1940 NYC Tax photo of 87-35 132nd Street, Richmond Hill, Queens. Block: 9340, Lot: 160.

Some of the buildings in these tax photos are gone. Some turn out grander than you’d ever guess. This one is neither, a plain two-family house on a Richmond Hill side street in Queens, the sort of place the city photographer could have shot a hundred times a day without a second thought. It’s still standing today. But it very nearly wasn’t, and the paper trail this ordinary address leaves behind runs from a Danish fireman to a German tourist to a fire that emptied the house one week before Christmas. When I stumbled upon this photo of two people who are strangers to me, I couldn't help but dig into the records to see if I could figure out who they were.

The house was built in 1935: wood-frame and shingled, two stories over a low basement, one of a row of nearly identical houses marching down 132nd Street in Queens. A driveway runs along the right side toward a garage at the back. On the little square of lawn behind a clipped hedge, two men haven’t stopped what they were doing even though a camera is pointed on them, one almost looks like he's tipping an imaginary bottle to his mouth, the other just standing there in shirtsleeves and a cap, with a spindly young sapling planted between them. The city’s placard looks like kt leans against the pole or the curb: 9340-160 Q, the block and lot that still identify the property today.

Who were they? A census taken just weeks after this photograph tells us who was home:

1940 U.S. Census, enumerated April 15, 1940; two households sharing 87-35 132nd Street.

In April 1940 the house held two families. The owners were Cornelius and Emma Shea, 67 and 69, both born in New York, sharing the place with Emma’s brother, 68-year-old Edward Hynes, an elderly trio in a house they valued at $6,700. Their tenants, paying $40 a month, were the Petersens: Frederick Petersen, 42, a stationary fireman for the City of New York who had been born in Denmark; his Danish wife, Emily; and their three daughters. The girls’ birthplaces trace the family’s path across the country: Margaret, 13, and Elizabeth, 12, born in California; and Frances, 6, born after they reached New York. An immigrant working family and a pair of native-born pensioners, stacked in a two-family house that was only five years old. It is about as ordinary a New York household as 1940 could produce. I’m confident that pictured in this photo is Mr. Shea, maybe Mr. Hynes.

Nine years later the house generated its own small piece of bureaucracy:

Certificate of Occupancy No. 65581, Borough of Queens, issued August 4, 1950, for a one-car garage at the rear of 87-35 132nd Street.

It’s easy to walk past a document like this, but I find them oddly moving. In 1949 the owners filed paperwork to put up a garage in the back yard, one likely similar to that little structure at the end of the driveway you can see behind their neighbors house, and in the summer of 1950 the Department of Housing and Buildings issued Certificate of Occupancy No. 65581 for it: one story, ten feet six inches high, “One Car Garage, Accessory Use.” A whole certificate, signed by the Borough Superintendent, for a place to keep a single automobile. It is the most hopeful, most suburban document in the file; a family with a car and a yard, doing everything by the book.

And then, decades on, the address turns up somewhere you wouldn’t expect.

Newsday, June 19, 1981: “2 Teens Indicted In Tourist Robbery.”

The item happened to run beside an ad for free summer concerts “on the World Trade Center Plaza:”

The Daily News reporting featured a picture of the victim:

Daily News, June 22, 1981. “Wolfgang Brendel shows mark on his neck where he was allegedly stabbed.” By Nick Sorrentino.

In June 1981 a nineteen-year-old West German named Wolfgang Brendel flew into JFK Airport from Frankfurt to begin a hitchhiking trip across North America. He wanted to see New York first. According to the papers, after taking in the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty and balking at Manhattan hotel prices, he rode the subway out to Queens and was sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Avenue elevated station when a young man struck up a conversation and offered him cheap lodging at a house around the corner. The house was empty. Once inside, the man went through Brendel’s backpack, pulled out Brendel’s own hunting knife, and demanded his money. In the struggle that ensued, Brendel was stabbed in the neck with his own knife, ten stitches, and, the medics told him, within two centimeters of an artery, but he fought free, recovered his money, and made it out to the street, where his attacker and a friend tried to run him down with a car before police boxed them in a few blocks away.

One of the two teenagers a Queens grand jury indicted on robbery charges was eighteen-year-old Juan Rodriguez, and the address the papers printed after his name was 87-35 132nd Street, this house shown earlier in the tax photo. Forty years after the Petersen girls were growing up here, the same address surfaced in the crime pages, attached to a story a tourist would spend the rest of his summer telling to a grand jury with the help of an interpreter. That is the strange thing about following a single lot number through the record: the house barely changes, but the lives that pass through it do, and every so often one of them lands in the newspaper.

Which brings us, finally, to the house’s most recent chapter, and to why I called it “barely” standing.

On December 22, 2024, three days before Christmas, a fire tore through 87-35 132nd Street. The Fire Department and Emergency Management asked the Department of Buildings for a structural-stability inspection, and that same day the city issued a full vacate order: the roof, an exterior wall, ceilings, doors, and windows were damaged badly enough that no one could safely live there. Violations followed in the spring of 2025 for failing to keep the building in safe condition, and in April the owners filed for a permit to make repairs; “general construction & structural work to restore ex. 2-family dwelling from fire damages,” valued at $109,000. As of early 2026 the vacate order was still on the books; an inspector who came by that January found the house empty and quiet, with no work going on.

So the little house is still there, ninety years after it was built and eighty-five after the WPA man stopped to photograph it, shingles scorched, windows dark, waiting to learn whether it gets its next chapter or not. Like so many of these tax photos, it turns out to be less a picture of a building than a record of the people who lived, worked, and occasionally made trouble inside it: a Danish fireman, an elderly widow and her brother, a family filing paperwork for a one-car garage, a teenager whose worst night ended up in the Daily News. The building was only ever the frame. The scene was always the lives.

But first, the city.

1. Coblenz, about 1833

Coblenz and the Rhine River from the heights of Ehrenbreitstein. Line engraving on steel by J. Cousins, ca. 1833–36.

The engraver has put us on a footpath high above the river, the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein looming over our left shoulder, freshly rebuilt by the Prussians after Napoleon’s troops destroyed its medieval predecessor. Far below, the Rhine bends away in a silvery sheet; sailing barges lean into the wind; a long low bridge stitches the far bank to the town. Coblenz itself is a pale hint of rooftops in the middle distance.

The real subjects here are the rock, the weather, and the half-dozen tiny figures in the foreground who have stopped to admire the view, walkers in bonnets and relaxed attire, one learning on the parapet, and a small dog. This is Coblenz as the nineteenth century wanted it to be portrayed: sublime, picturesque, a stop on the Rhine tour.

2. Coblenz, about 1870

“COBLENZ.” Steel engraving, drawn and engraved by F. Foltz in Darmstadt, ca. 1870.

Forty years later, focused on the same confluence, but the artist has crossed the water and come down off the mountain. Now we have look mostly at the city rather than past it. Ehrenbreitstein has retreated to the upper right. The foreground belongs to a farmer driving oxen up a cart track between vineyard rows, past the tiled roofs and slender spire of a riverside village. And in the middle of the plate is the thing the earlier engraving could not have shown: an iron railway bridge, its lattice arches striding the Moselle River on stone piers with a fortified gate-tower planted at both ends. The picturesque Rhine in the previous image has now acquired an infrastructure.

3. Coblenz, 1905

Koblenz and the Moselle. Photochrom print no. 1361, ca. 1905. Photoglob Zürich.

Now in color, or rather in the strangely charming candied color of photochrom, a process that took a black-and-white negative and printed it from a stack of lithographic stones, one per hue. Everything is legible compared to the previous images. Here, the city seems noisy and alive. This is an image to look at closely, because fifteen years later my family walked through it. The Balduinbrücke, the Baldwin Bridge. The great iron Moselle bridge with its castellated towers. The long stone walkway along the shore. The twin spires of the Liebfrauenkirche, or the Church of our Lady, and, downriver, the towers of St. Kastor. The vast Prussian government block along the waterfront. An orderly city under a summer haze. A crazy future ahead of it.

Three artists showcasing three techniques to portray the city across seventy years. And one small thing worth noting before we go on: the 1905 caption reads KOBLENZ, with a K. Both of the earlier engravings say COBLENZ, with a C. Both spellings ran side by side for decades. Hold that thought!

The document

Birth registration of Erich Hermann Winkler, entry no. 580, Standesamt Coblenz, 16 April 1920.

Here is the sheet. My grandfather’s civil birth record. The standard opening “Vor dem unterzeichneten Standesbeamten erschien heute, der Persönlichkeit nach … bekannt” (“There appeared today before the undersigned registrar, personally known as…”) is struck out entirely. Nobody came in. Written in above it instead: the municipal hospital administration hier hat angezeigt, has reported it. The birth reached the registry office as institutional paperwork, not as a relative standing at a counter with a hat in his hands. The registrar closed the entry the way the rules required, by counting his own deletions in a parenthesis at the foot of the page, and signed it in Vertretung, as deputy.

The entry itself reads:

No. 580. Coblenz, 16 April 1920. The municipal hospital administration here has reported that to the unmarried maid Wally Winkler, Evangelical, residing at Coblenz, Balduinstraße 4, at the city hospital at Coblenz, Castorstraße 94, on the ninth of April in the year one thousand nine hundred and twenty, at five o’clock in the morning, a boy was born, and that the child received the given names Erich Hermann.

Note what is there about my grandfather’s birth and my great grandmother’s life at the time. The date, the hour, her religion, her profession, and two addresses: the apartment she lived in and the ward she gave birth in.

And note where those two addresses are. Balduinstraße takes its name from the Balduinbrücke and Castorstraße takes its name from the church of St. Kastor. Both of them, the bridge and church towers, are sitting right there in the 1905 photochrom, a few hundred meters apart in the old town. The picture postcard and the birth certificate are describing the same few streets. She lived inside this view and my grandfather was born in this landscape:

Note, finally, what is not there in my grandfather’s birth record.

No father is listed.

The line for his name and occupation is simply unused; the word doing the work is unverehelicht, unmarried. My grandfather was born a natural child, and this civil form, which has a slot for everything, has no slot at all for the other half of that story. Where the certificate stops, the silence starts.

Except in one respect. The names my grandfather was given, Erich Hermann, were not improvised. They were my great granduncle’s. Wally had a brother named Erich Hermann Winkler, and she named her son after him. With no father on the page, the child was given a name entirely from his mother’s side, which tells you something about who Wally understood this baby to belong to. He was a Winkler. Full stop.

One more piece of context for that April. Coblenz in 1920 was the headquarters of the American zone of the Rhineland occupation. The city my grandfather was born into was an occupied city, four months after the Treaty of Versailles came into force. And the registrar still spelled it with a C.

Wally

Wally Winkler with her son Erich, May 1920. Studio portrait, photographer and location unknown.

A month later, someone paid for this precious portrait.

Wally sits in a wicker chair against a rocky backdrop. Wally is wearing a sort of dark pinafore over a white blouse with the sleeves pushed up; a long string of pale beads; her hair up. And she is not looking at the camera at all. Her head is turned down and away toward the baby in the crook of her arm, asleep in an enormous white gown that spills nearly to the floor.

A completely conventional photograph, which is exactly the point. An unmarried maid, six weeks out of a municipal hospital ward, in an occupied city, during a time of hyperinflation, put on good clothes, dressed her son in a christening gown, and had a proper portrait made. Whatever the certificate declined to record, this is the answer she gave it.

What I don’t know is nearly everything else about her time there. She was in Coblenz for work, in service. I don’t know when she arrived, whose house she worked in, or when she left. The registration gives me one fixed point, April 1920, an address, a trade, and no line running in either direction.

And she was a long way from home. The Winklers were originally Leipzig people; Wally and her sister Erika were born there. Around 1901 the family went to London for less than a year, then settled in Hamburg, which is where Wally’s story otherwise takes place, and which is some five hundred kilometers north of Erich’s birthplace. Coblenz was not a family town. She went there for work.

And then there is Erika

Erika Winkler (later Lippertz), Wally’s sister and my great grandaunt. Studio portrait with a photographer’s blind stamp reading “COBLENZ“ at the lower right. Ca. 1920–22.

Which brings me to the thread I actually wanted to pull. This is a photo of Erika Winkler, Wally’s sister, my great-grandaunt. She sits for a photographer in a pale, loose-waisted dress with a long fringed sleeve and a rope of beads, hair short and waved, hands folded, looking towards the photographer with a slight look of contemplation or amusement, I’m not sure. This is likely a different portrait studio, a different mood, and a woman on her own terms. She looks exactly like her mother.

In the bottom right corner, pressed into the photographic paper itself, is a blind stamp, an embossed dry seal, no ink, legible only when light rakes across it. It reads the photographer’s initials, which I can’t quite make out, and COBLENZ. Photographers’ blind stamps are, in a way, the last descendant of the decorated civil register page, a maker signing the object. This one also happens to be evidence. It puts Erika in the same Rhineland city as my great grandmother, five hundred kilometers from the family in Hamburg. On its own that would only prove she once sat for a portrait there, she might have been visiting for the christening. But it doesn’t stand on its own. When Erika emigrated to New York in 1922, her immigration record gives her last place of residence as Coblenz. She wasn’t visiting. She was living there.

So: two sisters from a Hamburg family, both residing in the same small Rhenish city, within two years of each other. Young women in service went where the places were, and the reliable way to find a place was through someone already there. Which sister followed which, and how long either of them stayed, I can’t yet say, Wally is documented in Coblenz for exactly one day in April 1920, and Erika for however long the phrase “last residence” covers. But they overlap, and the overlap is not an accident.

What the archives give you

The rest went the same direction, just later. Wally emigrated to New York in 1929. My grandfather Erich stayed behind in Hamburg with his aunt Gertrud and did not follow his mother until 1934, at fourteen. Their siblings Hildegard and Frieda made the crossing too, and so did the brother Erich was named for. The others, Gertrud, Erna, Georg, Dora, stayed in Germany their whole lives.

The Rhine views, meanwhile, kept being printed and sold. And somewhere in the 1920s the C quietly lost to the K, and the city on Erika’s blind stamp stopped existing under that spelling.

Three artists spent seventy years drawing this place with enormous care, every arch of the bridge, every vineyard terrace, every spire counted and set down. And in the middle of all that documentation, the two people I most want to see are almost entirely absent. Wally appears once, for one day, in one civil register, identified by her marital status and her job. Erika appears twice: as a place-name embossed under a photographer’s thumb, and as a line on a ship’s paperwork on her way out.

I know precisely what the Moselle bridge looked like in 1870. I know that Wally lived on the street named after it. I still don’t know how long she walked it.

But that is why I keep opening these things. The engravings give you the city. The certificate gives you the day. The gap between them is the actual person, and closing some of it is the work of the next few years, if I’m lucky.

1940 NYC Tax photo of St. Vincent’s Hospital, Greenwich Village, Manhattan. Block: 607, Lot: 1.

Some of the buildings in these tax photos are still standing. This one isn’t. The great stack of bricks in this 1940 photograph is St. Vincent’s Hospital, and for 161 years it anchored the corner of Seventh Avenue and West 11th Street in Greenwich Village, until it closed, went bankrupt, and was demolished. Walk to this spot today and you’ll find luxury condominiums where these ornate windows, smokestacks, and a giant crucifix once were.

St. Vincent’s opened on November 1, 1849, founded by the Sisters of Charity in the middle of a cholera epidemic. In the beginning it was thirty beds in a rented house, run by nuns who took patients regardless of their faith or ability to pay for care. It grew into one of the great institutions of the Village and of the city. It cared for survivors pulled from the Titanic in 1912. In the 1980s it opened the first AIDS ward on the east coast and became, for a generation, the hospital most identified with the AIDS epidemic. On September 11, 2001, it was the main hospital for the wounded coming up from the World Trade Center. And then its finances failed: bankruptcy in 2005, the doors closed for good on April 30, 2010, and by 2013 the whole campus had been demolished and replaced by a development of luxury residences called the Greenwich Lane. A hospital that served the poor for 161 years became some of the most expensive real estate in Manhattan.

St. Vincent’s Hospital in its early years, “under the charge of the Sisters of Charity, corner of Eleventh Street and Seventh Avenue.”

Across the street stood something more cheerful. The same WPA photographer turned his camera on the Loew’s Sheridan Theatre, the 1921 movie palace that faced the hospital across the wedge of Seventh and Greenwich Avenues at West 12th Street.

1940 NYC Tax photo of the Loew’s Sheridan Theatre, across from St. Vincent’s. Block: 617, Lot: 1.

The marquee advertised Television Spy and Scandal Sheet, both 1939 releases, which lets us date these photos to the winter of 1939–40. There’s a quiet irony in the pairing: in 1969 it was St. Vincent’s itself that bought the Sheridan and tore it down for hospital use, and then, four decades later, the hospital followed the theater into memory.

The double feature on the marquee: “Television Spy” (Paramount) and “Scandal Sheet” (Columbia), both 1939.

St. Vincent’s matters to me for a smaller and more personal reason: it is where my great granduncle died. Erich Hermann Winkler was born in Hamburg on November 28, 1901, and came to New York the hard way as a cook’s mate aboard the Hamburg-America liner SS Albert Ballin, off which he simply walked in April 1925, joining the ranks of the “deserting seamen” and then vanishing from the records for the better part of twenty years. When he resurfaced in the 1940s he had built a new life: a draft registration in 1942, service in the U.S. Army, and in 1944 a marriage to a woman named Sylvia Lazarus, who carried her own tangle of aliases and a first husband, a Harlem entertainer and convicted bigamist named William Sam Hart Stewart, then sitting in Sing Sing Prison. (That whole stranger-than-fiction story is the subject of my three-part series, Changing Names and Identities: Part 1, Part II, Part III). Erich died here at St. Vincent’s on January 15, 1959, of a hemorrhage from a peptic ulcer, ten days after surgery. He was first buried in the potter’s field on Hart Island and only later reinterred, with a proper headstone, at Long Island National Cemetery.

So the scene in these photographs from Greenwich Village are almost entirely gone: the theater razed in 1969, the hospital following it down a half-century later. The man who died inside is gone too, and was nearly lost from the record altogether. But a city photographer happened to stop at this corner one cold morning around 1940, and because he did, I can stand where my great granduncle’s last days played out and see the place more or less as he would have: the brick, the cross, the marquee glowing across the avenue. Like many of these photos, this one is now less a record of a building than of a life.

And yet, tucked between its pages, someone left this:

A 1940 pilgrimage calendar from Svatá Hora, found tucked inside a Kutná Hora birth index register book. Roman Catholic parish records, Kutná Hora Book 61, page 441, State Regional Archives in Prague (Státní oblastní archiv v Praze).

It is a printed pocket calendar for the year 1940, issued by Svatá Hora (“Holy Mountain”), a great Baroque pilgrimage basilica above Příbram, and one of the most venerated Marian shrines in all of Bohemia. At its center is the crowned Madonna and Child, a wooden carving of the miraculous Svatá Hora image pictured in the calendar...though in real life this is the revered statue carved sometime in the 1300s:

Back to the pocket calendar, down both margins runs the entire year of saints’ feast days, Leden through Prosinec (January through December); and the masthead names its editor, a Redemptorist father, and the shrine’s society that published it.

Someone once carried this small card maybe as a devotional keepsake, a bookmark, a scrap of the sacred year, and slipped it into a birth index that had been compiled decades before they were born. It has rested there ever since: a little paper Madonna keeping watch over columns of names.

Follow the index to where my family names occur, and you arrive at the reason I was in this book at all: the 21 February 1874 birth of Josef Alois Pettinger, my first cousin four times removed.

His birth record, over on page 306, is dense with the kind of detail these Kutná Hora books do so well:

Birth record of Josef Alois Pettinger, February 1874, Kutná Hora birth register (matriky book 39), page 306. State Regional Archives in Prague (Státní oblastní archiv v Praze).

21 února 1874. číslo dumo 209. jméno dítěte: Josef Alois. Otec: Pettinger Emanuel, katolík, sluha v Sedlecké továrně na tabák a měšťan zde, manželský syn † Felixe Petingra, postřihače zde č. 531, a matky † Barbory rodem (Kecovy) zde. Matka: Josefa, katolička, manželská dcera † Martina Fettra, mlynářského v Čáslavi č. 30, a matky Františky rodem Borovských z Čáslavi.

21 February 1874, house no. 209, name of child: Josef Alois, legitimate son of Emanuel Pettinger, an attendant at the tobacco factory in Sedlec and a townsman here, himself the legitimate son of the late Felix Petinger (my 4× great grandfather), a cloth-shearer at no. 531, and of his late wife Barbora (my 4× great grandmother). The mother is Josefa, daughter of the late Martin Fettr, a miller in Čáslav.

Longtime readers may catch a familiar thread in this: a cloth-shearer. My Petinger ancestors turn up in that trade more than once across these registers. My 4× great grandfather Felix, at his shop at no. 531, was cut from the same cloth, so to speak, as some of my other ancestors. Same for the connection to the tobacco factory in Sedlec: my 3× great grandmother Aloisie Petinger (daughter of Felix and Barbora, brother to Emanuel, Aunt to Josef Alois) married František Hájek (Kříž), who also worked at the tobacco factory.

But it is one word in that record, Barbora’s maiden name that turns this page into a small detective story for me. Because it’s wrong here… sort of. And it had been variable, in different ways, her entire life.

Barbora was born a Götz, a typical German surname. But German names in Czech-speaking Kutná Hora were spelled by ear, and the ear kept changing through time:

• In her own birth record, her father’s name was written down as Kötz.

• In her marriage record, it was recorded as Götz.

• In her death record, her maiden name was recorded as Goetzová.

• And here, in her grandson’s 1874 birth record, the priest wrote her as Kecová.

Four records, four spellings, one woman, and it turns out I am not the first person to have gone looking. In the margin of this 1874 record for her grandson, in pencil, someone wrote

“Dle matř. VIII B/33 — správně: Kutová”

(“Per register VIII, folio 33 — correctly: Kutová”).

Someone was cross-checking the parish books and decided to settle the matter for good: the name, they declared, should correctly be Kutová (family name Kutý), and they pointed to the register that proved it.

So I went and found that register. It is Barbora’s own birth record, from 1787, the very page where her father is written as Kötz. And there is the punchline: the record he cited to fix her name doesn’t say Kutová at all. It says Kötz. Her real name was Götz, though the pronunciation likely sounded very similar to a K. I don’t yet know where in Germany these ancestors originated from but this might be a rough clue since dialects, especially Upper German and Bavarian dialects adjacent to Bohemia/Czech lands, speakers frequently softened initial hard consonants so G and K may have been indistinguishable in Barbora’s case. Regardless, this person got it wrong again, and even got the page wrong. Their note says folio 33 but the entry sits on page 25 (though maybe pages were renumbered at some point). This person who tried to pin down Barbora’s name for good simply added their own fifth spelling and called it verified.

Barbora’s name we may never fully pin down. But that, too, is part of what the archives hold: not only names and dates, but the very human trouble of understanding and recording them accurately.

At least the priest got Josef Alois’ name right, and thanks to one surviving cabinet card, we know what he looked like:

A rare surviving image of Josef Alois; a cabinet card by the Kutná Hora photographer J. Steffel, taken around 1890, when he would have been about sixteen.

More on Josef Alois Petinger soon.

Having spent the last while going through the paper trail Otto left behind (baptismal records, draft cards, marriage licenses, a divorce notice, a probate file, even a single damning line buried in a police blotter), I understand a little better why he might have needed a sister in his corner. Otto’s life was not a quiet one.

A Family Taking Root in Manhattan

Before Otto, there was already a household. An 1890 New York City police census, taken street by street, ahead of the federal count, finds my 2× great grandfather as “Charles Clausen,” 28, and his wife “Josephiana,” 30, at 186 2nd Street in Manhattan with three small children: Charles Jr. (the family’s “Frank”), 4, Louisa, 3, and a baby Josephine, a year and a half old. Otto wouldn’t arrive for another three years. By the time he was born, his parents were already several years into raising a family in a city that must have still felt foreign to them both; Carl working as a waiter, a trade he’d keep his entire life.

The 1890 New York City police census, listing “Charles Clausen,” his wife “Josephiana,” and their three young children at 186 2nd Street, Manhattan.

A Convert at Sixteen

Otto John Claasen was born October 17, 1893, in New York City, at least, every later record agrees on that date. No original birth certificate for him has turned up; he may simply never have been formally registered, or his record may be sitting somewhere in New York’s stack of delayed birth filings, not yet located. What exists instead is a consistent secondhand trail: a 1905 New York State census that finds him, age 11, at home with his parents and siblings and enrolled in school under the name “Adolph,” and a baptismal record from January 1910 that calls him by the same name. That 1905 census also sketches in the household around him: Carl, 41, still a waiter; Josephine, 45, keeping house; older siblings Charles (19, a motorman), Louisa (17, a clerk in dry goods), and a 13-year-old daughter recorded as “Antoinette,” almost certainly my great grandmother Jeanette, under some variant of her name. Their sister Josephine, third-oldest of the eight, isn’t in this household; she had died the year before, in 1904. Below Otto came Herman (9), John (6), and George (5):

The 1905 New York State census, recording the Claasen household with Otto listed, age 11, under the name “Adolph.”

The first real surprise in Otto’s independent paper trail comes on December 30, 1909, when a marriage certificate from Jersey City records the union of “Otto Claasen,” apprentice, of Passaic, New Jersey, to one Ruth Cleveland Parker, also of Passaic. The certificate lists Otto’s age as 18 and Ruth’s as 19, a plausible one-year gap on paper. He was, in fact, sixteen, and the real difference in age between him and Ruth was considerably wider than the certificate lets on. Someone, most likely Otto himself, rounded up, and rounded generously:

The December 30, 1909 Jersey City marriage record for Otto Claasen and Ruth Cleveland Parker, with both parties’ ages overstated.

Barely a month later, on January 29, 1910, Otto was baptized at St. Stephen’s Catholic Church in Manhattan under the name Adolph, with the register noting he was a convert. It’s hard not to connect the two events: a teenage elopement, with a fudged age, followed almost immediately by a conversion, quite possibly to satisfy Ruth’s family or a priest who wouldn’t otherwise perform the wedding after the fact.

The January 29, 1910 baptismal register entry from St. Stephen’s Catholic Church, Manhattan, recording “Adolph” Claasen’s conversion.

The 1910 federal census taken that April confirms just how fast things had moved: Otto is nowhere in his parents’ household. Carl (49), Josephine (50), and the rest of the children, Charles (22), Antoinette (18, again likely Jeanette), Herman (14), a daughter recorded as “Johanna” (11, likely a transcription slip for John), George (9), and Louise (20) are all still there. Otto isn’t. By seventeen, he’d already married and moved out.

The 1910 U.S. federal census, showing the Claasen household intact, and Otto notably absent.

Trouble at Home

The next decade is where the story gets hard to read comfortably.

On April 7, 1917, a one-line item ran in the Long Island City police court column of the Daily Standard Union: “Otto Claasen, cruelty, $100 bail.” No elaboration, no follow-up, just a docket entry sandwiched between an unlicensed-dog case and a reckless driving fine. We don’t know exactly what happened or to whom, but given everything else in his file, it’s hard not to read it as an early sign of a marriage in serious trouble.

The April 7, 1917 police court column noting “Otto Claasen, cruelty, $100 bail.”

Two months later, in June 1917, Otto registered for the World War I draft: 24 years old, a carriage painter for the Jensen Creamery Manufacturing Company in Long Island City, living at 60 Fifth Avenue with a wife and child to support. That dependency claim earned him a spot in the deferred class... safe, for the moment, from being sent to fight in Europe.

Otto’s June 1917 World War I draft registration card, listing him as a carriage painter with a wife and child to support.

It didn’t last. On June 23, 1918, the Brooklyn Times Union ran a story with the blunt headline “REPORTS HUBBY’S NON-SUPPORT — So Claasen Leaves for Upton Tomorrow.” By then Otto and Ruth had separated; she was living at a different address on Fourth Avenue in Astoria with their seven-year-old son, Walter. According to the article, Ruth went to the Long Island City police court seeking a summons against Otto for failing to support her, and, in the same visit, also told the military draft board he wasn’t supporting her and their son. That single piece of information was enough to bump him out of the deferred class and into the first class of draftees. When the support case came before a magistrate, Otto’s lawyer said his client was ready to go to war and had already arranged for Ruth’s support during his absence; she declined to press the charge, and the case was dropped. The paper noted, almost gently, that “Claasen said that he hopes to make a good record as a soldier.” The next morning he reported for transport to Camp Upton.

The June 23, 1918 Brooklyn Times Union article, “Reports Hubby’s Non-Support — So Claasen Leaves for Upton Tomorrow.”

It is a strange, almost cinematic detail: a man drafted into World War I not by the draft board’s ordinary math, but by his own estranged wife pulling a lever most people didn’t know existed.

Rebuilding, and a Second Start

Whatever happened during his Army service, Otto came home to Long Island City. By 1922, he was registered to vote as a Democrat at 370 Freeman Avenue, the same address as his brothers John and George, all three Claasen men on the same voter roll, in the same election district. His sister Jeanette and her husband Gustave Mucha were there too, at least for a while; this is the same address they gave two years later when they bought their first home. Whatever else was going wrong in Otto’s life, this end of the family was living together in likely a crowded space.

The 1922 List of Enrolled Voters, showing Otto, John, and George Claasen all registered as Democrats at 370 Freeman Avenue.

By 1924 they were ready to spread out into homes of their own, and the timing was no coincidence. Elmhurst had spent the World War I years essentially unable to build: a wartime embargo on cement and lumber had shut down civilian construction nationwide, and when it lifted in late 1919, pent-up demand from a growing population and newly-married veterans touched off what local historian Vincent Seyfried called a burst of building activity not matched again until the 1950s:

Vincent F. Seyfried describing Elmhurst in the 1920s, from Elmhurst: From Town Seat to Mega-Suburb (1995), on the post-WWI housing boom that reshaped the neighborhood.

Transcription: “The enormous boom in housing was the most visible sign of change. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Congress embargoed all supplies of cement and lumber for the exclusive use of the military; this put an end to the production of all civilian housing throughout the country. In late 1919, however, the embargo was lifted and the pent-up demand for houses, plus the market for homes on the part of newly-married veterans, pushed the building industry into a burst of frenzied activity not seen again until the 1950s of our own day. The housing market was abetted by a climate of unparalleled willingness on the part of banks and mortgage companies to finance residential development. Finally, a whole new class of builders and realtors arose to meet the housing need, attracted by the prospect of ready bank financing, low cost for land in Queens, and the opportunity to sell their product as fast as they could put it on the market.”

Houses in the Cord Meyer section of Elmhurst, the same part of the neighborhood the Claasens and Muchas were buying into, were selling for anywhere from $8,500 to $25,000, on lots that had cost as little as $1,500 a few years earlier. On January 30, 1924, right in the middle of that boom, Gustave and Jeanette Mucha bought a lot on 16th Street in Elmhurst; a street about to be renumbered 73rd Street as Queens standardized its addresses that decade, so their new home shows up in some records as “41-16 16th Street” and in others as “41-16 73rd Street.” It’s the same house either way.

Page one of the January 30, 1924 deed conveying 41-16 73rd Street, Elmhurst, to Gustave and Jeanette Mucha.

Page two of the same 1924 deed.

Transcription:

Page 1: 9574 $11.00. U.S.I.R.S. CANCELLED.

THIS INDENTURE, made the Thirtieth day of January, nineteen hundred and twenty-four, BETWEEN FRED HOFFMAN and ANNIE F. HOFFMAN, his wife, residing at #1 Gleane Street, Elmhurst, Queens County, N.Y., parties of the first part, and GUSTAVE MUCHA and JEANETTE MUCHA, his wife, residing at #370 Freeman Avenue, Astoria, Queens County, N.Y., parties of the second part, WITNESSETH, that the parties of the first part, in consideration of TEN ($10) Dollars, lawful money of the United States, and other good and valuable considerations, paid by the parties of the second part, does hereby grant and release unto the parties of the second part, their heirs and assigns forever,

ALL that certain lot, piece or parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements thereon erected, situate, lying and being at Elmhurst, in the Second Ward of the Borough of Queens, County of Queens, City and State of New York, and bounded and described as follows: BEGINNING at a point on the westerly side of 16th Street, formerly known as Pennsylvania Avenue, distant 150 feet southerly from the corner formed by the intersection of the said westerly side of 16th Street and the southerly side of Fairbanks Avenue; running thence westerly and at right angles to 16th Street, 100 feet; thence southerly and parallel with 16th Street, 25 feet; thence easterly again at right angles to 16th Street, 100 feet to the said westerly side of 16th Street, and thence northerly along said westerly side of 16th

Page 2: Street, 25 feet to the point or place of beginning. TOGETHER with the appurtenances and all the estate and rights of the parties of the first part in and to said premises. TO HAVE AND TO HOLD the premises herein granted unto the parties of the second part, their heirs and assigns forever. Subject to a first purchase money mortgage for the sum of $4500. bearing even date and intended to be recorded simultaneously herewith. AND said parties of the first part covenant as follows: First- That said parties of the first part are seized of the said premises in fee simple, and have good right to convey the same; Second. That the parties of the second part shall quietly enjoy the said premises; Third- That the said premises are free from incumbrances; except as hereinabove mentioned; Fourth- That the parties of the first part will execute or procure any further necessary assurance of the title to said premises; FIFTH- That said parties of the first part will forever warrant the title to said premises. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties of the first part have hereunto set their hands and seals the day and year first above written.

In presence of: John P. Gering
FRED HOFFMAN　(L.S.)
ANNIE F. HOFFMAN　(L.S.)

STATE OF NEW YORK, COUNTY OF QUEENS, SS.: On the 30th day of January, nineteen hundred and twenty-four, before me came Fred Hoffman and Annie F. Hoffman, his wife, to me known to be the individuals described in, and who executed, the foregoing instrument, and acknowledged to me that they executed the same. JOHN P. GERING, Notary Public, Queens County. N.Y. #1999. The land affected by this instrument lies in Section 13 in Block 3127 on the Land Map of the County of Queens, Recorded on February 2, 1924 at 10:37 A.M., at the request of JOHN P. GERING and Kneeland Streets, Elmhurst, New York.

The renumbering itself was still a fresh, sore memory for the neighborhood. Queens had already been through one disorienting round of street renaming in November 1911, when the Cord Meyer company swapped out a set of numbered streets for names, and the borough’s Topographical Bureau followed it up in 1915–16 by scrapping names altogether in favor of the numbered grid still used today (the so-called Philadelphia system), with north-south streets numbered 1 to 271 running west to east, and east-west avenues numbered 1 to 165 running north to south. The 1911 change alone was chaotic enough that the Newtown Register described the aftermath in vivid terms in an article that almost seems made up (full transcription below):

Renaming streets causes mass confusion, The Newtown Register, November 30, 1911, page 5, column 5

WHERE DO YOU LIVE?

Is Your Home on a Street Which Does Not Sound Familiar ? — Newtown Residents Bewildered?

That ominous growl which was distinctly audible above the roar of traffic, last week, was produced by residents of the various villages in Newtown, who never will get through protesting against the play by which most of the streets have been robbed of their good old-fashioned names, to make way for high sounding ones. It was easy to tell a Newtowner last week. He was frothing at the mouth, and proceeded to blow bubbles of anger when asked to explain.

Newtown is upsidedown and a majority of its commuters do not know which end they are standing on, as a result of the merry little scheme to lift the street names out of the commonplace. It wouldn’t have been half so bad if the borough officials had begun the change in the middle of the week, but the new street signs were put in place early Saturday morning. Most men have a hard time locating their homes on Saturday even in a street in which they have lived all their lives, so it is easy to imagine the condition of affairs.

Many of the men had started to the city Saturday morning without noticing the change, and when they arrived home late that night they were unable to find the old street where they had left it. All night long the streets were filled with weary commuters, begging one another for assistance in finding out where they lived. They staggered back and forth, lighting matches and peering up at house numbers, and in the morning the streets were ankle deep with burnt lucifers. Wives sat up by the windows until the wee small hours, and in many instances upbraided men who were not their husbands as a result of the mix-up.

Daylight found most of the married women out in the streets trying to pick out their husbands. Milkmen and bakers have been leaving stuff at the wrong places and errand boys have been unable to find their regular customers. Letter carriers collapsed, after travelling forty or fifty miles in circles trying to deliver the mail. Policemen, unable to answer questions as to the location of new streets, take it on the run when any one approaches them.

Perhaps the bulk of the complaint came from those persons who went to bed in Third street, Elmhurst, and woke up in Jacobson street. It is easy to see what a hit this change made with residents of this thoroughfare when it is known that most of them are of Irish persuasion. One of the men who protested against this particular change has a hairlip. When he tried to say Ithaca it sounded as if he’d the hiccoughs.

Changes in Corona included — Grand avenue to Louona avenue; Chestnut street to Brady street; Shell road to Polk avenue; Prometcha avenue to Fillmore avenue; Sycamore avenue to Apollo avenue; From Junction avenue east the streets run numerically from 39th street to 51st street. Following are a few in Elmhurst: Fifth street to Hampton street, Sixth street to Gleane street, Seventh street to Forely street, Eighth street to Elberton street, Ninth street to Denman street, Tenth street to Case street, Eleventh street to Benham street, Twelfth street to Aske street, Newtown avenue to Pettit place, Orchard avenue to Britton avenue, Whitney avenue to Wurner avenue, Ludlow avenue to Kingsland avenue, and Prospect avenue to Ivy avenue.

“While they were at it they should have changed the name of the town to Slippery Elmhurst,” roared a fat commuter, who was addressing an indignation meeting in the smoking car last night. “It is impossible for a man to keep up with all the changes in Elmhurst,” said a resident. “About a year ago there was a plan to give the streets such foolish names as Juno, Adonis, Apollo, Jupiter and the like,, but they didn’t get away with it. Now they’ve changed them over night, and it will be Christmas before we can find our way home without ringing all the doorbells in the town.”

“What street do you live on?” some one inquired.

“I did live on Twelfth street, but it has been changed to Aske. No matter how careless I had been with my thirst I could always find my way to Twelfth street. What happened Saturday night? When I got to my regular corner I looked up and saw the strange sign. I admit it was too far gone to decipher it, so I yelled at a policeman — ‘what street is this?’

“’Aske,’ he answers back.

“I am asking,” said I. “What is it?

“’Aske,’ he says again, and threatened to lock me up if I didn’t stop trying to josh him.”

Historian Vincent Seyfried describes what city officials saw as the solution to the confusion:

Poetry as a solution to the mass confusion caused by abruptly, and largely without reason, changing street names in Elmhurt, Queens in the early 1900s. Described by historian Vincent F. Seyfried in Elmhurst: From Town Seat to Mega-Suburb (1995).

Against that backdrop, it’s no surprise that a single house could be “16th Street” in one document and “73rd Street” in another written four months later; the whole borough was still catching up to its own new addresses. Future family historians including myself remain quite unhappy about these renaming decisions.

The neighborhood’s very name was just as negotiable as its street number. My 2× great grandfather Carl’s 1929 obituary, discussed below, gives this same house’s address as being in Jackson Heights, while the deeds, censuses, and tax photos all place it in Elmhurst. It’s not an error so much as a reflection of real, long-disputed geography: the boundary lines between Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, and Woodside have been blurry and contested for decades, and a house sitting near the seam could reasonably be claimed by more than one neighborhood depending on who was filling out the form.

Two months after the Muchas bought their lot, on April 1, 1924, Otto’s brother John and his wife Mary bought the lot right next door, 41-18 73rd Street (then 16^th St.). For a stretch in the mid-1920s, two branches of the Claasen family were literally neighbors.

The April 1, 1924 deed conveying 41-18 73rd Street, Elmhurst, to John and Mary Claasen.

That same year, this photograph was taken just a few blocks from their homes on 73^rd street:

Woodside Ave and Baxter Street photographed 1924. This photo of an apartment building still stands today. From the Borough President of Queens Photo Collection.

I am fortunate to have a few photographs of my great grandmother Jeanette. I imagine there used to be many photos of the entire Claasen clan but few have surfaced so far in my search. Although I have yet to locate photos of Frank or Otto, I am thrilled that a cousin has kept a photo of John Claasen and his family:

Otto and Jeanette’s brother John Joseph Claasen (right) with his wife, Mary Quinn, and their children John Jr. and Catherine, photographed in Queens in May 1927.

The 1920s were a transformative time for Elmhurst, and they were a transformative time for the Claasen family. Otto’s marriage to Ruth did not survive. Two Brooklyn papers covered the split within a day of each other. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, on February 17, 1925, reported that Otto, then living at 41-16 16th Street in Elmhurst (my great grandparents’ house, where my 2× great grandparents also lived at the time as we’ll see below) had been granted a divorce from Ruth Claasen, who the article says had “been familiar with a man at a bungalow colony near College Point.”

The February 17, 1925 Brooklyn Daily Eagle item reporting Otto’s divorce from Ruth Claasen.

FOUR HUSBANDS SECURE DIVORCES

Yesterday was men’s day in the divorce mill at Special Term in the Queens Supreme Court, where Justice Benedict handed down decisions granting interlocutory decrees of divorce to four husbands against their wives.

Claude L. Freer of the Creedmoor branch of the Brooklyn State Hospital was granted a divorce from his wife, Eva A. Freer, who he charged had been unduly friendly with a man named Niels P. Sorensen at the hospital at various times and particularly on April 8, 1923.

George Ettinger of 631 13th st., Manhattan, secured a decree from his wife, Margaret Ettinger. They were married on May 27, 1911. He named Albert Spencely of Brooklyn as corespondent.

Otto Claasen of 4116 16th st. Elmhurst, was granted a decree against his wife, Ruth Claasen. Claasen charged that his wife had been familiar with a man at a bungalow colony in Grantville, near College Point, on July 23 last. Claasen was given the custody of their child, Walter, 13.

Louis Scherch of 357 Hancock st., Long Island City, aided by the testimony of his wife’s sister, was granted a decree of divorce from Bertha Scherch. He charged that his wife is living with a man named Frank Kazmark at Keyport, N. J.

The Daily Star covered the same case with more specifics: Otto, now listed at 4118, not 4116, Seventy-third Street, one more small variation in an address that could apparently never quite settle down, had been granted an interlocutory decree (the standard first step toward a New York divorce at the time, made final after a waiting period) after alleging that Ruth was discovered in a bungalow in Grantville, College Point, with an unknown man on July 23, 1924:

The Daily Star’s coverage of the same interlocutory decree, naming the College Point bungalow colony.

Both papers agree on the outcome: custody of their thirteen-year-old son, Walter, went to Otto. “Custody” on paper didn’t mean Walter moved in with his father right away. The New York State census taken June 1, 1925 catches the household at 41-16 73rd Street in full: Gustave Mucha, 37, a letter carrier; his wife, recorded here as again as “Antoinette” (Jeanette, under the same alternate name the 1905 and 1910 censuses used for her), 34; their small children William (my grandfather!) and Josephine; Jeanette and Otto’s aging parents, Carl and Johanna Josephine in their 60s; brother George, 25, working as a weighmaker; and, listed as a nephew, 15-year-old Walter, Otto’s son, attending high school. John and Mary Claasen were nextdoor. It was a full house, a block of Claasens, and evidently the one Otto himself was leaning on: when he remarried less than two weeks later, he gave that same address as his own.

The June 1, 1925 New York State census, showing the full household at 41-16 73rd Street; Muchas, Claasen parents, and Walter listed as a nephew.

Otto did not stay single long. On June 13, 1925, now 31, divorced, and working as a fireman, Otto married Ernestine Guperuix, a 22-year-old single woman, at Borough Hall in Queens. Their marriage record below as well as marriage license announcements in both the Long Island Daily Press and the Daily Star give an intriguing wrinkle: they list Otto at 4116 73rd Street, his sister’s house, as expected… but Ernestine at 4118 73rd Street. That’s not a random address; it’s the house next door, where Otto’s brother John and his wife Mary were living at the time. It’s tempting to read this as the real story of how Otto and Ernestine met: not through some chance encounter, but because she was, however briefly, boarding right next door to his own family. This marriage would last the rest of his life. A son, Kenneth Karl Claasen, arrived not long after.

The June 13, 1925 Queens civil marriage record for Otto Claasen and Ernestine Guperuix.

The Long Island Daily Press’s June 1925 marriage license announcement, listing Otto and Ernestine at neighboring addresses on 73rd Street.

Elmhurst continued to change around Otto, his new family, and the rest of the Claasens. Here is another view of Woodside Ave in 1926, just three blocks from the Claasen and Mucha homes on 73^rd Street:

Woodside Ave looking East from 77th Street, Elmhurst, Queens. Photographed March 25, 1926.

The house-sharing didn’t last much longer, at least not for John and Mary: they sold 41-18 73rd Street that July, just weeks after Otto’s wedding, and moved on to Jackson Heights.

Page one of the July 1925 deed by which John and Mary Claasen sold 41-18 73rd Street.

Page two of the same 1925 sale deed by which John and Mary Claasen sold 41-18 73rd Street.

Jeanette and Gustave stayed put. A New York City tax photograph taken around 1940 shows their house still standing, a modest two-story shingled place with a dormer window and a hedge along the front porch. This is the same home that had briefly, quietly, been Otto’s refuge too, in those messy months between his divorce and his second marriage.

The New York City tax photograph, taken around 1940, of the Mucha home at 41-16 73rd Street. Maybe a Claasen child runs across the scene.

Otto’s parents didn’t live to see how that second marriage settled out. His father, my 2× great grandfather, Carl, died on October 25, 1929, still living at 41-16 73rd Street, his daughter Jeanette’s house, confirming that he and Josephine had indeed spent their final years under her roof. The Daily Star’s obituary lists him survived by “Mrs. Jeanette Mucha, Charles, John, George and Alfred Claasen”... and there is Otto again, under yet another name. The baby brother who was recorded as “Adolph” in early census records and at his baptism and lived his whole adult life as “Otto” shows up in his own father’s death notice as “Alfred.” Only five names appear because only five children were left to name: their sister Josephine had died in 1904, Herman in 1912, and Louise in 1920, leaving Jeanette, Frank, John, George, and Otto to bury their father.

Carl Claasen’s October 26, 1929 obituary in the Daily Star, listing his surviving children, including “Alfred Claasen.”

My 2× great grandmother Johanna Josephine, followed him on December 21, 1933. They had watched their son through the wedding at sixteen (assuming they were there and knew about it), the cruelty charge, the forced enlistment, and the divorce, but neither would see the quieter decades that came after.

A Blended Household in Queens

By April 1930, Otto and Ernestine’s household had quietly folded together both halves of Otto’s life. The census that month finds them living at 43-15 72nd Street in Queens: Otto, 36, an automobile painter; Ernestine, 27, working as an operator for the telephone company; their son Kenneth, not yet four; Ernestine’s brother George Guperuix, 21, also a painter, living with them; and, notably, 19-year-old Walter, Otto’s son from his marriage to Ruth, working as a clerk at a brewery.

The April 1930 census, recording Otto, Ernestine, Kenneth, Ernestine’s brother George, and Otto’s son Walter all under one roof at 43-15 72nd Street in Queens.

Whatever the custody arrangement looked like on paper after the 1925 divorce, in practice it meant Walter grew up in his father and stepmother’s house, alongside his little half-brother born a year after his parents’ marriage ended. A city tax photograph of the address shows exactly the kind of home that was: a modest shingle-and-stucco two-story house with a covered front porch, one of a tidy row of nearly identical houses built for Queens’ growing middle class:

The New York City tax photograph of 43-15 72nd Street, Otto and Ernestine’s first home together.

Otto turns up again in the public record in September 1931, this time as the one filing the complaint, not the one accused. According to the Long Island Daily Press, Otto was the complainant when a Philadelphia man, Donald Cowan, was arrested for driving while intoxicated after a two-car collision near the entrance to the Motor Parkway in Creedmoor, Queens. The article gives Otto’s address as “431 72nd Street, Brooklyn,” and almost certainly got garbled somewhere between Otto telling them his address was 43-15 72nd Street in Queens and the police printed it in their blotter and this newspaper translated to the print you see below. It’s a small irony, given how often this family’s own addresses ended up scrambled in print, but the underlying event is clear enough: six years after his own brush with the law, Otto was the one calling the police on somebody else.

The September 24, 1931 Long Island Daily Press item on the Creedmoor car accident, with Otto’s address misprinted.

The 1940 census finds the family settled a few blocks away in Woodside, Queens, at 70-06 Woodside Avenue: Otto, 40, an auto painter (unemployed at the time of the count), Ernestine, 37, working as a sales clerk in a millinery shop, and thirteen-year-old Kenneth.

The 1940 census, finding Otto, Ernestine, and Kenneth living at 70-06 Woodside Avenue.

They had traded the house on 72nd Street for an apartment; the tax photo shows a five-story brick building called the La Salle, its entrance under a striped awning, a laundry sign visible across the street:

The New York City tax photograph of the La Salle apartment building at 70-06 Woodside Avenue.

By 1942, when Otto registered for the World War II “old man’s draft,” he was 48 and working at the Mack Truck Company at 35th Street and Queens Boulevard, with Ernestine listed as the person who would always know his address, which was now on Woodside Avenue:

Otto’s 1942 World War II “old man’s draft” registration card, listing his employer as the Mack Truck Company.

By 1950, they were still together at 61-17 Woodside Avenue, the address that would remain Otto’s home for the rest of his life. Otto, 56, was still painting cars; Ernestine, 47, was still working the telephone lines; Kenneth, 22, was unmarried and still living with his parents:

The 1950 census, recording Otto, Ernestine, and Kenneth at 61-17 Woodside Avenue.

Whatever turbulence had marked Otto’s twenties, his middle age reads as steady: the same neighborhood, the same wife, the same trade, anchored for decades to the same house.

The Will, and the end

On April 11, 1951, Otto sat down and made his will, leaving everything to “my beloved wife, Ernestine,” with the estate to pass to their son Kenneth if she predeceased him. Two witnesses signed it: Veit E. Kaufmann, Otto’s attorney, and Jeanette Kaufmann, I assume Veit’s wife:

Otto’s Claasen’s will dated April 11, 1951, bequeathing all of his estate to Ernestine.

Otto died on November 18, 1962, at City Hospital in Elmhurst (later renamed Elmhurst General Hospital), after what the newspaper called a short illness, still living at 61-17 Woodside Avenue. He was 69, survived by Ernestine, Kenneth, three grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. The obituary in the Long Island Star-Journal notes he had worked as an automobile painter for a Long Island City trucking company, likely the same Mack Truck Company from his 1942 draft card, and had lived in Woodside for more than thirty years.

Otto’s obituary in the November 19, 1962 Long Island Star-Journal, describing him as an “automobile painter.”

Probate records show that Ernestine and Kenneth appeared in court to inherit his estate, which included “no real property in the State of New York or any other state and he died possessed of personal property having a value under $3,000.00”

Otto’s parents weren’t the only family he outlived. By the time Otto himself died, his first son, Walter, had already predeceased him; Otto’s own death notice quietly calls him “the late Walter,” with no further explanation of when or how.

Otto’s formal death notice in the same paper, naming Ernestine, Kenneth, “the late Walter,” and “dear brother of Netta Mucha.” My great grandmother Jeanette went by Netta.

Otto lived in the apartment on Woodside Avenue for the last 20 years of his life, it was a large six-story brick apartment house lined with fire escapes, and seems a world away from the small shingled house on 72nd Street where he and Ernestine had started out three decades before.

The New York City tax photograph of 61-17 Woodside Avenue, Otto’s home for the last 20 years of his life.

He was buried at Mt. St. Mary Cemetery in Flushing; when Ernestine died in 1975, she was laid to rest beside him under a single headstone that reads simply, “In God’s Care.”

The shared headstone of Otto and Ernestine Claasen at Mt. St. Mary Cemetery, Flushing, reading “In God’s Care.”

The sister who remembered him

It’s easy, reading a stack of court notices and census sheets, to reduce a person to their worst documented moments; the cruelty charge, the failed marriage, the divorce. But the record also shows a man who converted for love at sixteen, who went to war when circumstance and his own estranged wife pushed him there, who rebuilt a second marriage and made it last thirty-seven years, and who was still working a steady job at Mack Truck in his late fifties.

My great grandmother Jeanette knew him longer and more completely than any newspaper clipping ever could; or, as his own death notice called her, “Netta Mucha,” one more nickname in a family that collected them. She watched her baby brother stumble through a hard first act and find his footing in the second. That she grieved so hard when he died in 1962 suggests she saw the whole of him and not just the parts that made the papers.

She had little time to grieve alone. Her husband, my great grandfather Gustave Mucha, died on November 20, 1963... almost exactly a year, to the week, after Otto. In the span of twelve months, Jeanette lost both her baby brother and her husband, each in the same late-November days. Whatever it meant to have Otto in her corner for sixty-nine years, she lost that twice over, in quick succession, right at the end.

Jeanette Claasen and Gustave Mucha, photographed in 1917, Gustave in his U.S. Army uniform.

Jeanette kept one more thing: a prayer card handed out at Otto’s funeral, printed by Thomas M. Quinn & Sons for the service at St. Sebastian’s. It’s the kind of card every mourner at a Catholic funeral in 1962 would have carried out of the church and, more often than not, misplaced within the year. Jeanette didn’t. She kept hers for the rest of her life.

The prayer on it is a standard one for the era; a plea on behalf of “the poor captive souls in Purgatory,” asking God to “be not severe in Thy judgment” toward “Thy departed servant.” It was the funeral home’s stock card; nothing about the wording was chosen specifically for Otto. But knowing what the rest of his record trail contains, the elopement at sixteen, the cruelty charge, the forced enlistment, the divorce, it’s hard not to read that line and think of him anyway. Be not severe in Thy judgment. Maybe that’s exactly why Jeanette held on to it.

Prayer card from Otto’s funeral, “In Loving Memory of Otto Claasen, November 18, 1962,” kept by his sister Jeanette (or Netta) for the rest of her life.

1940 NYC Tax photo of 86-88 Avenue B, Manhattan. Block: 401, Lot: 35.

Most of the people in these tax photos are caught unaware, which is half the charm. Not this one. On a sunny stretch of Avenue B, a young woman has plainly noticed the photographer. She’s turning around mid-stride on the sidewalk, but her eyes are on the lens, handbag in hand, hair set in tidy 1940s waves, heels carrying her along. She looks less like a pedestrian caught in passing than like someone who decided, in the half-second she had, to give the camera a look.

A closer look.

Around her the Lower East Side goes about its day. Behind her a delicatessen awning, a candy shop, and a baby carriage parked at the curb; beside her a corner shop advertising kosher “Tasty Sandwiches” and “Brew on Draught” in English and Yiddish. Fire escapes zigzag up the tenement faces of 86-88 Avenue B. The WPA man came to photograph a building for the tax rolls, and he got it, but he also got her, a stranger holding our gaze across eighty-five years.

Title page of the Großheubach baptismal register, begun 1653. Roman Catholic parish records, Archiv und Bibliothek des Bistums Würzburg via Matricula Online.

At first glance, the title page is exactly what you would expect from a 17th-century parish book: a formal Latin declaration set in bold Roman capitals.

MATRICULA seu LIBER BAPTIZATORVM MAIORIS HEYBACH AB ANNO DOMINI M·DC·LIII (“The Register, or Book of the Baptized of Großheubach, from the Year of the Lord 1653”).

Beneath it, the priest notes that the book was renovatus (renewed), or freshly copied out by the Reverend Georg Feßlinek, at that time the pastor there, and that it would serve as the parish’s Matricula Regeneratorum, Copulatorum et defunctorum: the register of the reborn (the baptized), the married, and the deceased.

But look a little closer at those big capital letters, and the solemnity cracks:

The scribe couldn’t resist. Tucked inside the round bellies of the letters, the O’s of tOrvm, maiOris, and dOmini, are tiny faces, peering back out at the reader across three and a half centuries. Some are serene, some almost comic. This is a man copying out a dry Latin title page and quietly deciding to have a little fun.

Yet, the scribe wasn’t finished. At the foot of the page he wove a devotional flourish: an elaborate interlaced knot, almost Celtic in feel, threaded with a whispered prayer:

O Jesu mi dulcissime (“O my sweetest Jesus”)

These are the artistic human fingerprints in the archive. A parish priest, decades of baptisms and burials still ahead of him, taking a moment to make something both beautiful and a little playful before the record-keeping began. (Below the knot, almost as an afterthought, he even started a list of the pastors of Großheubach going back “a hundred years”: Feßlinek in 1653, König in 1667, Brunn in 1670, Burger in 1692, and on down the line.)

Now to my family. Somewhere in the pages of this same parish register, I found the 9 February 1682 marriage of my 8× great-grandparents, Mathias Hartmann and Susanne Wöber:

1682 marriage record of Matthäus Hartmann and Susanna Wöber, Großheubach.

Aõ [Anno] 1682. 9. Feb[ruarii]: Matrimonio iuncti sunt honest[us] Juvenis Matthæus Hartman[n], Jŏis [Joannis] Adami quondam Civis Mil-tenberg[ensis] filius legit[imus], cum pudica Virgine Susanna Wöbe-rin, filia legit[ima] Henrici Wöber [Scabini?] in Klein-heybach.

On the 9th of February 1682 were joined in matrimony the honorable young man Matthäus Hartmann, legitimate son of the late Johann Adam Hartmann, a citizen of Miltenberg, with the chaste maiden Susanna Wöber, legitimate daughter of Heinrich Wöber [alderman?] of Kleinheubach.

There is a small geography lesson tucked inside this entry. Kleinheubach sits directly across the Main from Großheubach, the two towns face each other over the river. Susanna’s father was a Kleinheubach man; Matthäus’s father, Johann Adam, was already dead by the time of the wedding. Two families, two banks of the same river, joined in one line.

Seven years later, the very same book records the next generation. In September 1689, their daughter, my 7× great-grandmother, was carried to the baptismal font:

1689 baptism record of Maria Susanne Hartmann, Großheubach.

7bris [Septembris] baptizata est Maria Susanna, filia Matthæi Hartman[n] [lanionis], quam suscepit … ex Klingberg [Klingenberg].

In September Maria Susanna was baptized, daughter of Matthäus Hartmann [butcher], whom [godmother] received at the font, of Klingenberg,.

There is one more detail tucked into this entry: beside Matthäus’s name the priest set down his trade, lanio, a butcher. With a single word, a name on a page becomes a working man with a shop and a block in Großheubach.

The register that opens with a joke hidden in its letters and a prayer hidden in a knot turns out to hold, a few hundred pages on, the quiet beginnings of my own family: a young couple joined across a river, and the daughter they brought to be baptized. The scribe who drew those little faces in 1653 never knew that one of the children recorded in his beautiful book would be traced, three centuries later, by a descendant an ocean away.

But that is exactly why I keep opening these old registers. They hold so much more than just names and dates.

And there’s a second difference. In every one of these tax photos so far, the buildings and the people in the frame have been strangers to me... someone else’s home, someone else’s grandparents, but not mine. Here it’s personal. This building is Newtown High School, and two years before the WPA photographer set up at this corner, my grandfather walked out its front doors with a diploma.

1940 NYC Tax photo of Newtown High School, Elmhurst, Queens. Block: 1849, Lot: 1.

You can’t miss the tower. It climbs 169 feet, topped with a cupola and turrets and edged with stepped gables, and it was envisioned by C. B. J. Snyder, the architect behind a whole generation of New York’s most visually notable public schools. Snyder designed it in a Flemish Renaissance Revival style between 1917 and 1921, and he chose that look on purpose. Elmhurst is one of the oldest European settlements in Queens, beginning in 1652 as a Dutch and English village called Newtown, and the old name stuck for nearly 250 years before “Elmhurst” replaced it in the 1890s. Snyder reached back to those Dutch colonial roots and gave this twentieth-century high school the profile of an old Low Countries guildhall. A schoolhouse has stood on this very spot since 1866. The building in the photo eventually took this spot, and it still towers over Elmhurst today.

Now to the reason I went looking for it. My grandfather, William John Mucha, was born in June 1920, the son of Gustave Mucha and Jeanette Claasen, and the grandson of two immigrant couples who had built new lives in New York: on the Mucha side the Czech Václav Mucha and Josefa Kříž, and on the Claasen side the German Johann Joachim Carl Claasen and the Dutch-German Johanna Josephine Weustink. In the winter of 1938 my grandfather was one of 234 students handed a Newtown diploma, a midyear class big enough to make the Queens papers. The Long Island Daily Press of February 3, 1938 printed the whole list under the headline “234 Diplomas Awarded at Newtown High,” and there in the M’s is William Mucha.

Long Island Daily Press, February 3, 1938.

My grandfather’s yearbook is where he stops being a name on a list. He looks like a thin, serious kid in a jacket and tie and, next to his photo, we learn of his educational ambitions and a bit about his literary tastes:

William Mucha, Newtown High School yearbook, 1938. Destination: N.Y.U. “We grant although he had much wit He was very shy of using it.”

Those lines aren’t the editors teasing him; they’re a quotation he picked out, and what appears to be a well-read one. The couplet comes from Hudibras, Samuel Butler’s satirical poem of the 1660s (Part I, Canto I), in which Butler says of his blustering knight that “although he had much wit, / He was very shy of using it.” For a self-described shy boy to choose those words is perhaps a sly joke, and the kind of detail that gives me a sense of what kind of teenager my grandfather might have been.

“Destination: N.Y.U.” was the plan my grandfather announced here in 1938, and he followed it, though not without a few bumps. He enrolled at New York University’s School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance and ground through courses in bookkeeping, business law, cost accounting, and business finance. His transcript provides an honest record of his effort: the stamps along the bottom show him placed on academic probation in 1939 and again in 1940, and removed from it each time. In June 1942 he graduated with a bachelor of science in accounting. Almost immediately he traded the classroom for a uniform, serving in the United States Army through World War II. When he came home he joined E. R. Squibb & Sons, the pharmaceutical company on the Brooklyn waterfront with offices reaching into Long Island City, where he worked as an accountant. That’s where he met Mary Margaret O’Rourke, a secretary at the same company, and on August 6, 1950, William married Mary. They raised four kids up in College Point, including my mother Kathleen. I never met my grandfather and wish I could learn exactly why he chose the Butler quote, what his life was like during the war, what he thought of NYU, how he would have felt knowing that I, too, got my degree at NYU a little more than 65 years later, why he might have struggled in class, and even what his teenage years were like in Elmhurst and at Newtown High.

William Mucha’s New York University transcript from the School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance for his bachelor of science in accounting, completed in 1942.

Snyder built a beautiful school that still stands today. In 2003, New York City designated Newtown High School a landmark, that Flemish tower is still the tallest thing for at least a few blocks. One of the kids who passed under that tower in the 1930s grew up to be my grandfather, which makes the whole frame feel less like a record of a building and more like a record of my grandfather’s life.

It begins, as these things often do, with a single sheet of paper. As a genealogist, this was a particularly exciting sheet of paper that immediately sent me on a side quest down a rabbit hole that has lasted years.

It is dark and sort of looks and feels like a photographic negative, or a type of paper that has not been manufactured in half a century. It is water-stained and folded into thirds from a long life in a drawer or folder or box. Words float across it in pale, typed capitals, somewhat stark against the brown background: BLOOD LINES. Beneath this title runs a cascade of names in a language that is not quite English and not quite the language of anybody I know. It is the somewhat private dialect of German dog breeders, with titles and kennel notes as suffixes: Sch. III, R.O.M., vom Haus Twisterling, von der Wünschelrute. At the far left are two dogs. SIRE Krieger von der Luftige Höhe, Reg. No. W-953308. DAM Gretchen von Luback, Reg. No. WA-221780. And at the bottom, in faint lettering, are two dates that turn this chart into a life that directly connects to my family: Bred Feb. 23, 1963. Whelped April 28, 1963.

The page is a pedigree, five generations of it, for a single German shepherd dog whose own name appears nowhere on it (though there is a blank line where it could have been written). Since the page is about her, everyone on it is her ancestor. She belonged to my father when he was a child. Her name was Gretchen.

The artifact that started all of this: a five-generation “Blood Lines” pedigree typed for Gretchen; sire (or father) Krieger von der Luftige Höhe (Reg. W-953308) and dam (or mother) Gretchen von Luback (Reg. WA-221780), bred February 23 and whelped/born April 28, 1963, kept folded among my family’s papers for decades.

I will admit that I have been a little obsessed with this sheet of paper. I am a genealogist by temperament, which is to say I am mostly unable to leave a name alone, and here were thirty or so names, each trailing off the right edge of the page into what I hoped were additionally recorded, findable generations. I wanted to see how far back records went. I wanted to build Gretchen’s family tree, partly to show my dad, partly because I am obsessed with records and interested in peculiar people of the past (and I guess dogs now, too). I wanted to know who all these dogs were. So I started pulling at the thread. I am still a little astonished at where it went...out of a backyard in College Point, Queens, across both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, through a Hawaiian quarantine station, in the pages of Esquire magazine, and to the late 1800s and almost the very moment a retired cavalry officer in Bavaria decided that there should be such a thing as a German shepherd at all.

Gretchen

Gretchen was born on April 28, 1963, and she came to live with my dad and his family in College Point, a neighborhood at the northern edge of Queens, New York, where the borough eventually runs out of pavement and into Flushing Bay and the East River. She was my father’s favorite, the dog of his boyhood, the one he still mentions (when I ask, of course) decades later in the particular voice people keep for the animals from their childhood.

The single photograph I have of her is a color snapshot; its original white border has yellowed and foxed at the corners. She is sitting in the grass, head tipped up and to one side toward someone just outside the frame, with someone else behind her, pictured as only a pair of legs in a skirt who seems to be holding a spoon (I think this might be my grandmother Rose). Gretchen’s coat is the sable-and-black of a working shepherd; her tongue is out; she looks, in the way of dogs in old photographs, entirely and uncomplicatedly happy. Across the bottom of the photo, in blue ink, is a single word: Gretchen. I know without a doubt that this is my grandmother Rose’s handwriting. It is a small thing that has come to mean a great deal to me, that the person who labeled this photograph and gave this dog her name was the same woman who had been keeping dogs since she was a girl, and who would go on keeping them long after Gretchen was gone.

Gretchen, my dad’s favorite dog growing up, looking adorable in the backyard in College Point, Queens, mid-1960s, her name written across the bottom of the snapshot by my grandmother Rose.

Gretchen sadly only lived a few years. One night she ran into the road in front of the house and was struck by a car. My father and his brothers and sisters were still teens and children; my grandmother had already kept dogs for more than thirty years so I imagine she knew how to get through this. Regardless, the whole family was devastated, and I imagine it took time to grieve and recover from that sort of trauma. It is a mushy cliche but maybe this is the oldest contract there is between people and the animals they love: you give your heart to a pet, and the pet, having no say in the matter, eventually breaks it. Repeat.

We think Gretchen died in early 1968. And then, because that is what this family did, they got another dog.

The receipt for this new dog survives; my grandmother and then my cousin saved it. It is typed on a half-sheet, dated November 24, 1968: “SOLD TO ROSE WINKLER, 121-59 6th Avenue, College Point, N.Y. 11356 ONE GERMAN SHEPHERD DOG, FEMALE, BLACK, TAN & SILVER FOR THE SUM OF $40.-- AKC REGISTRATION WILL BE DELIVERED WITHIN ONE WEEK.” And then “PAYMENT RECEIVED IN FULL,” signed by William Uhle.

The receipt for the dog that came after Gretchen: “One German Shepherd Dog, Female, Black, Tan & Silver,” sold to my grandmother Rose for $40 on November 24, 1968, by William and Helen Uhle of 130-03 7th Avenue, College Point, neighbors a couple blocks away.

Her name was Shatzie (from the German word Schätzchen, meaning “little treasure” or “darling” or “honey”) and I know she lived much longer than Gretchen because a second document agrees with the first: my grandmother’s New York City dog license, issued in November 1980, for “Shatzie,” a female German shepherd born in 1968, at the very same College Point address.

My grandmother Rose’s New York City dog license for Shatzie, a female German shepherd born in 1968, living at 121-59 6th Avenue, College Point; issued November 1980, valid through November 30, 1981 (Control No. E-239005-9). The same dog from the Uhle receipt above.

William and Helen Uhle did not own a kennel. The Uhle family lived a couple blocks over, at 130-03 7th Avenue; the 1950 census finds him thirty-six years old, born in Germany, working as a stock clerk for a camera company. This was not a show transaction but a backyard litter, sold between neighbors, a German immigrant selling a German dog to the German-American family down the street. Even the telephone number printed at the bottom of the receipt belongs to that world: FL 8-8835, a FLushing exchange, the kind of lettered phone number I have written about before as a way of counting time. By 1968 those exchanges were already being swallowed by all-number calling, the way so much else was being devoured, ever-morphing into the beast of change.

College Point was historically (beginning in the mid-1800s, that is) a German town. In 1854 a manufacturer named Conrad Poppenhusen arrived from Germany via Brooklyn and turned the place into something close to a company town around his hard-rubber factory. Hard rubber was the plastic of its day, pressed into combs and buttons and dental plates, among other items aiding in the rapid growth of the population during the industrial era. Poppenhusen’s factory was staffed by a thousand mostly-German workers. By 1880 nearly three-quarters of the families in College Point were German-American. The neighborhood was nicknamed “Little Heidelberg,” and its waterfront along Flushing Bay was lined with beer gardens and clambake resorts until Prohibition closed them in the 1920s. Poppenhusen built the water mains and the sewers, a library, an institute that still stands, and the first free kindergarten in the United States. By the time my grandmother bought a $40 puppy from a neighbor in 1968, College Point/Little Heidelberg was decades past its beer-garden prime, but the German bones of the place were still there, in the surnames on the mailboxes and given how on the nose it was to buy a German shepherd from a man named Uhle.

Shatzie outlived Gretchen by many years; she died in the early 1980s, not long after that NYC dog license was issued. My dad remembers an interesting detail from the end of Shatzie’s life: my grandfather Erich took her out for a walk one night, which was striking because he never walked the dogs. That was Rose’s thing, or the kid’s thing. My dad isn’t sure why my grandfather took the leash that particular night, only that he did. Shatzie was about 13 or 14 years old and died while my grandfather was out with her, apparently succumbing to a health issue she had for some time.

Rose, Always Among Dogs

To understand why a grieving family kept buying another shepherd almost as a reflex, you have to understand a key feature of my grandmother’s existence.

One of the earliest photographs I have of my grandmother Rose is from 1930, on a porch in Middletown, New York. She is a girl here, slight and serious, standing by her brother and beside her mother, my great grandmother Kunigunda Sperber, in a cloche hat, and, of course, a dog named Rex. Rose’s parents, Kunigunda and Edward Arnheiter, were the first of my paternal line to cross the Atlantic from Germany, and whatever else they carried with them, they seem to have brought the assumption that a family always has a dog in it. Rose was, from this very early photograph, a girl with a dog at her side.

My grandmother Rose Arnheiter (left), as a girl, with her mother, my great grandmother Kunigunda Sperber (right), her brother Eddie, and the family dog Rex on a porch in Middletown, New York, 1930. She was among dogs from the very beginning.

By 1934 she was about fifteen, photographed in a print dress on a Catskill hillside with two dogs, though neither are shepherds, at her feet and the long forested ridges behind her.

Rose, about fifteen, with two unnamed dogs on a Catskill hillside, New York, 1934.

She married my grandfather, Erich Winkler, in 1942 and they raised their first children in Elmhurst, Queens; the older ones were born there before the family moved across the borough to College Point. In April 1947 her eldest, Eric Jr., stood on an Elmhurst sidewalk in a flat cap, gravely holding the leash of a young, alert shepherd named Rex. It’s unknown how many Rexes there had been up to this point but I assume at least a few.

Rose’s eldest child, Eric Jr., holding the leash of the family’s young German shepherd Rex on the sidewalk in Elmhurst, Queens, April 1947, the neighborhood where she and my grandfather Erich raised their first few kids.

Two years later it is Rose herself in front of the house, pregnant with my dad, standing in a lovely coat and scarf, with Rex stretched out on the pavement at her feet.

Rose with the shepherd Rex on the front steps of the family’s house in Elmhurst, Queens, about 1949.

That same year there is a photograph of a different kind: Rose in a lawn chair on a wide upstate lawn, reading, while my aunt sits in a playpen and the shepherd Rex lies alongside her like a hired nursemaid. This is in Delhi, New York on her parents’ farm. Rose’s parents and siblings had left Queens at this point, for a quieter and simpler life in the country. This was one of those small migrations that never make the history books but reorganize a family entirely, splintering branches of the family tree until new roots can grow.

Rose reading in a lawn chair while one of her daughters sits in a playpen and the shepherd Rex lies alongside, on the Arnheiters’ farm in Delhi, New York, about 1949, shortly after Rose’s parents and siblings left Queens for a quieter life upstate.

Not every dog in the sequence was a Rex, and not every one of these stories ends gently. Somewhere between the postwar Rexes and Shatzie there was a shepherd named Horace. The family took him in already grown, a couple of years old, and he never quite settled; snippy, my father remembers, watchful in a way the others were not. One afternoon he was playing with Eric Jr. in the living room when something snapped in him and he bit. They called the local ASPCA, the same society whose license would one day record Shatzie, and were told the kindest thing was to put him down. They did. And then, because that is what this family did, they got Gretchen.

Across all the decades, as we’ve now seen, there was very regularly a dog named Rex. The name passes through the photographs like a refrain, attached to dog after dog; the same way names do in some families. In 1999, nearly seventy years after the Middletown porch, there is my grandmother Rose again in my files: about to turn 80, at her home in Wurtsboro, New York (she also eventually left Queens for a quieter life in the country), standing with my uncle and two dogs named Katy and… Rex.

Rose with her son and the dogs Rex and Katy at their home in Wurtsboro, New York, 1999; nearly seventy years after the porch in Middletown pictured earlier. There was almost always a Rex.

Laying these photographs out in order, I notice that the constant in all of them is my grandmother. Rose is the through-line: 1930, 1934, 1947, 1949, 1999, the dog always somewhere near her hand. She was a powerful woman, and I imagine she summoned some of that power from her faithful sidekicks. Unsurprisingly though, when I went looking for the females in Gretchen’s pedigree, they were precisely the ones who kept disappearing. Hold that thought!

“Descended From Royalty”

Here is one of the most interesting things about that sheet of paper with Blood Lines. Gretchen, the backyard dog who died young on a road in College Point, was descended from royalty. Not as a figure of speech. Two of her four great grandfathers and one her grandfathers were national champions whose victories were reported in newspapers from Honolulu to Akron to a front page in Texas, and one of whom appeared, improbably, in the pages of Esquire.

Consider Ingo von der Wünschelrute, who sits two generations above her father Krieger. In October 1952 he advanced through the classes to win Best of Breed at the 39th annual specialty of the German Shepherd Dog Club of America and, with it, the automatic title of Grand Victor, which is the highest honor an American shepherd can hold. He had been imported from Germany by Margrit V. Fischer of the Waldenmark Kennels after, the paper notes, “an eight-month search” for a champion (Krieger’s own mother, Waldenmark’s Petra, came from the same kennel). Four years later, in July 1956, Esquire ran a full-page art photograph of Ingo, the dog rendered with the same gravity the magazine gave to film stars and senators. Here is Gretchen’s beautiful great grandfather:

U.S. Grand Victor Champion Ingo von der Wünschelrute, Gretchen’s great grandfather, in a full-page photographic profile. Esquire, July 1956.

Or consider Troll vom Richterbach, another of Gretchen’s great grandfathers, born in Germany on May 31, 1953, and owned by Irvin Apelbaum of Akron, Ohio. When Troll came to visit Fairlawn, Ohio in 1957, the Akron Beacon Journal ran the headline “Fairlawn Carpet Out For Canine Royalty,” and it was not really exaggerating: Troll was an international champion five times over in three countries, a Canadian national champion, the American Grand Victor for 1957, and the holder of all his German training degrees in tracking, attack, guard, and obedience. He was, as the paper put it, “a quite wonderful dog, in fact.”

“Fairlawn Carpet Out For Canine Royalty:” International Champion Troll vom Richterbach, U.S. Grand Victor for 1957 and Gretchen’s great grandfather, owned by Irvin Apelbaum of Akron, Ohio. Akron Beacon Journal, November 3, 1957.

And then there is Bernd vom Haus Twisterling, one of Gretchen’s grandfathers, and perhaps surprisingly the most traveled dog in this entire story.

Bernd belonged to Mrs. Jessie L. Ho, and here the pedigree of a dog and the genealogy of a human family amazingly weave together, because Mrs. Ho turns up elsewhere in my files. There is a 1919 photograph of the Ho family of Honolulu: Kim Tong Ho at the back, his wife Jessie Kam How Leong beside him, their small children Evelyn and Kenneth in front. Jessie Leong is Mrs. Jessie L. Ho. A Chinese-Hawaiian woman and, the Honolulu papers tell us, a devoted shepherd fancier who traveled to Germany herself to find Bernd and bring him home to the islands. By one Florida paper’s account she had been breeding German shepherds and cocker spaniels for over thirty years and was “credited with first introducing both breeds into her native Hawaii.”

The Ho family of Honolulu, 1919: Kim Tong Ho (back) and Jessie Kam How Leong, later Mrs. Jessie L. Ho, with their children Evelyn and Kenneth. Jessie would become a prominent Honolulu dog fancier and the owner of Bernd vom Haus Twisterling, Gretchen’s grandfather.

She found Bernd in Germany, put him through Hawaii’s strict animal quarantine, and then campaigned him across the American mainland to ten Best in Show awards and a place among the top ten dogs in the country. A judge called him the finest-moving dog of his breed in a decade; a New York breeder offered Mrs. Ho six thousand dollars for him (something like seventy thousand in today’s money) and she turned it down and took him to the Canadian and Mexican dog show circuits instead. His handler in the ring was Porter Washington. A breed engineered in Germany and carried to Hawaii by a Chinese-Hawaiian woman, campaigned to one championship after another across America in the 1950s. And related to Gretchen!

Mrs. Jessie L. Ho’s imported German shepherd, Bernd vom Haus Twisterling, Gretchen’s grandfather, taking Best of Winners over 91 entries; Long Beach, California, 1956, handled by Porter Washington.

A whole family! Bernd vom Haus Twisterling (top right, the “illustrious dad”), the dam Jeff Lynnes’ Francella (top left, owned by Mrs. Ralph W. Reynolds), and their ten-week-old litter. 1957. The Cleveland Press.

Gretchen’s own father, Krieger, never reached those heights, but he did his part: long after Gretchen was born, a 1971 classified from the Miami Herald advertises him as a unique (technically senior) stud in South Florida coming from “the only breeder in S. Fla. listed in AKC Breeder’s Aid.”

Gretchen’s own father advertised as an available stud: Krieger von der Luftige Höhe, advertised by “the only breeder in S. Fla. Listed in AKC Breeder’s Aid” offering his line. The Miami Herald, 1971.

I keep turning over the distance between the dog in the Esquire photograph and the dog in the backyard snapshot. They are four generations apart and they are the same animal, more or less, the same blood arranged in slightly different proportions. One had a stranger offer six thousand dollars to buy him and was carried between continents to perform. The other was loved by my dad in Queens and buried after a tragic car accident. The pedigree charts might not be able to tell them apart, but who they spent their lives with certainly could.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

If royalty is the word to describe the dogs at the top of all the best in show competitions, then commerce is the word for everything that comes after those awards are bestowed. A champion is, among his other functions, a small industry in himself, his puppies the product; and the classified pages of mid-century American newspapers are thick with Gretchen’s ancestors and relatives, all priced to move.

“GERMAN SHEPHERD, black male, 8 months, son of Grand Victor Champion Ingo Wunschelrute. No papers, $35; with papers, $50,” runs a 1959 ad from The Montreal Star. Note that the paperwork costs a full fifteen dollars on its own.

“Litter by Grand Victor Champion Ingo Wunschelrute from blue ribbon bitch,” offers Buffalo, New York in 1960.

“Sired by International Champion and 1957 Grand Victor Troll vom Richterbach. Superlative quality. Fairly priced,” says Pittsburgh in 1958.

A 1963 Richmond ad piles up the titles and connections to other dogs, and then adds a single word that I find fascinating: “Terms.” In a classified, that one word was an offer of credit… a little down, the rest paid off in installments. You could buy a piece of this canine royalty on layaway, the same way you might a sofa or a washing machine.

And then, most remarkably, an advertisement from December 1987, twenty-four years after Gretchen’s chart was typed, still selling Ingo’s bloodline, now braided together with the bloodlines of celebrities!: “AKC GERMAN SHEPHERDS — from the famous lines of Rin Tin Tin, Roy Roger’s Bullet, imported Grand Victor Champion Ingo Wunschelrute… Ready for Christmas at only $200 & 400. Give the gift that keeps on giving.”

Twenty-four years after Gretchen’s chart, Ingo von der Wünschelrute’s bloodline is still for sale, now braided with Rin Tin Tin and Roy Rogers’ Bullet: “Give the gift that keeps on giving.” Press & Sun-Bulletin, December 14, 1987.

None of this was new. A half-century earlier, the 1922 Bulletin of the Shepherd Dog Club of America was already a marketplace for all your dog needs…

Worm tablets at fifty cents a bottle,

a hundred-dollar stud fee for a “Grand Champion of America,” and an imported training collar called the TRAINO, “Approved by Military and Police Officials,” which if “worn reversed, it acts as a guard against bites.”

The commerce of this breed runs the entire length of the American century, from a 1922 guard collar to a 1987 Christmas puppy, with Gretchen’s chart sitting quietly near the middle of it. And that Grand Champion of America available as a stud for a fee, it turns out, belongs in this very story. The hundred-dollar stud was Apollo von Hünenstein, advertised as “Grand Champion of America 1919” (studbook number 31621), his own sire and dam named just beneath him: Ajax vom Hohenstein and Liselotte von Hannover. All three are Gretchen’s direct ancestors: Apollo her 10× great grandfather, and his sire and dam a generation deeper still, her 11× great grandparents, exactly as the ad lays them out. The 1922 marketplace was advertising, without the faintest idea of it, Gretchen’s ancestors. The ad even boasts the point twice over: it sells Apollo as the grandsire of “the only Sieger in this country, Champion Dolf von Düsternbrook,” the big winner at that year’s New York show…and Dolf, too, comes down into Gretchen, her 9× great grandfather along a separate line.

Int. Ch. Apollo von Hünenstein, P.H., “Grand Champion of America 1919,” offered at stud for $100 with his sire Ajax vom Hohenstein and dam Liselotte von Hannover named beneath him. All three are Gretchen’s direct ancestors. Bulletin of the Shepherd Dog Club of America, 1922.

Earlier still, and from across the pond in Germany: A turn-of-the-century stud advertisement for Rex von Karlsruhe (studbook no. 61), one of Gretchen’s 13× great grandfathers. “Rex covers purebred bitches by arrangement,” it offers and “puppies of good descent occasionally available.” The same commerce as the 1959 classifieds, fifty years earlier, in a different language, and an ocean away.

Gretchen’s 13× great grandfather Rex von Karlsruhe. Kennel “Karlsruhe” (Fr. Schmitt).

Sometimes what I love most about these clippings, though, is not the dogs at all. It is what shares the page with them. A 1956 column about Gretchen's grandfather Bernd resting in his Honolulu quarantine runs directly beside an advertisement for Skippy Pet Stew for Dogs and Cats.

A Skippy dog AND cat food advertisement sharing the page with a 1956 column on Bernd vom Haus Twisterling in his Honolulu quarantine. Honolulu, 1956.

Ingo’s 1952 Grand Victor win shares a column with an ad for false teeth glue:

An advertisement for false teeth glue printed in the same column as Ingo von der Wünschelrute’s 1952 Grand Victor win.

Troll’s championship is printed next to a notice for Betty Zane popcorn, a brand named, as it happens, for a frontier heroine of a 1782 siege that is a story of colonial violence and Native dispossession sold back here to mid-century shoppers as cheerful Americana in popcorn form, riding alongside a German master-breed dog:

A Betty Zane popcorn advertisement beside Troll vom Richterbach’s championship notice. The Cleveland Press, 1957.

And in the same Honolulu paper as Bernd, a column called “Cat Chat” reports, in tender detail, a local veterinarian stitching shut the abdomen of a newborn kitten.

The “Cat Chat” column from the same Honolulu paper that covered Bernd: a local veterinarian stitching shut the abdomen of a newborn kitten. 1956.

The old newspaper is a democracy of the trivial and the enormous; everything on the page is equally dead now, and equally alive when enthusiasts like me rediscover these things.

And then there is the one clipping that stops me cold. On the very same 1957 page as Troll vom Richterbach’s “canine royalty,” a public-service advertisement urged drivers to keep their brakes in good repair so that they would not, it said in so many words, strike a child who ran into the street.

The public-service notice that ran on the very same 1957 page as Troll’s “canine royalty,” urging drivers to keep their brakes in good order.

I try never to read the past as though it were arranged for my benefit. But I know that not many years later, on a street in College Point, Gretchen ran into the road and a car could not stop in time. The advertisement and the dog never met. They share only a theme and now my attention while trying to stitch things together. That is one of the strange things about looking back at old newspapers and documents: they seem to be forever printing warnings alongside sad stories about the things they failed to prevent.

All the Way Down to One Dog

I said I was pulling at the thread so let’s go with that. Though, wasn’t it pulling me? Luring me? Regardless, here is how far I pulled (so far).

I took the thirty-odd dogs on the 1963 Blood Lines chart and I followed every one of them backward, generation by generation, registration number by registration number, the way you would work a human family out of census sheets and parish books. The five-generation chart eventually became a tree of just over three thousand dogs. And then something happened that anyone who has done this with a human family will recognize at once: the tree began to fold in on itself. It collapsed on itself.

The same names started coming back. A dog who was Gretchen’s ancestor along her father’s paternal line turned out to be her ancestor along her mother’s great paternal line as well, and then along a third line, and a fourth. Axel von der Deininghauserheide, a celebrated postwar sire, sits in her tree as her 3× great grandfather on her father’s side and her 2× great grandfather on her mother’s, the very same dog sitting in two different spots at once. Geneticists call this pedigree collapse, and in a breed built deliberately from a tiny founding population it is not an accident but the whole design. By the deepest reaches of the tree, a single dog: Horand von Grafrath, the first German shepherd ever registered, appears in Gretchen’s ancestry not once or twice but thousands of times (555,506 times, by my count as of this writing). Horand was Gretchen’s 12× great grandfather on seven separate lines of descent, and her 20× great grandfather on nearly eighty-six thousand of them. He appears on her paternal line 179,943 times and on her maternal line 375,563 times. Every branch traces back to him. He is less of an ancestor and more like a vanishing point for Gretchen’s tree. It helps to see the arithmetic Horand is quietly breaking. In theory a pedigree doubles at every step back: two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, and on and on… so by the time you reach the 20× great grandparents, the very rung where he turns up most often, Gretchen should have more than four million of them:

How a family tree is supposed to grow: the number of ancestors doubles with every generation, from two parents to more than four million 20× great grandparents. Gretchen’s tree and most others don’t grow so cleanly. Instead, those millions of slots are filled, over and over, by barely three thousand real dogs.

Pull those repeating names out and a tiny foundation core appears. These are the breed’s pre-registration ancestors: dogs like Pollux and his litter-brother Kastor, both whelped in 1891, a sire remembered only as Roland, and a herding female the studbook never named beyond Courage. All of them were already old, or gone, before the studbook existed; they were written into it later and backward, from breeding notes and memory. Each one stands in Gretchen’s pedigree not once but on the order of a million times over. Horand von Grafrath himself, studbook number one, appears more than half a million times.

Just over three thousand distinct dogs, in the end, fill those countless millions of slots: the breed keeps folding back onto itself until the same handful of animals is holding up the entire structure.

Horand and the entire breed had a maker. His name was Max von Stephanitz. This is a human’s name, not one of the dogs’. He was a cavalry captain who trained in veterinary anatomy and left the army in 1898, officially, one historian notes likely with audible skepticism, “because of illness, specifically hemorrhoids.” He then bought an estate near the village of Grafrath in Bavaria and used the village as his kennel name, hence, Horand von Grafrath. In 1899 he attended a dog show in Karlsruhe, saw a dog called Hektor Linksrhein, bought him on the spot, renamed him Horand von Grafrath, and entered him as entry number one in a studbook he had just founded. Around that one dog he built the German shepherd breed and, just as deliberately, a philosophy, which he described in his own enormous, beautiful 1923 book, full of photo plates and Fraktur type and an absolute certainty about what a dog was for. Here are examples from both the original German and translated English editions:

“The standard by which he would be judged and approved was this, namely: Utility is the true criterion of Beauty.” -Max von Stephanitz, The German Shepherd Dog in Word and Picture, 1923

“The breeding of shepherd dogs is the breeding of working dogs; and this must always be the aim, or we shall cease to produce shepherd dogs.” -Max von Stephanitz, The German Shepherd Dog in Word and Picture, 1923

Max von Stephanitz, founder of the breed, with Horand von Grafrath, the first registered German shepherd and Gretchen’s 12× great grandfather, studbook number 1, about 1900.

It is a vision of the dog as a perfected instrument: useful first, beautiful only insofar as beauty serves a use; bred, measured, titled, and put to work. Von Stephanitz’s book diagrams the ideal animal like an engineering drawing,

including the skeleton:

And muscles:

The “correct” gait broken down into freeze frames:

Spend long enough in these pedigrees and the names themselves begin to read like a map of Germany. Gretchen’s ancestors carry the places that made them: vom Brenztal and vom Saaletal after river valleys, von Grafrath in Bavaria, von Boll and von Schwenningen in Württemberg, von Tautenburg in Thuringia, even von Bern across the Swiss border.

The places hidden in Gretchen’s ancestors’ names, mapped: foundation kennels scattered across Württemberg, Bavaria, Thuringia, elsewhere in Germany, and over the Swiss border.

Other dogs are named for their work instead of their birthplace. For example, there is a whole line bred with the name von der Kriminalpolizei, “of the criminal police,” and the abbreviations trailing the names, SchH, FH, PH, and HGH, are not show ribbons but working certificates in protection (Schutzhund), tracking (Fährtenhund), police work (Polizeihund), and herding (Herdengebrauchshund).

That working purpose was always the point. Von Stephanitz built the breed as an “instrument,” and the German police and army took it up almost at once; by the First World War shepherds were sentries, messengers, and Red Cross dogs. The same trainable intelligence that made them useful also made them, in some of the century’s darkest moments, “instruments” of the regimes that used them. The German shepherd breed has worn both the rescue harness as well as the guard-tower leash. Today its descendants are guide dogs, search-and-rescue dogs, bomb dogs, and family companions, and their trainability is evident in the significant literature about the breed. The Monks of New Skete, a monastic community in upstate New York not many counties from my family’s old Delhi farm, raise German shepherds, teach behavioral classes, and publish books and guides to understand and train your dog.

Popular book How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend by The Monks of New Skete in Cambridge, New York, who breed German shepherds and wrote several books on their behavior and how to train them; only a couple of hours’ drive from where my grandmother Rose’s family kept their own dogs.

Von Stephanitz’s 1923 book contains dozens of plates that are crowded with the very dogs who would become Gretchen’s ancestors:

Her 9× great grandfather Roland von Starkenburg:

Her 11× great grandfather Beowulf:

Her 9× great grandfather Hettel Uckermark:

Her 11× great grandfather Graf Eberhard von Hohen-Esp (also known as Hektor):

Her 10× great grandfather Munko von Boll:

Though von Stephanitz included few photos of Gretchen's female ancestors, elsewhere, I found her 13× great grandmother Bella Eislingen:

Bella Eislingen, born 1896. One of the earliest of Gretchen’s foremothers to leave any trace at all: a named, titled working herding female (HGH) from the breed’s first years. By the nearest line she is Gretchen’s 13× great grandmother. A foundation female we can actually see.

To turn the pages of a 1923 book and find, again and again, the names already written on a 1963 chart in a Queens drawer is a particular kind of vertigo. I am, uncontrollably, very jealous there isn’t a book like this for my ancestors.

Run her line straight back, parent to child, generation by generation, and you can count the steps between my father’s backyard dog and the founding of her breed. There are about twenty-two of them. From Gretchen the line climbs up through her American champions, back across the ocean into the German foundation kennels, past Horand von Grafrath himself (the first dog ever entered in the studbook) and at last to her 20× great grandfather, a dog known only as Roland, from the years before the breed even had a name. And this time there are no detours and no doubled-back arithmetic: every link is a real sire or dam, each dog the parent of the one below it, an unbroken thread running from a 1963 backyard straight into the nineteenth century. I find I cannot quite get over it.

Gretchen’s direct line of descent: twenty-two unbroken generations, parent to child, from a College Point backyard to her 20× great grandfather Roland, passing through Horand von Grafrath, the first German shepherd ever registered. Compiled from SV and AKC studbook records. The numbers down the side mark each dog’s place on this one line; because the breed folds back on itself, several sit closer to Gretchen by other routes: Horand, at 17× great here, is her 12× great grandfather at his nearest.

The lines I have traced so far are only the parts written in ink (and now digitized in a few interesting pedigree databases). Run the breed itself back far enough and the pedigree leaves the studbooks behind entirely: von Stephanitz opened his own book with a fold-out chart that carries the dog past the Bronze Age and the Ice Age all the way down to the first carnivores. This is Gretchen’s family tree, drawn across thousands of years of geological time:

The German shepherd’s deep ancestry: Max von Stephanitz’s fold-out “Genealogical Tree of the Domestic Dog of the North Eurasian Territory,” tracing the breed from the Bronze-Age herding dog back through the Ice Age to the earliest carnivores. From The German Shepherd Dog in Word and Picture, 1923.

Females in the Margins

I told you earlier that the females kept disappearing. Here is what I meant.

When you trace a dog pedigree, the sires are easy. They are titled, photographed, advertised as studs, written up in the Akron Beacon Journal, etc. The dams are another matter. Over and over, a female in Gretchen’s tree is simply a hole in the record: no registration number, no photograph, and rarely a name, as though she were a piece of furniture that happened to whelp. I spent weeks finding these dogs in databases, and the pattern was unmistakable: the records for this breed clearly remembers its fathers and frequently forgets its mothers. The sires wear their names like banners: Ingo von der Wünschelrute (“Ingo of the Divining-Rod”), Troll vom Richterbach, Apollo von Hünenstein, Dewet Barbarossa, Harras vom Glockenbrink; each a place, a rank, a flourish. The dams, when they are named at all, are often given a single bare word and no estate to go with it: Flora, Bella, Mara, Lotte, Lene, Courage.

The breed historian Gordon Garrett makes a related argument, though his quarrel is with the studbook itself. The shepherds came through both world wars and their aftermaths, he writes, not on the strength of the celebrated show “pillars” but on that of humble working-herding lines “from all over Germany and Switzerland” that the books barely recorded; dogs dismissed in their day, which he calls “the condemned.” “The deep pedigrees,” he writes, “show the condemned were largely responsible for the salvation of the breed.”

And much of that uncredited foundation was female. The pillar sires were bred again and again, as Garrett puts it, to “unregistered sheep herding bitches” whose offspring turned up later inside the pedigrees of famous dogs while the books “just followed the one line.” Even the females worth keeping tended to get lost, he writes, “because of the German System that emphasizes the males.”

From Gordon Garrett’s German Shepherd Dog History.

Take Flora Berkemeyer, Gretchen’s 11× great grandmother, born around 1910, whose litters “formed the backbone of breeding stock” for a decade. Her maternal lines were working herders, mostly unregistered and untraceable; Flora herself, Garrett notes, “is the only one known to be registered in her litter.” One name kept; the rest let go.

Flora Berkemeyer, Gretchen’s 11× great grandmother, born about 1910 and “the only one known to be registered in her litter,” her herding dam-lines otherwise lost to the record.

Thus, I cheered anytime there was a photo of one of Gretchen’s great grandmothers. Here is her 14× great grandmother Lucie von Starkenburg:

And her 11× great grandmother Ansa of Ceara:

And here is an incredibly adorable portrait of her 12× great grandmother, Gretel Uckermark:

Gretel Uckermark, the 1906 Siegerin (the year’s champion female) and Gretchen’s 12× great grandmother. Posed like this, I can’t help thinking, she’s almost like a Renaissance Madonna: a haloed bust, a medallion at her breast, her eyes turned devoutly upward.

Though these maternal photos are wonderful, their number pales in comparison to the paternal ones I’ve found. I have spent years now reading human records including parish books, ship manifests, census sheets, the worn faces of headstones, and I have learned to brace for exactly this silence. The woman who outlives her husband and buries all eight of her children and is herself left off the family stone. The birth records that only list the child’s father. The mother named only as “wife of.” To meet the same structural forgetting again in the pedigree of a dog was both entirely unsurprising and, somehow, freshly sad.

And yet. Look back through the photographs in this essay and count the women who are not in the margins at all. My grandmother Rose, on a porch in 1930 and a front lawn in 1999, the dog forever at her hand. Margrit Fischer, who crossed an ocean and searched for eight months to bring a champion home. And Jessie Ho, a Chinese-Hawaiian woman in Honolulu who put her dog on a steamship, beat the entire American mainland with him, and turned down a fortune to keep him. In the records of the dogs, the females vanish. In the records of these people, the women are a considerable part of the whole story. Perhaps that is the small justice available to any genealogist: to go back into the silence and write the names down.

Back to Gretchen

I come back, in the end, to the sheet of paper.

Only a few physical memories are tied to Gretchen and remain today. One color snapshot with her name at the bottom. One typed receipt for the dog who replaced her. A line on a 1980 dog license, again for the dog who replaced her. And a blank line for her at the front of a pedigree that I have now followed back twenty-two generations to the very founding of her breed. The champions above her are remembered because they performed, because they won, and bred, and sold, and went on selling for decades after they were gone. Gretchen is remembered because my dad loved her, and because, sixty years later, his son was fascinated by a folded sheet of paper.

There was almost always a Rex in my family. There was, once and only once, a Gretchen. The breed was built to be useful; she was simply beloved, which is maybe its own and better kind of use. Max von Stephanitz would not have approved of a dog whose only title was “favorite,” but I think he had it backwards, and I think my family proved it for seventy years, on porches and lawns and front steps from Middletown to College Point to Wurtsboro and all the places before, in between, and after.

I mentioned earlier, in slightly different words, that there is an old caution that you should never give your heart to a dog, because a dog will only break it. My family heard that warning across seven decades and ignored it, every single time. Looking at all of them now… Rose and her dogs, my father and Gretchen, the whole long line of love handed freely to creatures who could never keep it safe. I am certain they were right to.

Gretchen, in the backyard in College Point, sometime in the mid-1960s.

“I’m so sorry we bury dogs in the backyard
And still take for granted all the time we’re given”
-L. McKenna

Sources and links:

Full text of Max von Stephanitz’s 1923 The German Shepherd Dog in Word and Picture:
https://archive.org/details/CAT10506117

The original, full text in German, Der deutsche Schäferhund in Wort und Bild:
https://archive.org/details/derdeutschesc00step

In case you want to go down a dog breeding rabbit hole: https://www.pedigreedatabase.com/

Full text PDF of Gordon Garrett’s German Shepherd Dog History:
https://www.angelplace.net/doc/GarrettBook.pdf

Monks of New Skete on their life with dogs:
https://newskete.org/our-life-with-dogs

Today, we are opening a different, older register from the same city: Book No. 3, which spans the years 1732 to 1754. When you turn to the death and burial section of this particular book, the tone shifts immediately. You are met with this dramatic, sobering image:

Page 550 of Kutná Hora register (matriky) book no. 3. Roman catholic birth/baptism, marriage, and death/burial records. State Regional Archives in Prague (Státní oblastní archiv v Praze).

This engraving is a classic example of Memento Mori, or a visual reminder of the inevitability of death. A human skull dominates the foreground, resting atop an open book whose pages carry a warning in German Fraktur script:

Daß andere alles muß vergehen (“that all else must pass”).

Above, a ribbon banner completes the thought:

Wer Gott fürcht’ bleibt ewig stehen. (“Who fears God stands eternal.”).

Surrounding the skull are the stock symbols of the vanitas tradition: a smoking pipe, a pocket watch, a vase of cut flowers already beginning to wilt, each a reminder that earthly pleasures and time itself are fleeting. The engraver has left nothing ambiguous in this piece. Open this register, and before a single death is recorded, the book has already told us what it thinks of the living.

While the death section of Book No. 3 features this incredible engraving, it was in the unillustrated marriage section of this same book that I found the April 30, 1743 wedding record of my 6th great-grandparents, Jan Frydrych Petyger (Johann Friedrich Petinger) and Anna Meysner:

1743 Marriage Record of Jan Frydrych Petyger and Anna Meysner in Kutná Hora.

This record taught me a valuable lesson about the pitfalls of historical research. Because the later Kutná Hora registers I had been translating were written in Latin, I assumed this one was, too. Looking at the cursive, I thought I had identified Anna’s maiden name as “Swoboda.”

However, after having the record professionally transcribed, I learned that this specific entry was not written in Latin, but in Old Czech, and that “Swoboda” wasn’t her surname at all!

The priest had actually written Swobodnau diewecžkau. In Czech, the root word svoboda means freedom. The priest was noting her social status, calling her a “free girl,” ensuring it was legally documented that she was a free citizen and not a bound serf to a feudal lord.

Once the Old Czech was properly translated, her true story was revealed:

April 30. Joined in marriage was the honest and free youth Jan Frydrych Petyger, a local citizen, with the honest and also free girl Anna, who has been serving here for several years, the surviving daughter of the deceased Kryštof Meysner, formerly residing in Český Dub... Married in the Church of the Lord St. James.

This single paragraph completely reshaped my tree. Anna’s maiden name was Meysner. She wasn’t a native of Kutná Hora; she was the daughter of Kryštof Meysner from Český Dub, a town in northern Bohemia. She had traveled to Kutná Hora for work, spending several years as a servant before marrying Jan, a vested local citizen (and, as I would later discover in their children’s baptismal records, a skilled cloth shearer).

My 6th great-grandparents were married in the Church of St. James the Elder (Kostel svatého Jakuba Staršího):

Kostel svatého Jakuba Staršího (Kutná Hora)

This is the oldest church in Kutná Hora, construction began around 1330 and was completed in 1420. The church is famous for its towering steeple that dominates the city skyline. Between St. James and the Church of St. John of Nepomuk (where their son married 30 years later), I now have multiple standing historical landmarks where my ancestors stood to start their families.

Book No. 3 may contain terrifying reminders of mortality, but it also holds the beautiful, working-class love story of a local tradesman and a girl from Český Dub building a free life in a Bohemian town.

History buffs and literary fans might recognize this exact corner. This building later became the legendary 8th Street Bookshop, a famous gathering place for Beat Generation writers like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in the 1950s and 60s. Here we see it a decade or so earlier, quietly operating as a lending library and bookshop alongside a dress store and The Jumble Shop restaurant and bar a few doors down. It’s a beautifully gritty, everyday glimpse into Greenwich Village just before it became the epicenter of a massive cultural movement.

I walked by this building dozens of times while I was a student down the block at NYU. Honestly, I didn’t know this spot was special at the time. The Jumble Shop had an interesting history up to when this photo was taken (it had been around for 18 years at this point) and would years after when French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir mentioned it in her 1948 travel diary America Day by Day:

“This is my last night in New York for two months. I go down to Greenwich Village with my friends. Near Washington Square they show me a charming cafe, the Jumble Shop, which looks almost European with its red tiled floor and its quiet little tables arrayed along the walls. You can eat and drink there all night. During years of exile, French writers and painters tried to resuscitate Les Deux Magots and Le Cafe de Flore here, but they failed; their get-togethers were always too contrived. For one reason or another, New York doesn’t have the right atmosphere for cafe life.” -Simone de Beauvoir

A few years earlier, the Jumble Shop celebrated it’s 20th anniversary in 1942:

It seems like the restaurant never intended to replicate a French cafe so I’m not sure what Simone was complaining about:

“‘What is the reason for the restaurant being called The Jumble Shop?’ is a question that has been asked hundreds of times. To answer this I must retrace my steps to a day in December 1920 when Miss Tucker and I took over from a Mrs. Smith, wife of an army officer being transferred to California, a not very important but quite amusing collection of antiques…. A small wooden sign, just a plain board with Jumble Shop painted in black in, announced to the passer-by that Eighth Street boasted another Antique Shop. A front room with couches on either side of an open fire suggested tea in the late afternoon of wintry days and soon groups of friends and strollers in from the street, chatted and smoked in front of the fire. One day someone, I do not remember who but if I did I would thank him, suggested that we start serving meals. With very little money but much enthusiasm we grasped at the idea and February found us started out on our restaurant career.”

The founder and owner of the restaurant goes on to describe all the notable people who enjoyed eating there over the years, including French artists:

And an American writer who had a special table of his own:

“Hanging on the street wall in the Tap Room is a prized possession. A note from Thomas Wolfe written on a page torn from his notebook. It was one night a couple of years before his death when I had gone over to his table, the table just under the framed note, to tell him how much I had enjoyed reading The Web and The Rock. He told me it was his birthday and that when friends asked him where he wanted to dine he said The Jumble Shop….”

I think Simone de Beauvoir was maybe having a bad day when she judged this “cafe” and the atmosphere in New York.

“I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman, to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish.” -Simone de Beauvoir

1940 NYC Tax photo of 5523 5th Avenue, Brooklyn. Block: 832, Lot: 1.

Sometimes, the most captivating part of a historical property photo isn’t the building it was meant to record, but the people doing the recording. Take this 1940s NYC tax photo from Brooklyn. The official subject is 5523 5th Avenue (Block 832, Lot 1), then the location of George’s Lamp and Gift Shop, but the real star of the show is this NYC Works Progress Administration (WPA) employee holding the sign. Dressed quite sharply in a fedora, heavy overcoat, scarf, and gloves, he looks more like a detective from some film noir than a city assessor.

What makes this image so fantastic is the sheer candidness of it. He’s crouched in a wide stance to get the sign in frame, juggling his clipboard while casually holding a pencil in his mouth. It’s a brilliant behind-the-scenes look at the massive bureaucratic effort it took to photograph every property in the city, capturing a fleeting, unposed moment of a working New Yorker’s day.

I shared an image in a post a few weeks back of a collapsed cardboard box from a florist that my mom saved from her 15th birthday, and want to share my side quest to learn about this place, the people who worked there, and the colorful flowers they produced in Queens, New York. Here is that box again:

Corsage box for Kathleen Mucha’s 15th birthday, February 1966, autographed by classmates in English room 209, St. Agnes Academic High School, College Point, Queens, New York. From C. Thienel’s Florist shop at 47-12 Bell Boulevard, Bayside, Long Island.

I spent a considerable amount of time researching this florist, curious to see what I might learn about C. Thienel, the history of this unique space in Queens, and perhaps also about the flower(s) my mother wore at school.

Initially, I did not find much about C. Thienel’s Florist at the Bell Boulevard address listed on the souvenir box but, after a little searching in the neighborhood, I found this great picture taken just around the corner:

A 1940 NYC tax photo of “THIENEL’S FLORIST” at 4739 213 Street in Bayside, Queens. Though more accurately this business was located on what is today 48th Avenue but was formerly Titus Avenue and more commonly Rocky Hill Road.

A previous customer left a note attached to this photo: “This was Thienel’s Flower Shop. I believe relatives of the Wettingfeld family. There were large Glass hot houses behind the shop. My sisters and I used to buy Flowers for Mom on Easter, Mothers Day and other special occasions.” There are a few interesting memories in these sentences that I will expand on in a bit.

First, who was C. Thienel? Well, the billboard in the above tax photo lists a “Chas T[hienel].” Sure enough, the C/Chas was short for Charles. But there were two Charles Thienels, a junior and a senior. When my mom received the corsage in the box above, it likely came from Charles Thienel Jr. since his father, Charles Sr., had passed away almost 3 years earlier in 1963. That said, the Florist shop was a family affair and includes connections to the Wettingfeld family mentioned in the note left by their former customer, plus a few other notable families that show up in the historical record in this part of New York.

Charles Thienel Sr. was born in 1877 in the town of Leuber in the German Empire (now Lubrza in Poland). But before he would marry his wife Maria and end up with his name on flower shops, billboards, and corsage boxes, a few events needed to occur. Maria (Mary) Kriegelsteiner, Charles’ future wife, was born in 1868 in Tachov, Bohemia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today part of Czechia or the Czech Republic). Maria married a man named John Seitz in 1891 in Queens, New York. John is listed in the 1900 federal census as a Florist living with his wife Maria and their 2 year old daughter Anna at 342 Bell Avenue in Bayside. It is unclear whether this is the same property as what would become the Thienel homestead. Tragically, John contracted typhoid fever in September 1902 and, after what must have been a difficult couple of months, John died on November 13, 1902 at Flushing Hospital (the same hospital where my mother was born almost 49 years later). John’s death record states his cause of death was “pelvic abscess following typhoid fever,” surely a painful way to die that must have been difficult for Maria and Anna to witness.

Maria and Charles married sometime in early 1904 and had their first son, Charles Jr., who was born November 14, 1904, almost exactly two years after John’s death. Charles Jr.’s birth record lists his parents Charles, a Florist, and Maria as living on Bayside Street, which, as far as I can discern, was an error since this street is located in what is now Fort Totten Park further north in Bayside. Charles and Maria had two more sons, Richard in 1907 and Oswald in 1909 and records for both of them show their residence as still being on Bayside Street. The family then appears in the 1910 census living at 174 Rocky Hill Road in Bayside. Charles Sr.’s profession is listed as Florist and the general nature of his industry or business is listed as “Raising flowers:”

Thienel family in 1910 Census at 174 Rocky Hill Road in Bayside, Queens.

The Atlas of the Borough of Queens was a three volume guide to the lands divided among the five wards of Queens published in 1904:

Title page of Volume Three (Third Ward. Flushing) of The Atlas of the Borough of Queens, City of New York, published in 1904 by E. Belcher Hyde.

In 1904, the Thienel property extended to Bell Ave and included multiple greenhouse on the property:

Future Thienel homestead (highlighted yellow) as it was in 1904 according to The Atlas of the Borough of Queens.

Sometime between 1904 and 1909, the property was divided and the house that sat facing Bell Ave was separated from the rest of the property where the greenhouses still sat, at least according to the 1909 Atlas of the City of New York:

Future Thienel homestead (highlighted yellow) as it was in 1909 according to the Atlas of the City of New York, Borough of Queens, published by G. W. Bromley & Co.

At this point in my search, I realized the Thienel family’s address was definitely recorded incorrectly on their children’s birth records, and maybe even the federal census record. First, a photo taken in 1906 shows the family posing in front of their home:

The Thienel family in 1906 in front of their home in Bayside. In the foreground is 8 year old Anna Seitz, next to her mother Maria, 2 year old Charles Thienel Jr. in the arms of Charles Sr. In the background are two workers at the farm and the family horse named Schimmel.

A NYC Tax photo from 1940 shows what I am certain is the same Thienel residence, with a few slight differences:

I think these two photographs depict the same structure as what was labeled by the tax surveyor in 1940 as 4702 213th Street in Bayside, Queens, but was likely the home facing Hurd Ave (now 47th Ave) shown in the two maps from the Atlas prints above. Several architectural features strongly suggest this conclusion: the number and placement of windows, the dormer window on the roof, the overall height of the building, and maybe even the presence of an outbuilding to the side all correspond closely between the two images. One photograph appears to be mirror-reversed (I think it is the 1906 based on the lot schematics and how the 1940 image shows the appropriate placement of the outbuilding/garages). This mirror-reversed effect is likely due to a negative being printed or reproduced in reverse, which initially obscures the match with just a quick glance. Between the two dates, the house appears to have undergone significant renovation, most notably the application of brick veneer over the original wood-frame exterior and the enclosure of the open Victorian porch, both of which were common modernization practices in Queens during the early 20th century. When the mirroring is accounted for and the renovations considered, the underlying structure appears to be one and the same, the Thienel family lived on Hurd Avenue, though the property stretched down to Rocky Hill Road where their flower stand was located.

Regardless of where the Thienel family called home, they were together as the family was expanding, their flower business was expanding, and the neighborhood around them was expanding. Here is the family photographed in 1913:

Thienel family photo from 1913. Anna Seitz, Charles Jr., Charles Sr. Richard, Oswald Thienel, and Maria Kriegelsteiner.

The floral town of Bayside and Charles Thienel’s farm were mentioned in the Long Island Notes section of The American Florist in 1913:

Charles Thienel grows good stock in Bayside, Queens. The American Florist, volume 40, issue 1305, June 7, 1913.

This part of Bayside, like many of the towns in eastern Queens (e.g., Flushing and Whitestone), was undergoing rapid changes as railways were connecting communities, allowing for increased residential development and connections to the larger city nearby. By all means, Bayside was still fairly rural compared to Long Island City, Newtown, and other neighborhoods further west in Queens. Here’s a view of the drawbridge spanning Alley Creek in Bayside in 1910 (looking south to where the Thienel property sat about a dozen or so blocks away):

Looking south in 1910 at drawbridge over Alley Creek in Bayside, Queens.

Five years after this photo was taken, one of Charles Thienel’s employees, Andrew Puseta, tragically appeared in The Brooklyn Daily Times after he was found dead in Alley Creek:

Andrew Puseta, employee at the Charles Thienel flower farm, was found dead in Alley Creek. In the March 15, 1915 issue of The Brooklyn Daily Times.

Andrew’s death record notes that he was found in Alley Creek in Bayside, that he died March 10, 1915, was a laborer, and lists his cause of death as “Drowning - suicide:”

Andrew Puseta 1915 Queens, New York civil death record.

Later that year, Anna Seitz, Maria’s daughter and Charles’ step-daughter, married her neighbor, Henry Wettingfeld (of the same family noted above on the 1940s tax photo of the Florist shop). Henry’s marriage record lists him as a Market Gardener residing on Bell Avenue and Anna as residing across the street on Hurd Avenue:

Anna Elizabeth Seitz and Henry Wettingfeld 1915 Queens, New York civil marriage record.

Partly because of a rapidly growing population in the US, partly because of increasingly strategic marketing in the floral industry, and surely because of their location in Bayside providing them ample space in the fields and greenhouses to grow their business, the Thienel family’s business grew over the coming years and decades. The “need” for flowers during and after World War I were clear. A “Say It With Flowers” slogan grabbed hold and was marketed in newspapers as a way to serve the community, give a little pep to the afflicted, and brighten hospital rooms and dining spaces.

“Say it with Flowers” to the Afflicted in Hospitals in the May 18, 1919 issue of The New York Herald.

The National League of Woman’s Service operated nineteen ambulances that delivered flowers, fruits, jams, and jellies to those suffering from war injuries including shellshock, lost limbs, and infection that kept them hospitalized for a few days to many months. Here is one of their ambulances and the volunteers lined up with flowers and gifts for patients:

“Arrival of ambulance load of flowers at hospital–notice jars of jams and jellies on the running board” in the May 18, 1919 issue of The New York Herald.

Interesting commentary on gender norms, war-caused trauma, and caring for the sick were included in this article:

Transcription: “Some may question the value of supplying flowers to men. Flowers often rouse a man by association and with the memory of home and loved ones, some having passed on into the other world while he was “over there.” Flowers may bring tears and any emotion gives evidence of returning interest and is helpful in the fight of readjustment to the new physical, financial and domestic conditions. These men, many maimed for life, who have faced all kinds of danger for the protection of others, must now put forth a greater effort than ever before for their individual position.” May 18, 1919 issue of The New York Herald.

And it is difficult to say for sure whether the flowers served their purpose in photos like this:

Surrounded by flowers, “Convalescents try to amuse themselves at card games” in the May 18, 1919 issue of The New York Herald.

Whereas the caption of this photo boldly makes a claim that I would argue conflicts with the facial expressions on the two bedridden patients photographed:

“The bed patients like flowers and company.” In the May 18, 1919 issue of The New York Herald.

Anyhow, it is likely the Thienel family was selling and donating flowers to causes like this after the war and in years to come. In part because of a growing unity among those in the floral industry, especially with efforts made by another florist who advertised on the same page as this “Say It With Flowers” article:

Ads for Schling’s Seeds for Three Wonderful Annuals and A Perpetual Spinach by Max Schling, Inc. at 24 West 59th Street, New York. In the May 18, 1919 issue of The New York Herald.

Max Schling was a prominent florist in New York City and is purportedly a founding member of the Florists’ Telegraph Delivery (FTD), a trade network of Florists initially led by another well-known florist, John Valentine, from Denver, Colorado. A group of 13-15 florists, likely including Max Schling, met in Rochester at the annual convention of the Society of American Florists and Ornamental Horticulturalists and formally created the FTD in August 1910 “to exchange business among retail florists,” though the FTD unofficially took shape earlier that year in January:

Founding of the Florists’ Telegraph Delivery in 1910, Rochester, New York from then Proceedings of the 26th Convention of the Society of American Florists and Ornamental Horticulturalists.

It is thought that FTD’s first president, John Valentine, and another notable florist, William Penn, coined the phrase “Say It With Flowers,” which quickly spread and became a staple advertising slogan for florists at the time, and was regularly used by Max Schling in his advertising campaigns in local newspapers, magazines, and trade papers. Schling is frequently described as someone who was inspiring, innovative, a brilliant teacher, determined, and someone who approached all situations with positive intentions and creative ideas. He brought color into the lives of many millions of people not only with the flowers he sold but also with the books he authored, seeds he sold to amateur gardeners, hobbyists, and farmers, including to Charles Thienel in Bayside, Queens.

Max Schling’s contributions to the Florists’ Telegraph Delivery organization were immense and more far reaching than seemed imaginable at the time. He wanted to connect the world with colorful floral arrangements and the FTD was the most surefire way to achieve this goal. First, he solved challenges related to fulfilling significant orders for flowers in New York, and even for flowers leaving New York on voyages across the Atlantic Ocean:

Max Schling fulfills orders for corsages, bouquets, luncheon, and dinner decorations in the December 16, 1911 issue of The Florists’ Exchange.

He achieved this local success by taking advantage of fairly novel technologies like the Auto Car:

One of Max Schling’s Delivery Auto Cars used to deliver flowers around New York in the October 28, 1911 issue of The Florists’ Exchange.

Though “progress” and expansion were embraced in businesses like Max’s floral shop in NY, doing so came with inherent risk:

One of Max Schling’s auto delivery wagons in an accident with a trolley car in Manhattan reported in the April 29, 1911 issue of The Florists’ Exchange.

From this article we get a better estimate of the size of Max’s operation at the time: two auto cars, three wagons, and upwards of six taxicabs used just during the Easter season. He shared his philosophy and perspectives on selling flowers regularly, offering unique insights on his business practices, how he interacted with customers, and how he views love and roses:

Max Schling quote from his article Roses, Best Sellers, Best Colors in the December 16, 1911 issue of The Florists’ Exchange.

When the Society of American Florists and Ornamental Horticulturalists brought its annual convention to New York in 1917, I imagine Max was thrilled to participate and introduce many new faces to his business in person. Likely because the convention was in such a large metropolitan area, the trade paper The Florists’ Exchange featured a 16-page spread describing the history of the trade but mostly showcasing “Portraits of Men Active in New York Floriculture.” The section started with portraits of officers and directors of the society and affiliated floral associations:

It then quickly turned into a who’s who of flower-loving men with mustaches based on whether they were in the Seed Trade:

Whether they were Wholesale Florists:

Or whether they were one of the “Prominent Growers Worth Visiting:”

This is where we get our first glimpse of Max:

Max Schling portrait among the Prominent Growers Worth Visiting in the New York area during the annual convention of the Society of American Florists and Ornamental Horticulturalists, published in the August 11, 1917 issue of The Florists’ Exchange.

It is clear from these pages that the floral trade, like all business ventures, was dominated by men. Women were present but hardly visible, save for these three women who were officials of the Ladies’ Society of American Florists, though they received no text or description of where they came from, etc.:

As his business and the floral industry continued to expand with the growing population, Max continued to share trade knowledge by describing how he successfully completes orders for steam ships in New York:

Max Schling sharing tips of the trade in the November 6, 1919 issue of The Florists’ Review.

And in advertisements for his work with FTD, suggesting it might be fruitful to join him since it’s “Just a 20th Century way of doing things, that’s all!:”

Max Schling’s FTD flowers by wire ad in the December 4, 1919 issue of The Florists’ Review.

It is in this same issue of The Florists’ Review that we get a short glimpse into how much Max was loved and admired, at least by those in the floral trade who considered him one of their Merchant Princes:

The Merchant Prince of New York’s floral scene, Max Schling, described in the December 4, 1919 issue of The Florists’ Review.

Although Max invested considerably in advertising in newspapers and magazines that only printed in black and white, he successfully used imagery to convey the colorful nature of the flowers he sold as well as the potential impact they could have:

Max Schling flowers ad featuring a steamer ship and describing potential occasion to buy flowers for. est. early 1920s.

Though his flower catalogs printed in color were beyond colorful and artistically displayed the beauty of all the varieties of flowers he sold (despite his particularly fondness for pink roses). Here is a sampling of his catalog, called A Book for Garden Lovers, from 1925:

Max Schling’s Book for Garden Lovers, 1925 cover

“Schling’s Delightful Twelve” annuals of merit and distinction from the 1925 edition of Max Schling’s Book for Garden Lovers.

“Our OWN Best” An Exclusive Collection of Novelties and Rare Flowers from the 1925 edition of Max Schling’s Book for Garden Lovers.

I claimed earlier that my florist-of-interest in Bayside, Queens, Charles Thienel, was part of this growing network of florists because of Max Schling. This is likely true not only because of Max’s prominence in the region and involvement in the Florists’ Telegraph Delivery organization, but also because of his work as an educator in floral design and business. Max taught courses for about a decade in New York and at national conferences and trade shows. Charles Thienel was lucky to snag a spot in Max Schling’s floral design school in June 1929:

Charles Thienel of Bayside, Long Island (highlighted yellow) listed as a student in Max Schling’s 1929 floral design school in the July 4, 1929 issue of The Florists’ Review.

Content and duration of these courses varied through time but all received positive reviews from the florists who attended each year. In 1921, the course lasted ten days and took place mostly at the Hotel Netherlands and also at Max’s floral shop in Manhattan. Students listened to Max lecture on the importance of standardized techniques in floral design, the state of the profession and where it could go, and the many tools and materials every florist should know about. More importantly, they watched demonstrations from Max and gained hands-on experience in designing bridal bouquets, funeral decorations, corsages, using floral wire, preserving sprays, ribbons, and different plant parts to enhance floral aesthetics.

Charles Thienel grew flowers primarily in his greenhouses in Bayside, and there were likely a number of financial and environmental reasons why the family did this for decades. Here’s an article dating back to 1910 describing the Thienels’ floral business and what they grew:

Thienel greenhouses and a heavy focus on carnations described in the June 11, 1910 issue of The Florists’ Exchange.

Their business clearly progressed over the next few years, perhaps because of the Thienel farm’s work with the FTD. They added or replaced greenhouses, and improved the methods to help maintain climate controls by 1915:

Thienel greenhouse improvements described in the September 18, 1915 issue Horticulture.

Again, perhaps to expand or replace existing greenhouses, Charles added another less than a decade later in 1924:

Thienel greenhouse purchase mentioned in the September 12, 1924 issue of Southern Florist and Nurseryman.

Fortunately demand continued for Charles Theinel’s flowers as Queens became more developed and the views of Bell Avenue dramatically changed:

View of Bell Avenue from 41st Ave looking south toward Thienel farm, June 1927 from QueensBorough Magazine.

Max Schling, via his work with the FTD, was quick to respond to increasing demands and addressed problems along the way. In a full page article in 1928, Max writes about the issues of non-payment when wiring for flowers, his conversations with the vice president of Western Union and the general manager of the Postal-Telegraph-Cable Company, all seeking a simple solution to address the problem and, thereby, “protect florists from losses and…protect the public against the disappointment of unfilled orders:”

Max Schling and his work to improve and protect the Florists’ Telegraph Delivery organization in the April 21, 1928 issue of The American Florist.

This is an exciting article in part because we see another one of the rare photographs of Max:

In Max’s own words, we also get a glimpse into how orders were filled for more than a decade through the FTD before the “problem” was finally addressed in the late 1920s:

Quote from Max Schling’s article aiming to protect the Florists’ Telegraph Delivery organization in the April 21, 1928 issue of The American Florist.

Max is regularly cited as a donor of flower arrangements, bouquets, and wreaths to major social events in New York City and to hospitals and charity organizations as well (see his likely connection to the “Say it With Flowers” article above). Charles Thienel, though records are fewer and his social status in Queens likely paled in comparison to Max, also donated flowers to events and charities in his community:

Charles Thienel donating to charity event at St. George’s Church in Flushing, Queens, reported in the February 1929 issue of St. George’s Sword and Shield.

I wonder if his donation came with space for this ad that appears in the same issue:

Thienel ad in the February 1929 issue of St. George’s Sword and Shield.

I also cannot help but wonder if florists donating flowers was particularly common back in the day because of the inherent shelf life issues of selling fresh cut flowers. Or maybe it was the free advertising that comes with having a pretty bouquet on your table at an event and even just one person questioning where they came from. Or maybe it was part of the philosophy of florists wanting to bring beauty and color to their communities. Maybe it was a bit of all of these.

Max Schling’s floral empire continued expanding in New York and beyond over the next decade. I presume Charles’ did as well, though perhaps at a respectable Bayside-Queens-level of growth. Max continued publishing fantastic seed catalogs, which all suggest he was breeding his very own hybrid varieties of flowers, including in this catalog from 1931:

Max Schling’s Book for Garden Lovers, 1931 cover

Here is an illustration of “Schling’s New Giant Pansy Mrs. Pierre S. du Pont:”

And “Schling’s Long-spurred New Hybrid Columbines:”

And “Schling’s New Monstrous Deep-Throated Single Fringed Petunias:”

And Campanulas sitting above “Schling’s Improved Giant-flowering Sweet Williams:”

He also sold “Schling’s Special Lawn Mixture” and “Schling’s Shady Nook Mixture” to grow your lawn since it is “The most important feature in the development of the home grounds, furnishes the setting for the house and puts the finishing touch to an attractive home:”

At this point in time, Max had attained a level of prominence that hardly could be surpassed, at least in New York. Here is an ad for silk fabric that is “blooming with a luxuriance that would make Max Schling jealous…:”

Ad in January 10, 1931 issue of The New Yorker.

It was also around this time that Max developed a lasting, documented friendship with Helen Keller, someone who might not appreciate flowers in the traditional sense through sight but likely appreciated them at a higher level than most because of their smell. I am not sure when their friendship started precisely, but I know she sent him an inscribed copy of her 1929 book Midstream: My Later Life because Max writes about it in this letter he sent her in 1930:

Letter from Max Schling to Helen Keller dated February 4, 1930. Transcription: Dear Miss Keller: Returning after a few days absence from the city I found on my desk the most thoughtful and wonderful gift not only in the book itself that you sent me but in the dear lines on its first page. If I could give expression to my thoughts then this letter would be a poem of gratitude to Fate that I was permitted to learn to know you and to learn to read the wonderful expression of your mind. Although I have it in my heart I cannot find the words and I can only say that I am happy to be one of those whose life you made more beautiful. Thank you again. Yours faithfully, Max Schling”

Here is the inscription Helen wrote to Max:

Helen Keller’s inscription to Max Schling in her 1929 book Midstream: My Later Life. Transcription: To Max Schling, Would that I could inscribe this book to the Lover of Flowers in their Language— Colour, Fragrance, Beauty! But alas I have only dull human words in which to send him Sincere greetings, Helen Keller, January, 1930.

Max must have sent Helen flowers a few years later based on this letter he sent her:

Letter from Max Schling to Helen Keller. Transcription: “New York, January 28, 1933. Dear Miss Keller: You are sending me a far greater gift in your glorious way of writing than I could send you with my few blossoms, and your lines are more lasting than my blossoms. You have an unusual gift to give your thoughts to others in a way that others cannot help but keep them as they would keep a precious jewel, and it does not need very much imagination to feel and see the loveliness of your mind and heart -- the real garden behind your finger tips. Your expressions bring back to my mind many a lonesome hour when I was dreaming about a wonderworld, building castles in the air, and happily forgot realities and harshness of life, and what happened to me then is happening to me again because of your letter. May the inner sunshine that you give others bring happy hours to you too wishes you. Your always faithful, Max Schling”

Helen and other celebrities were buying flowers from Max and having them sent to friends for special occasions, including Helen who wrote a letter to soon-to-be First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt on February 19, 1933 that included the following:

“Mingled with my hope for the nation is the wish, always present in my mind, that the blind who still abide in the dim forests of our days may share in the light of your coming. This desire emboldens me to make a request -- that, either at the inaugural ceremony or at the ball that evening, you wear a corsage as a token of the affectionate regard of the blind of America. If you grant this request, I shall be most happy to know your favorite colors and have Max Schling make up a bouquet suitable to the occasion. The very thought of your wearing the flowers would gladden the hearts of the blind. It would be a gesture never forgotten by those who appreciate a beautiful deed. You have always listened to the needs of the humblest with ministering tenderness, and in wishing to have you include the sightless in the circle of your benevolence I am only asking the rose to give of its own fragrance.” -Helen Keller to Eleanor Roosevelt

I am not sure if Eleanor responded to this letter, but Helen had Max create and send a corsage to Eleanor on the day of her husband F.D.R.’s inauguration as the 32nd President of the United States. Perhaps because of the importance of the occasion, perhaps because of their friendship, Max sent Helen a Western Union Telegram late in the afternoon:

Telegram from Max Schling to Helen Keller on March 4, 1933.

Approximately 10 miles east of Max’s store in Manhattan, Charles Thienel and his family were living through the Great Depression. The floral industry, like most, slowed tremendously during this period. Charles Thienel was perhaps in a better position than other florists in the region since he focused primarily on growing carnations, which were typically easier to grow and more affordable than most other flowers. At the end of the Great Depression, we find the Thienel property in Bayside shown from a different angle on Rocky Hill Road:

View of the greenhouses at the Thienel Homestead in Bayside, with a view of the Thienel home behind one of the greenhouses and a chimney likely used to vent the coal fumes that came from heating the greenhouses. 1940 NYC tax photo listed as 4702 213th Street in Bayside, Queens.

As well as this view of an overgrown field in front of another greenhouse:

Sadly, Charles’ wife Maria died later that year in November 1940 at the age of 72. Charles was 10 years younger than Maria. In the 1940 census, Charles Sr. was listed as an Owner and Grower in Green Houses, Charles Jr. was listed as an Owner and Florist in a Retail Florist, Richard was listed as a Florist in Green Houses, and Oswald, though he lived with his family southeast in Hempstead, was listed as a Florist in “Father’s Shop.”

This was likely a difficult time for the Thienel family, especially Charles Sr. It was likely a difficult time for most as World War II had started more than a year prior, though it would be another year before the U.S. would enter. It was likely a difficult time for the Schling family back in Manhattan. Helen Keller sent Max Schling the following letter in October 1942:

Letter from Helen Keller to Max Schling dated October 17, 1942. Transcription: “Dear Mr. Schling, When I went into your shop Wednesday before going to Washington, I was shocked and saddened to learn of your illness. Now that I am home again, I send these lines to tell of my tender sympathy and prayer that you may be easier soon. Somehow your real self -- always well and walking in the sunlight -- is vividly before me as I write. Despite suffering, life must keep its precious value for you to the last, you have spent it so faithfully fostering life and beauty in the plant kingdom. How the flowers and “sweetheart leaves” your wizardry called forth must smile upon you as you recall them! Like the Spirit of God they have moved upon many dark waters of experience, spreading peace and light and interpreting faith anew. Such work is divine in the loveliness and consolation which it causes to blossom from heart to heart, and all of us who know you give thanks at the remembrance of the endless good you have wrought. If I only knew of something to do for your comfort, I could pay a small part of the dear debt I owe you. As it is, this letter contains the fragrance of uncounted happy moments spent with you and the courage they have inspired in me for difficulties to be overcome. Polly too sends her sympathy, and she wants you to know that the Schling Florist Shop seems a desert to her without your friendly self. She says she will ever cherish in memory the flowers you put into her hand and pinned on her frock, and the dear understanding with which you have brought balm into her busy, often anxious days. Perhaps when you feel like it, you will let us hear how you are. Clasping your hand in a grateful blessing, I am, Affectionately yours, Helen Keller”

Max Schling died on February 12, 1943 at the age of 68. Though a cause of death is not listed on his civil death record, it is noted that his doctor attended to him starting back in August 1942. His obituary in the public newspapers was glowing and gave an overview of his life and contributions to the floral industry:

Max Schling obituary in the February 13, 1943 issue of the Daily News.

But his obituary in the Journal of the New York Botanical Garden spoke honestly to his character and described his tremendous influence on florists, students, and New York:

Max Schling obituary in the Journal of the New York Botanical Garden, March 1943, Vol. 44, Issue No. 519.

And though his Spring 1943 seed catalog was likely prepared starting before his illness, Max is still listed as the President in the welcome message. His son Max Jr. is listed as Secretary and the message is signed by the VP and General Manager, David Platt. The message talks about the difficulties of being at War, the importance of purchasing War Bonds, the value and health benefits that come from gardening, that “Flowers provide the beauty necessary to the maintenance of morale at home,” and that “Indirectly it can assist in the maintenance of the morale of our boys overseas.” Max Jr. would go on to take over his father’s business and lead it for several decades. It is another sign of the times that Max Schling’s oldest child and daughter, Elizabeth, is not listed here or elsewhere, though I imagine she inherited quite a bit despite this. Perhaps appropriately from Elizabeth’s perspective, immediately next to Max’s obituary in the Daily News was this comic strip:

Harold Teen – “Sonny Boy” cartoon poking fun at the patriarchy in the February 13, 1943 issue of the Daily News.

Perhaps because of the idea that “Flowers provide the beauty necessary to the maintenance of morale at home,” LIFE magazine visited Max Schling’s shop for their June 12, 1944 issue and published more than a dozen photos of the store, its flowers, and, most notably, the passersby who stopped to enjoy them through the front window. The issue’s cover dramatically spoke to the fact that the U.S. was still actively at war:

Although Max Sr. was dead for over a year at this point and that his son bore the same name, it still feels as though the article is describing Max Sr.’s shop. Perhaps this is only because of the legacy and brand he left behind:

I think most of the passersby are likely admiring the beauty of the floral arrangements, maybe some are thinking about the war and hoping it would be over soon, maybe some are thinking about Max Schling Sr.:

All of the photos of Max Schling’s shop were taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt, who would become most famous for a photo he would take a little more than a year later called V-J Day in Times Square. Since I think Alfred and LIFE were trying to capture the reflective emotions of the passersby pictured in the magazine spread, they excluded more artistic images like this one, which may have garnered similar fanfare as his photo in Times Square:

In the 1950 census, Charles Thienel Sr. was 70 years old, widowed, still working, working at a Floricultural Establishment. His daughter Anna was living across the street with her husband Henry Wettingfeld. His sons were all out of the house, though nearby. Charles lived nearby on what was now officially Bell Boulevard and was listed as a proprietor, Wholesale Florist, suggesting the family business had changed to include some sort of floral distribution in addition to growing and retail sales at their shop. Richard was still listed as working in Green Houses. And Oswald was listed as a proprietor, Florist.

As we know from the beginning of this story and my mother’s corsage box, the C. Thienel’s Florist shop continued for a while longer. This ad appeared in a yearbook from 1960 that commemorated the 50th anniversary of St. Joseph’s church in Jamaica, Queens:

C. Thienel Florist ad in St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church Jubilee Yearbook, 1960.

The above ad showed the business was still a member of the FTD, the Florists’ Telegraph Delivery organization. The FTD’s logo features prominently on the shop’s front door in this photo taken likely in the 1950s:

Note this photo was enhanced using AI to improve clarity.

Oswald Thienel and his brother-in-law Henry Wettingfeld were pictured in one of the greenhouses holding what appear to pink azaleas with gorgeous orange marigolds behind them:

Oswald Thienel and Henry Wettingfeld est. 1960 in Bayside, Queens.

Richard tragically died at the early age of 52 in 1958. Charles Sr. died at 86 in 1963. Charles Jr. died at 69 in 1973. Oswald died at 73 in 1982. Oswald’s obituary was appropriately published next to a floral ad for the FTD bought by the Long Island Retail Florists Association, and includes the same FTD logo seen on the front door of the Thienel’s shop:

Charles Thienel’s step daughter, Anna Seitz outlived her entire family and died at the age of 95 in 1992. Perhaps if not for her father’s death from typhoid fever, her mother would not have married Charles Thienel. And perhaps the connections to Max Schling would never have taken shape and the floral business in Bayside would not have been possible. There’s a striking juxtaposition between Max Schling as a florist and Charles Thienel as a florist, and I think it stems from a mixture of geography, clientele, status, and wealth. In 1977, Anna Wettingfeld/Thienel/Seitz was interviewed by Newsday and the article ends with this cute quote that I think nicely illustrates what I perceive to be the class difference between Max and Charles:

“A delivery truck rumbled by, and Mrs. Wettingfeld shivered again. ‘When I was a little girl here,’ she said, ‘the wealthy people used to come riding by here in their tally-ho’s, right in front of the house; coming from the city. Sometimes they were headed for the Oakwood Golf Club, which was the second-oldest golf club in America. Now it’s one of the buildings of the Queens College. Sometimes they were headed for the estates. They would ride by in those tally-ho’s with liveried men sitting on top, and when they blew that horn I would run and hide. It was the eeriest sound I’d ever heard. You know what a tally-ho is, of course, don’t you? Although you would probably call it a coach-and-four, right?’”

Again, I think this not only captures interesting perspectives on social status, but also the variability of what it meant to be a Florist in New York at the turn of the century. Queens is now an entirely different landscape than what the Thienels and Seitzs and Wettingfelds encountered during the 1900s. I am grateful for Max Schling and that he inspired a connected, colorful world with the FTD, and that he taught Charles Thienel all about floral design in the 1920s, and that Charles shared this knowledge with his children who inherited the family business, and that they took care to create a beautiful corsage for my mother’s 15th birthday back in 1966. It is wonderful to know her life was made a little bit more colorful because of the chain of events and people described above. I also can’t help but now notice the FTD logo:

“It is beyond a doubt that everyone should have time for a hobby or some special delight, if only five minutes each day to seek out a lovely flower or cloud or a star, or learn a verse or brighten another’s dull task.” -Helen Keller

Some sources and recommended reading:

The Helen Keller Archive from the American Foundation for the Blind:

https://helenkellerarchive.afb.org/

Nursery and Seed Catalogs: Max Schling, Inc. from the LuEsther T. Mertz Library at the New York Botanical Garden:

https://libguides.nybg.org/c.php?g=655017&p=4597877

Here is the title page that begins the register:

Page 4 of Kutná Hora register (matriky) book no. 4. Roman catholic birth/baptism, marriage, and death/burial records. State Regional Archives in Prague (Státní oblastní archiv v Praze).

At first glance, it looks like a standard Latin introduction written by a scribe with a very erratic use of capital letters. But those capitalized letters are actually a deliberate puzzle!

During the Baroque era (approx. 1600–1750), priests and scribes loved to show off their classical education by writing introductory texts known as Chronograms. In a chronogram, certain letters are capitalized because they double as Roman numerals (M=1000, D=500, C=100, L=50, X=10, V=5, I=1). When you extract all the capitalized letters in the sentence and add their numerical values together, they reveal a hidden date.

Almost every sentence on this page is a math equation that equals 1755; the exact year this register was started.

Let’s start with the equation in the title. The very first lines of the page set the spiritual purpose of the book and hide the start date beautifully:

“LIber GenesIs In qVo fILIorVM DeI generatIo eX aqVa, et spIrItV sanCto orta eXhIbetVr.” (The Book of Genesis [Origins], in which the generation of the children of God, arisen from water and the Holy Spirit, is presented.)

If you pull out those capitalized letters and add up their Roman numeral values (L+I+I+I+V+I+L+I+V+M+D+I+I+X+V+I+I+V+C+X+I+V), it equals exactly 1755.

While the math is fascinating, the middle paragraph of this page held a massive clue for my own family tree. It lists the ruling church authority in Kutná Hora at the time the book was started:

“Sub Regimine Reverendissimi, ac Amplissimi Domini Wenceslai Henrici Erythrey p.t. Archi-Diaconi Kuttenbergensis...” (Under the rule of the most reverend and most ample Lord Wenceslaus Henricus Erythrey, at this time Archdeacon of Kuttenberg...)

If you read my first post about the 1774 baptism of my 4th great-granduncle, Josef František Petinger, you might recognize that name. I noted that his godfather was a man named “Praenobilis Dnus Josephus Erythrae” (Very Noble Lord Josephus Erythrae). At the time, I thought the Latinized surname stood out strangely among the local Czech and German names.

This title page explains exactly who that godfather was or, at least, who he was related to! The Erythrae (or Erythrey) family was incredibly prominent and powerful in Kutná Hora, basically running the church as Archdeacon of the city. Having a “Very Noble Lord” from the Archdeacon’s own family serve as a godparent to my Petinger family shows that my ancestors were likely more than just everyday residents; they were rubbing shoulders with the highest levels of local society.

The page concludes with one final, poetic chronogram that serves as a beautiful blessing for everyone whose lives would eventually be recorded in the hundreds of pages to follow, including my ancestors:

FeLIX eX qVIs qVIs sCrIptVs, feLICIor hIC, qVI In LIbrIs VItæ noMIna sCrIpta LegIt. (Happy is whoever is written [here], happier is this one, who reads [his] name written in the Book of Life.)

It is incredible to look at this page, knowing the scribe meticulously crafted these mathematical Latin puzzles in 1755, preparing a book that would go on to hold the births, marriages, and deaths of generations of my family.

1940 NYC Tax photo of 2436 Walton Avenue, Bronx. Block: 3184, Lot: 35.

Look past the heavily-coated city assessor holding the sign for Block 3184 Lot 35. The real story is the architectural collision happening right in front of him. On the left, you have a towering, brick apartment building, representing the high-density future of the 20th-century city. But clinging to the lots right next door are two gorgeous, older Victorian-style frame houses, complete with ornate porches and a classic turret. This frame freezes the exact moment the older, more suburban feel of the Bronx was giving way to the modern cityscape (at least, what was modern at the time). It is a brilliant reminder that the neighborhoods our ancestors called home were often vibrant works in progress. The two Victorian-style houses you see above were built in 1910, thirty years before this photo was taken. They lasted 101 years and were demolished in 2020 to make way for a high-rise apartment building:

Time series of change at 2436 Walton Avenue beginning in 1940 followed by, August 2019, August 2021, and August 2024. NYC Tax Photo from 1940, all others are from Google Street View.

This block in the Bronx has experienced dramatic change to its historical architecture in recent years. A few lots down from the house pictured above sits the Fordham Evangelical Lutheran Church:

1940 NYC Tax photo of 2430 Walton Avenue, Bronx. Block: 3184, Lot: 30.

In this photo you can see there were actually three Victorian-style homes. This Lutheran church was built in the late 1910s to serve the growing German immigrant community in the Fordham section of the Bronx and was abruptly closed in 2023 after 105 years:

Fordham Evangelical Lutheran Church closure, June 2023, reported in the Bronx Times.

The physical landscape of the Bronx will likely always be a work in progress, ruthlessly making way for the future. Thankfully, these 1940s archives allow us to permanently freeze the past, keeping the everyday world of our ancestors safe from the wrecking ball.

I do not know if Herman continued his smoking habit after purchasing tobacco from my great grandmother back in 1919. I do know that my ancestors kept up the habit, some more so than others, and, like everything, their relationship with tobacco changed over time. As I mentioned earlier, my great grandmother Mary smoked Camel cigarettes. Though I don’t know when she started, if they were sold in her mother’s shop, or whether she smoked only Camels. Maybe she took up the habit after seeing ads like this that told readers to “Be smart this Christmas” when she was in her early 30s:

“Fresh” Camel cigarettes for Christmas, ad in the December 12, 1931 issue of the Saturday Evening Post.

Maybe her relationship with tobacco changed after she moved out of 871 5th Avenue in Brooklyn, which is now part of a large city transit depot. Or maybe her relationship with tobacco changed after her husband tragically died at the age of 52 in 1948. The chief medical examiner described the circumstances of his death and declared the cause of death as coronary sclerosis, or hardening of the heart arteries; smoking cigarettes is known to be a primary cause and accelerator of coronary sclerosis:

William Arthur O’Rourke 1948 NYC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner Report, Brooklyn, New York, case # 1906. Transcription: “State the circumstances and particulars of death (condition of body and clothing, method of examination), criminal violence, casualty, suicide, suddenly when in apparent health, unattended by a physician, in prison, or in any suspicious or unusual manner. I hereby certify that on the 13 day of May 1948, I made an examination of the body of William A. O’Rourke now lying dead at 470 81 St. and upon investigation of the essential facts concerning the circumstances of the death and history of the case, I am of the opinion that the cause of death was Coronary sclerosis. Information given by wife - Mary O’Rourke, 470 81 St., B’klyn. Has had no medical attention in many years but has complained the past few months that “he tired more easily” than ***** heretofore. The past 2 days he has complained of “indigestion pains” and discomfort in his chest. About 2 AM he got up complaining of pre-cordial distress and vomited several time. He returned to bed where he expired before medical attention arrived. No questionable circumstances elicited. Examination - White male, 52 yrs of age, 5’ 6½” about 155 lbs. No markings of note. Nothing suspicious.”

There are numerous other lifestyle and genetic factors that could have contributed to Willy’s death but there’s no doubt smoking cigarettes was at least part of the cause. My great grandmother Mary lived for another 34 years and though her relationship with tobacco may have changed, the world around her continued to apply pressure and coercive advertising to convince her and millions of others to “relax” and “believe the medical facts” that a “cleaner” cigarette with “less tar” is all you need to take the edge off. Though Mary may have left her family’s lunch counter and tobacco shop in Brooklyn decades earlier, she kept the love note from Herman Seidler all those years and was likely transported back when she saw this published in the “I Remember Old Brooklyn” section of the Daily News in 1964:

The Connolly’s lunch counter and tobacco shop (referred to as “Mrs. Connley’s restaurant”) remembered by George Jackson in the I Remember Old Brooklyn section of the April 3, 1964 issue of the Daily News. Transcription: ESCOFFIER BRT. When I worked in the BRT car shop at 36th St. and Fifth Ave. from 1913 to ‘17 Mrs. Connley’s restaurant at 38th and Fifth served us the best meals of our lives, a full course affair for 35 cents. The best part was that they were served by Mrs. Connley’s beautiful daughter, Mary. Mary’s brother John worked in the car shop. How many of the boys are still going strong, Joe Grace, Charlie Morgan, Bill Murhpy, Tony Disler, Al Anderson and Charley Lawney the cop? Best regards and luck. GEORGE JACKSON. 76 Mayfield Dr., Mastic Beach.”

It is delightful to read that people were served “the best meals of our lives, a full course affair for 35 cents.” I wonder what my great great grandmother cooked for them. I also wonder if they knew how old Mary was when she served them: “The best part was that they were served by Mrs. Connley’s beautiful daughter, Mary.” I wonder if Herman had a similar experience in 1919 when he bought the pouch of tobacco from the shop. And could Joe Grace, one of the boys listed at the end, be the same Joe who sent Mary the Forget Me Not card from France I showed at the beginning of this story?

It is crazy to think that my parents grew up potentially seeing “toys” like this:

Mister Merry’s Play Lighter from 1965 featuring Philip Morris Commander Bubble Gum Cigarettes

I have searched my family archives for photos of Mary and others and, after writing this story, a few stand out because of the presence of cigarettes, cigars, and ashtrays. I do not have a photo of my great grandmother Mary smoking but I do have this one of her sitting next to someone with a cigarette in her hand:

Mary Agnes Connolly est. 1975 sitting next to cigarette smoker.

I have many more photos of my grandmother holding cigarettes or sitting near a pack of cigarettes, perhaps because she smoked regularly and more frequently than her mother. Here she is, I think in the mid 1970s, smiling with a cigarette between her fingers and a pack on the table:

Mary Margaret O’Rourke est. mid 1970s or early 1980s smoking a Pall Mall cigarette.

Here’s my grandfather smoking a Dutch Masters cigar also likely in the 1970s:

William John Mucha est. late 1970s smoking a Dutch Masters cigar in a backyard in Queens, New York.

Here is a photo of my grandmother and her mother likely in the late 1970s with an ashtray on the side table nearby:

Mary Margaret O’Rourke and Mary Agnes Connolly est. late 1970s likely in Brooklyn, New York. Ashtray visible on table to the right.

Here is a photo of my grandmother with a cigarette between her fingers, before she and my grandfather went to watch a baseball game in 1980:

Mary Margaret O’Rourke and William John Mucha in July 1980 outside a baseball stadium, likely in Queens, New York.

My grandfather William John Mucha died in June 1982 about a week shy of his 62nd birthday. Like his father-in-law Willy O’Rourke, my grandfather’s death can also be (at least in part) attributed to the four to five Dutch Masters cigars he smoked every day for decades:

William John Mucha 1982 NYC Physician’s Confidential Medical Report listing an immediate cause of death as myocardial infarction due to or as a consequence of arteriosclerotic heart disease.

My great grandmother Mary died about four months later in October 1982 at the age of 82 after a four month battle with metastatic ovarian carcinoma. Although it depends on the type of ovarian cancer she had, there is some evidence that there is an increased risk of this type of cancer when someone smokes cigarettes. Her obituary was published in the November 2, 1982 issue of the Daily News:

Mary Agnes Connolly 1982 obituary in the November 2 issue of the Daily News.

The same issue that her obituary was published in was filled with tobacco ads like:

And:

Isn’t it strange that a majority of the cigarette ads I have included in this story only focus on tar and harshness in comparison to other brands, and never mention anything actually good about the products? Who chooses to smoke a tobacco brand simply because of the tar content?

There is even a full page ad for a lozenge to help someone “get along on 10 or less cigarettes a day” to “add extra years to your life:”

There were also magazine ads in 1982 that attempted to rebrand Mary’s go-to cigarette brand, Camel, as a manly cigarette:

I guess women at the time were instead being targeted by the cigarette that was supposedly “More you”...whatever that means:

My mother never smoked and, from what I can remember, she was always disgusted by cigarettes and the smell of smoke in public places. Here’s a photo of my grandmother with my mother jokingly pretending to smoke the mostly done cigarette between her fingers:

Mary Margaret O’Rourke with Kathleen Anne Mucha pretending to smoke, est. mid-1980s, Lynbrook, New York.

My great grandmother smoked Camel cigarettes, my grandmother smoked Pall Mall cigarettes, and, as a child, I remember “smoking” and chewing these:

Candy cigarettes from the 1980s.

Even more exciting was when I got to pretend to be my grandfather and “smoke” and chew these candy cigars:

Candy cigars from the 1990s.

Eventually, enough people were suffering and dying from tobacco-related diseases that intervention was deemed necessary and was politically feasible. A democrat, Bill Clinton, was in the White House and democrats held the majority in the House of Representatives. Legitimate concerns related to the environment and the health of everyday people could be acted on. In early 1994, the Food and Drug Administration revealed evidence that manufacturers controlled nicotine content and journalists asserted that tobacco companies “spiked” cigarettes with extra nicotine to ensure addiction. Thus, in 1994, seven CEOs from Big Tobacco companies were called to testify in congressional hearings held by the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. The goal was to hold the industry accountable in reaction to recent increases in anti-smoking sentiment and overwhelming evidence that smoking was the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. at the time. Approximately 434,000 deaths in the U.S. were attributable to cigarette smoking in 1988. This number hardly changed throughout the early 1990s.

All seven CEOs lied under oath. House Representative Ron Wyden asked all seven the following, “Let me begin my questioning on whether or not nicotine is addictive. Let me ask you first, and I’d like to just go down the row, whether each of you believes that nicotine is not addictive. I heard virtually all of you touch on it. Yes or no, do you believe nicotine is not addictive?”

My great grandmother smoked Camel cigarettes and my grandmother smoked Pall Mall cigarettes that were both manufactured by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company:

“Mr. Congressman, cigarettes and nicotine clearly do not meet the classic definition of addiction. There is no intoxication.” - James Johnston, Chairman and CEO of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.

My grandaunt Anne smoked Marlboro cigarettes manufactured by the Philip Morris Tobacco Company:

“I believe nicotine is not addictive, yes.” -William Campbell, President & CEO, Philip Morris

My great grandmother and her mother sold Fatima cigarettes at their lunch counter at 871 5th Avenue in Brooklyn from around 1905 until the mid-1920s. Fatima cigarettes were manufactured by the Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company:

“I believe that nicotine is not addictive.” -Edward A. Horrigan, Chairman and CEO, Liggett Group Inc.

The American Tobacco Company was broken up for being a monopoly in 1911 but were still able to sell millions upon millions of cigarettes that were shipped abroad for soldiers serving in WWI. This is the same company that had a factory in Brooklyn that, in 1918, produced “enough cigarettes to make a band about 5 inches wide and stretching all the way around the world:”

“And I, too, believe that nicotine is not addictive.” -Donald S. Johnston, President and CEO, American Tobacco Company

A few years after this hearing, a $206 billion settlement was reached. Known as the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, it required some of the Big Tobacco companies to limit certain marketing practices and to pay 46 states indefinitely for some medical expenses related to smoking. Perhaps most impactful, the companies were required to fund the Truth Initiative, one of the most impactful public relations campaigns in history. I remember around this time it was difficult, if not impossible, to find the bubble gum cigarettes pictured above in candy stores but you could still find these:

Candy cigarettes from the 1990s that are still available today.

I wrote an anti-smoking report in junior high school that included research on the negative health effects of tobacco products, methods to quit, publicly available resources, surveys of smokers and non-smokers, and responses from state government officials on what they were doing to help reduce the number of people smoking in New York. I received a response from the Governor of New York, George Pataki:

Letter from Governor George Pataki to Daniel Winkler regarding inquiry about anti-smoking initiatives. January 2000.

As Governor Pataki’s letter indicated, I received a letter from the New York Department of Health shortly after:

Letter from Stephen R. Onderdonk, Manager of the Tobacco Control Program at the State of New York Department of Public Health, to Daniel Winkler. February 2000.

The Tobacco Control Program’s manager referred to New York’s Clean Indoor Air Act from 1989 that was enacted to protect the public from adverse health effects associated with secondhand smoke and was “based on an individual’s right to breathe clean air.” This provided the inspiration for what became the title of my report: “To Breathe, Or Not To Breathe.” I seem to have thrown away most of the report so I spent time with AI to try to reimagine what the cover looked like and this is kind of close, though a much better drawing than I was capable of achieving as a young teen:

Reimagined cover of my To Breathe Or Not To Breathe report on the negative effects and sociology of smoking. Generated using Google Gemini.

Aside from the letters from government officials above, I saved a couple of the surveys I conducted, one from my mother and one from my grandmother.

My mother marked that she regarded smoking as “disgusting:”

She also thought that advertisements influence people to start smoking and that children are influenced by whether their parents smoke:

My grandmother marked that she regarded smoking as “satisfying” and that smoked 5-10 cigarettes per day:

Note that I don’t recognize this as my grandmother’s handwriting and am thinking maybe it was filled out by one of my parents while surveying my grandmother over the phone.

My grandmother did not think that advertisements influence people to start smoking nor did she think that children are influenced by whether their parents smoke:

My grandmother marked that she started smoking when she 14-15:

Somewhere between a pouch of Captain tobacco and a hidden slip of paper, my great grandmother Mary Agnes Connolly set something in motion she could not have predicted. She was a young woman working the counter of her mother’s Brooklyn shop, tucked a note into a tobacco pouch perhaps on a whim, maybe because she was romantic, playful, and perhaps a little lonely in the years just after the war. Herman William Siedler found it, recognized the gesture for what it was, and responded with the language of a man who had seen too much of the world to take a small, surprising tenderness for granted. Neither of them could have known that their brief, fragrant correspondence would outlast the tobacco itself, the shop, the century, and almost everyone who knew them.

What strikes me now, trying to figure out how these threads came together, is how thoroughly tobacco ran through the fabric of ordinary life in that era, not just as a habit but as currency, as comfort, as courtship. Soldiers received cigarettes alongside their rations. Companies manufactured enough of them to circle the globe. A Brooklyn girl could slip a note into a tobacco pouch and reasonably expect it to find someone worth writing to. The same leaf that would eventually be revealed as the leading cause of preventable death in America was, for a generation shaped by war and loss and the quiet work of simply continuing, something closer to a private comfort.

By the time I was writing my anti-smoking report in junior high school and surveying my grandmother, the story had turned. The industry that had profited for decades from that “comfort” and deliberate addiction, sat before Congress and lied, seven men in a row, with the confidence of people who had never had to pay for the damage they caused. My grandmother, who started smoking at fourteen or fifteen and regarded it as satisfying well into her later years, never stopped. My mother, who grew up in the same house with the same smoke, regarded it as disgusting. Two honest answers, one to each side of an industry’s long reckoning.

Mary Agnes Connolly married William O’Rourke in 1921 and, as far as I know, never heard from Herman Siedler again. But she kept his letter. She kept Joe’s forget-me-not card too. She kept them her entire life, through moves and decades and the quiet accumulation of a family that didn’t know to ask about them. I think about what Mary Schmich wrote (“keep your old love letters”) and I think my great grandmother already understood. The letters weren’t just sentiment. They were evidence that she had been known, however briefly, by people the world would otherwise have forgotten entirely.

This is what old paper does if you let it. It does more than record the past. It returns people to you: a short, slender young man with gray eyes who survived German prison camps and came home to Manhattan and bought a pouch of tobacco and found, inside it, a reason to be charming again. A girl at a counter in Brooklyn who knew that some things were worth hiding for the right person to find.

Here’s one of my favorite photos of my great grandmother Mary:

Mary Agnes Connolly est. 1921 Brooklyn, New York.

“I’ve got these little things
I’ve got your memory
Or, has it got me” -P. Cline

Additional recommended reading and links:

You can read and download an original illustrated edition of My Lady Nicotine here: https://archive.org/details/barrieladynicotine1896
Or listen to an audio version here: https://archive.org/details/myladynicotine_2406_librivox

Images and videos of tobacco ads in the University of Alabama’s “Merry X-Ray and a Happy New Lung: When Santa Sold Cigarettes:” https://csts.ua.edu/santa/

More images of tobacco ads and cartoons in the University of Alabama’s “Cartoonists Take Up Smoking:” https://csts.ua.edu/cartoons/medicine-and-health/

Seeing Through the Smoke of Vintage Cigarette Ads from Washington University Libraries:
https://library.washu.edu/news/seeing-through-the-smoke-of-vintage-cigarette-ads/

Operation Berkshire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Berkshire

I have no evidence or reason to believe my great great grandmother was selling tobacco products to minors. Still, just a short couple blocks away were other shops like this one prominently featuring Garcia Grande Cigars alongside toys and candy:

1940 NYC tax photo of Garcia Grande Cigars stationery, toys, and candy shop at 3905 5th Avenue, Brooklyn, New York.

Or this Candy Store a few miles north of where my Connolly ancestors lived, prominently featuring Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola and Philip Morris ads in their storefront:

1940 NYC tax photo of Candy Store at 605 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, New York.

This Philip Morris ad is remarkable to me because it looks like there is a little kid advertising cigarettes. Turns out, this was first a character developed by the Philip Morris tobacco company during WWI. The “Call for Philip Morris” bellboy was an iconic ad campaign that lasted many decades. The earliest ad I could find featuring this bellboy was from 1919, just around the time my great grandmother was slipping a secret note into the tobacco pouch Herman Seidler ended up purchasing from her at 871 5th Avenue:

Philip Morris tobacco ad from the April 10, 1919 issue of the New York Times.

This ad campaign changed during the Great Depression as the Philip Morris Company remarketed their tobacco products to poorer Americans who were struggling during the global economic downturn. They started by taking the bellboy in their ads and bringing him to life, recruiting a 3-foot-11-inch-tall, 23-year-old actual bellboy named Johnny Roventini to make the “Call for Philip Morris” and appear in print, radio, movie, and television ads to charm readers, listeners, and viewers into switching to Philip Morris cigarettes. Here he is in 1937 providing “facts accepted by eminent medical authorities” for why Philip Morris cigarettes are better for you than others:

Johnny the Call for Philip Morris bellboy ad from 1937.

Here’s Johnny wishing readers a “MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY SMOKING:”

Johnny the Call for Philip Morris bellboy ad from 1938.

And here’s the same image of Johnny that was featured in the display window of the Candy Store at 605 Washington Avenue shown in the NYC tax photo above from 1940, this time telling us “The Truth” about Philip Morris cigarettes:

Johnny the Call for Philip Morris bellboy ad from 1940.

I am obsessing a bit here with showing you some of these tobacco ads in part because they are a fascinating and disgusting look into how big corporations are able to manipulate consumers with misinformation, colorful ads, and adorable characters meant to seduce you into wanting and eventually craving their products. Mostly, though, I am trying to document the culture my ancestors were exposed to in an attempt to understand why nearly everyone on this side of my family smoked cigarettes or cigars. My great grandmother Mary smoked Camel cigarettes manufactured by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company:

My great grandmother Mary Agnes Connolly was exposed to ads like this in 1914. From the December 8, 1914 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

All of Mary’s kids smoked, including my grandmother who smoked Pall Mall cigarettes manufactured by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company:

My grandmother Mary Margaret O’Rourke was exposed to ads like this in 1940. From the May 15, 1940 issue of the Brooklyn Citizen.

My grandaunt Anne smoked Marlboro cigarettes manufactured by the Philip Morris Tobacco Company:

My grandaunt Anne O’Rourke was exposed to ads like this in 1940. From the November 1940 issue of Harper’s Bazaar magazine.

Mary’s son-in-law, my grandfather, William Mucha smoked Dutch Masters cigars:

My grandfather William John Mucha was exposed to ads like this in 1937. From the October 29, 1937 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

I can only imagine what it was like for my great grandmother Mary to grow up surrounded by tobacco products in her mother’s shop, and what she may have hoped for when she slipped the secret note into Herman Seidler’s pouch of tobacco that day in 1919. Did Mary like working there? Did she have aspirations to go elsewhere? Was she hoping Herman would be her “knight of my lady nicotine” and take her away? I have tried to learn about the actual shop Mary’s mother ran and how they ended up there, and whether there was a formal process for receiving a “widow’s death benefit” either through the city or county but have come up mostly dry.

The next few sets of records make it difficult to understand what my ancestors were doing but I will try to infer if you will entertain me.

Here are help wanted ads from 1907 looking for a respectable young girl and middle-aged woman to work at 871 5th Avenue:

Help Wanted ads for positions in the lunchroom at 871 5th Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. From the September 4, 1907 issue of the South Brooklyn Home Talk.

I think this is most likely Mary’s mother looking for help at what was then her lunchroom at 871 5th Ave. It seems plausible that sometime between the 1905 census and 1907 they either switched from just selling candy or expanded to include lunch. Or it’s possible Mary’s mother had worked at a candy store and took over the lunchroom around the time this ad was posted. Or it’s also possible this was their first attempt at an out, looking for someone to take over their jobs so they pursue something else.

Mary, her mother, and older brother John appear shortly after in the 1910 federal census and are listed as living not at 871 5th Avenue but at 3721 5th Avenue. Using a combination of photographs from the 1940s tax records, maps, and other census records, I am confident these are actually the same addresses but were part of the county or census-taker’s attempt to make the census blocks uniform (meaning the 3000 block of addresses ended with the 3900s just two blocks south of where Mary lived, so one block south would be the 3800s, and Mary’s block would be the 3700s). Mary’s mother is listed as a cook working in a lunchroom in this census. It is noted she was working on her own account, meaning she owned the business.

A few years after this census, this familiar address appears again in a local newspaper, this time seeking work and a potential home in a Situations Wanted ad that read, “WANTED–SITUATION BY RESPECT-able elderly woman; small family; good home preferred to wages. Call at 871 5th ave., store.”

Situation wanted ad likely from the Connolly family. From the October 15, 1913 issue of the South Brooklyn Home Talk.

I checked the 1910 and 1915 censuses and local directories and there were no other families living at this address that could fit this description so I’m convinced it must be Mary, her mother, and brother. The only issue is Mary’s mother was only 46 years old at the time, which makes it difficult to describe her as “elderly” like the ad does but maybe this was intentional. A couple years later a new Situations Wanted ad was published, “WANTED–POSITION AS COOK OR general houseworker; sleep home preferred; references. 871 5th ave., 1 flight up.”

Situation wanted ad maybe from the Connolly family. From the October 13, 1915 issue of the South Brooklyn Home Talk.

The “1 flight up” at the end of this ad suggests it might be another family. There were three other people living at the address in 1915 but all were employed at the time of the census so I am not entirely sure who this could be. The next ad is definitely from my great grandmother Mary and reads, “GIRL, 15, WANTS TO MIND BABY AND assist light housework. 871 5th ave., near 39th st.”

Situation wanted ad from Mary Agnes Connolly From the October 20, 1915 issue of the South Brooklyn Home Talk.

A couple months later another Situations Wanted ad was posted, “LAUNDRESS WANTS WASHING, ironing; home or out; also cleaning; references. 871 5th ave., near 39th st.”

Situation wanted ad maybe from the Connolly family. From the December 01, 1915 issue of the South Brooklyn Home Talk.

About one month later, my great grandmother Mary placed another ad looking for work, “WANTED–POSITION AS COOK OR housework by an experienced girl; sleep home preferred. 871 5th ave., near 39th st.”

Situation wanted ad from Mary Agnes Connolly From the January 12, 1916 issue of the South Brooklyn Home Talk.

It seems like Mary and her family may have been having difficulty getting by on just income from running the lunch counter and tobacco shop in late 1915 and early 1916, and were looking for additional sources of income. Who knows though, maybe their stove was broken during these few months and they had to temporarily close the lunchroom.

While all this was happening in Brooklyn, Herman Siedler was finishing his second year of coursework at Fordham University in the Bronx. Those studies were cut short in 1917 when he was called abroad to fight in the Great War. A year later, his family and friends were likely traumatized to learn he was captured by German forces while fighting in France and was being held in a prison camp in Rastatt:

Herman William Siedler of 314 E. 86th Street, New York, being held prisoner in the German prison camp at Rastatt during WWI. From the New York Herald, November 10, 1918.

The above article is from November 10, 1918, just one day before Germany signed the armistice ending the fighting in World War I. Herman, however, had actually been captured months earlier on September 5, 1918. Fortunately, he was released on December 12, 1918. The war ending was yet another perfect opportunity for cigarette companies to shout their patriotism while advertising their tobacco products, like in this ad that proudly describes how Fatima cigarettes were the most popular among those traveling on the George Washington for the Peace Conference talks that began in 1919:

Fatima cigarettes ad potentially with the George Washington ship engulfed in a cloud of cigarette smoke. From the Brookly Daily Eagle, February 24, 1919.

Like my great grandfather Gustave Mucha, his brother William Jr., and my other great grandfather William O’Rourke, Herman eventually made his way back to the U.S. and was discharged from the military in 1919. This was perfect timing for him to continue feeding the tobacco addiction he had likely developed with the help of one of the many Tobacco Funds set up to deliver him and other soldiers their much-needed calming fix. He then somehow ended up purchasing a pouch of tobacco from my ancestors and, later that year, wrote my great grandmother the love note I shared towards the beginning of this story.

Herman’s letter to my great grandmother ended with a request for her to respond, “I would appreciate a reply unless your memory fails you.” I do not know if Mary replied but I suspect not and, instead, she likely connected with my great grandfather William O’Rourke who had also returned from serving abroad and was discharged in August 1919. Herman returned to complete his degree at Fordham University and graduated the following year as part of the class of 1920. His heroic tales from the war, his book smarts, and his service to his community were featured prominently in the 1920 yearbook, providing us a more detailed illustration of the man who wrote the love letter to my great grandmother, and an actual photo of this mysterious man:

Herman W. Siedler 1920 feature page from Maroon, the Fordham University yearbook.

We also learn from the yearbook that once Herman returned from the war, he enrolled in Fordham and quickly established a senior class newspaper, the Bugle, and served as its editor under the motto, “It Toots Every Morning.”

The class of 1920 had a special section describing their “War Record” and a dedication that mentions Herman and the five others from what was originally the class of 1918:

“We are indebted to the war, if we may say so, for the presence of six men of the Class of ‘18 who, on account of war service, were too busily engaged to graduate until they completed their little bit for dear ‘Motherland.’”

Beginning of the War Record section with dedication and mention of Herman who “was captured at the Vesle and for four months was a German prisoner, enduring such an existence as is impossible to describe but readily understood by those who had any dealings with the German war friends.” From the Maroon, 1920 yearbook of Fordham University.

Herman was then given an introduction from the yearbook’s editor and three and half full pages to describe, firsthand, what transpired in France and Germany (I provide a full transcript after the images to make reading easier):

WWI war story by Herman William Seidler, using the byline P. W. No. 81332, in the 1920 Maroon, yearbook of Fordham University. Transcription:

Herman W. Siedler, ex-’18, left Senior Class on December 5, 1917, and became attached to the 77th Division. He sailed for France on April 6, 1918, and was engaged in the July offensive of Marshal Foch and General Pershing at the Vesle River. He was captured and gives a vivid description of his treatment by the Germans. He returned from Germany after the Armistice and was reattached to his Division. I had the good fortune to be in Paris March 13, on my way home, and of the millions there, it was my good luck to meet Herman at the Y. M. C. A. Hotel. We went to dinner and he told me his tale. It certainly is a pleasure that comes seldom in life to meet a schoolmate so far away from home and under such circumstances. Hermie returned in May with the 77th and was discharged.

Battles: Buccarat Sector—May, 1918.
Vesle Sector—June to July, 1918.
Oise-Aisne Offensive—July 15, 1918.
His story, as related by himself, is as follows:

“IN CASTRIS GERMANORUM”

By P. W. No. 81332.

(The following extract is plain unadulterated fact. It is a true account as related by an American “doughboy” of the famous “Lost Battalion,” a sniper and scout, captured by the Prussians during the Oise-Aisne offensive and held prisoner for four months.—War Historian.)

Picture, my readers, a street urchin tattered and torn with disheveled hair, smutty face and dirty hands. Now imagine some eighty such little unfortunates grown up, donned in ragged khaki and parts of French, English, Russian and even German uniforms, wearing a variety of grotesque caps, and you will then have a fair idea of the Yankee prisoners of war in the German prison camp at Montloue, France, a small deserted village sixty kilometers from “No-Man’s Land,” yet within sounding distance of the booming guns.

For over three whole weeks we hapless fellows lived the life of mere creatures mastered by the iron hand of Prussian hordes. We passed these dreary days like dogs housed in a stable-barrack, a small, low, rectangular structure, a mere framework of wood covered with scraps of tar paper. The interior besmattered with filth had the damp muddy ground as flooring. Both sides of the barrack were lined with double rows of platforms; water-soaked, rough-hewn pine boards carelessly slapped together allowing a sleeping place, a little more than a foot wide for each inmate. The windows, three in all, were conspicuous for their lack of panes and the cold breezes of northern France whistled through them dismally. The roof, though covered with sanded tar paper, permitted the drenching rain to filter through its crevices upon those scantily clad. Blankets were few and far between. Those who possessed them had veritable nests for cooties and fleas. Bed sacks we never saw. Some of the boys slept on the bare boards; others, who were skilled cracksmen, rested on potato bags pilfered while out on detail. Let me say that I was one of the chosen few who managed to have an apology for a mattress. Such was our dining-room, boudoir and home. In this hole we slept when we could. If any human being can rest in peace under such conditions, when the pesty cooties bite, when the elusive fleas sting, when the bold rats and saucy mice play tag over your weary limbs, then surely that man must sleep the sleep of the dead. During any hour of the long night one could faintly sense, by the pale moonlight streaming through the window-frames, the presence of restless bodies.

At 5 A. M. the sentry’s key turns in the rusty lock on the iron-barred door and a guttural voice rasps out “Aufstehen; Raus!!” These words were our daily reveille and call for breakfast, if so may be termed a repast, consisting of a quart of warm water colored with burnt barley. No sugar. No milk. A real Boche eye-opener. If our companions, the rats and mice, had not eaten our crust of bread hoarded from the night before we were indeed lucky to have what the boys considered a fairly good breakfast.

One would imagine that after our meagre mess we at least attended to our toilet, but, when you realize that we never changed our clothes, possessed no soap, no towel, no brush, no comb, only one razor in the crowd and then the scarcity of water not uncommon in France, you will readily understand why, after the hastily-eaten collation, we were all “raused” out of the barrack and lined up—no, not for inspection, but for “Appell” (roll-call). It was not an infrequent occurrence to stand shivering for one whole hour in the bitter cold and pouring rain awaiting the Feldwebel (Sergeant-major) to count us over. This accomplished, the Yankee sergeants amongst us were dismissed while the corporals and “bucks” trailed the muddy roads to work. The tasks they forced upon us were the loading and unloading of freight cars, shoveling coal or sand and piling up heavy planks of lumber. You can safely bet that the old army game, ducking details, was practiced in true American style.

Toiling for six consecutive hours without even a moment’s rest was surely sufficient incentive for any man to work up a fairly sensitive appetite for a regular dinner. But the mess, literally taken, was a mixture of water, corn meal, bits of rotten potatoes, and some unhealthy greens. Once in a while, if you were not “out of luck,” a piece of deliciously sweet horse flesh, the size of a domino, was buried in the porridge. This hodgepodge of camouflaged goodies the “Jerries” dared to call soup. To break the monotony of the menu the cooks would serve us “barbwire” soup made from dried beets and kohlrabi. To get our feed we had to have some kind of utensils. These were usually home-made. Most of us used old preserve cans found in some dump-heap; some were fortunate enough to be able to purchase a “Frog’s” mess kit. If you had no can, pot or some sort of dish you simply went hungry. Later on, whether out of sportsmanship or pure generosity, the Heinies treated us to agate bowls. A spoon for the soup came in handy IF you had one; if you did not—well then you juggled your meal in Chinese fashion. I can never forget how I managed to use a tomato server in place of a spoon. Many of the boys carved table ware out of wood a la American Indian.

After devouring this meal which certainly touched the spot, and there was no such thing as “seconds,” we took the count once more and again marched off to continue our morning travail.

5:30 found us back again in camp. Now was dished out our supper, usually a quart of saffron-colored warm water called tea, a spoonful of brown sugar, some beet jam or a mite of “Butter-ersatz” (oleomargarine), mere grease, and a quarter loaf of Teutonic black bread which was our ration for one day. The whole loaf of bread was just the size of a cobblestone, baked as hard, and made of whole wheat, rye, corn meal, potato peels and sand,—mostly SAND for it sure did make one grind his teeth. Nevertheless, bread, such as it was; I have been known to pay ten francs for a filched loaf.

Before sundown the Feldwebel held “Appell” after which we filed into the barrack which was then locked and barred till early morn. Often, during the many sleepless nights, we could distinctly hear the French 75’s bombarding the German lines. We could see part of the sky glowing as if afire. One night in particular, I well remember, we all were awake. The firing of guns seemed but a few kilometers distant. Aeroplanes hovered and buzzed overhead. The “Jerries,” terrified, ran about the barb-wired enclosed camp yelling at the top of their lungs “Lichter aus—Lichter aus!!” We, shut up in the barrack, were tickled to death, hoping and wishing that the Boche lines would give way. We had visions of a German retreat. We saw our liberation at the hands of our own comrades in arms. But with the approach of dawn the bombing, firing and barrage suddenly ceased. Again we were greeted with those familiar words “Raus, Amerikaner, Raus!!!” A few quick drafts of barley-water, and we were hurriedly packed on trains and shipped P. D. Q. to the Ukrainerlager in Rastatt, Germany. What happened there and at the sugar factory in Waghausel is, as Kipling says, another story.

Herman’s story didn’t end with his harrowing time as a prisoner of war or his graduation from Fordham. He continued his education, leaning into his passion for the past by earning a master’s degree in “Teacher of History” from Columbia University, which was conferred in October 1925. By the 1930 census, he was living in the Bronx and putting that degree to use as a public school teacher, which included time spent teaching at St. Francis Xavier High School in New York City.

However, like many who navigated the economic turbulence of the early 20th century, Herman’s path eventually shifted. By the 1940 census, he had transitioned out of the classroom and into real estate. According to his obituary, he spent the remainder of his career working as a salesman until his retirement in 1963.

Herman William Siedler lived a long, full life, passing away at the age of 85 on November 7, 1979, at his home in Bronxville. His obituary is brief, summarizing his military service, his degrees, and his career in just a few short lines. But it is the final sentence that strikes the heaviest chord:

“He has no survivors.”

This brings me back to Mary Schmich’s advice: “Keep your old love letters.” Herman did not leave behind children or grandchildren to pass down the story of the brave, clever “Knight of my lady nicotine.” He had no direct descendants to remember the young Fordham student who survived German prison camps, bought a pouch of The Captain tobacco, and sent a hopeful, playful letter to a Brooklyn girl he likely never met.

But because my great grandmother Mary kept that letter tucked away in her archives her entire life, Herman is not forgotten. His memory, his humor, and his resilience survive right here, woven among the branches of a family tree that isn’t even his own.

Continued in the final Part III.

“Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.” -Mary Shmich

The above print appeared in a 1997 column titled “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young” in the Chicago Tribune. The column took on a few lives of its own after publication and became known as the Wear Sunscreen graduation speech, is often incorrectly attributed to Kurt Vonnegut, and was used as the basis for a number one song by Baz Luhrmann called Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen). I have thought about this line about love letters many times over the years and am lucky to have a few love letters to and from my ancestors tucked away in my family history archives.

Reading a love letter sent to an ancestor a century ago is beyond heart warming. It is delightful and endearing and magical and intriguing. It is especially intriguing when the letter is from someone you are not related to. Case in point, my great grandmother Mary Agnes Connolly married my great grandfather William (Willie) Arthur O’Rourke in February 1921. World War I had ended only a couple years earlier. Prohibition had taken effect in the U.S., purportedly in an attempt to create a more productive, sober proletariat. My great grandparents were likely thrilled to start their lives together and create a family, beginning with my grandmother later that year.

A few years earlier, Mary received a small love note in the mail from a troop serving in France during the war:

Forget me not card to Mary Agnes Connolly with “From Joe to Mary. France Sept.22.18” written on the back.

Who was Joe? What was his last name? Did they know each other before the war began? Was my great grandmother smitten with Joe? Did he survive the war? Were they some sort of pen pals connecting through a Civilian Relief Organization? Did my great grandmother also know her future husband, Willie, at the same time? Was Willie also sending her notes while he was fighting in Belgium and France? These and a dozen other questions come to mind when I see this note, knowing that my great grandmother held on to it her entire life.

Even more tantalizing is a two page letter Mary received a little over a year later in 1919. The letter was apparently solicited by Mary when she hid a note in a pouch of tobacco sold at her mother’s shop in Brooklyn. I will likely never know what she wrote in her original letter or whether she replied to this letter but it suggests she signed her first note as “Marie” instead of Mary, perhaps to keep things mysterious and playful.

The man who found it was a Fordham University student named Herman William Siedler (though he playfully signed his letter to her as “A. W. Seidler”). Living at 314 East 86th Street in New York City, Herman had registered for the World War I draft in 1917, where his registrar described him as short and slender, with gray eyes and blonde hair. Two years later, after fighting in some horrific battles and being captured and held in German prison camps (more on that in a bit…), Herman purchased a pouch of “The Captain” tobacco, discovered Mary’s hidden note, and decided to mail a response.

Here is that letter, which I transcribed below:

Letter from Herman William Siedler (a.k.a. A. W. Seidler) to Mary Agnes Connolly (a.k.a. Marie Connolly). Transcription:

New York City N.Y.
Oct 17 - 1919
314 - East 86th St

Miss Marie Connolly
871 - 5th Avenue
Brooklyn N.Y.

Dear Miss

It affords me great pleasure
to satisfy the peculiar curiosity and natural
Inquisitiveness of an unacquainted young
girl and especially to because you have asked
me unknown male that I am to please write to
you.

Mayhaps you must now consult and
tax the innermost recesses of your infallible
memory Let me retrace the psychological path
with you (Marie C.) While some time ago I
meaning you while packing neatly in cases
soft brown suede leather tobacco pouches chanced
to think of writing a note and inserting the
same into one of the bags just to see or hear
what man (for you knew it would fall into
the hands of a Male Sex) would find the hidden
slip. This is so romantic you said to yourself
and Besides I have read such things in books.
Who will prove to be my hero Well this was in
part your reflection Now do you recollect
I may frankly and unhesitatingly say that
the Captain (for that is the name printed on the
pouch) guided the ship into a port not of
missing men and into a haven not so far
distant as you had probably expected.
Evidently a storm arose and this old
salt said to him self any old port in
the storm. However I am quite an adept
to smoking and partial to the weed but
since I secured the pouch and that is some
weeks past In all my pipe dreams the
fumes of the ascending smoke have failed to
picture the image of the fair romantic
Brooklynite The tobacco is fragrant what is
the cause of this aroma

I would appreciate a reply unless
your memory fails you.

A knight of my lady nicotine
A. W. Seidler

You might be wondering how I know this “A. W. Seidler” is actually Herman William Siedler. First, he provided his return address at the top of the letter and a quick search of historic newspapers shows a Melchior Seidler living at 314 E 86th St in 1910, so we can be sure this is the family residence.

Melchior Seidler at 314 East 86th St., with $7,000 mortgage to Annie T. Fisher recorded Nov. 15, 1910, due Jan 1, 1916. New York Tribune, November 26, 1910.

We can also find Melchior as head of the household in the 1920 census living with his wife, Anna, three daughters, and son Herman W. who was 25 years old at the time:

1920 census of Siedler family living at 314 East 86th Street, Manhattan, New York.

There are a couple issues that remain with the name provided in the letter to my great grandmother. First, the author signed the letter “A. W. Seidler” and not “H. W. Siedler” as we might expect after seeing this 1920 census record. The name Hermann is the German translation of the Latin name Arminius. It is possible Herman was being mysterious and playful like Mary was when she signed her name Marie. Or maybe he went by Arminius or the modern German form, Armin. Second, he spelled his last name as Seidler, which was the same spelling we saw in the 1910 mortgage record for his father, Melchior, and, sure enough, these were sometimes interchangeable among immigrants in the US at this time. So I am very confident Herman W. Siedler wrote this letter to my great grandmother, which is great because there is a lot to learn about Herman.

In the letter to Mary/Marie, Herman’s sign off as “A knight of my lady nicotine” references a book from 1890 called My Lady Nicotine: A Study in Smoke, which was written by J.M. Barrie (better known for writing the play and novel Peter Pan) and is one of the strangest books I have ever read. Aside from the blatant sexism and antiquated norms on display throughout (to be expected in a book written in 1890), there are chapters about tobacco pipes, ghosts, smoking clubs, murders, the purported health benefits of smoking, and unconnected adventures that sometimes only mention tobacco/smoking in the very last sentence of a chapter.

Herman mentions in his letter to my great grandmother that “In all my pipe dreams the fumes of the ascending smoke have failed to picture the image of the fair romantic Brooklynite.” I think this is intended to be a romantic way of saying Herman had wished to see my great grandmother (Mary, the Brooklynite) in the smoke clouds he produced with his pipe. This idea is taken directly from the main artwork included on the title page of My Lady Nicotine:

Illustrated title page of My Lady Nicotine: a Study in Smoke by J.M. Barrie, Illustrated by M.B. Prendergast. 1898 edition.

Herman also tells Mary that “The tobacco is fragrant” and asks “what is the cause of this aroma[?]” It seems likely that Mary filled the pouch with a mixture of tobacco leaves, some of which may have included additives like chocolate…:

Ad from 1919 for Patterson’s Tuxedo Tobacco. “Tuxedo tobacco uses the purest, most wholesome and delicious of all flavorings–chocolate!” From the February 4th, 1919 issue of the Brooklyn Eagle.

Tobacco marketing was likely stranger than you would expect it to be in the 1910s. Scientific evidence on the harmful effects of using tobacco products was present, though largely masked by misinformation propagated by Big Tobacco that had taken hold of American mouths and lungs beginning in the 1890s, roughly the same time My Lady Nicotine was first published.

Although written as a comedic take on the complexities of smoking and reasons to quit, the main character in My Lady Nicotine stresses a few reasons to quit smoking and the main reason why he quit was a threat from his wife: “I gave up on my most delightful solace, as I regarded it, for no other reason than that the lady who was willing to fling herself away on me said that I must choose between it and her.” That it was his “most delightful solace” is interesting and almost matches some of the tobacco advertising being published in Brooklyn newspapers the same year Herman sent this letter to my great grandmother Mary, including claims that Fatima Cigarettes are “a sensible cigarette” that leave “a man feeling as he should feel:”

Fatima Cigarettes ad from the Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company, claiming that Fatima cigarettes are popular at the Yale Club despite their affordability. From the April 2nd, 1919 issue of the Brooklyn Times-Union.

Or this full page ad again for Fatima Cigarettes, this time touting that these cigarettes are sensible because they are popular and that they contain just enough Turkish tobacco “to leave a man feeling right even if he smokes more than usual:”

Fatima Cigarettes ad from Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company, declaring their tobacco product is sensible because it is selling well at the places listed in the ad. From the December 10, 1919 issue of the Brooklyn Times-Union.

Or that Velvet Tobacco in your pipe “will help you tell the kiddies a better story tonight:”

Velvet Tobacco ad from the Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company, claiming that Velvet pipe tobacco is linked to good humor, good nature, and friendly ways. From the May 21st, 1919 issue of the Brooklyn Times-Union.

Again, the negative health effects that come from smoking were known but were often hidden, buried among the ads promoting tobacco use, some of which were promoting their own products:

Nicotol tablets article advertisement describing the negative health effects of smoking or chewing tobacco and advertising Nicotol as a remedy to help quit. From the September 7th, 1919 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Most of the ads I have come across do not necessarily describe the actual tobacco product but, instead, tell the reader that the product is popular and, therefore, the reader should buy it as well. When the ads get close to describing the product, it is often a brief mention of the production process or something vague like, “Prince Albert is so all-fired-good you feel like you’d just have to eat that fragrant smoke!:”

Prince Albert pipe and cigarette tobacco ad by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company claiming “It has the jimdandiest flavor and coolness and fragrance you ever ran against.” From the December 9th, 1919 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Times.

With a slow switch from immigrant and child labor to mechanized production in the 1890s, the number of cigarettes being produced each year in the US increased and, as a result, tobacco products became cheaper (in part because of reductions in labor costs, in part because of which companies controlled the market, and in part because of what was being put in the cigarettes). Ads like this one for Fatima Cigarettes showcased the increase in popularity of cigarettes and asked, “Are you a normal Smoker?” and also prompted readers to ask themselves, “Which one of the several forms of smoking will give me the most pleasure and solid comfort?:”

Fatima cigarettes ad from the Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company claiming that “medical men have proved” that cigarettes are “the mildest form of smoking” and are increasingly popular in part because of their “cleanness, convenience and moderate cost.” From the August 14th, 1919 issue of the Brooklyn Times-Union.

I do not know what these numbers actually represent, whether they are the number of cigarettes sold or consumed or produced but they are interesting and seem quite large. Up until the 1910s, Big Tobacco in the US was dominated by the American Tobacco Company. The Sherman Antitrust Act was passed in 1890 in an attempt to prevent monopolies from existing, the American Tobacco Company was indicted in 1907, and the Supreme Court ordered the company to dissolve in 1911. The dissolution of the company was difficult and, perhaps, useless because the company was already a combination of several previous companies and production processes. Thus, Big Tobacco persisted and its purported big numbers soared, especially during World War I. Here is an article that describes production at the American Tobacco Company’s factory in Brooklyn, including its 1918 production of “enough cigarettes to make a band about 5 inches wide and stretching all the way around the world” or “a line of smoke long enough to encircle the globe about thirteen times:”

American Tobacco Company’s production rates at its Brooklyn factory. From the December 20th, 1919 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

When Herman Seidler wrote my great grandmother the above love letter in 1919, he had just returned home after serving overseas in the Army. Herman and millions of other troops deployed overseas were likely, constantly smoking during the war. The above article describes the number of cigarettes produced in 1918 at the American Tobacco Company’s Brooklyn factory, enough to wrap around the Earth. This number is actually a tiny fraction of a total when you consider the US Army’s Subsistence Division was procuring an average 425 million cigarettes each month for troops overseas. Strangely, providing “smokes” to the troops was viewed not as a luxury, but as an absolute necessity for maintaining morale in the trenches. To bridge the gap between the home front and the front lines, newspapers and civic organizations launched massive “Tobacco Funds,” allowing everyday citizens to donate pennies and dimes to send tobacco directly to the soldiers serving overseas.

The US entered WWI on April 6, 1917, the Selective Service Act to begin the military draft was passed on May 18, 1917, and almost immediately funds were being raised to send tobacco to troops overseas:

Advertisement in the June 29, 1917 issue of The Sun, requesting donations to the newly established “THE SUN’S Tobacco Fund for Our Soldiers in the Trenches.”

Shortly before this, the first draft registration day took place on June 5, 1917, requiring men aged 21 to 31 to register. Herman Seidler registered that day. Mary did not know it then (at least I don’t think) but a short distance away in Queens, her future daughter’s father-in-law, my great grandfather Gustave Mucha, also registered that day. So did his siblings William Jr., Henry, and Joseph Mucha. Mary’s future husband, my other great grandfather William (Willie) Arthur O’Rourke, also registered that day. Willie was the first among these folks to enlist, joining the Army on June 22, 1917. Here he is pictured in uniform in 1917, likely taken during his training at Camp Upton on Long Island, New York:

William (Willie) Arthur O’Rourke 1917 Private in the 106th Infantry, Company G.

My great grandfather Gustave Mucha and his brother William Jr. were called to be examined for duty August 4th, 1917. Both enlisted September 23, 1917. Here is Gustave during his training at Camp Upton:

Gustave Mucha 1917 Private in the 307th Infantry, Company G, photographed at at Camp Upton, Long Island, New York.

Herman Seidler was called for duty August 2nd, 1917 and enlisted December 2nd, 1917. Though it was likely a scary time for all of these people, I imagine it was particularly difficult for Herman. Unlike my Mucha and O’Rourke relatives named here, Herman grew up in an incredibly wealthy family. He graduated top of his class just a few years earlier in 1914 at the Fordham Preparatory High School at St. Johns College in New York:

Herman William Siedler graduated with highest honors in 1914 from Fordham Preparatory School at St. Johns College. Published in the Fordham Monthly.

A couple years later he was enrolled at Fordham University and was listed in the student register as a high achiever:

Herman William Siedler in the 1916 student register for Fordham University, New York.

Although Herman was enrolled in college when he was drafted, his student status did nothing to stop his conscription, though maybe it delayed it slightly by potentially giving him time to finish classes that semester since he did not enlist until December 1917. Either way, it must have been disruptive to be taken out of school to go abroad to fight in a war.

Gustave and William Jr. were the first of the Mucha men to enlist and I am sure this was disruptive and scary for them and their families. Their brother Henry enlisted in 1918 and served in Baltimore with the signal corps. Joseph Mucha was never called for the draft. Still, my great great grandfather William Sr. must have been frightened for his kids.

William Sr. did his part and contributed to at least one of the tobacco funds before any of his sons were sent abroad. Here he is contributing 75 cents to the officially-named THE SUN’S Tobacco Fund for Our Soldiers in the Trenches that was collected during a visit he made to the New York Zoological Park (now known as the Bronx Zoo):

William Mucha Sr. donates $0.75 to the Sun’s tobacco Fund while at the New York Zoological Park in the Bronx, New York. From the November 11, 1917 issue of The Sun.

You can read that, at this point, this particular fund had raised $126,083 since its inception about five months earlier. The lengths The Sun and other companies went to raise funds varied widely. For example, celebrities were used to solicit donations. 27-year old silent film star Clara Kimball Young did her part, appearing on screen before film showings stating:

“The soldier in the trenches wants tobacco–NEEDS tobacco–his own particular kind of smokes. Over there in France he cannot get them unless we send them to him. I want you to help me do this and I want to help you do it. The New York Sun Tobacco Fund will help us both.”

Clara Kimball Young and other celebrities help raise funds to send tobacco products to soldiers in France. From the October 7, 1917 issue of The Sun.

The Sun’s and other tobacco funds partnered with American Tobacco manufactures to acquire cigarettes for the troops. This is unfortunate because, as you know from Herman Seidler’s love letter, Mary and her mother worked in a lunchroom that sold tobacco products. I imagine their business suffered while troops were abroad and most cigarette sales were now happening via companies with tobacco funds working directly with manufacturers. Regardless, it might be that Mary and her mother had wanted to get out of the business well before the war had begun. Family lore has it that after Mary’s father died in 1904, her mother was given the lunch counter/tobacco shop as a widow’s death benefit. Local newspapers suggest they ended up living and working at the shop through slightly different means. First, they appear in the 1905 New York State Census living at 871 5th Avenue and that Mary’s mother works as a “Candy Store Keeper.” Perhaps this was the first business the family ran at this address.

There were two other floors in this building that at times all bore the same address and at other times had their own house numbers (872 and 873 5th Ave). The families on the second and third floors rotated in and out regularly while my Connolly ancestors on the first floor remained for years. That Mary’s family ran a “candy store” at first seemed odd to me since I had only ever seen mention of a lunch counter and tobacco shop. Then I learned that candy and tobacco went hand in hand back in the day. This matches memories from my own childhood of going to corner stores or stationary stores where candy and cigarettes were both on full display. In Mary’s childhood, the displays were often side by side and were not always viewed as one being for adults and one for children. Case in point, here is an article describing one elementary school principal’s “crusade” against women who run candy shops and sell cigarettes to boys:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle article from January 16, 1904. Transcription: RAFFERTY FIGHTS SALE OF CIGARETTES TO BOYS. Principal of P. S. 19 Begins Crusade Against Violation of Law. MAJORITY OF OFFENDERS WOMEN, Dealers in Nearly Every School District Sell Noxious Things to Children, With Horrifying Results. Principal John W. Rafferty of Public School No. 19, at South Second and Keap streets, has started a crusade against the sale of cigarettes in the neighborhood of his school. He has been actuated in this step through the startling discovery that many of the boys attending his school are suffering from the evil effects of overindulgence in the obnoxious habit. The evil, he discovered from an investigation, has grown to such a degree that not only one but several of the boys are on the verge of losing their reason. As a result, several summonses were issued, and this morning there were arraigned before the magistrate in the Lee avenue court, Mrs. Kelly of South Third and Keap street; Mrs. Carson, South Third and Rodney street; William Feltman, South Fourth and Hooper streets, and Mrs. Pratt of South Fourth and Hewes streets. The accused were badly scared and, when arraigned before the bar, Magistrate Higginbotham explained that they had been summoned at the request of Principal Rafferty, who claimed that each of them was in the habit of selling cigarettes to minors, thereby endangering their morals and health. At this point Principal Rafferty interrupted and explained that each defendant kept a candy store in the immediate vicinity of the school, where the boys were in the habit of congregating, and he had learned that it was their custom to spend their money for cigarettes, which they were allowed to smoke on the premises. ‘This practice of selling cigarettes to boys of tender years is a vicious one, and I have felt for a long time that something ought to be done to put a stop to it. There are scores of little candy shops in every school district of the city, and several times each day these shops are crowded with school children. These places are run mostly by women, who seem to have no scruple against selling these nasty cigarettes—the vilest of the vile—to a great many of our boys, no matter how young or how small they may be. There is no mistake in asserting that this vicious practice is carried on openly and brazenly every day on the part of the proprietors of these candy stores, as well as by some of the tobacco stores.’”

Similar to the known health effects of tobacco being masked at the time by the overwhelming power of advertisements coming from Big Tobacco companies, there were blurred lines between the legality of who was allowed to smoke, who advertisements were targeting, and who actually smoked cheap and easily accessible cigarettes. That history repeats itself is perhaps nowhere more evident than in this article from 1905, describing the Venezuelan President, Cipriano Castro and his dreams of invading the United States, his obsession with destiny, throwing opulent balls, and, strangely, smoking tobacco and offering chocolate candy cigarettes to women:

“Between [dances] he smokes cigarettes, and invariably offers one to his partner. If, like most American and British women, she does not indulge in the weed, he produces some candy cigarettes, made of delicious chocolate, and insists upon at least an appearance of joining in his smoke.”

Article on Venezuelan President Cipriano Castro, “who really thinks he could invade United States, spends time dancing, eating candy and prating of destiny.” From the April 16, 1905 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Couple this with sensationalized local news headlines in Brooklyn like the following:

Headline from the August 21, 1905 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

And dramatic quotes like the following, which go so far as insinuating that children are living in a different society than the one created by their parents:

“Gangs of boys get together, form bad habits, smoke and sometimes drink, when they can get a chance, and steal to gratify their appetites… They will take some article of trifling value in order to get ten or fifteen cents for candy or cigarettes.” -Patrick Mallon, St. Vincent de Paul’s Society

Yet, here is a newspaper clipping from 1908 in the “For Our Young Readers” section of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle providing “Good Suggestions for Cake and Candy Sales” including a recipe for… “CANDY CIGARETTES:”

From the November 10, 1908 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

It seems the power of advertising and the ability of private corporations to overpower the health and well-being of ordinary people has maintained its stronghold even to the present moment. Though people like John Rafferty, the principal at P.S. 19 in the article above, and Patrick Mallon, from the St. Vincent de Paul’s Society, may have appeared in headlines from time to time to try to make the case for much-needed change, their pleas seem to continuously fall on deaf ears. Which is why we get headlines and stories like this one from 1912:

Stealing candy and cigarettes from shop on Flushing Ave. From the November 16, 1912 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

I am not sure where Principal Rafferty’s “crusade” went after the 1904 article above but I can tell you that at least two of the four candy shops stayed in business through at least 1940. Here is what was once Mrs. Kelly’s Soda, Candy, and Cigar shop at 333 South 3rd Street near Keap Street:

1940 NYC tax photo of the stationery corner store at South 3rd and Keap Street, Brooklyn, New York.

And here is what was once William Feltman’s Coca-Cola-sponsored shop selling Cigars, Cigarettes, Soda, and Candy at South 4th and Hooper Street:

1940 NYC tax photo of the cigar and soda shop at South 4th and Hooper Street, Brooklyn, New York.

Principal Rafferty was quoted in the article saying,

“There are scores of little candy shops in every school district of the city, and several times each day these shops are crowded with school children. These places are run mostly by women, who seem to have no scruple against selling these nasty cigarettes—the vilest of the vile—to a great many of our boys, no matter how young or how small they may be.”

Maybe he knew about this luncheonette and stationery store directly across from P.S. 19 but did not have evidence the shop keeper was selling to minors despite the subliminal advertising of “CANDY CIGARS” at South 2nd Street and Keap Street:

1940 NYC tax photo of the stationery corner store at South 2nd and Keap Street, Brooklyn, New York.

Continued in Part II out next week….

Here is the dramatic illustration that introduces the final section of the register:

Page 521 of Kutná Hora register (matriky) book #4. Roman catholic birth/baptism, marriage, and death/burial records. State Regional Archives in Prague (Státní oblastní archiv v Praze).

As with the previous prints, this piece originates from the printing capital of 18th-century Europe: Augsburg, Germany. The inscription in the bottom right corner, “Martin. Gottfrid. Crophius excudit A.V.,” reveals it was published by Martin Gottfried Crophius, the very same publisher who produced the “New Eve” print for the marriage section. It also carries the same imperial copyright mark (“Cum Pr. Sac. Cae. Maj.”).

The artwork depicts The Death of Saint Joseph. Catholic tradition suggests Joseph died before Jesus started his ministry, which allowed him to die peacefully with Jesus and Mary by his side. Saint Joseph became venerated as the patron saint of a “Good Death” (or a “Happy Death”). Placing this specific image at the start of the death register is likely meant to be a visual prayer that everyone recorded in these pages experienced a peaceful passing.

The Latin text at the bottom beautifully reinforces this visual message:

ANTE OBITUM BEATUS BEATE OBIT. (Blessed before death, he dies a blessed death.)

Iosephus morte deficit, (Joseph grows weak in death,)
Iesus cum Matre reficit. (Jesus with his Mother comforts him.)

Quid hoc affatu gratius (What is more pleasing than this consolation,)
et obitu beatius. (and what death more blessed?)

It is fitting that right here in this section, I found the final puzzle piece for a discovery I shared in my last post. When my 5th great-grandparents, Josef and Apollonia, married in 1773, the priest noted that the groom’s father, Joannes Peticher, was already deceased. Five years prior to that wedding, his passing was recorded here in December 1768:

Joannes Peticher (synon. Johann Friedrich Petinger) 1768 Kutná Hora death record.

Translated into English, the entry reads: Joannes Peticher, inhabitant, in communion with Holy Mother Church returned his soul to God, having been provided with all the last Sacraments. Whose body in the Catholic manner was buried on the 14th of this [month] next to the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Age: = = =

The original Latin transcription reads: Joannes Peticher incola in Communione S:[anctae] Matris Ecclesiae animam Deo Reddidit o[mn]ibus ultimis Sacramentis provisus est, Cujus corpus more Catholico Sepultum est 14 hujus penes Ecclesiam B: V: M: aetatis = = =

This record nicely closes the loop on my previous find. The priest recorded his name exactly as he did his son’s later on, and noted the same social status: incola (an inhabitant or resident, as opposed to a fully vested burgher).

The wording of this entry also ties beautifully into the artwork’s theme of a “Good Death.” The priest confirms Joannes passed peacefully according to the Church, noting he was “in communion with Holy Mother Church” and received “all the last Sacraments” (Last Rites) before passing. The entry provides a physical location for his resting place, noting he was buried penes Ecclesiam B: V: M: or next to the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Finally, in a wonderfully relatable genealogical quirk, the priest either didn’t know or forgot to ask his age, leaving the space at the bottom entirely blank with a few dash marks.

Finding my 6th great-grandfather’s final record in a section marked by this beautiful print feels like the perfect end to this deep dive. I’ll definitely return to this book (for the umpteenth time…) to find other relatives in my tree. It is amazing to see how Kutná Hora’s parishes intentionally curated these three Augsburg prints to tell a spiritual story from birth, to marriage, and to death, transforming standard administrative books into stunning galleries of art and history.

1940 NYC Tax photo of 300 S. 3rd St, Brooklyn. Block: 2436, Lot: 6.

While this might look like a typical street photo, this is actually a unique kind of historical document: an official 1939–1941 NYC Tax photo. The crouching man is likely a photographer or a worker for the city’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), setting up the key visual cue that makes these photos so distinct: the stark, numbered sign on a pole. These photos were a massive undertaking, meant to document every single property in the city for assessment purposes. This particular photo was taken at 300 South 3rd Street in Brooklyn. These photos are an invaluable tool for genealogists because they are honest, unfiltered records of the streets our ancestors walked. Unlike a studio portrait, which is highly curated, this frame is raw. It shows the massive apartment buildings with their endless fire escapes, the intricate gas-style lamppost, and the dusty street. If you ever wondered what it sounded like to be on a Brooklyn corner during the era of the Greatest Generation, this photo almost has a soundtrack.

I love the interaction here. The city employee is crouched, adjusting his sign, hair blowing in the wind, treating this like the sterile clerical job it was. Meanwhile, the neighborhood is alive all around him. The two boys in the foreground aren’t posed; they’re just existing. Their clothes, their faces, even their posture tell a story. While this is not my family, these could easily be someone’s grandparents or uncles. Seeing this photo makes me wonder who else was just around the corner, or watching from one of those windows, and it reminds me that historical records are most vibrant when the messy, real world sneaks in.

I plan to share at least a few more of my favorite photos from this collection over the next few months.