Fred Schleiniger: Building a Family Tree

And so we begin the research into the final photo I collected at Miss Pixie's with Ricke, Elise, and Judge C.E. Vanderburgh. I suppose these four can be referred to as 'Generation 1,' and I love that they've each provided us with some different types of research. With Ricke and Elise and my quest to find out how they knew each other, I really focused on census data: household occupants, occupations, and addresses; with Judge C.E. Vanderburgh, I moved beyond typical genealogical tools and just relied on simple Google searches to tell me who he was. Now, I'm using genealogy to find his descendants.

So with Fred and Charles, I'm trying something a little different first. I know they're cousins, and so this post will attempt to prove that through horizontal genealogical research (researching siblings and cousins rather than ancestors and descendants). So, here we go.

In the 1910 census, a 16 year old Fred Schleiniger appears in New Orleans, living with his father Philip and his mother Amelia, and four siblings Charles, Alvin, Philip, and Louise. If this was the correct Fred, it would date our Fred to 24 years old in our 1918 photo. The man on the right looks like he could be 24, so I keep going.

Information gathered from 1910 census

We know the Fred in our photo has a cousin named Charles, so I am on a particular mission to find siblings of Philip and Amelia. I turn my search first to Philip. Searching for a Philip Schleiniger born 1865-1870 (for some wiggle room) returns parish marriage records for Louisiana. Interestingly, there are two for Philip, and I know it is the same person as his birth date is estimated 1862/1863 on both, and he has the same parents listed on both.

We see that he married a Christina Zimmerman in 1886, and then married Amelia in 1897. Christina and Amelia are, of course, sisters - on both marriage licenses their father is William Zimmerman. The mothers names switch between Louisa Zeller (marriage to Amelia), and Elizabeth Ziller, Zoller, and Zoeller on his marriage license to Christina, depending on the various transcriptions of the record. It is safe to assume Louisa and Elizabeth are the same person - the surname is too similar to be a coincidence, and Louisa can be a nickname for Elizabeth.

Marriage licences are a wealth of information because oftentimes parents are listed for both the groom and the bride, and usually always provide maiden names.

Interestingly, from the 1910 census we see that Fred is the youngest sibling, born 1894, but he is still born prior to his father marrying Amelia in 1897. From this we can assume that all children were actually born to Catherine prior to what I can only assume was her death. Below is the updated family tree I make from this new information.

Information gathered from Philip's marriage licenses to Christine and Amelia

As the ultimate goal is to find Fred's cousins, I need to find siblings for Philip and Christine/Amelia to ultimately see if any of them end up having a child named Charles. I'll start with Philip's family.

Searching for 'John Schleiniger' residing in Louisiana with a wife Catherine (could also be Catharine, or another spelling, but search tools are generally good at returning all possible results), I am met with - you guessed it - more marriage licenses! John is listed as the 'father of the groom' or 'father of the bride' on each of them, with wife Catharine also present, so we know it is the correct couple. Let's fill in the Schleiniger family tree with all this new info:

After doing very brief searches of these couples, I couldn't find any hint of a son named Charles belonging to any of them. Let's move on to the Zimmerman line, then.

I find an 1870 census with William Zimmerman, wife Catherine, daughters Amelia and Christina (though the birthdays are different than those I had previously found, but it seems like too much of a coincidence for them to be a different Zimmerman family), and four other siblings. Let's fill in the Zimmerman tree:

After some research, I had trouble finding a Charles related to any of these people as well. But here is what we know so far:

Based on the photo, we can assume that Charles did not live in or around New Orleans- Fred is specified as "the cousin from New Orleans, LA" leading us to assume that Charles lived elsewhere.

We also know Charles last name could be one of the following:
Charles Butsch
Charles Seehas
Charles Cathalongne
Charles Schleiniger
Charles Zimmerman
Charles Kottemann
Or could be the son of Eliza Zimmerman or Annie Zimmerman, who I have yet to find husbands for.

Interestingly, I find a Charles Zimmerman, born in 1872 to William and Kate Zimmerman, who was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey - an astonishing coincidence, considering I found Fred and Charles' photo in the same bin as Ricke and Elise, both from Elizabeth. Perhaps they were all related somehow, through marriage? But I cross this off as a possibility - if Charles Zimmerman was born in 1872, father William would have only been 12.

I also find a Charles Kottemann, born 1888, whose father was born in Germany and whose mother was born in Louisiana. This seems like a perfect match, as Lena was born in Louisiana and husband Frank could have very well been born in Germany. The only thing I take issue with is that this Charles is listed as living in New Orleans in 1920. The photo is dated 1918, and seems to insinuate that Charles doesn't live in Louisiana.

Of course, perhaps all of this could easily be solved with a simple Ancestry.com search for other users who have Schleinigers in their family trees. But unfortunately, without a subscription to Ancestry, I'm limited to using their database to Saturdays (when I can make a trip down to the National Archives, which provides subscription-free access to Ancestry!).

Nonetheless, I'm pretty positive that our photo is of the Fred Schleiniger examined in this blog post. Schleiniger is an unusual surname, but indeed there was a Schleiniger family living not only in Louisiana but specifically in New Orleans around the time our Fred in the photo would have been born. I feel confident about this case, even if we can't identify our 'uncle Charles.'

Until next time...