On today’s date in 1861, my third great grandparents Karolina Fehlig and Wilhelm Kirsch were married in Gartenkirche, Hannover, Germany. They were the parents of my immigrant ancestor Louis F. Kirsch and the grandparents of my great grandmother Helen Kirsch. You can visit Wikimedia Commons to see many pictures of the church where their marriage took place. Louis was baptized there.
Wilhelm Kirsch was born in 1836 in Sankt Andreasberg, Goslar, Niedersachsen, Germany to Johann Karl Ludwig Kirsch, a master tailor, and Johann Ernestine Louisa Kutscher, a silver miner’s daughter. Johann Karl Ludwig’s father was a pochsteiger=supervisor at a stamp mill. A stamp mill processed heavy metals from mining.
At the time of the wedding in 1861, Wilhelm Kirsch was already a master tailor.
Karoline Fehlig was born in 1834 in Grohnde, Hameln, Niedersachsen, Germany to Friedrich Fehlig and Karolina Mahlstedt. I know nothing about either of her parents except that perhaps Friedrich’s parents may have been named Joseph and Franziska.
My immigrant second great grandfather Louis F. Kirsch was born 11 months after their marriage.
I don’t know if my third great grandparents died in Germany or America. Could they have died in Switzerland where Louis F. Kirsch met his wife, immigrant Anna Heinzen?
They did have a child in 1877 in Hannover named Frieda Minna, so they were in Germany at least until that time.
I still have many gaps in the years of research on Louis F. Kirsch in America. What was it in 1909 that caused him to answer that he was out of work for 35 weeks that year on the 1910 census. Why did I never pay attention to the fact he had been suffering from symptoms of liver disease for two years prior to his death? Does that mean anything?
Oh to have a picture of Louis F. Kirsch! My previous post on him will need some updating regardless.
This concludes my year of wedding anniversaries for all of my third great grandparents!
Next year I will have to finish summarizing the lives of the rest of the immigrants in my tree. There are less than 10 immigrants left – Yippeeeeeee!!
Happy New Year!
Sources:
Elbe-Weser Triangle, Germany, Marriages, Baptisms, and Deaths – (actual images of these records via Ancestry.com.)
Immigrant Ludwig Fritz Kirsch, Northern Germany – Ever since I began my genealogy I mistakenly thought my ancestor Louis Kirsch would be that obscure ancestor that I would try to find down the road when I was stuck in a different research line. When I started, unlike the other immigrants in my tree, there was not much of an American paper trail on this mysterious cook that Ferraros say worked at the world famous Palmer House Hotel Restaurant. He was a source of pride for them, although, nothing more was known of him besides that he worked at the Palmer House, he was from Germany, he studied cooking in Switzerland where he met his wife Anna, and they came to America together.
So we started our search and the obstacles began. I found Anna Heinzen’s passenger manifest. He didn’t arrive WITH her according the family story went because he wasn’t on HER ship. When his daughter was a prime witness in a notorious murder case that gripped the country’s newspaper readers, it was his wife Anna quoted in the paper, NOT him. Ancestry.com failed in his regard as well. They said he was buried in the incorrect cemetery. They also improperly indexed his place of birth on his daughter Helen’s birth record. What he actually said was that he lived in Brig, Schweiz before he moved to Chicago. Then, I was mistakenly informed by Chicago that it would take a genealogist to get his naturalization record. So I didn’t try to get it myself until recently and it cost only $2. I saw him as a gigantic brick wall. Because we have no photos or physical descriptions of him from relatives, I imagined him tall and fair haired like other Northern Germans.
What would have been great to find was a World War I draft card with his name on it…detailing a physical description, but, alas, he was too old at the time of that draft to be drafted…
All we knew then was that he had a father named Wilhelm (William), his birth date, and a birthplace that was recorded on his Illinois death record. I didn’t think it was possible to get his baptism because I didn’t know if he was born in Hannover the city or Hannover the region. I just didn’t know where to begin in Europe. Then Ave Maria! I ignored an Ancestry hint thinking it was impossible someone bearing his name and exact birth date had a Lutheran church record on Ancestry in none other than Hannover. Another researcher had to point it out to me! Sorry Louis!!! Finally, the World Explorer subscription to Ancestry paid off because everyone knows if you are mostly Italian, Ancestry.com is a joke! So, there happens to be a lot of facts about Louis that just need to be explored and researched further, besides the meaning of his surname is for anything that is rosy or cherry colored.
Portion of Louis’s baptism from Gartenkirche Taufen #425, 1863 Hannover
These are the facts we know about Louis Kirsch:
Birth: November 19, 1862 in Hannover, Hannover, Germany;
Baptism: January 25, 1863, Gartenkirche, Hannover. Gartenkirche of Saint Mary is still there today but was rebuilt into a larger structure after he was baptized;
Parents: Johann Georg Andreas Wilhelm Kirsch and Karolina Friederika Wilhemina Fehlig – Louis is their oldest child;
Known Siblings: Hermann Ludwig Kirsch (b. 1866), Friedrich Albert Erdmann Kirsch (b. 1868), and Frieda Minna Kirsch (b. 1877). Louis and Anna named their son Albert;
1877: That is the last year I have been able to find a record regarding Louis’s immediate family in Germany. (But not of his aunt’s, uncles, and grandparents which will be explained below.)
Marriage: In 1886 Louis and Anna Heinzen marry in Chicago before a Justice of the Peace.
Birth of Helen: In 1887 his only daughter and first of two children is born – Helen. On that Chicago civil birth record, he stated the last place he lived before Chicago was Brig, Switzerland. So did Anna Heinzen;
His naturalization record: In 1896, Louis becomes a naturalized American citizen in the Criminal Court of Cook County. This is the important part. The number of his naturalization record is preceded by the word “minor.” That, according to the clerks in the archives department of the Clerk of Court of Cook County, means he got here before the age of majority which is 21. He wrote that he had lived in America a total of 18 years, with at least 3 of those years a minor, and that he lived in Chicago for 12 years. Because he had come as a minor, no declaration of intention was necessary for him to become naturalized. A lack of the declaration could have created a huge issue BUT, we know he was a minor when he got here.
So Louis probably got to Chicago around 1884 (1896 minus 12). In early 1885 Anna Heinzen came to America on the St. Laurent and stated she was going to Chicago. She was probably going to meet him. If Louis got here in 1878 (18 years minus 1896) that was a year after his sister was born, and he likely came with at least one parent because he was only 15 or 16 at that point. This naturalization year is backed up by what he said on the 1920 census. He stated he was naturalized in 1896. The 1920 census also reflects that he was a cook at a hotel. This was likely Palmer House. In the 1900 and 1910 censuses he was a cook at a club house. The 1890 census was destroyed.
Death: 1925, Chicago.
Louis’s Ancestry
The Kirsch of Sankt Andreasberg in the Harz Mountains
Louis’s father Wilhelm was born in Sankt Andreasberg, Germany in 1836. The town is about 40 miles south of Hannover. He was a schneidermeister or master tailor when Louis was born. His father, Johann Karl Ludwig Kirsch, was also a tailor. Wilhelm’s mother was Johanne Ernestine Louisa Kutscher. She was born in Sankt Andreasberg. She was the daughter of Ludwig Daniel Ernst Kutscher, a silver miner, and Johanne Elizabetha Schroder. Sankt Andreasberg is a historic mining town and is known especially for the Grube (Mine) Samson where they mined for the silver mineral called Samsonite. The Samson Mine is a UNESCO World Heritage Site so it is only natural that Louis had mining ancestors from the Sankt Andreasberg area. Interesting note: Sankt Andreasberg is one of the few towns in the area that spoke its own dialect and it can be traced back to the settlement of mining folk in the area in the 16th century from Bohemia and Saxony.
Old mine entrance in Sankt Andreasberg
Sankt Andreasberg is in the highest mountain range in Northern Germany, the Harz Mountains. These mountains are the home of the wild lynx and it’s highest peak is the mysterious and folkloric Brocken Mountain, a place of superstitions, legends, and the haunting Brockensgespenst or in English Brocken Spectre a.k.a. St. Walpurga’s Horned Mask. The strange weather phenomen is created by the mountain mists and shadows and can be seen below. The peak has been associated with strange activity and an annual Walpurgisnacht festival going back to the finding of a portrait of Wodin on the summit. Parts of the play Faust take place at Brocken. It is the subject of poems and songs. I could honestly spend the entire blog post talking about Brocken and Sankt Andreasberg because a trail leads direct from Sankt Andreasberg right to the mountain’s peak.
Brockensgespenst
More on the Kirsch…Louis’s father Wilhelm had at least two siblings. Because their marriage records from Hannover are available to view on ancestry we can tell that Wilhelm and Johanne moved their family from bucolic Sankt Andreasberg to Hannover around 1845. Wilhelm had at least two siblings: Carl Georg Julius Hermann Kirsch, a machinist, and Auguste Julie Mina who married into the Sprengel family. Eventually, Auguste and her husband moved to Hamburg. Johanne (Wilhelm’s mother) died in Hamburg in 1886 while living with her daughter and son-in-law.
View of Brocken in the distance
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The Fehligs of Grohnde, Hamelin-Pyrmont, Germany
Louis’s mother Karolina Fehling was born in another bucolic setting – Grohnde, Germany which is about 25 miles from Hannover. She married Louis’s father Wilhelm in 1861 in Hannover in the Gartenkirche of St. Mary. She was the daughter of Friedrich Fehlig and Karolina Mahlstedt. On her marriage record to Wilhelm her father’s profession was purely called self-employed. I do not know much yet the about Fehligs. Grohnde is very tiny. The nearest largest town is about four miles away and should be a familiar sounding place. Hamelin. It is obviously known for the tale of the Pied Piper where, according to the town annals, 130 children from the town really did disappear in 1284 and you cannot play music on the street today where they followed the piper away.
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Ponderings and some conclusions about Louis F. Kirsch:
-How long was Louis in Brig, Valais, Switzerland a town still known for its hospitality training today? The story was he went there to study how to become a cook. Will he show up on a census there? Was Louis sponsored to go to Switzerland from America? Did he pay his own way?
-The civil and church records of Sankt Andreasberg and Grohnde, Hamelin-Pyrmont were not destroyed by World War II and are in archives in Germany and not available to Americans that way. But I can access census and military records from Sankt Andreasberg. Slowly, the Germans will put more online. Once the Fehlings are researched further, I suspect a direct connection in the Fehling line will be made to the closest town Hamelin and it will be easier to research because they kept great records.
-A big consideration in what we now know about Louis is what was on his naturalization. As we can surmise, and per his daughter’s birth record, Louis came to America, went back to Europe, then back to America to Chicago. Again, no passenger records have been found to support this, but, remember there was a fire that burned many records from Castle Garden on Ellis Island. Don’t forget the Leies and Bold records were never found either.
-There is a man named Wilhelm Kirsch that naturalized in Chicago shortly after Louis did. I think getting his record is in order.
-What employee record does the Palmer House have about Louis? Nothing. Palmer House doesn’t have any that old.
-There is an one line mention of a Louis Kirsch in the Chicago Tribune in 1910 for getting out of business with a shadey policeman. Smart man. More research is needed there.
-With the records available to me, I cannot find any record of Louis’s immediate family in Germany after 1877. Obviously his grandmother died in Hamburg after that date. It really looks like Louis’s immediate family immigrated with him around 1878 since he was a minor and if they did where on earth did they settle?!
This is everything I know of Louis F. Kirsch, which is a lot more than I ever thought possible.
Sankt Andreasberg miners
Do you have a picture of Louis F. Kirsch, chef at the Palmer House?
Cinziarosa's Descendants (c) 