[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Chicago

[Kenneth Browne]

On 10/06/2011 11:44 AM, Sue Eipert wrote:
> Kenneth (and all),
>
> I'm starting a new thread related to the Chicago part of your message.
>
> Where in Chicago was your grandfather born?
He was born in 1898 and the 1900 U.S. Census shows the family living 
on Paulina Place, however I have a slight variation in the address (2 
No. Paulier Place) which may be from another handwritten source. 
(can't remember)
Earlier about 1894 they lived at 35 West Fullerton (Ward 26) and by 
1902 they lived at 310 or 337 Wabansia Avenue. My great grandmother 
Alvine (aka Irena) Mroch Lachmann died in September of that year.

I've been able to locate these addresses on Google maps but Chicago's 
size makes it hard for me to gauge their proximity to one another. By 
the time my great grandfather Samuel Lachmann died in 1937 I seem to 
recall their living at 2218 North Knox Avenue. That address leads to a 
fascinating unfinished story involving some letters written from 
Berlin, Germany in 1931 and 1937.

I've never been able to ascertain much about my great grandmother even 
though I have a coupld of pictures of her; one a wedding photo the 
other taken with children months before her death. Family lore says 
she was from Alsace-Lorraine but I've gotten nowhere trying to find 
her immigration whether on her own or with others. Likewise no 
marriage record from Chicago, although based on the dob of their first 
child and Sam's arrival in the U.S. they were probably married about 1893.

I've found some vital records for Cook County online, including 
Alvine's death certificate, but no mention of her parentage or origin 
beyond "Germany" on her death certificate. According to the death 
certificate she lived in the U.S. for 11 years, which would place her 
arrival here in 1891 the same year Samuel arrived here.



>
> I'm always interested in hearing about Germans from Poland that 
> immigrated to Chicago. My grandmother Anna Kopp came there from near 
> Chodecz (powiat of Włocławek) to join her brother. My grandfather 
> Johann Radtke came to Chicago from Crimea to join his cousin, 
> Wilhelm Radtke, who had just arrived from Poland (he was born in the 
> Plock area).
>
> They were married by Pastor Martin P.F. Doermann at Zion Evangelical 
> Lutheran Church in 1905, and their first four children (including my 
> father) were born there. 
Alvine is buried at Wunders Cemetery and I just sent an email to 
wunders_cemetery at SBCglobal.net (Val Stodden) requesting more 
information. I had not previously found any such link and Chicago is a 
pretty long field trip from Massachusetts. I did pass through Chicago 
on a car trip in the late 1990's but my family members would have 
balked at me looking for a cemetery and gravestone without any prior 
knowledge .