Jaekel Hoelzel Monument

Jaekel/Hoelzel family plot

Jaekel inscriptionCarl Frederick Jaekel (1823 – 1882) was a tailor and patriarch of a large family, many of whom are buried on this extensive family lot. In pride of place on the shared marker are the names and dates of his second oldest daughter Paulina and her husband Nickol Hoelzel. Carl and his wife Ernestine (Knopf; 1823 – 1907) had seven children together, born prior to their immigration to the US (there is a much-younger daughter Anne who appears on the 1880 census, but I believe she is more likely a granddaughter mistranscribed; I can find no other trace of her), six of whom lived to adulthood in the US.

Carl II who was at first a tailor like his father, ended up working for the railroad and died in Florida where he was also buried, far from the rest of his family. His wife and children returned to Chicago after his death.

Carl and Ernestine’s daughter Ernestine (“Teeny,” who never married) and I believe their granddaughter Pauline (daughter of Paulina) appeared in the Chicago Tribune in September 1927 in an article on recent car injuries. The two were run down on Harrison and Laramie, neither fatally, though Pauline suffered a punctured lung.

An Emil Jaekel was written up in the Tribune in July 1887 involved in robbery and assault. Though there is no way to be sure if this is Carl I and Ernestine’s son Emil, the age is correct, and Emil did die in his late 30s a few years after this incident. If we had the 1890 census, I might be able to find if he’d been incarcerated fom that, but alas. If this is the same Emil, it seems he was the family’s black sheep. In 1880 he was working alongside his brother and father as a tailor, but after his father’s death, who knows what may have happened.

Carl I died in 1882 leaving Ernestine as matriarch until her own death in 1907. All except Carl II and the missing seventh child – who might be Anna or might be one lost in infancy in Germany – are buried at Concordia either with their parents or very nearby.

RIP Jaekels

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