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Merry Christmas to All Christmas 2001
My name is Don (Frog ) Lamoreaux.
Early this summer it dawned on me that Amie and
Don, my children, had
grown up not fully knowing their family heritage.
Except for my Aunt Huntz
and Uncle, Ed Hamel, who they call Grandma and Grandpa,
and Tom and Lee, the Hamel sons.
they had only met anyone from the Roehler side of
our family once or twice
and that was when they were quite young. They never
had the opportunity of meeting my mother, Edna
(Gussy) Alma Lamoreaux, who had passed on during the Polio Epidemic of
1956, when we were living in
Opa Locka, Florida.
It was because of that I decided to put together a
scrapbook of some old family
pictures that my mother had kept.
I was 11 years old when our mother passed
away, my brother Bob would have been 6.
My dad Jim Lamoreaux, my brother Bob and I returned
to Pittsburgh and moved in with my dads parents
in their small home in Perrysville, PA a suburb of Pittsburgh.
Because of problems I had adjusting to this new environment I ran away
from home when I was 14.
I did not run very far, as I did not know were to go. I went to a
drug store where they had a pay phone
and called my Grandfather Gig, my mothers father. This written history and
the picture album are
dedicated to Gig who raised me until I graduated from high school .
What started out to be a
small project, soon became a
major work, when I decided to not limit the album
to only my family, but to
include pictures of the rest of the family and
make copies for everyone.
I apologize for the quality of some of the
pictures, but some of the originals
were in poor shape when I started working on them.
As I was collecting pictures, Doreen Purkey was
also collecting pictures, as
well as trying to put together a written history of
the early Roehler family.
She kept us informed of a lot of what she was
finding. It will be interesting
to read what she found.
I hope I have not incorrectly identified anyone in
the pictures, but if you do
find errors please e-mail me at either
frog@lamoreauxfamily.net
or call me at 440-988-7107.
What follows is a written history of our family and
especially my love for my
grandfather Gig.
Don
The four sisters shown below
Lillian, Alma ( Huntz), Dorothy Charlotte, and Edna my mother.
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resulted from the union of Edward
August
Roehler (Gig) and Elma A.
Inderbitzen.
I am going to begin the
telling
of this history with Elma because I know.
more of her ancestry
but less of the other story.
Elma was born on June
16,1891
in
Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, to
Gustav August Inderbitzen and Anna
E.
Volkert. Anna was the daughter of Heinrich John
Volkert of
Hessen, Germany, and Charlotte Louise Fredricka
Suedekum,
also of Germany. Her father, Heinrich (Americanized
to Henry)
was a tailor. In 1890 his business was located at
43
Buchanon
Street in Reserve Township, Allegheny County,
Pa. His
son, Albert
Volkert, worked there,
with him,
as a carriage trimmer.
Heinrich
Volkert was born in Hessen on August
18, 1833
and died'
on
November
28,
1894
in Allegheny City. Charlotte
Volkert was
born on June
1,1833 and died in Allegheny
City on May 4, 1903.
They are both buried at St. Paul's cemetery on Troy
Hill, in
Pittsburgh. August Inderbitzen was born on February
19, 1864,
most likely in Switzerland. He was the son of
Gustav and, in
1890, they were in business as
Inderbitzen and Son, tanners.
They had two locations, one on Filbert Street and
one on Return
Street. Gustav was born on May
13, 1813
in Thun, Canton Bem,
Switzerland. Nothing is known, to date, about his
wife. He died
on August
3, 1899
in Allegheny City and is buried at St.
Paul's
cemetery. August and Anna Inderbitzen were married
on June
13,1886 at St.
Paul's German Evangelical Church in
Allegheny
City, and they lived at
9
Buchanon
Street (now, Lowrie).
August
died, at
38
years of age, on June 9, 1902, and Anna died on May
21, 1918.
Her death resulted from surgery for a
goiter which was
interfering
with her windpipe. It is a legacy of thyroid disease
that she has left us all, genetically.
I also had this surgery in1996.
She and
August are buried at St.
Paul's.
Elma died of cirrhosis of the liver on June
25,1947,
in
Pittsburgh. She, too, is buried in St Paul's,
together with Gig.
Edward August Roehler (Gig) was born on June 4,
1889 in
Pittsburgh, six months and three weeks after the
wedding of his
parents. His father was Otto Gottard Washington
Roehler, who
was born in Allegheny City ,on April 9, 1867. His
mother was
Annie Kartluicke (Americanized to Kartlick). Annie
was born on
February 19,1871 in Pittsburgh and, on the 1880
census, she
lived with her parents, August and Caroline
Kartluicke, two
brothers, Louis and Fritz, and one sister, Alma.
August,
Caroline and Louis immigrated from Prussia in 1869.
Otto was
the son of Edward A. Gottlieb Leberect Roehler,
born in 1829 in
Dehler - Auma, Saxony, which is SSE of Leipzig,
Germany, and
Carolina Freda Nagler, born in 1830 in Germany. It
appears
that sometime before his death in 1886, Edward
became partners
in a grocery business, with August Kartlick, at 26
Penn Avenue?
in Pittsburgh. His son, Otto, inherited that part
ownership and,
at the age of twenty-one, on his marriage license
application, he
listed his occupation as grocer. In the 1890 street
directory of
Pittsburgh, the Penn Avenue address is listed as
Kartlick and
Roehler, Grocers, with August and Otto as the
owners.
Otto and Annie Roehler were married on November 13,
1888
at St. Paul's German
Evangelical Church in Allegheny City.
Church records show that the best man and matron of
honor
were Nicholas and Mary Hopfeld, and that the
parents were
present at the ceremony. They lived on Penn Avenue
in First
Ward, Pittsburgh. Gig was born on June 4,1889 in
Pittsburgh.
There is no church record indicating that he was
baptized at St.
Paul's, nor at Smithfield Church in Pittsburgh. l
find it curious
that his birth is not recorded at St. Paul's and I
suspect that the
timing of his birth may have been the reason.
Penn Avenue is
across the Allegheny River from Troy Hill and
traveling back
and forth would probably not have been so frequent
that Gig's
early birth could not have been fudged a bit. I
hope that I can
find evidence that he was baptized somewhere. His
siblings
births and baptisms are all recorded at St. Paul's.
Elsa Louise
was born on February 17. 1891 and died on April 9,
1891.
Her
godparents were Louis William Kartlick, Annie's
brother, and
Hulda Roederus. Otto Louis was born on April 25,
1892. His
godparents were the Hopfeld's. Clarence Friedrich
(Fritz) was
born in December of 1893 and was baptized on
January 14,
1894. Fritz Kartlick and Clara Kellner were his
godparents.
Elmer was born on April 12 or 13, 1895 or 96. He
was baptized
on July 7, 1895 or 96 and died that same day. He
is buried at St.
Paul's as Elmer Roehler. Annie died during that
following year
as she miscarried in her sixth pregnancy. She was
only twenty five
years old. There is no record of her burial,
possibly because
of a period of poor record keeping in the late 1890
's, and,
possibly, because she was buried with one of her
babies. It was
not uncommon to reopen a grave for a second burial
of a close
family member.
Gig, Otto and Fritz lived with their father and
grandmother
on Herman Street in Mount Troy. Carolina was a
diabetic and
was apparently losing her eyesight. Gig did recall
her making a
trip back to Germany during his childhood.
I have been
searching ship's manifests to try to document her
journey. Otto
, was
in the process of relocating a grocery to the north end
(Allegheny City) in 1900 and I suspect that he had
purchased the
building, which later became uncle Fritz's tavern.
In April of
1900, Otto died of a self- inflicted gunshot wound.
The reason
for this act is a puzzle, which went to his grave
with him. Gig
was ten years old .
It is unclear whether Otto was still in the
grocery business on Penn Avenue. The 1900 census
taken in
June, two months after his death, shows that Louis
W. Kartlick
was the proprietor of that grocery store and lived
there with his
wife, Katherine, and eight children .
It appears that both August
and Caroline Kartlick had passed away before 1900,
but I can
find no death or burial records. Before 1905, it
was not a
requirement to report births or deaths, so records
are very scanty
and I can find none. Where I have written apparent
birth
locations and death dates, it is because there are
conflicting
records. Allegheny City, Mount Troy and Troy Hill
are all part
of Reserve Township, Allegheny County on the north
side of
Pittsburgh and across the Allegheny River. In the
late 1800's, it
was a close community and family members all lived
in very close
proximity. From 1872 there is a plat map which
shows two
adjacent pieces of property owned by Edward Roehler
on what
would later become Herman Street. Carolina Roehler
died of
capillary bronchitis on April 11, 1914, at the age
of eighty- four ,
still living at 1354 Herman Street.
Gig, Ott and Fritz were sent to live with relatives
in Ohio.
There is no record, to date, of where they were
living, or with
whom. My mother has a memory of meeting an older
woman at
uncle Ott's family reunion in 1953. Gig was very
glad to see her
and he told mom that she had come all the way from
Sebring,
Florida and that her husband had founded that town.
Mom
thinks that the lady remarked to her that she
looked like her
grandmother.
Sebring, Ohio was founded by the Sebring brothers, a family from
East Liverpool, Ohio. They owned and operated many pottery businesses.
The Sebring family dreamed of building their own pottery town, one that
would bear their name and stand as a memorial to their work and ideals.
The above paragraph was taken from the Sebring, Ohio web page
I have not been able to verify that Sebring ,
Ohio was where
the boys went, but, for the record, I'll digress
and tell you a little
about George Eugene Sebring and his wife, Cora
Harris.
George
E. owned a successful pottery plant in East Liverpool,
Ohio
,founded by his father, George, who was a potter. The
Sebring family in America originated in western
Pennsylvania,
Beaver County and Bucks County. In 1911, on a
fishing trip to
Florida, George E. fell in love with the area that
is now Sebring,
Florida and in 1912 he purchased property and
incorporated the town.
Incorporated
1929. In 1912, the community of Sebring Florida, was founded by,
and named for, George Eugene Sebring, a pottery manufacturer of
Sebring, Ohio. Family members' scoff at the legend that he
intentionally patterned the city plan after that of Heliopolis,
the ancient Syrian City with its Temple of the Sun at the center
and the streets radiating. Sebring is the county seat.
The above
paragraph is taken from the Sebring Florida town web site.
I can find no information, as yet, on Cora,
his wife.
Whether pertinent or just an interesting
coincidence, the
Sebring's had a daughter in 1907, named Dorothy.
Also, just
after Lil was born, Gig and Elma bought a farm in
Beaver
County .
It seems odd that they would chose to live in a county
where they appear to have had no family ties,
rather than in the
Pittsburgh area .
It's worth pursuing further and I will
The three boys returned to Pittsburgh and claimed a
small
i nheritance
(Gig complained once to mom that the lawyers took
most of it), and the property on Troy Hill. This is
the building
which, probably, was going to be Otto's grocery
store but,
eventually, became Fritz Roehler's tavern. Gig and
Elma
married, probably in 1910, in Ohio and in 1911,
Lillian Anna
was born in Pittsburgh. After their move to the
farm in Beaver
County, Dorothy Charlotte was born on November 8,
1914,
dur ing
an early snowstorm. In about 1916, they returned to Troy
Hill and lived on the second floor of the brother's
building.
Uncle Ott's family lived above them on the third
floor, it is
unclear what, or who, was down below. They stayed
there for
only a short time before buying a house on Edison
Street, where
Edna Elizabeth and Alma Ann were born.
They had a pony,
rabbits and, no doubt, chickens.
Some time around 1918, Gig borrowed money and began
his
own bakery business. He had established routes with
customers
for bread delivery and would have had a successful
venture had
it not been for an unethical competitor, named
Bauer or Hanky,
who sabotaged his bread, pouring gasoline on the
loaves in the
trucks before they were to be delivered. The
business went under
and Gig went into a severe depression, fearing that
he couldn't
' pay
back his loans. He just sat in q chair and wouldn't speak a
word, at the age of about twenty-nine years. The
debts were
cleared and his fog lifted .
He then went to work as a laborer and
truck driver for other bakery establishments. Uncle
Ott told mom
in 1947, at Elma's funeral, that he regretted not
going into the
business with Gig because they could have been very
successful
together. Apparently they were estranged for many
years dating
back to that business venture.
At about the time that Gig and Elma bought the
house on
Edison Street, Fritz bought the building from his
brothers.
Prohibition began in 1920 and so did uncle Fritz's
Speakeasy!
"Down the
street, Fritz Roehler holds forth in the family saloon which his
grandfather built some
90 years
ago. . . . 'We've been dealing with the same people for five
generations,
' Fritz Roehler Shrugs. .
.--"So Close, Yet So Far," 1980.
The
above notation was taken from FINAL
REPORT-Northside Pittsburgh, Bob Carlin-submitted
November 5, 1993
A note: the
Roehler Bar on Troy Hill has closed. It is a shame I guess the Roehler
family just ran out of sons to run it,
The above paragraph was taken from
The Rivers of Steel web page, which is no longer active.
Doreen continues, Mom tells a story, from that time period, of Gig
bringing a
monkey home from the bar. Someone brought it in and
left it
and the customers were teasing it, so Fritz gave it
to Gig. They
kept it in the basement kitchen area until one day
when Elma
carried it upstairs to wake Gig up in the morning.
'The monkey
went nuts and bit Gig, maybe because of the men in
the bar who
antagonized it. Gig took it to a pet store and
traded it for a
canary and a cage.
On another occasion, a burglar came into the
Speakeasy.
Uncle Fritz shot him and made the papers with that
one. Mike
Scudder tells how, "Gig made one foray into crime
by
accompanying a few trucks laden with the devil's
brew. Shots
rang out and Gig departed the convoy, never to
enter into
criminal activity again!
When mom was about fourteen years old, in 1928, I
guess,
Gig was asked
if one of his girls could ride
along with Fritz, aunt
Mary and baby Fritz to Cambridge Springs in north
Pennsylvania .
Aunt Mary and the baby picked mom up in their
chauffeur driven car and drove around a while
before picking up
Fritz on a street corner. They had dinner at a nice
hotel in
Cambridge Springs. Fritz's "chauffeur" had dinner
with them
and then went to check out Fritz's room at the
hotel before
driving aunt Mary, the baby and mom back to
Pittsburgh. On
the way home the chauffeur told aunt Mary that he
didn't want to
alarm her, but they were
being followed. She commented that
surely they wouldn't do anything with Dorothy and
the baby in
the car. They arrived back in Troy Hill too late to
take mom
home to Mount Lebanon, so she stayed the night. So
did the
chauffeur. He slept in the hallway.
In 1925, Gig sold the house on Edison Street to
the Erk
family. It is not clear how they are related to our
family, but
there seems to be some connection. Mr. Charles Erk
still lives in
that house at 2708 Edison. There were twin sisters
and a
brother. Charles Erk is his son, born in 1927.
The family moved to 1318 Cochran Street in Mount
Lebanon
and Gig worked for Seven Baker Brothers, driving a
truck .
He
got the job, he told Mike, when he had a wreck with
one of their
trucks and the owner was worried, even though it was
Gig's
fault. Gig recounted his trips from Pittsburgh to
Wheeling, West
Virginia in a solid tired, chain driven truck .
He' could only go
ten miles per hour up the steep hills around
Wheeling. He
bought his driver's license in a drug store and
started out driving
a motorcycle. Mom doesn't remember the motorcycle
or that
wreck with the bakery truck, but she recalls
stories about Gig's
truck being hit by a train when they lived in the
apartment on
Troy Hill. He was late getting home the following
week and
when her mother wondered why he was late, the
story goes that
mom replied, "Maybe he was hit by a damn train
again". Little
pitchers have big ears!
When mom was in high school her parents decided
that it
would be better for her to attend business school.
She was not
thrilled, but back then you didn't question your
parents. Gig had
once enrolled for a class at a school on Stanwick
Street and
never attended, nor did he get his money back .
They gave him a
credit when he enrolled mom in the school. Her
course was only
about nine months but it was the beginning of the
depression
when she finished in 1931 and she couldn't find
a job. She
babysat for a couple and the husband hired her
to fill in for a
three month stint at Denison Manufacturing and that
gave her
some
experience. She married my dad, William Edward Purkey,
on August
1,1936, and in 1937 she was hired by Edwards,
George and Company, an insurance agency. She worked
there
until she was pregnant with Eddie in 1943.
In 1945, Gig and Elma, mom and Eddie, Edna and
Donnie
and one or two bottle fed Pekinese pups headed for
Miami. My
dad was already there and had bought our house on
Day Avenue
in Coconut Grove. Jimmy Lamoreaux was in the
service. The
Purkey family stayed in Miami but in 1946 Gig and
Elma moved
back to Pittsburgh where they had purchased a farm
on the north
side .
Mom recalls that on their return trip Gig's trailer carried
all of his chickens on the top and was quite a
sight to see. Mike
remembers being on the farm and watching his mom
and
grandmother getting eggs from
the chicken house. He describes
Kitty, Gig's blind work horse, as the biggest
animal in the world.
She would roll around in the side yard after
working in the fields
with Gig. Mike also recalls a "tough" goat with a
reputation for
chasing people. Don adds that the only remembrance
he has of his
grandmother Elma was on Christmas eve 1946 we
were all at the farm.
The kids were told to go to bed or Santa
would pass them by. Well
I must have been causing a fuss so Grandma
took me out on
the front porch. It was dark out there and when a
shooting star
flew by grandma said it was probably Santa
and he
was going to the neighbors' farm. Well just in case
she was right
I flew back to my bed not to take any chances
that he would pass me by.
Elma died in 1947 .
Shortly after he lost Elma, he sold the farm and
moved in with
Edna and Jimmy. Don recalls the house they lived in
on the hill
in the country. When they went to strip the
wall paper off
of the living room wall they found many
layers of newspaper
glued to the wall.
Gig met and married a somewhat
younger
woman. His daughters were less than thrilled and
thought she
was unpleasant, but she seemed to be a good
companion for him .
Her name was Deeley and that is about all that is
remembered
about her. When they married, Gig bought a house in
Mount
Oliver. Mike and Don both recount the same memories
of the
chicken house in the garage. Mike says it seemed
like it could
have been upwards to a thousand of them in there.
He sold his
chickens to the Chinese restaurants around
Pittsburgh. He said
that the Chinese liked them because, unlike store
bought, they
had real flavor. The neighbors got a court order and
shut him
down eventually .
I even recall those birds from our 1953 visit
when I was five years old. That's when uncle Ott
Roehler held
the big family reunion. My single memory of that
event is a big
tub of ice filled with bottles of pop, and I had
orange.
Don adds, In 1954 Bobby, Donny, Edna and Jimmy
Lamoreaux,
moved to Florida. We lived in a rented house on
Day Avenue before we bought the small house in Opa
Locka,
a suburb of Miami.
In 1956, Edna
contracted polio and passed away February 28th.
We all
had to have painful shots of gamma globulin and
my
dad was the only one left walking because he had
crutches.
Bobby stayed at our house while Edna was hospitalized
because he
had the chicken pox. He had to stay confined to my
room
since my dad had never had them.
I came home from school and
discovered that he had
given all of my dolls the chicken pox
with mercurochrome.
Jimmy took the boys back to
Pittsburgh to live
with his parents. After that, Don's memories paint
a poignant
and powerful picture of the grandfather that he
knew best.
When Don was fourteen, he ran away from home,
because of
heavy drinking and arguments by his father and his
grandparents.
When he ran, he called Gig from a local drug store. He's not sure
how he
got hold of Gig as gig did not have a phone, but Gig
came and
got him.
They went to juvenile court to get a change of
living status and
Don lived with him in Mount Oliver until he
graduated from
high school and again, for about a year, when he
got out of the
Air Force.
The house was three stories divided into two
apartments,
which Gig rented out while he and Don lived in the
basement. It
was divided into three sections. In the front
facing the back yard
was Gig's bedroom. It was also the kitchen and
dining area,
laundry, shower and TV room. The
middle section was
the workshop. The furthest back area belonged
to Don and
the furnace, and the toilet, which they had
to share with
the first floor renters. Don and Gig lived on Gig's small
government
check and the rent money that they collected from
the tenants,
but they got by.
According to Don, Gig was "famous" for his cooking,
but
when you read this you might think that "infamous'
is a better
description! He made the best pig tail/foot
sauerkraut stew. Gig's most notable meal was Yck-a-May. The
great
thing about Yck-a-May was that any meat would do, but Gig most
often used
chicken as the basic ingredient.
He added potatoes,
carrots, onions, celery and some rice or barley and
let it simmer
all day. No matter how we may chuckle about his
cooking, Don
can't recall many leftovers, so it couldn't have been as "yucky" as it sounds!
Gig always loved to go to the Allegheny County
Fair. He and
Don would walk through every barn and check out
every
chicken, pig and cow. They would sit in the stands
until their
butts were blistered watching every event that
occurred on stage!
Don shares with us that Gig was a hunter! He had a
Remington 22 caliber bolt action rifle. One day Don came home
from
school and found him sitting, with the gun, in his
favorite lawn
chair under the mulberry tree. Don thought he was
cleaning the
gun until he aimed and shot at the brick wall
separating his yard
from the neighbor's. When Don questioned him about
what it
was that he was doing, he replied that he was just
shooting rats
as they came over the wall, and
besides,
he was only using split
shot. Don was fairly certain that he was peppering
the house
across the street with bullet pellets and that the
police were not
going to take lightly to him shooting a firearm in
the city. He
also had a 12gauge shotgun. One fall day he
drove out into
the country with his grandson to teach him how to
hunt. They
walked out into afield where Gig was sure there
were plenty of
rabbits .
Within a few minutes of Small Game Season opening,
what seemed like a war broke out,
as buckshot was flying all
around them. It turned
out to be pheasant season and
the lone pheasant in this field was just to
the left of them! It seemed to them that
every hunter in the
county was shooting at that bird. Gig and Don heat a hasty
retreat
to the local bar. Gig bought some rabbits from a farmer
and they
had rabbit stew for dinner.
Gig had a 1948 gray Dodge that was a fluid drive
"tank".
When rust spots began showing, he sanded them down
and
painted the car with a paintbrush. Don recalls that,
as funny as
it seems, from fifty feet away you couldn't make
out the brush
marks and the rust was gone.
Gig was, apparently, a fearless
driver .
Coming home from Huntz and Ed's one winter day in
about ten inches of snow, they came upon a bunch of
cars stuck
on a long hill in Bethel Park, near Lil's. Gig
said, "Hang on!"
and he proceeded to slowly pass all of the stuck
cars as he went
in to the
downhill lane. That old tank never even spun a tire, but
he probably gave the oncoming drivers heart
failure. Also
Don remembers coming home from an evening at the
Moose Lodge, Gig asked
how many
headlights Don could see approaching them. When Don
told
him there were
two, Gig replied that he saw three, and
"I will
just
steer for the middle one and that way we'll miss
them all"
Whether he was being serious or joking, he did
manage to stay
on his side of the road.
When Don was in the Air Force, he got a letter from
Gig in
which he told about a young couple who had rented
the upper
apartment in the house. There were a lot of people
coming and
going and staying late into the night and he was
very suspicious
of them. A bank robbery occurred in Pittsburgh and
the
description given by the police sure seemed to
match his tenants.
He called the police and they came out and arrested the
whole
gang, but never found the bank money .
0ne day, as
Gig was watching TV
he heard a noise in the chimney.
he was
sure that
the money had been stashed in there. He called the
police and they
searched, but no cash was found. Gig always
felt that some day
those robbers were going to
come back to get him and their hidden
booty!
In his later years, Gig worked as a guard/watchman
for
Trumble Construction which was owned by my
Godfather, John
Yount and his brother. The Yount's were friends of my
parents.
The company maintained an asphalt plant out in the
"sticks".
Bill and Mike would often accompany Gig on his
weekend shifts.
They would take along Bill's bolt action 22 caliber
rifle and
shoot it into a gravel pile below the plant. Gig
would take his dog
along with him, and Mike remembers an occasion when
the dog
got tar on his coat. Gig used a rag with some
kerosene to clean
the tar off, and, accidentally, got some on the
dog's hind end.
Mike thought it was great watching the dog running
through that
plant at the speed of light. He was ready to do it
again!
Gig, true to his German roots, was known to enjoy
his beer. I
can recall on at least one visit to Miami, he and I
would drive off,
daily, probably in that same gray tank, to the
Coconut Grove Bar
and
Grill He would have a couple of beers and I would feel very
special sitting at the bar with him, sipping a
Pepsi and eating
peanuts. We'd get back in the car and he would say
every time,
"Now, don't tell Deeley where we've been". The last
time I was
in Coconut Grove, the bar was still there, painted
bright green
and renamed Senor Frogs. I liked it better in the
fifties! Mike
hit a few bars with Gig after returning from the
service. He says
it was never long before everyone in the bar would
be chatting
with him. Gig considered himself a beer sipper. He
would pick
up his beer and take a small sip and on the second
sip, he
would down the remainder of the glass. He couldn't
figure out
why it took Mike so long to finish one beer when he
was just
sipping on his!
Gig went to live with Huntz and Ed, in Amherst,
Ohio, in
1969. He had sold his house in Pittsburgh and Tom
had gone
into the service. In 1971, he went into a nursing
home.
"Gig" Roehler died on January 2, 1973, at the age of eighty
three.
Edward August Roehler was a memorable character and
a
curmudgeon with a heart of gold. Don reflects that
he doesn't
know what his life might have been like had Gig not
given him a
home. It is clear that all of our lives were so
greatly enriched by
a father, and grandfather, who was a survivor! He
loved his
daughters, his grandchildren, his animals, and he
could make
stew from a pig's foot! He and Elma left a legacy
of four
beautiful daughters, eight grandchildren, ten great
grandchildren, and three great, great
grandchildren, as of this
writing. We are all deeply rooted in this country,
Germany and
Switzerland, and we are all connected
A Family!
God bless us, everyone!
Merry Christmas, 2001, with love,
Dee
As a postscript, I would like, first of all, to say
that I don't
vouch for the accuracy of any of these delightful
memories. It
occurs to me that this history is meant to be
entered into our
hearts, and not the Congressional Record, so
accuracy is far less
important than the feelings that these memories
evoke.
Secondly, I have filled in some of the blanks in
our story with
suppositions, not necessarily rooted in fact, but
definitely based
on the most logical conclusions I can draw from the
information
available to me. I think that I have come close to
an accurate
depiction of the Roehler history, but it may change
a little with
added research .
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Mr. George McKee,
the
keeper of the records at St. Paul's Cemetery, and
an experienced
genealogist. He made this very easy for me
by providing so much
information from Troy Hill He grew up there and
still lives
there and generously shared his knowledge and
expertise with
me. I could not have accomplished this without his
help and his
patience. Just for the record, the sloppy keeping
of records in the
late 1800's at St. Paul's was directly attributable
to a
Cronenweth.
John Cronenweth was Gig's uncle. He owned a
dairy on Troy Hill
In our own family, I thank Don Lamoreaux for
planting the
seed, and for his precious memories. I thank Mike
Scudder for
sharing his remembrances, and I thank Karyn Charm,
as well as
Don, for providing wonderful old family photos, not
to mention,
support. I thank my mom, Dorothy, for allowing me
to pick her
brain, never sure exactly what it was that I was
"creating". I
especially regret that I didn't begin this, years
ago, when my aunt
Lil was alive and able to contribute her
considerable knowledge
to it. Hindsight is wonderful!
It is my fondest wish that each of you will take
this history and
add your own information and your valuable memories
to it and
make it a work in progress, a continuing legacy!
Merry Christmas 2001
To
My Family
The gift of one's family is a priceless
heirloom that can bring us together with our
kin. It can, also, put us together, as
individuals, as we discover the reality of
where we came from and the legacy that has
been left to us.
I have opened up a treasure box and, as I
dig, ever deeper, I realize that my history has
grabbed me and will not let go! This is the
result of less than five months of searching
endless census records, ship's manifests,
cemeteries, city directories and maps. It will
continue, as some of these spirits continue to
haunt me, especially Otto and Annie Roehler
and my grandfather, Edward August
Roehler, affectionately known as Gig. I wish
that I had known him as well when he was
alive as I know him now, and I wish, so
much, to know him better! I'll keep
searching!
I love you,
Dee
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