A Family History Blog

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet
                                 ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ William Shakespeare

This is the story of Rose Estall, our grandmother Bessie’s sister, who through some name changes left me at sea in the search for her. (Ironic, considering Bessie believed Rose was lost at sea.)

Rose Estall was born on October 21, 1895, in the Bethnal Green Workhouse infirmary. She was the third to last of Sarah (nèe Hutchings) Estall’s eight children. Her mother, a seamstress, had three children with unnamed fathers before meeting Rose’s dad, possibly indicating she used prostitution to make ends meet. Her father William Edward Estall, a dock worker and general labourer, had two children out of wedlock before meeting and marrying her mother. Unfortunately, neither parent was a long-term fixture in young Rosie’s life.

Her older sisters — Bessie, four years her senior, and Lily two years — walked her from the age of two to the neighborhood Globe Road[1] primary school. Their home was in the multi-building, multi-story tenement of Quinn’s Square – a complex that a police inspector at the time referred to as “there are no worse places to be found.”[2]

When Rose was four her mother passed away from acute meningitis. Her father, oftentimes sickly, entered the Bethnal Green Workhouse infirmary shortly thereafter, bringing the children with him. This would begin Rose’s upbringing at the hands of the London Workhouse resident school system. She spent a year at Bethnal Green’s Leytonstone School with her half-brother Tom and sister Lily. (Bessie was confined to the infirmary.)

Upon her father’s recovery and discharge from the workhouse he promptly abandoned the kids with his former mistress’s father in Syndenham … who immediately turned the kids over to the Lewisham Workhouse.

Fortunately for Rosie — age five at the time — her older half-brother Thomas and her sisters Bessie and Lily were also admitted to the Workhouse and sent to its Anerley School with her. Thomas, at age 12, was then sent off to the Exmouth Training Ship on the Thames. The sisters remained together at Anerley for the next five years.

According to the recollection of Lily, Rose’s sister, the school uniform was a blue serge with a white smock apron and lace collar. On Sundays they wore maroon serge and a straw hat for church and were given a straw mat for kneeling during services. They loved the organ music; Lily recalled that Rose was a good singer.

The dorms held around 500 girls and an equal number of boys, housed according to gender and age. Meals were sparse and regimented, with no talking allowed. Breakfast was a slice of bread and cocoa. The evening meal was a slice of bread and skim milk (and jam when outside visitors were present, for show). The mid-day meal varied by day: Monday was plum pudding; Tuesday a meat pie; Wednesday cold meat; Thursday pea soup; Friday cold meat; Saturday suet pudding; and Sunday a meat dish. Only when outside visitors were present were second helpings available at the end of the table.

In March of 1906 the girls’ father, William Estall, who’d abandoned them and moved back to Bethnal Green, passed away, leaving the children now both deserted and orphaned. They volunteered to emigrate to Canada through the Home Children program administered by Annie Macpherson. At the end of May they were released from Anerley to the Macpherson Home of Industry in South Hackney to prepare for the trip. Rose, only ten years old at the time, was a bed wetter, and her sisters took her to bed with them in hopes of curing that condition,[3] but it didn’t work. Rosie was deemed unfit for emigration and sent back to Lewisham when her sisters left for Canada in July.

The Lewishham Workhouse sent Rosie to a scattered home on Gilmore Road.  Scattered homes were run by foster families and were designed to integrate groups of orphaned or abandoned children into neighborhood schools rather than placing them in isolated cottage homes or in workhouse schools. Rose only lasted there a year (for a reason that wasn’t documented) and was readmitted to the workhouse’s Anerley school for the next two years. She was finally discharged in 1909 at age fourteen, possibly to the care of James and Ellen Kent, who’d adopted Rose’s younger brother Jim at age two.

A year later her half-brother Thomas committed suicide while serving with the English Army in Cairo, Egypt. Rose was noted as his nearest next of kin.

In 1911 Rose, then 15 years old, showed up in the census as adopted and living in Enfield with the Kents and her brother.

From Canada, Bessie and Lily exchanged letters with Rose. Rose indicated that she was planning to get married and she hoped to travel to North America to join her sisters.[4] Apparently the correspondence ended when the Estall sisters left Canada for California in 1911. As mentioned before, Bessie believed that Rosie was lost at sea on her way to North America.

For me, Rosie’s paper trail went cold after the 1911 census. I spent years unsuccessfully searching ship passenger lists, marriage records, death records, workhouse registers, and censuses to track her down. She was a mystery that I couldn’t solve … yet couldn’t give up on.

Rose is a rose is a rose
                                 ‘Sacred Emily,’ Gertrude Stein

 

And then in the spring of this year I serendipitously found her in a family tree on Ancestry.com. The tree was put together by a previously unknown third cousin of ours – our common ancestor being Rose’s paternal grandfather – and over the ensuing weeks our cousin uncovered “the rest of the story” of Rose Estall: from motherhood to the grave.

Rose’s story picked up again in 1915 in the west London districts of Chelsea and Fulham. In July of that year she entered the Chelsea Workhouse infirmary to give birth to an illegitimate son whom she named Thomas James Estelle, perhaps in honor of her older brother Thomas and younger one James. Rose was 20 and working as a domestic servant in Fulham. When she left the infirmary at the end of September she did so without Thomas in hand; he was left to be adopted out.

The 1921 census shows that Thomas was adopted by the boot maker and auxiliary postman Edward Clark and his wife Florence of the north London district of Edmonton, a couple who in 1921 were ages 48 and 43 respectively and had two older children of their own. Thomas was four at the time of the census. Although he’d found a home and family, Thomas had a short, difficult life, dying at the age of 21 (the same age as the uncle he’d likely been named after). He’d been admitted to the Cripples’ Training College to learn a trade compatible with his handicap but he  died shortly thereafter in 1936 of congestive heart failure.

Meanwhile, Rose had a second son, Charles Francis Estelle, in September of 1917. The birth certificate lists Rose as “Rose Estelle formerly Francis,” living on Hampstead Road in the St. Pancras district, and lists the father as Charles Estelle, a master hairdresser. There is no previous record of their marriage, and there are no obvious candidates for the father in other contemporary records — i.e., censuses, voter registers, directories, vital records, etc. Although one could accept his identity at face value, there are alternative explanations which we’ll come to in a bit.

The young Rose, now with the son she kept, was living hand-to-mouth in Fulham. She literally sang for her supper, according to a recollection of her son. “He could remember queueing up for stale bread when he was young. Prior to that, he remembered his Mum holding him in her arms when he was very young, while she sang in the street for her supper.” [5] Interestingly enough, Rose’s sister Lily remembered that Rose had a good singing voice while at Anerley.

The 1921 census provides a fascinating snapshot of Rose, who was 24 years old at the time. It shows her as Rose Estelle, single [as opposed to married or widowed] with an unpaid[6] occupation of “home duties,” living in a furnished room in the widowed Marie Van Goethem household. Rose’s son Charles, at 3 years old, is listed four lines down as having “no father.”  His position on the page, following Marie Van Goethem’s two children, seems odd but may not warrant reading anything into. By inference one assumes that Rose is helping Marie with household duties and helping raise the children. Whether the relationship with Marie was strictly transactional or based on friendship is unclear. There are, however, some indications it was likely the latter.

Digging deeper into the census, we see that one of Marie’s children is Julia Franciscone. Julia’s father was Eduardo Franciscone,[7] a hairdresser’s assistant in Fulham, associated with a family operating a hairdressing shop on Waterford Street.

Marie had what we could call a “history” with the apparently volatile Franciscone family. In addition to having a daughter by one of them in 1911, she had a run in with another of them in 1923 over money he owed her. This was with Celestino Vincenzo Franciscone, aka Charles V. Francis, a resident Italian hairdresser who a few years previously was warned off with a gunshot after insulting an acquaintance’s wife (it would be interesting to learn just what the nature of the “insult” was).[8] When Marie came to collect the money he owed her, they had some words, she picked up a stick and he in turn picked up a broom and he banged her on the head with it.[9]

Whether Marie herself was volatile, or whether the broomstick did some damage (she showed up in court with her head swathed in bandages), Marie ended her days in a mental hospital. Nevertheless, these instances of violence and strife might well reflect some instability in the fatherless household, or more generally the chaos frequently found under poor economic living conditions.

Even more interesting, it seems that Rose herself had a history with Celestino Vincenzo Franciscone. Given that Celestino also went by the anglicized name Charles V. Francis,[10] it is more than a curious coincidence that when her second son was born in 1917 she said her former surname was Francis,[11] that the child’s father was a hairdresser, and she named the son Charles Francis Estelle.

Furthermore, Rose’s granddaughter relayed that “I remember my Dad saying that his father’s name would have been pronounced ‘Cileste’ or ‘Cilesto’ but I think he thought that his next name (which he would have thought was his middle name) was ‘Francesco.‘” She went on to write “I remember my Dad saying that there would have been a proper way to pronounce the ‘Francisco’ name and then said that the Estelle name would have been pronounced Estellè (with an accent because of the ‘Italian’ connection – evidently the story told to him by his Mum).”[12]

It seems pretty clear that Rose believed Celestino was Charles’s father, or alternatively, was looking for someone to pin the Rose on, so to speak. However, Charles’s daughter’s DNA doesn’t show any Italian heritage[13] so Rose apparently guessed wrong as to which lover fathered her son. Celestino went on to marry another woman in 1923.

Nobody knows this little Rose
                                 ‘Nobody Knows This Little Rose,’ Emily Dickinson

 

Rose next surfaces in 1925 when she gave birth to her daughter Phyllis at the Chelsea Workhouse infirmary.[14] On the birth certificate she identifies herself as Rose Estelle, a domestic servant. The father is identified as Leonard Miles, a hotel cook. They are living together under separate surnames on Limerston Street in Chelsea. Yet again, Leonard is as elusive as Rose’s former partners: there are no corroborating documents showing his residence, their marriage (though Rose later maintained she was a widow of his), nor his death. Nevertheless, Rose adopted the surname Miles for the balance of her life.

Rose, a single mother of limited income, sent her son Charles off to Bisley School[15] in Surrey, which operated as a resident school for homeless or destitute boys. She also sent her daughter Phyllis off to school, though which one is open to speculation, with some of the family thinking that it was a private school with tuition paid by Rose’s employer,[16] and others thinking a Workhouse district school was more likely.[17] Regardless, there was a pattern to Rose’s parenting: her children were sent off for adoption or to resident schools. This perhaps reflected the hard life choices of a young, single, working woman struggling financially. She may also have borne in mind that she had been raised in the workhouse school system with no apparent harm.

Rose, however, didn’t abandon her two younger children. She still played a part in their early and later lives.

In 1939 England conducted a register of its inhabitants to support the production of national identity cards. Rose Estall, now Rose Miles, showed up on Sussex Street in Westminster, adjacent to Chelsea, as a ‘widow’ engaged in ‘daily housework.’ It is her birth date on the form that confirms Rose Miles, formerly Rose Francis, was indeed Rose Estall: it shows she was born on 21 October 1895. The earlier census of 1921 showed she was born in Bethnal Green. Between the two censuses we have confirmation of her identity.

Rose’s experience with privation undoubtedly extended into the era of the Second World War, when rationing hit the London civilian population and certain goods and foodstuffs were hard to find.

Along with the economic stress, Rose’s son Charles served on a corvette in World War II, a ship designed for anti-submarine warfare to protect the north Atlantic shipping routes. He took some shrapnel in his hand, which fortunately didn’t do lasting harm, but having a child in harm’s way is particularly hard on a mother.

And of course Rose would also have shared in the anxiety and terror of neighbors who hurriedly sought shelter at the sounds of air raid sirens, the rumble of engines of German bomber airplanes overhead, and the whistles of German V-1 and V-2 rockets. An estimated 18,688 civilians in London were killed during the war and 1.5 million were made homeless.

The fires, the fear, the hunger, the rubbled neighborhood streets, the losses . . . Rose lived through a good deal of difficulty at most every stage of life.

Rose in her last years worked as a cook at the Battersea Power Plant[18] across the river from her home on Uverdale Road in Chelsea.

It was from the Chelsea home that Rose passed away in 1951 at the age of 54 from cancer, namely cervical cancer. Her death certificate shows her as the widow of [the elusive] hotel chef Leonard Miles. Her son Charles, living in Great Yarmouth on the eastern coast, was listed as the one who reported her death.

Her body was buried in the Old Brompton Cemetery in Chelsea in a common grave. Being a common grave, there was no headstone to commemorate her life or her passing.[19]

So ended the story of my grandmother’s “missing” sister. She was raised in working class poverty and apparently spent much of her adulthood in the same. Her life was marked by childhood institutionalization, loss, abandonment, and instability. Like her mother, she had children by unknown fathers and was difficult to track due to name changes. But also like her mother, she gave life to the next generation and showed genuine concern for them.

I know our grandmother would have been happy to know that Rosie wasn’t lost at sea. Decades later, we have some resolution on the mystery of what happened to her. It even feels like we have some reconnection — unfortunately posthumously — but if there is an afterlife, we can now envision the sisters sitting together again, holding hands, and reminiscing about their years at Anerley … and catching up on “the rest of their stories.”

‘A word with you, that of the singer recalling—
     Old Herrick: a saying that every maid knows is
A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,
     And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.’
                                                                                     ‘Asking for Roses,’ Robert Frost

AFTERWORD

This story of Rose Estall wouldn’t have been possible without the generous contributions of cousins who live in England and Wales, whose names I’ve omitted out of privacy concerns. This story really does end in reconnection … not just the figurative one between the Estall sisters, but the literal ones among the Estall descendants.

DNA is a fairly new addition to the field of genealogy and one I wasn’t very familiar with. But DNA matches among myself and these cousins has proven our mutual connections to the Estall family. DNA evidence also eliminated a candidate for the father of one of Rose’s children, though we are still in the dark as to the fathers’ true identities. As more people take DNA tests and we find matches, we may eventually fill in more blanks in Rose’s story … and maybe in our own as well.

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Endnotes

[1] Rosie was enrolled at the age of 2 years, 3 months. See Tower Hamlets: Globe Road School: Admission and Discharge Register for Infants, 31 Jan 1898.

[2] George H. Duckworth’s Notebook: Police and Publican. Charles Booth Notebook B350, page 39.

[3] Recollections of Lily Schrotzberger (née Susan Estall) as recorded by her son Ed. Copy provided to Jamie Schutze by JoAnn Schrotzberger.

[4] Recollections of Lily Schrotzberger.

[5] Email, F.T., 7 April 2024, Subj: Re: Rose Francis/Estelle/Miles. From one of Rose’s granddaughters.

[6] The green numeric code 992/1 translates to “Retired or not gainfully employed/not employed – unpaid domestic duties etc.”

[7] Birth certificate for Juiglietta Margherita Franciscone, born 23 Dec 1911 on Maxwell Rd, Fulham.

[8] “The Fulham Shooting Affray,” The West London Observer, 14 Nov 1919, p8.

[9] “Alleged Assault with a Broom,” The West London Observer, 13 July 1923, p3. Also: “Broom v. Stick,” The Kensington News & West London Times, 20 July 1923, p2.

[10] The 1939 England and Wales Register shows Franciscone, Vincenzo “known as” Francis, Charles V. employed as a Gentlemen’s Hairdresser on Avalon Road in Fulham.

[11] Marie, who’d had a child by Eduardo Franciscone in 1912 (with no apparent marriage), stated her surname as Francis when she married Theophile Van Goethem on 3 July 1915.

[12] Emails, F.T., 3 May and 10 April 2024, Subj: Re: Rose Francis/Estelle/Miles.

[13] Ibid.

[14] The place of birth is the address of the Chelsea Workhouse, which in 1925 was still in operation. The Chelsea Workhouse and Infirmary were turned over to the London County Council in 1930.

[15] Email, F.T., 8 April 2024, Subj: Re: Rose Francis/Estelle/Miles.

[16] Email, C.S., 3 April 2024, Re: Rosie Estall.

[17] Email, E.H., 12 April 2024, Subj: Re: Hello! Email from a great-granddaughter of Rose Estall.

[18] Email, F.T., 8 April 2024, Subj: Re: Rose Francis/Estelle/Miles.

[19] The Royal Parks, Brompton Cemetery, burial search for Rose Miles, 1951. The burial record shows she was buried in a common grave. According to Britain Express, “Brompton Cemetery, London,” https://www.britainexpress.com/London/brompton-cemetery.htm, “common graves saw up to 10 burials in a single deep grave, with no right to erect a headstone.”

Librarians are my favorite kind of people.

They are exceptionally helpful … and altruistically so. Not motivated by profit, pride, or power, they offer their services with a generosity that’s, well, frankly, uncommon today.

Combine that with their intelligence and resourcefulness, and you have a cadre of bookish people who are your best friends when you’re in need of information.

I mention this because of two instances this year in which I turned to librarians with positive results. I’ve already mentioned the help I got from the Detroit Public Library when seeking the naturalization papers of my great-grandfather.

The second instance came a couple of weeks ago when I was seeking the locations of a village house and neighboring farm field of my great-great grandfather’s family in rural Bavaria. Although I had the house and field numbers of their 19th century property from a church death register, I couldn’t find a way to relate those numbers to locations today in Röckingen, Germany, which I’m visiting in July.

Last year I wrote the mayor of Röckingen to request assistance, with no tangible results. So this year I figured … ahem … I’d contact a librarian.

The nearest town with a library is Wassertrüdingen. I sent the librarian, Ms. Claudia Knauer, an email requesting her help in finding old maps or documents that would show the exact locations. After a few day’s silence, I figured it was a lost cause.

But as I said, librarians are resourceful, and Ms. Knauer forwarded my request to citizens in Röckingen who might have an answer. About a week later, I got an email from the mayor of Röckingen with an old map and the string of correspondence from people in town who kept the question alive until someone found the answer. Voila, a librarian came through again!

In July we’ll be able to stand in the courtyard where my great-great-grandfather Johann Schrotzberger was raised: the house on one side, and the barn on the other … undoubtedly the same barn where he, a master butcher later in life, learned about raising animals and butchering them from his mother’s father and brother, the Rau family butchers of Röckingen,

As TV’s Mr. Rogers famously advised, when in trouble “look for the helpers.” In my experience, those helpers are frequently the librarians in towns and cities across the globe. When you’re stuck, “just ask a librarian.”

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The Schrotzberger family lived at house number 100 in Röckingen. This map identifies the location, near the church at the center of the village, and Google maps shows the area appears unchanged.

It was with a certain amount of trepidation that we decided to take a DNA test.

For one thing, I’m a private person, and exposing our DNA isn’t exactly the height of privacy. At best we open ourselves — if we allow it — to share our results with other researchers. At worst, we leave a digital fingerprint for law enforcement to track us or our kin. And somewhere in between is a concern as to whether health insurers or others can buy (or hack) their way into our private lives.

Nevertheless, it seemed like a risk that was worth the potential benefits . . . those benefits being validation of our genealogical research, and testing some assumptions about our forefathers.

And . . . the results are in.

Ethnicity

If our research was thorough, we could expect that Ancestry DNA’s Ethnicity Estimate and ranges would closely align with our own calculated ethnicity.

Based on the percentage of DNA we got from our ancestors (parents, grandparents,  great-grandparents and great-great grandparents) and where they came from, we calculated our heritage as shown in the first two columns below. Ancestry DNA’s analysis is shown in the remaining three columns.

Our Calculated Heritage		DNA Ethnicity Estimate and Range
Scottish	37.50%	Scotland	43%	28-43%
German	25.00%	Germanic Europe	33%	26-57%
English	25.00%	England & N.W. Europe	7%	0-31%
Irish	6.25%	Ireland	7%	0-15%
Misc U.K. & W. Europe	6.25%	Wales	4%	0-7%
Total	100.00%	Sweden & Denmark	3%	0-12%
		Baltics	1%	0-2%
		Sardinia	1%	0-2%
		Basque	1%	0-1%
		Total	100%

It appears the Ancestry DNA test estimates rather closely align with what we’d calculated in our own genealogical research. The small percentage of the Swedish and Danish estimate is intriguing but not definitive, and the trace percentages of the Baltics, Sardinia, and Basque regions are interesting, but most likely flukes given their extremely low figures. By and large, the DNA estimates were what we would have expected.

Lost Kin

The other benefit of DNA testing is finding unknown relatives in the family.  Our DNA report showed ten “close family” matches with from 3% to 16% shared DNA. All but one of those were known cousins (and the 16% was a first cousin), so no surprises there. The single unknown match, on our maternal side, uses the cryptic handle of “Su918” and has no family tree; they could be someone we do or don’t know. At a 4% match they are probably a distant cousin.

The remaining matches are “extended family” or “distant family.” There are two extended family matches (1-2% shared DNA) who also have an ancestor in their family trees in common with us. All of the rest are “distant” family matches, sharing less than 1% of our DNA.

In short, here too the DNA results were largely what was expected.

No Skeletons in the Closet

And unlike some families, ours don’t seem to have any “skeletons in the closet” — surprise brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles or cousins born outside of known long-term partnerships. Perhaps that’s a testament to the marital fidelity of our forefathers and mothers.

Traits

Lastly, we included the test for genetic traits in our DNA package. The results were mixed, leading me to think this testing was more parlor game than science. Whereas I’ve always considered myself an introvert, the DNA results pegged me as likely to be more extroverted. My endurance fitness puts me in the “commonly found in elite endurance athletes” camp . . . laughably funny. I supposedly like cilantro, even though I frequently ask my wife to go easy on it in her meals. Some things, such as “morning person” and “risk averse” are true. And “more sensitive to sweets” was proven yet again this Easter season with jelly beans and chocolate candy consumption. But on the whole I didn’t find this part of the DNA test particularly useful or insightful.

Summary

For me the Ancestry.com DNA testing was more a confirmation of what we’d already found in our research rather than a breakthrough insight into our family past. It’s still early days, though. Some potential “extended” or “distant” family member match may contact us in the future with more information about our clan. We can only wait and see.

One of my favorite family photographs^[1] is of Friedrich Hermann Schütze (1851-1909), my great-grandfather. In the photograph he looks so intense, yet contemplative; a young man who knows where he’s going in life and has the ability and ambition to get there. (As it turned out, the “there” was America.)

The bottom of the photograph shows it was taken in Hamburg, Germany. Since I’m going there this summer to walk in the footsteps of our ancestors, I thought it would be nice to visit the place where this picture was taken. And thus began a journey of another sort … an exploration in time and space.

The starting point of this exploration was the back of the cardboard-mounted photograph, which had a note written by my father, Leonard, as to the subject of the photo. Equally helpful, the name and address of the photo studio was imprinted there. Should be easy to find the place, right?

Well, sort of.    Except, where the heck is “St. Pauli. Langereihe 69” in Hamburg?

Modern-day maps don’t show a Langereihe street in the St. Pauli district. That’s to be expected — the city has evolved over the 140-odd years since the picture was taken. But perhaps there’s another clue on the back? How about the phrase “Carl Schultze’s Theater gegenübuer”?

Gegenüber means “across from,” so we needed to find the Carl Schultze theater in the St. Pauli district. And here’s where an 1890 and a 1911 map of the city^[2] came to our rescue.

Aha, we found the place, on the south side of the current-day Reeperbahn, between Lincoln and Silbersack streets. (The original 3-story building, of which the studio was on the second floor, is long gone, unfortunately. So is the theater across the street.)

That’s the Where … How About the When?

But wait … there’s more. We wanted to confirm the location using the Hamburg city address books,^[3] and sure enough, the street listings match what we found on the old map. But surprisingly, the address books also hinted at the time that the photograph was taken. The 1879 book^[4] shows Aug. Noack as located at Langereihe 13, and the 1880^[5] book shows him at Langereihe 69. That explains the “alte No. 13” line on the back of the photograph: formerly at Langereihe No. 13. And since Noack moved in 1879 (to show up at the new address in the 1880 book), the photograph was likely taken that year. My speculation is that the photo was taken around the time of Hermann’s wedding, July 4th, 1879. However, the photo could also have been taken as late as the spring of 1880, prior to Hermann’s departure for America on the 19th of May, as a keepsake for his new wife until she could join him three months later in Detroit. At any rate, it was taken when he was 28 or 29 years old.

So, finding the “where” of the photo also fortuitously led to finding the “when.”

And the icing on the cake?

The Reeperbahn is Hamburg’s nightlife and red light district, going back at least a couple of hundred years, due to Hamburg’s function as a port city catering to sailors’ needs. And in the early 1960s, the Beatles — who recorded the sound tracks to my formative years — played the Reeperbahn’s clubs, where they honed their musical skills over countless nights of grueling, stimulant-fueled, hours-long sets in seedy bars.^[6] So when we go to see the area where my great-grandfather Hermann walked, we also get to see the clubs where the Beatles honed their craft before becoming famous. In fact, the site of the old Carl Schultze’s theater is where, years later, the Top Ten Club was located, one of the places the Beatles played in 1960 and 1961. It’s now the Moondoo Club, and you’ll find me having a drink there with my son this summer.

Hamburg, here we come!

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Notes:

[1] The original is in the possession of Elizabeth Nick, Hermann’s great-granddaughter. She loaned it to me to scan in 2012.
[2] “Large detailed old map of Hamburg city – 1911,” Mapsland, https://www.mapsland.com/europe/germany/hamburg/large-detailed-old-map-of-hamburg-city-1911.
The street name at the time, Langereihe, is confirmed in an 1890 map of the city, “Large detailed old map of Hamburg city – 1890,” Mapsland, https://www.mapsland.com/europe/germany/hamburg/large-detailed-old-map-of-hamburg-city-1890
[3] “Hamburger Adressbücher – Dokumentanzeige,” 1880, Hamburgisches Adress-Buch für 1880, Straßenverzeichnis: Vierter Abschnitt. Verzeichniß der Straßen und Häuser der Stadt, Vorstadt und der Vororte nebst Angabe der Einwohner und Eigenthümer der Häuser.  Alphabetteil: Langereihe, Seite IV/518, Staats und Universitäts Bibliothek Hamburg, https://agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de/subhh-adress/digbib/view?did=c1:493192&p=632. Accessed 25 March 2023.
[4] “Hamburger Adressbücher – Dokumentanzeige,” 1879, Hamburgisches Adress-Buch für 1879, Personen- und Firmenverzeichnis: Dritter Abschnitt. Alphabetisches Verzeichniß der Einwohner der Stadt Hamburg, der Vorstadt und des Landgebiets, mit Angabe ihres Standes und ihrer Wohnungen. Alphabetteil: Nienstädt, Seite III/267, Staats und Universitäts Bibliothek Hamburg, https://agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de/subhh-adress/digbib/view?did=c1:494924&sdid=c1:495199&hit=6. Accessed 25 March 2023.
[5] “Hamburger Adressbücher – Dokumentanzeige,” 1880, Hamburgisches Adress-Buch für 1880, Personen- und Firmenverzeichnis: Dritter Abschnitt. Alphabetisches Verzeichniß der Einwohner der Stadt Hamburg, der Vorstadt und des Landgebiets, mit Angabe ihres Standes und ihrer Wohnungen. Alphabetteil: Niemeyer Seite III/252, Staats und Universitäts Bibliothek Hamburg, https://agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de/subhh-adress/digbib/view?did=c1:493192&sdid=c1:493455&hit=29. Accessed 25 March 2023.
[6] “The Beatles in Hamburg,” Wikipedia, last modified 25 February 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_in_Hamburg.

One of the biggest steps our immigrant ancestors could take in their newly adopted county — America — would be to disavow allegiance to their former country’s government and to indicate they wished to become U.S. citizens.

Documentation of this step in the story of our German immigrant, Friedrich Hermann “Hermann” Schütze, was elusive. None of the popular genealogy sites had digital images, or even indices, indicating  that Hermann had obtained citizenship.

However, a couple of years back I ran across a Detroit Genealogical Society magazine index^[1] that pointed the way to his documents. And last week, with the kind assistance of Mark Bowden, the Special Collections Coordinator of the Burton Historical Collection of the Detroit Public Library, we finally obtained a digital copy of these milestone documents. (Click here to see the 73 megabyte pdf file.)

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We addressed Hermann’s German origins in an earlier post. By way of recap, he was born in the small town of Zauckerode, southwest of Dresden, in 1851, the son of a coal miner. Hermann moved to Hamburg to pursue his goal of becoming a journeyman butcher in the early 1870s, married there in 1879, and emigrated to Detroit in 1880.

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Naturalization was a two-step process, requiring an immigrant’s Declaration of Intention, followed by a Naturalization Oath a minimum of two years later. At that time any “court of record” could grant U.S. citizenship. Hermann went to the local Detroit Recorder’s Court to begin the process in March of 1884.

In his Declaration, Hermann swore it was his intention to become a citizen of the United States, and renounced all allegiance to the emperor of Germany, of whom he’d been a subject. He affixed his signature to the document, spelling his surname with an extra “e” to Anglicize the German “ü.”

Almost three years later, on January 10th of 1887, he returned to the court to swear his Naturalization Oath. In this document he used his full name, Friedrich Hermann Schuetze, again signing at the bottom. By extension, when Hermann became a U.S. citizen, his wife and children also became citizens … as would  his descendants.

Americans celebrate the birth of our country on July 4th — Independence Day — with hot dogs and a bottle or two of Budweiser. As members of the Schütze/Schuetze/Schutze family I propose we also celebrate our “Citizenship Day” on every January 10th with brätwurst and a bottle of Löwenbräu — or good ol’ hot dogs and Bud, if that’s more your thing — which is  particularly apt considering Hermann was a sausage maker by trade.

Are you in? Mark your calendar for January and we can clink glasses to celebrate this turning point in our Americanized family’s history.

Zum Wohl ! (Cheers, y’all ! )

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Footnote:

[1] The Detroit Society for Genealogical Research Magazine, Fall 2003, Volume 67, No. 1, p19.

On June 22nd, 2022, we lost our brother-in-law James P. Bartlett, Jr., after a massive stroke.

James’s extended family gathered in Omaha, Nebraska, to mourn his passing and to celebrate his warmth and accomplishments over the 63 years of his life.

His funeral pamphlet can be opened by clicking on the image above, and his funeral service and slideshow can be found at the bottom of the photo albums page on our web site.

James will be in the hearts and on the minds of our family forever. Rest in peace, brother.

In July of 2021 I traveled to South Pasadena, California, to meet my father’s cousin Hugh Davis.

We had a fun time exploring the history of the California branch of the Hermann Schütze family, visiting cities, cemeteries, and old family residences.

One of the highlights of the visit was an interview I conducted with Hugh to get an oral history of his mother Harriet (née Schutze) Davis and his uncles Leonard and Hugo Schutze.

The recording is at the audio page of our family history web site.

 

Today we are looking into our great-grand uncle Malcolm Campbell, the only member of our Scottish Campbell clan who didn’t emigrate to Canada, and who headed to Australia instead.

Background

By way of background, Malcolm Campbell’s mother Isabella McLean — our great-great-grandmother — was born in 1801 at the Arichonan farmstead in the parish of North Knapdale, in Argyll, Scotland. Her husband John Campbell was born in 1796 at the neighboring farmstead of Gallochoille.

Isabella and John were married in 1829 in the parish church in Tayvallich and between 1830 and 1843 they had seven children (see below) at the Baroile farmstead in the neighboring Kilmichael Glassary parish.

The children of John and Isabella (McLean) Campbell
     Neil Campbell (1830-1909)
     Effie Campbell (1832-1910)
     Malcolm Campbell, our great-granduncle (1835-1905)
     Sarah Campbell (later Livingston), our great-grandmother (1837-1914)
     Jane Campbell (1839-1891)
     Donald Campbell (1841-1919)
     John Campbell (1843-1860)

The Highland Clearances

Isabella and her family felt the effects of the Highland Clearances while residing as tenants at farmsteads owned by Neil Malcolm of Poltalloch.

The Arichonan farmstead, where Isabella’s family still lived, famously rebelled in 1848 against the Clearance instigated by their landlord. Two of Isabella’s brothers were indicted for rioting, with one of them serving a prison sentence.

At about the same time, John and Isabella moved from their home at Baroile farmstead in Glassary parish to the Auchrome farmstead in Kilmartin parish. It seems likely this, too, was due to a clearance instigated by Neil Malcolm, who owned both farmsteads as well as many others in the area, including Auchachrome. The former farmsteads are now all in ruin; or as in the case of Baroile, there is nothing left of the former structures, further indication that the farms were “cleared.” (Click on photos to enlarge.)

In 1854 John Campbell passed away at the age of 58 at Auchachrome and his body was buried in the Kilmartin churchyard. Three years later his widow and their children — probably as a result of another clearance — emigrated to Ontario, Canada, near the town of Alvinston.

All of the children, that is, except for Malcolm Campbell.

Malcolm Campbell

For many years I wondered why Malcolm didn’t move with his mother and siblings to Canada. Why — and when — did he emigrate to Australia instead? What is the story of this person who became a  successful businessman in Muswellbrook and the Upper Hunter Region of New South Wales, 160 miles north of Sydney?

His obituary, recently found in an Australian newspaper, provides some answers. From it we learn that Malcolm left his family in his teens to make a living at a wholesale drapery establishment in Glasgow, 85 miles and a seemingly whole world away from the isolated farmstead. At the age of nineteen, in the same year his father died at Auchachrome, Malcolm emigrated to Australia to get in on a gold rush there. Whereas his father and siblings were farmers at heart, Malcolm was an entrepreneur, and untamed Australia was in his sights rather than rural Ontario.

 

Campbell Clan Origins?

Interestingly, Malcolm’s wife’s obituary, below, makes some fascinating assertions about the origins of our Campbell family in the Scottish Highlands. According to the obit, Malcolm (and his father and siblings, of course) were from the Duntroon branch of the powerful Campbell clan, with a direct line of ancestry to William the Conqueror and an Irish chieftain. Wow! I’m ready to strap on my kilt right now!

The Campbell clan was indeed dominant in Argyll  and still maintains a large castle near the town of Inveraray, not very far from our family’s parishes. Closer still is the Duntroon castle, located on the shore of Loch Crinan, exceptionally close to our Campbell family farmsteads. Duntroon castle was owned by the Clan Campbell until 1792, when it was sold to the Malcolms of Poltalloch. So there may be some merit to the claim in Mrs. Campbell’s obituary.

Yet it is also true that many poor families took on the surnames of the powerful clan chiefs of their area. And there were a lot of Campbells in the parishes of Kilmartin, Glassary, and North Knapdale. If our ancestors were indeed of noble stock, it seems our humble farmers were perhaps on the lower rungs of the clan ladder. It’s an awful irony that the family the Campbell Clan sold their castle to, the Malcolms of Poltalloch, would be the ones who booted our ancestors off their farms.

I know of no documentation to refute, or conversely to verify, the obituary’s clan lineage assertion. I leave it up to you to judge. But if you want to show your colors, a piece of Campbell tartan clothing might be in order. (I got my kilt at St. Andrew’s Society Highland Games, in Livonia, Michigan, but there are a number of on-line sources as well.)

Whether from exalted heritage or just a poor adventurous kid trying to make his fortune, Malcolm Campbell the entrepreneur turned into the wealthiest of his Campbell siblings. He grew both a large family and a small fortune in New South Wales, Australia.

Despite the distance from Canada, Malcolm didn’t lose touch with his birth family, who passed on the photo of him at the top of this blog post and some of his hand-written notes. I’m sure they were proud of his accomplishments. Then again, that’s exactly what one would expect of a Scotsman from the powerful Campbell clan whose lineage traces back to England’s great king William the Conqueror, isn’t it????