Tracing a Life Gone Awry: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Timeline”

From Independence to Asylum Inmate

Anna Stroy: 1877-1961

 

While researching my second-great-granduncle Johann Streu/John Stroy, I discovered that his youngest daughter, Anna, ended up in the Norfolk State Hospital for the Insane, spending over half her life as an inmate. I knew that in early part of the twentieth century, people with problems like severe intellectual and developmental disability and severe autism were often institutionalized with the mentally ill. Was Anna’s condition lifelong, or did it develop later in life? I decided to track the data points in the records creating a timeline to see what I could learn.

1877:  

Anna was born April 1, 1877 in Elmwood Nebraska to parents Johann and Johannah Kupke Streu. She was the youngest of their 6 children.  

1880:

Anna appears on the census with her family.

1900:

Anna appears on the census, age 23, living with her parents. She is not employed.

1901:

A news item in the January 4, 1901 issue of the Elmwood Nebraska Leader-Echo states “Miss Anna Stroy returned to her work in Lincoln, Tuesday evening.” So at 24, she was holding down a job and presumably living on her own in Lincoln, Nebraska.

1905:

Anna’s mother dies.

1906:

News item from the Ashland Journal on March 2, 1906 reads: “Anna Stroy and sister Emma Gakemeier are visiting relatives at Glenwood, Iowa for an indefinite period.”

1908:

News item from the Ashland Gazette on January 31, 1908: “Miss Anna Stroy was an Omaha visitor Thursday of last week.        

1909:

News item from the Ashland Gazette on September 3, 1909: “John Stroy and family and Miss Anna Stroy returned Tuesday from a three weeks outing in Colorado.” Note: it is unclear if the John Stroy mentioned is Anna’s father or, more likely, her older brother, who was married and the father of three children in 1909.

News item from the December 3, 1909 Ashland Gazette describing the removal of 700 apple trees from Anna Stroy’s farm, so they must have been running an orchard, but were now returning the land to farming use. Was this Anna’s father’s old land?

1910:

Anna and her father are living together in Elmwood, Nebraska in a house on Kansas Street. She is 33. Her father is 75. She is not employed.

1918:

Anna’s father Johann died on March 27, 1918.

1920:

The 1920 census finds Anna living at the Norfolk Hospital for the Insane in Norfolk, Nebraska. She is 41 years old.

1924:

The Elmwood Leader-Echo published an article on May 23, 1924 detailing a lawsuit brought by Anna’s brother John as her guardian. She owned farmland, and the school district had condemned five acres to use as a school site, but paid less for the land than Anna’s brother thought was fair. She is described as “incompetent.” The jurors awarded an additional $460 in compensation.

1930:

The census finds her still an inmate in the Norfolk Hospital.

1934:

Legal notice in the Plattsmouth Journal of Plattsmouth, Nebraska providing public notice that John Stroy has filed for paperwork requesting approval of his guardianship expenses and report for Anna, an incompetent.

1939:

Anna is listed as a surviving relative in her sister Emma’s obituary. Ashland Gazette October 18, 1939.

1940:

The census finds Anna still a resident at the Norfolk Hospital for the Insane. She is 62.

1961:

Anna Stroy died on July 11, 1961 at age 84. Her obituary stated that “She lived in the Murdock community until 1917 when she became a paitient at the state hospital in Norfolk. She remained there until about five years ago when she was transferred to a nursing home in Plattsmouth.” Obituary published in the Ashland Gazette on July 20, 1961.

1962:

Springfield Monitor, Papillion Nebraska published a Notice of Sale for Anna’s farm on January 11, 1962.

 

So what did I learn from this timeline? First, Anna had been independent early in her life. She was able to hold a job and live on her own. However, at some point she moved back home, and lived with her parents until she was committed to the Norfolk Hospital. Did her mental illness manifest in her early twenties when she moved back home? Schizophrenia can manifest in early adulthood. She could have been bipolar or severely depressed. Did her condition worsen as the years went by? Whatever mental illness she suffered, it apparently wasn’t apparent from birth.  

Anna’s mother died in 1905. Anna continued to live with her father and travel with family for the next decade. However, we see that her father was preparing for her support once he was no longer alive to care for her: he placed 160 acres of farmland in her name by 1909.

As her father’s health failed, the family must have decided that Anna needed more care than they could provide, for according to her obituary, she was committed in 1917, a year before her father’s death. The timeline shows that her siblings took responsibility for her—her sister traveled with her one year, and her brother another year. Her brother became her guardian after her father’s death, and managed her affairs until his death in 1954.

Dining hall at the Norfolk State Hospital around 1915

The Norfolk State Hospital for the Insane appears to have been a decent institution. The photographs I was able to find show attractive buildings and a clean interior with plenty of staff to care for the patients. I hope the hospital was able to provide good care for Anna, as she spent half of her life there, from age 39 to approximately 79, when she was transferred to a nursing home.

The use of a timeline helped me track Anna Stroy’s life more effectively. While I may never know the details, I can at least see the framework and milestones of her life,

Broken Ties Between Parent and Children Leads to Lawsuit: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Broken Branch”

A Crooked Lawyer, a Suspicious New Will, and Angry Children: the Ernest Kupke Estate Lawsuit

Johann Streu/John Story: 1834-1918

Ernest Kupke: 1840-1903

 

While researching my second-great-granduncle Johann Streu, I came across news articles about a lawsuit that named him as a defendant. To my surprise, Johann was being sued by his wife Johanna’s niece and nephew. They claimed Johann was involved in a scheme to defraud them of the inheritance they were due following the death of their father, Ernst or Ernest Kupke. Ernst was Johann’s brother-in-law and neighbor. What had happened to cause such mistrust and animosity? It sounded as if this branch of the family tree had been broken, perhaps beyond repair.

I collected as many newspaper articles about the lawsuit as I could find on Newspapers.com. The suit was apparently well-known in Nebraska, with articles detailing each ruling published in several newspapers. The case appeared, in various forms, before at least three different judges. I was able to piece together the basic storyline from all these articles.

So who was Ernest Kupke? He was born in July of 1840 in Silesia, Prussia. His parents were Carl and Johanna Setzer Kupke. Ernest and his family immigrated to the United States in 1863 when he was 23 years old. His sister married Johann Streu/John Stroy, and the 1870 census finds Ernst living next door to the Stroys in Wisconsin.

The next year Ernst married Johanna Caroline Tischer or Fischer, another Prussian immigrant. They had two children, John Christ Kupke, born in 1874, and Johanna Kupke, born in 1873. Shortly thereafter, Ernst and Johanna must have separated and divorced, for by the 1880 census, Johanna had remarried to a man named William Hoerner or Koerner, and she and her two children were living with Koerner and his children from an earlier marriage. Johanna Tischer must have married him quite quickly, for the couple already had three-year-old twins and a 7-month-old son named Gotlieb by 1880.

John and Johanna Kupke Stroy had already moved their family to Cass County, Nebraska around 1875. Ernest followed them, bringing his mother to live with him. He appears on the 1880 census in Cass County, marital status “D” for divorced, just two pages away in the census forms from the Stroy family.

Ernest’s ex-wife and new husband moved their family to Kentucky. Census records list Ernest’s children as Koerner’s children, so they incorrectly appear with the surname Koerner rather than Kupke.

I surmise that Ernest fell out of contact with his children over the years, for whatever reason. They seem to have built lives in Kentucky, and don’t seem to have traveled to Nebraska to visit him. His daughter married a man named Robert Sayre in the 1890s, and by the 1900 census, she was the mother of two sons and was living in Paducah. Her brother, John Christ, was 26 and living with his stepfather and mother in Clarks River, Kentucky, working as a house carpenter.

Ernest fell into poor health in 1903, dying July 27, 1903. His children didn’t know about his death until they received a visit from a slick Nebraska attorney, Carey S. Polk, who spun them a tale about their father’s will, which was written in German and incomprehensible to them. He told them Ernest’s estate was to be split among several heirs and their share was to be $3,300. He proposed that he help them out by buying out their rights in the estate for $700 more—so they would have $4000 to split. He must have been very persuasive, for the naïve pair signed the agreement. Polk scampered back to Nebraska where he tried to parlay his partial interest into a full interest, alleging that the will was improper and unenforceable—Ernest had an earlier will that left everything to his children, and that would come back into effect if the new will were tossed out. The total value of the estate was $22,000, so he had paid $4000 to get hold of four times as much money—a sweet deal for him.

Luckily for John Christ and Johanna, someone let them know the true value of what they had signed away, so in November 1903 they filed suit in Nebraska asking for the agreement with the slick attorney be set aside, and that they be declared sole heirs to their father’s estate. A newspaper article at the time stated; “They tender repayment of the $4000 with interest and seek to recover the value of the estate, asserting that the papers were signed in ignorance of their rights in the matter.”

So who was benefitting under the new will? John Christ and Johanna have a long list of defendants, including Carey Polk of course, and H. R. Neitzel, J. E. Baumgartner, Herman Schmidt, Agnes Schmidt, my ancestor Johann Stroy and his wife Johannah, and the Bank of Murdock.

So what were these people alleged to have done? According to an article in the Lincoln Star, the new will “is alleged to have been made while he was in a dying condition and it is charged in the action that others held the dying man’s hand and guided it to affix his signature to the document, which had been written in German.”

This sounds like something straight out of a crime show—a forged will with a forced signature. So who was holding the pen when poor Ernest was dying?

Another, longer article in the Plattsmouth Journal in October 1903 provides more details of exactly what crooked Mr. Polk was up to.

“The petition filed by these children and heirs at law tells a tale that is, to say the least, most outrageous. The will was written in the German language by [Kupke’s] spiritual adviser, Rev. Baumgartner, of the Lutheran faith, and contained a bequest of $5000 to the Lutheran church. Among other bequests, $3000 to the two children of Kupke’s who reside in Kentucky. The will was propounded for probate…After filing the petition for probate, C. S. Polk hied himself to Kentucky with a translation of the will and requested the Kupke children to join with their Uncle Stroy in a fight to have the $5000 bequest to the church defeated, representing to the heirs in Kentucky that the will was valid and binding on them, and if they would join their uncle in defeating the Lutheran church out of the $5000, Stroy and Mr. Polk would pay them the amount allowed them under the will ($3000) and their pro rata share of the $5000 so snatched from the wicked church.”

The article goes on to state that Polk was well aware that the two people who witnessed the new will were beneficiaries of the will, which is forbidden due to the obvious conflict of interest. That made the new will “incompetent, illegal and could not be admitted to probate under the law of Nebraska”.

While the total value of the estate may not sound like much to us today, according to Google, 1903’s $22,000 would be the equivalent of $718,000 in 2022. It’s easy to understand why John and Johanna were ready to sue to get what they were properly owed. It is also easy to understand why the church was so eager to get that $5000—that would be $163,000 in today’s money.

So how complicit was Johann/John Story in this attempted swindle? I suspect he was the other witness to the will who was also a beneficiary, along with the Rev. Baumgartner, although none of the news articles identify him directly. It would make sense that John’s wife Johannah would have been caring for her brother Ernest during his final days, so they would have been close to hand.

Also, not only was Rev. Baumgartner the Stroys’ minister, he was also their daughter’s father-in-law. Johann’s daughter Mary was married to Conrad Baumgartner, Rev. J. E. Baumgartner’s son. It sounds like the Baumgartners and the Stroys conspired to keep Ernest’s money in their family rather than see it go to his estranged children. Hardly the actions of true Christians!

Cass County Nebraska farmland similar to the Kupke land...

The courts eventually sided with John Christ Kupke and his sister Johanna Kupke Sayre. They seem to have inherited the full estate, although the slightly shady lawyer Polk was awarded $2500 out of the estate for attorney’s fees for his “work” as the administrator of the estate. I’m sure that didn’t sit well with the Kupke children, nor did it sit well with one of the local newspapers, which published a scathing criticism of the fee award, suggesting it was a political payoff.

Shockingly, the German Lutheran Synod persisted in trying to acquire their bequest from the invalid will. They filed suit to ask that the order throwing out the new will be vacated, and that they get their day in court to argue that the new will was valid. They claimed that, “Material witnesses living, who were present and witnessed the execution of the will, were never called, and the hearing was, from a legal standpoint, a miscarriage.”

The Synod was granted a hearing to present their case to the court. I can find no records in the newspapers of the result of that hearing. It appears that the Kupke children received at least a portion of their father’s estate. John Christ Kupke moved to Nebraska, and took up farming, presumably on his father’s land. His sister and her family remained in Kentucky. John Christ appears on the 1910 census as a single man. A year later, he seems to have married and his first child was born December 3, 1911. His wife was Louise Holare, and was eleven years younger than John, who was 37. They had three daughters.

John Christ Kupke headstone at Lutheran Cemetery. Findagrave. 

I wonder if John Christ Kupke made his peace with the Stroys. Johannah Stroy and her children might have been his only relatives in Nebraska after all. I’m not sure whether they deserved his forgiveness or not, but I hope they tried to mend the broken branch in the family tree eventually.

 

Sources:

Plainview News, Plainview Nebraska. “Sue to Recover Estate”. 13 Nov 1903.

Lincoln Star, Lincoln Nebraska. “Brief in Will Contest”. 8 Nov 1904

Omaha Daily Bee, Omaha Nebraska. “Kentucky Heirs Get Property.” 12 Apr 1904

Plattsmouth Journal, Plattsmouth, Nebraska. “Get Rich Quick”. 29 Oct 1903.

Plattsmouth Journal, Plattsmouth, Nebraska. “Court Orders Resitution.” 14 Apr 1904.

Plattsmouth Journal, Plattsmouth, Nebraska. “Get Rich Quick Scheme”. 4 Aug 1904

Plattsmouth Journal, Plattsmouth, Nebraska. “An Imposition on the Court.” 28 Apr 1904.

Louisville Courier, Louisville Nebraska. “Increases Bond of Administrator.” 5 Mar 1904.

Elmwood Daily Leader Echo, Elmwood Nebraska. “Kupke Case in the Supreme Court.” 18 Nov 1904.

 

A Road Trip Gone Awry: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Road Trip”

Runaway Horse Leads to Serious Buggy Wreck

Claire Stroy: 1895-1998

 

While researching the Stroy family for my previous post, I happened to run across an amazing news story from 1913 Nebraska that demonstrated that travel was dangerous long before cars ruled the roads.

Claire Stroy was my second cousin twice removed, the grandchild of my second-great-grandmother Sophia Streu Hoffman’s brother, Johann Streu/John Stroy. Claire was born October 13, 1895 in Murdock, Nebraska to parents John Stroy and Margaret Augusta Deusing. She attended local schools, along with her brothers Arthur and Herbert.

On August 4, 1913, sixteen year old Claire and two friends were traveling by buggy near Murdock when the horse bolted. The newspaper reported the resulting accident as follows:

“The young lady with two lady friends were returning from Murdock when the horse took fright and became unmanageable. In the course of its flight it struck a bridge, and jumped over the banister into a deep gulley, throwing the young ladies out with terrible force. Miss Stroy being terribly crushed, while the other two escaped with only minor bruises. The horse’s neck was broken and the buggy reduced to a mass of splinters. Miss Stroy was taken home at once and physicians called. Her condition is quite alarming.”

Horse and buggy image from around 1913

What a wild and terrifying incident! The horse must have been completely crazed to actually jump over the bridge railing, dragging the buggy behind, and plunge into a ravine. This is proof that accidents with horses could be just as serious as car accidents can be a century later.

The loss of the horse was probably also a financial blow to the family, as good horses could be expensive. I wish the article provided more details about how Claire was rescued and moved to her parents’ home. Did the other two girls go for help? Did someone happen along the road and discover the wreck?

While Claire’s condition sounded very serious, the newspaper reported two weeks later that she was “gradually improving from the serious accident”. She was able to return to school in the fall.

Claire went on to attend the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, and married Fred T. Henderson in April, 1922. The couple had three children and eventually moved to Fred Henderson’s hometown, Winter Haven, Florida.

Obviously Claire’s injuries didn’t leave her with long-term health problems. She lived to the amazing age of 103, outliving her husband by forty years!

Sources:

“Miss Clara Stroy is Dangerously Injured”. Ashland Gazette, Ashland, Nebraska. August 7, 1913.

German, Americanized: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “How Do You Spell That?”

A Spelling Problem Simplified: Johann Streu Becomes John Stroy

Johann Carl Christian Streu/John Stroy: 1834-1918

 

Donald Trump recently made headlines for mocking a Michigan congressman’s surname, Meijer, a common German name, but weird according to Trump. He asked why Meijer didn’t just spell it “Meyer” so people would know how to pronounce it. This invited mockery on Twitter, as Trump’s ancestors immigrated to the United States with the surname Drumpf, which they changed to Trump, a little piece of personal history he apparently likes to forget. I suspect there were plenty of mocking comments like Trump’s directed at my second-great-granduncle when he arrived in the United States. Like Trump’s ancestors, he chose to “Americanize” his name, choosing a more phonetic spelling that even the cruel, prejudiced and ignorant could understand.

Johann Carl Christian Streu was born September 21, 1834 in Laage u Weitendorf in the Mecklenburg region of Germany. His parents were Johann Friedrich and Friederike Dethloff Streu. He appears to be the eldest of their six children; my second-great-grandmother, Sophia Maria Christiane Streu, was his younger sister, born when Johann was five.

Johann's baptism record

Johann left Germany for the United States in either 1851 or 1852, when he was only 17 or 18 years old. I have been unable to find any records of his arrival, or of his naturalization, so the details of how and when he travelled and arrived are lost. I don’t know if he was alone or with extended family or friends, but it must have been very frightening to head off to a new country where he couldn’t even speak the language. How did he decide where to go once he arrived? How did he afford the trip?

He first settled in Racine, Wisconsin, appearing on the 1860 census at age 25 as John Stroi, a laborer living in the home of a miller named Richard Thomas. It is unclear if he and the other boarder were laborers in Thomas’ mill operation, or if they just happened to board at the Thomas house. It is also unclear whether Johann chose the new spelling of both his first and last name, or if the census taker just wrote what he heard, anglicizing the German.

Johann’s family followed him to the United States in May 1857 aboard the ship Johannes. His parents, then 50 years old, his sisters Sophia (my second-great-grandmother) and Marie, then 17 and 18 years old, and his younger brothers Bernhard and Wilhelm, 15 and 11, sailed out of Hamburg. His parents also moved to Racine, and appear on the 1860 census farming with Bernhard and Wilhelm. My ancestor, Sophia, had married by the 1860 census, so was out of the house. Marie or Maria simply disappears from the records. Did she marry as well? Or did she die? Since one of Sophia’s middle names was Maria, other Ancestry trees merge the two sisters together, which is incorrect. The ship’s manifest clearly shows they both set out for America with their parents and brothers.

Streu family record from German ship Johannes

Was it Johann’s job to pave the way for his family to join him? Was he supposed to find a good place for them to settle, and then send for them? He was very young to take on such a responsibility if that was the case.

Johann married Anna Dorothea Kupke, another German immigrant, on September 21, 1864. The couple married in Milwaukee; the marriage certificate stated that Johann was living in “Town Lake” which no longer appears on any map. On the record, Johann’s name is spelled correctly, the German way. However, the first name of his spouse may have been incorrect; on all subsequent records she appears as Johanna or Johannah. She and her family had arrived in America just a year earlier; she was born in 1845, so was 11 years younger than Johann.

Johann and Johanna's wedding record

The next time Johann and his wife appear on records, on the 1870 census, Americanization of his name had begun in earnest. Johann had morphed into John, and Streu had become Stroy. Johann/John and Johanna had three children in 1870, all of whom had very English-sounding first names: Amelia, Emma and John. Johann was farming near the small Wisconsin community of Port Washington, which was on the shore of Lake Michigan just north of Milwaukee.

The family continued to grow, and sometime around 1875, Johann and Johanna moved to Nebraska, settling on a farm between the tiny towns of Murdock and Elmwood. Their sixth and last child, Anna, was born there on April 1, 1877.

The Stroys became solid members of their community, attending the German Lutheran Church in Murdock. Their children married area residents, and Johann/ John ended up helping his sons-in-law, serving as the guardian of Peter Gakemeier, his daughter Amelia’s husband, when the young man suffered some sort of mental health issue that led to his being deemed insane. Fortunately the issue was short-term. John also worked with his daughter Mary Louise’s husband, Conrad Baumgartner, helping to build a barn on Conrad’s property.

By the time Johannah died in 1905, she was described in the Ashland Gazette’s death notice as “the wife of one of the wealthy and highly respected citizens of Murdock.” Obviously, Johann/John had done well farming. By the time of Johannah’s death, the couple had moved into Murdock to live. Johann sold all his farm livestock and basically retired from active farming. A 1907 news clipping reported that he was “suffering severely from rheumatism.”

Johann/John died at age 83 on March 27, 1918. He and Johannah were buried in Murdock at the Immanuel Lutheran Church Cemetery. Curiously enough, after decades of Johann using the name “John Stroy” for legal records as well as in the community, the family chose to use the names “Johann Streu and Johanna Dorathea Streu" on the headstone. The surname at the bottom of the monument proudly reads “STREU”. In death, Johann and his family reclaimed their German heritage.

 Sources:

Baptism Record. Mecklenburg, Laage u Wietendorf, Taufen, Hieraten u Tote 1750-1885, accessed on Ancestry.  https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/61229/images/0069280-00224?pId=14707424

Ashland Gazette, Ashland NE, 14 Jun 1907. Murdock news. https://www.newspapers.com/image/667950689/?terms=john%20stroy&match=1

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/51648589/johanna-dorathea-streu

Plattsmouth Journal, Plattsmouth NE 24 Sep 1903. Guardianship Notice.

Ashland Gazette, Ashland NE. 4 Jan 1901. Public Sale Notice, John Stroy Farm Property and Livestock

Census Data: Ancestry.com