This was a letter to the Kauffman children from our mother, Elizabeth Wright Kauffman. She gave it to me when she was in her later years.
I say “the Kauffman children” because she made a carbon copy of it and it was in a letter to me, so i assume she intended to a copy to everyone. (For those of you who are a bit younger, carbon paper was something that you could put below a piece of typing paper that you inserted into a typewriter.
Hum, let’s see. A typewriter was something that you could use to create words on paper, rather than write things out. Well, google it. Maybe there is a picture of one. )
Back to my point. I found this letter but i guess she never gave copies of it to anyone else.
You had a great-great grandfather by the name of Frantz Peter Keller who was born in Mierburg which was at that time either in Alsace or Lorraine. He fought with Napoleon and married a Catherine Anthony. He migrated to this country (not sure he was naturalized), bringing wife, my grandfather Eduard, aged 2 — M, a daughter Regina, and then Uncle Harry was born in Erie. Evidently Catherine died and he remarried. No one knows where his first wife was buried but probably in some local churchyard cemetery.
He along with second wife was buried in Calvary Cemetery in the German section. I gather that the second wife was an “itch”—bay, because all three children ran away from home, Grandpa to join the Navy — guess this to be about Civil War time, Regina disappeared and no one could ever find her, Uncle Harry blew up Carter’s Drug Store experimenting with sulphuric acid, the roof blew off and there was a customer there whom he thought he’d killed, aged I5 and afraid to go home, he hopped a freight -for Buffalo where he applied for a job with The Fakir of Ava as a magician’s assistant. This started him off on his successful career.
He married a woman named Eva from Australia and they never had any children. I think none of us liked Eva but Uncle Harry loved his “Mopsy”. Meantime my grandfather married one Christine Weindorf and they had four children, Anna Marie (Aunt Mamie, who married a Malcolm Buck who was born in Canada). They had no living children. I gather that no one liked him, including me. My mother Clara Katherine Elizabeth, known as Kate and Clara, Frank Henry, and Eduard. Frank married an Irish lassie named Margaret and Tang (Katherine) is the one child. Uncle Ed had two daughters, Helen and Clara, who changed her name to Claire. His first wife died shortly after Claire was born and he married another Mae (your little old lady who wrote to me and sent the picture). We didn’t any of us like her much because she was very bossy and always stirring up trouble.
Now back to Eduard and Christine (your great grandparents),
Christine, I never saw, she was a plain looking woman and died of some kidney ailment, I understand she was the daughter of our other raging beauty, one Elizabeth Lane or Lehn, who really was a countess. She eloped with the family gardener one Martin Weindorf or Weindorff.
They were, I think from Lorraine or some small “duchy”. No one has been speaking for so many years that I doubt if we can tract this down. I do faintly recall seeing old Martin who was then about 95, and according to my father, somewhat senile at the time. There was also a handsome, erect, white haired woman by the name of Mrs. Owen (also Elizabeth) who I presume must have been the daughter. The Weindorfs evidently fared well, came up in the world, teachers, one a realtor, one artist and one who married a Darryl Schaubacher and they run those tours that the Skovrons, etc. take to Greece and Switzerland — she too, I hear is quite an artist.
So perhaps I am the Jewess in the family and isn’t that awful? But Lehn -if that is the correct spelling is hard to escape – I always thought it was Lane.
Let’s finish off with a few bits about Uncle Harry. He always helped his family, parents, brother, nieces, nephews, and the “greats” – had it not been for him I would have never gone to college, I suspect, and old Grandpa K. gave me some money too. Uncle Harry had a fear of poverty and though he made and lost several fortunes, he had these funny phobias. He lived fairly quietly, had a nice house, a lotta US Steel stock, 60 – 70 Australian opals which he used to carry around in a few leather boxes wherever he went, according to his mood he would present one. He spoke 9 languages, put himself through school, amused himself by reading the encyclopedia, wore socks with separate toes made in Australia and for personal allowance had an annuity of $l000. a month, which was big money those days. If by the 30th of the month there was any of this money left, he felt obliged to get rid of it, if anyone he fancied was around he gave it to them, if not, he used to throw it in the fountain in the yard and the neighbor children used to fish it out.
Want me to get started on my farmer Wright and White relatives? Jason fought in the Revolution. A White was a DAR. Aunt Elsie wrote books under an assumed name (it wasn’t lady—like to do things like that those days). Your great-grandmother, Virginia ‘ White Wright — who taught school, tried to enlist in the Civil War but obviously got caught immediately — eventually married Grandpa Wright (lst wife).