15 March 1880 – 25 October 1931 This article was originally posted on May 15, 2022. I was contacted by Anna’s grandchildren and given additional information and clarification which I’ve used to annotate this article, while leaving my erroneous conclusions and conjectures in place. Anna Blau was born in Galicia which seems to now be […]
Michael Brand (1826 – 1897) was a German brewer from a well-off family that had him privately educated. He trained to be a brewer and was in France at the time of the Revolutions of 1848, during which he served in support of the Republican side and led a company. After his side won, he […]
Colonel John Mason Loomis 5 January 1825 – 2 August 1900 Mary Jane Hunt Loomis 15 August 1829 – 7 October 1910 Mary Hunt Loomis 16 June 1855 – 5 January 1861 John was born in Windsor, Connecticut in 1825 to a prosperous family. His father was an officer in the state militia and a […]
John J. and Mary Louise (Jewett) Mitchell John (1853 – 1927) was born in Alton, IL, and came to Chicago with his family as a young adult. He started his career as a bank messenger at Illinois Trust and Savings when he was 20 years old, but just six years later in a scene out […]
Patriarch Jacob Birk immigrated to the US from then-Prussia around 1853. He met and married Magdalena Welflin (from Alsace-Lorraine; then Germany, now France) in 1859, and together they had 12 children, 8 surviving childhood. Jacob did well in business and on the 1880 census is listed as the proprietor of a boarding house (per other […]
Thomas A. and Laura E. (Frary) Munshaw, married 1892 Frederick A. and Mildred A. (Lawson) Munshaw, married 1903 The two couples entombed in this mausoleum are connected through brothers Tom and Fred. Tom, born in 1867 in Toronto was four years older than Fred who was born in 1871 in Elgin, IL. Both sons married […]
Richard T, Jr and Florence (Higinbotham) Crane Richard was the son of Richard T Crane, Sr, an industrialist and founder of the Crane Company (1855 in Chicago) which manufactured plumbing supplies. Florence was the daughter of Harlow Niles Higinbotham, a partner in Marshall Field & Company and the president of the 1892 World’s Columbian Exposition […]
William Boldenweck 9 August 1851 – 21 August 1922 Adelheid Gesine Samme Boldenweck 4 July 1852 – 17 Augugust 1912 William Boldenweck was president of the Chicago Sanitary Board during the building of the Chicago Drainage Canal — the construction of which famously reversed the course of the Chicago River. He married Chicago-born Adelheid Samme […]
3 March 1879 – 6 February 1947 Philomena and her first husband Vito were both born in Italy. On the 1920 census – the first one I can find for them – Vito lists his immigration year as 1899, but there isn’t a year listed for Philomena. From their ages, I presume they married in […]
9 Nov 1835 – 17 Dec 1922 John H. Bass was born in Salem, Kentucky, and came to Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1852. He first worked as a grocery clerk while he studied bookkeeping at night school, then worked for a railroad concern as an auditor. The next year, he joined his brother and some […]