I know, I know...what's the big deal, right? I got the names and dates from the transcription, who needs to look at the actual record? Turns out, it's actually a pretty big deal. It nearly caused me to put the wrong 3rd great grandfather on our family tree! (Don't laugh, that's a big deal!)
Here's what happened...
For the last few weeks, I've been in contact with two of the daughters of Opa's cousin Patricia Wiese (daughter of Grandma Taylor's sister, Eva Bauer Wiese). One of these cousins had done an oral history with Eva back in 1986, and she very kindly shared the transcript of this interview with me.
As some of you may remember from looking at my initial family trees, the Bauer line has been a mystery beyond Grandma Taylor's parents (Louis Bauer and Margaret Lechner), so I was very excited to see that Eva mentioned the names of her maternal grandparents - Peter and Eva Wachter. According to the transcript, Eva Wachter's first husband, a Mr. Lechner, died and she remarried Peter Wachter. There were several other members of her grandmother's family that Eva remembered - Anna, Mike and Evelyn Wachter. All of these would be clues to use in my search for records.
So I headed over to Ancestry and opened up the search page for the 1880 census. It's always bothered me that I was unable to find Margaret Lechner in this census, when she would have been about 7 or 8 years. If her mother had remarried, though, I thought it might be possible that the census taker had recorded Margaret with the last name of Wachter. No such luck, though - a search of the 1880 census turned up no records of Peter Wachter, Eva Wachter or Margaret Wachter.
I then moved on to the 1900 census. Almost immediately, I got a promising hit. In 1900, the following family was recorded in Manhattan:
Peter Wachter, head of household, age 40
Eva Wachter, wife, age 50
Annie Wachter, daughter, age 24
Michael Wachter, son, age 22
George Wachter, son, age 15
Peter Wachter, son, age 13
It certainly looked like this could be the family I was looking for. I then moved on and searched the 1910 census. Again, I very quickly got another promising hit, finding the following family in Manhattan:
Peter Wachter, head of household, age 50
Eva Wachter, wife, age 60
Michael Wachter, son, age 33
George Wachter, son, age 26
Peter Wachter Jr, son, age 24
If nothing else, this was very clearly the same family that I'd found in the 1900 census. I then looked for them in the 1920 census. I found Eva Wachter fairly quickly, this time living with one of her sons, George Wachter and his family. Her husband, Peter, was not recorded in the 1920 census, which likely meant that he died at some point between 1910 and 1920.
These census records gave me a valuable starting point for finding Margaret Lechner's father. The first thing I looked at was the birth year of the oldest Wachter child in the 1900 census. According to that record, Annie Wachter was born about 1876. Margaret Lechner was born in about 1872. That would mean that at some point between 1872 and 1876, Mr. Lechner died and Eva married Peter Wachter. Unfortunately, that excludes census years for finding him. So I headed over to the website of the German Genealogy Group, which hosts an index of the birth, marriage and death records on file at the NY Municipal Archives. Searching for the surname 'Lechner' between 1872 and 1876, I got two hits. One was for a four year old boy, which was obviously not what I was looking for. The other record, though, was for a Frederick Lechner, who died at age 30 in 1873. Eureka! I found him!
I quickly added Frederick to the family tree and declared him to be my 3rd great grandfather. End of story, right? Wrong...
The next day, I went back to the 1900 census to see if I could figure out Peter and Eva Wachter's marriage date. Opening up the record (rather than just the index transcription), the first thing I looked for was the column that listed years married. For Peter and Eva, that was listed as 16 years, which would be a marriage year of 1884 - after two of their children (Annie and Michael Wachter) were born. Could this just be a transcription error? Or could there have been (gasp!) children born out of wedlock?
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| 1900 Census |
Moving across the page, the 1900 census had another interesting piece of information (not shown in the picture above) - immigration year. For Eva, this year was 1872. Interestingly, if this is correct and if I have Margaret Lechner's birth year correct, this could mean that she was already pregnant with Margaret when she immigrated...but that's a story for another post, after I've done more research. More relevant to figuring out the mystery of Peter and Eva, Peter Wachter's immigration year is listed as 1882. If that info is true, then that leaves only two possibilities - either Annie and Michael were his children with a first wife, or Annie and Michael were not his children.
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| 1910 Census |
Looking at the 1910 census, Peter and Eva are listed as being married 25 years, which would give them a marriage year of 1885. In the world of census records, I've learned that a difference of a year or two is fairly common from census to census, so the single year difference didn't concern me. Looking at the record, I noticed that the census taker did something unusual (and helpful) on this record. In the column recording relationship status, you typically see several letters denoting status - 'S' for single, 'M' for married, 'D' for divorced, and 'W' for widowed. In this record, though, I noticed that Peter was listed as 'M1' and Eva as 'M2'. Looking down the page, I realized that this census taker had most kindly recorded not just that someone was married, but also whether it was their first or second marriage.
So this was Peter Wachter's first marriage, making it highly unlikely that Annie and Michael were actually his children. His immigration year of 1882 also explains why I couldn't find him in the 1880 census - he was still in Germany! But if Annie and Michael were not actually Wachters, who were they?
I started to wonder if maybe I had jumped too quickly in assuming that Frederick Lechner was Margaret's father. If Peter and Eva Wachter hadn't married until 1884 or 1885, Margaret's father could have died much later than 1873. In fact, it was pretty clear to me that if Annie and Michael weren't Wachters, they were probably actually Lechners, which would mean that Frederick Lechner could not possibly have been Margaret's father.
Going back to the 1880 census, I searched for Eva Lechner, hoping to either find a young widow with three children or a married couple. After a couple of promising hits that didn't quite match up, I found this record:
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| 1880 Census |
Well, Eva, Annie and Michael are there as expected...but if this is our family, who the heck is Rachel? After a little head scratching, I've come to the conclusion that Rachel must be Margaret Lechner. The only reason I can come up with for the name switch is that perhaps Rachel was her middle name. Based on her age and the other family members present, I'm quite sure this is our family. It certainly explains why I was never able to find Margaret in the 1880 census!
So it appears that Margaret Lechner's father was actually Michael Lechner. Heading back to the German Genealogy Group's death index, I found a Michael Lechner who died 1 Aug 1881 at age 31. Given the census data, this Michael Lechner is very likely my actual 3rd great grandfather.
And there you have it...a very long-winded version of why I should always triple check my records! The discovery of the names of Michael Lechner and Eva Lechner Wachter open up brand new avenues of research for me, so look for more updates to come as I learn more about this family.
