Wolff Family Reunion in Luxembourg

Last update: 5 December, 2014

Thanks to corrected and/or new information from Mary Lou (Wolff) Bartolomie, Doris (Wolff) Rivera, Shauna (Wolff) Reston, and Miriam (Wolff) McCornick, I have updated this blog. 
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My original intention for this write-up was to share information about the Wolff family reunion in Luxembourg this past September that my sister Miriam Wolff-McCornick and I attended. In order to do that I felt some background was necessary. 

I had no idea what I was in for. 

I should have known better, I suppose, in dealing with genealogy that the job is never done, for questions always arise. And more questions. Almost daily this past week small pieces of the puzzle relating to the three Wolff's who left Luxembourg for the U.S. have been filled in thanks to the hard work of my two sister's Shauna and Miriam. But they are hardly alone.

In addition to what I say a few paragraphs below about the reunion, There is more at the end of this historical orientation now set before you. I organized it this way so you might gain a better understanding of who 'the players' are and how they are relevant to us. In the end I suppose I really did this for myself because I could never keep it all straight: it was always out of context. Hopefully when you are finished reading this you'll have a little bit more of a sense of who our ancestors are beyond birth and death dates on a genealogy map. In truth, the families of Anna Wolff-Evert and Jean Pierre Wolff get short shrift, but my intention was never to delve into the details of branches I'm not a part of but to give an overview as best I am able. This stated, I wrote this with the hope that everyone in the Wolff clan would enjoy it and learn about our background. 

Shauna and I discussed a need to store and build upon the ever-increasing layers of information from all branches of the family and keep it all tied together. We are open to suggestions as to how this can best be done.  

The Ancestors

    

The Wolff Family Reunion in Luxembourg occurred on September 27, 2014. For our purposes it all began with Antoine Wolff and his wife Marie Marguerite Michaelis. The Family Tree of the Wolff Family, seen below, is courtesy of Maggy Wolff-Diedrich of Luxembourg and goes back to Antoine’s great-grandfather Mathias Wolff, but the family reunion only focused on the family tree when it branched out over the Atlantic. Maggy did a lot of work on Wolff-family genealogy, and to her delight (and ours) she finally made contacts within the United States - perhaps only within the last year or so - to help her fill in the missing information. One of her allies in this was my aunt Doris Wolff-Rivera, but there are apparently others. Throughout this past year Shauna Wolff-Reston has been nearly obsessed with learning this information, and she was slated to go to the reunion, but, alas, life’s events sometimes get in the way of our best made plans and so it happened to her. I had absolutely no initial role in the quest of learning about the Wolff genealogical roots, but my sister Miriam and I have been the beneficiaries of the groundwork laid by Maggy and those who aided and abetted her on our side of the pond.

According to the Family Tree, Antoine and Marie Marguerite had nine children. Those were rough times. Two unnamed females have birth and death dates on the same day (child 4 and 5), one male lived for nine days (child 9), and their first born, Nicolas, died when he was six years old. That left five who made it to adulthood: Jean (1857-1918), Nicolas (1859 -1904), Anna (1864-1929?), Pierre (1866-1925), and Jean Pierre (1870 - ?). Nicolas, Anna, and Jean Pierre immigrated to the United States, leaving Jean and Pierre to continue the Wolff line in Luxembourg. If you are confused with all the Nicolas’, Jean’s, and Pierre’s, so am I. It got pretty darn confusing rather quickly regarding who was who…especially before I could trace the genealogy on paper. Except for Jean Pierre, no other middle names are given, and it doesn't help when Nicolas (#3) was also known as Jean, but when he emigrated to the U.S. he called himself John. On his birth certificate - which Wakova Carter looked up online when we were in Luxembourg – the only name given is Nicolas. However, he is commonly referred to as John Nicholas.

Jean Pierre 

After Jean Pierre emigrated to the United States in 1889 with his older sister he went by the Anglicized version of his name John Peter. He settled in Los Angeles, worked for the railroad, and married a woman who originally hailed from Hermann, Missouri named Paulina Thomas. They had two sons, Emil (b.1891) and Gustavus (b.1893). Emil appears to have died in 1950. According to research from Shauna, Jean Pierre outlived his first son and died on February 15, 1953...just a few months after his wife who passed away in December of 1952. 

In the early years after his arrival in California there appears to have been at least some contact between Jean Pierre and his older siblings, but that seemingly waned or stopped after some time. As of this writing I have little else to share on that branch, so the rest of the American Wolff’s from Antoine and Marguerite’s line descended from either John Nicholas or Anna, and all of the Luxembourg family originated from Jean (#2) and Pierre (#7).

John Nicolas & Descendants

The birth date given above in The Family Tree appears to be correct according to John Nicolas birth certificate, but that isn't what's on his grave. "When Forrest [Godde] had the old eroding headstones [for two graves] replaced, he used the complete DOB. Before there was just the year and in one case the last two numbers were illegible. But it's all there now and the DOB for John Nicholas is the one dad [H. Patrick] always said it was - 9 March 1858" (Doris Wolff Rivera). There are also conflicting dates as to when John Nicolas emigrated to the United States. However, the date highlighted in The Family Tree (1888) is wrong. According to some of his documents (corroborated with other evidence) he claims it was 1878. It was also previously thought that he came alone. However, my sister, Shauna says, "I found a Nicolaus Wolff and a Heino Michaelis taking a ship from Antwerp to New York and arriving in the states in Nov 1881. It makes sense that JN would have traveled with a Michaelis since the Michaelis's were his cousins/uncles. There is a Henri John Michaelis (brother to his mother) who emigrated in 1847." The question as to why he left the green and rolling hills of Luxembourg for the west coast of America might be fairly straight-forward: opportunity. Miriam, who received information from Maggy, states, "I am sure he left Lux for the U.S. because his father, Antoine, died when he was 15, forcing his mother to leave the mill and take her small children to live with her brother, a priest, in a near by parish church to be his housekeeper. The older kids, like great grandpa, had to be 'farmed out'. He left Lux when he was around 20." 

When he was 32, John Nicolas married a 20-year-old Bavarian girl named Katherina Muhl (who later swapped an "a" in her first name for an "e" and changed the last name to Meehl in the U.S.). She was born Oct. 17, 1871, and at the age of 17 arrived in the U.S. The year was 1888. 

Katie (as some of her documents call her) may also have come with a relative. Her reasons for leaving her great historic city (briefly visited by Miriam and I on this trip) are unknown, but according to Kim McBride (of May and Tony Godde's line) Katie's family was extremely poor, so her reasons for coming were probably the same as John Nicolas'. She joined at least one bother in Los Angeles after apparently working her way cross-country. According to Doris, “I had always been told that she worked as a meatcutter but Aunt Anna insisted that she worked as a "mother's helper" in the home of the meatcutter in Los Angeles which is where she met Jean Nicolas. They attended what was known as "the German church," because of its predominantly German-speaking congregation. It was called St. Joseph's and was in an L.A.” Incidentally, if you notice in the Family Tree starting with Mathias Wolff, you'll see in parenthesis their occupation: miller. If that long association wasn't enough, Doris had this to say, "He (John Nicolas) married a woman whose named translated to mill." 

The two immigrants doubtlessly had other things in common too, not the least of which would be the common language of German. The Luxembourg people, as I have just discovered, tend to be tri-lingual. Not only do many of them speak the languages of their nearest neighbors, French and German, but they also have their own: Luxembourgish. Luxembourgish is more closely aligned with German then French, but is distinct from them and appears to be widely spoken, especially outside the capital city.

John Nicolas and Katie moved to the Mojave Desert and lived on a ranch. Doris states that, “At some point free land was offered in the Antelope Valley for anyone willing to settle on it which is apparently how they ended up there. According to local historian Norma Gurba, the time period when they did had heavy rainfall so the greenery and surrounding mountains might have reminded Katherine of her Bavarian home.”

When he had lived in America for 9 years, John Nicolas invited from Luxembourg his younger brother Jean Pierre and sister Anna, along with her husband Nicolas Evert, to join him in California. They arrived in 1889. Family sources say that John Nicolas and Nick Evert ran a saloon which they co-owned, however, the newspaper clipping that I included makes no mention of this. Doris says that John Nicolas “traded his share [of the saloon] for the AnaVerde property” (mentioned below).

John Nicholas and Katherine Wolff had five children: Agnes, John, Marie (May), Edward, and Herman Patrick. 

L-R: Edward, John, May, Herman Patrick (in front)

Agnes died as a baby and Doris says, “I believe Agnes was firstborn but don't know for sure - only that no one seemed to know where she was buried so that kind of rules out that she was born at AnaVerde". "She apparently only lived a short time after birth and there were no cemeteries in the area at that time. Depending on when she was born and where it is always possible she is buried in L.A.” But, as Miriam says, the baby might have just been buried 'out in the desert' somewhere since Antelope Valley was in the middle of nowhere at the time and that kind of burial wouldn't have been uncommon. According to my grandfather Herman Patrick (Pat - but for the purposes of this genealogy will be referred to as H. Patrick), in his autobiography, “We were never called by our right names: John was Boyts, Ed was Babe, and me, I was Little Kid” … “May was called Toots”.  Well, at least they weren’t all called Jean, Pierre, and Nicolas! H. Patrick goes on to say, “My brother John, who was the oldest, died when he was eight years old of an enlarged heart. The night before he died, he asked to be dressed in his best clothes because he was going to die before morning, and sure enough he did.”

John Nicolas himself died at the age of 45. He was beaten badly by a man he knew who was “drunk and quarrelsome” while giving him a ride in his wagon. H. Patrick describes it by saying, “…my father was a small man, the half-breed [Indian] a large man, so my father did not have a chance. His heart had been injured some years before and the beating did it all over again.”

“The first thing we knew about it was when the horse came home – the half-breed had taken a knife and cut the harness loose and turned the cart upside down.”

“We followed the horse’s tracks down the road and found my father where he had crawled into an old abandoned shack. We took him home, and after he had been in bed a week or so, a stray horse came to the ranch. My father recognized it, so he decided to take it back to its owner’s which was over the high mountain in the next valley. He rode one horse and led the other. That night, both horses came home, so a rescue party went looking for him and found him on top of the mountain dead. He had gotten off his horse and sat on a limb of a tree with his arms crossed on the tree trunk and his head resting on his arms.”

“I also remember after my father died, the half-breed came to the ranch, and seeing my mother come out with a six-shooter to run him off, he did not lose any time in getting off.”

By using his father’s words, my father, Kevin, has illustrated in the above paintings the final weeks surrounding the death of a man born Nicolas Wolff, formerly of Luxembourg, in the Mojave Desert. 

H. Patrick mentions his father’s sister (Anna) in his autobiography, “Going to church was an all-day affair. We would eat dinner at my aunt’s in town, Tante Evert. She was the valley’s midwife; lots of times they had no doctor, so she delivered all the babies in the valley, including me.” And on the man who married his cousin Marguerite (Anna and Nicolas Evert’s daughter), “My memories go back to the ranch and Andeverde [AnaVerde] when I was small…the time my cousin’s husband, Gar Carter, teasingly threatened to cut my leg off with a saw, I hid out all day and wouldn’t come home.”

It didn’t happen immediately, but at some point Katherine remarried a man named Wilhelm (or Willem) Stratmann and moved onto his ranch. Regarding her own ranch (seen in the photo), H. Patrick remembered “When I was seven years old (1907), the city of Los Angeles was building the aqueduct from Owens Valley to Los Angeles, and they forced my mother to sell the ranch to them at their price which was much less than it was worth. They said they were going to put storage lakes there, but they did not come within 40 miles of the valley. They resold it for a much higher price, and now you would have to be a millionaire to buy it. My mother felt so badly over it that she moved 7 miles from there and never went back to look at it. I can still see the man in his brown suit telling my mother she would have to sell.”

Katherine and Wilhelm Stratmann had three children: Anna, John Alois (Al), and Willamena (or Wilhelmina). Al married a woman named Phoebe and inherited his father’s ranch. They had no children of their own but adopted a boy named Victor. According to my dad, Al died of blood poisoning in his 50’s due to a hand wound becoming infected after cutting it on farm machinery. After Phoebe’s death Victor inherited the ranch. Willamena (Billie) had a daughter named Sonya who married a man named William Beebe. Sonya and Bill have two children and four grandchildren. Katherine died in 1939 and is buried next next to her second husband - who lived to his mid-90's - in the old Lancaster cemetery. 

So in the end, Katherine Meehl - formerly of Regensburg, Germany - is not buried next to her first husband John Nicolas from whom many of us are descended, but by a man with a different name: a name whose particular branch has ended but whose genealogy lives on the family of Sonya Beebe.

Edward Nicolas Wolff – John Nicolas and Katherine’s second oldest boy -

grew up, married a woman named Evelyn, and had five children: Robert, Margaret, Dolores, Dorothy, and Geraldine. According to my dad, “Robert died around 5 of a ruptured appendix. Dolores died around 30 of cancer. I understand there are two living, Dorothy and Peggy (Margaret). I talked to Dorothy [Pepin] last year on the phone. The last I heard Peggy lived in the central valley in California. Her married name was Murphy I think and she had a large family. My uncle Ed died...of throat cancer (he was a chain smoker). He was in his early 50's.” Shauna's research revealed that Ed Wolff died September 4, 1953. 

Anna Stratmann – In 1925, as a young woman of 18, Anna married 23-year-old surveyer Lewis Orville Wilcoxon. Their union was tragically short as Lewis died of typhoid three years later. Years passed before she became ever-linked with her half-sister May...

Marie (May) Wolff, Nicolas and Katherine’s only surviving daughter, married a man named Anthony Godde. They had seven children: Forrest, Russell, Marjorie, Robert, Barbara, Lawrence, and Gerald.

• Robert died as a baby
• Russell was killed in WWII
• Marjorie died in 2004 (children?)
• Lawrence (d 2010) had two boys – Jeff and Mike
• Gerald also had two children – Max and Renee
• Barbara married a man named Jack Reynolds, they had a daughter Kimberly who married John McBride, and their children are Carrie and Clayton
• Forrest (d 2010) had three children – Steven, Pamela, and Gary. Not infrequently did my dad mention Forrest while I was growing up. Apparently his father, H. Patrick, also had a fondness for him. It appears that out of his own pocket Forrest paid for the replacement of the eroding headstones of John Nicolas and his son John A. "Boyts" Wolff.  

Unfortunately, May Wolff-Godde died on May 10, 1933 at age 39 of breast cancer. Her half-sister Anna Stratmann-Wilcoxon first moved into the Godde home to help take care of the children, but later married May’s widower, Tony. Anna never had children of her own. Doris informed me that "May is buried next to dad [H. Patrick] in the Wolff plot, along with her infant son."

Herman Patrick Wolff married Margaret (Madge) Wegmann. Of course they are the patriarch and matriarch of many (presumably) reading this account, but for those who branch out from May Wolff-Godde and Anna Wolff-Evert, I will list the children up to my generation as I have largely been doing right along...not to exclude other generations but the intention of this writing is to give a narrative regarding the Wolff family origins in the U.S., not to delve deep into the expanding family branches as they are today – which goes far beyond my original scope.

Pat and Madge had seven children: Patrick, Kevin, Peter, Mary Lou, Doris, Margaret (Margie), and Joan.

L-R: Madge, Peter, Mary Lou, Kevin, Patrick, Doris, H. Patrick, Margie, Joanie (toddler)

• Patrick married Audrey Bonyko and had two children: George and Leslie.
• Kevin married Rosemary Weseloh and had five children: Shauna, Stephen, Miriam, Jon, and Brendan.
• Peter (legally Stanley Peter but baptized Peter Anthony) had three children: Yvonne, Kurt Peter, Katherine
• Mary Lou (officially Marie Louise) married George Bartolomie and have four children: Jeannie, Christopher, Julie, and Brian
• Doris’ five children with her former husband are Elizabeth, Monica, Guendalina (Wendy), Daniel, and Claudia
• Margie married Nils Persson and their three children are Nils III, James, and Josette
• Joan married Larry Pernicano and their four children are Anthony, Christina, Aimee, and Andrew

Anna Wolff-Evert & Descendants

Anna and Nicolas Evert both came from Koerich, Luxembourg. They had four children: Marguerite, Peter, Franz, and Herman. It appears that three of the four were brought over from Luxembourg. Franz only lived a brief span of about six months. Peter is reported to have married a woman named Ethel Hastings and Herman a woman named Bertha Kelly. I have no more information regarding them. Perhaps members of this branch can fill us in (hint hint). Marguerite married Garfield Carter and ended up in Mariposa, California. They had nine children: Anna, Herman, Mary, Grace, Pearl, Peter, Harry, George and Phyllis. Anna died on June 10, 1947. 

Photo courtesy of Trent Williams...hope you don't mind Trent! 

The only ones who appear to have descendants (but I haven't verified this) are:

• Anna and Joseph Berberich had a daughter Jo, who in turn had a son named Patrick Thistle
• Peter and Ursula Carter had daughters Joan and Mary
• Phyllis and Herbert Reece had Marilyn, Janice and Robert 
• Pearl and Winfried Williams had Gary, Trent, and Bill
• George and Marjorie Carter had sons Charles and Michael. Michael is the father of Wakova. 

The Reunion

Trent W, Pamela Godde w/sons, Wakova C, Nadine D w/son, Marc D w/daughter, Miriam, Brendan

The people whose names I have italicized in the genealogy information above - Trent Williams, Michael Carter, Wakova Carter, Pamela Godde , Miriam Wolff-McCornick, and yours truly - are the American-born representatives who attended the Luxembourg Wolff Family gathering.

Pamela also brought along the next generation: her sons Sean and Maddox. 

 

Miriam received the furthest-to-travel award since she is residing in Sri Lanka, Wakova is currently living in London, I’m in Alaska, and Pamela, Mike, and Trent all hail from California. It was truly a wonderful experience hobnobbing with these long-lost relatives and I am proud to say clearly and boldly that whatever mistakes I made in trying to cast light on our genealogical roots, it’s all Trent Williams fault. That’s right. He so unnerved me that he would attack certain parts of my head with a pair of clippers that I haven’t thought straight since. So if you see him in Mariposa (at the southwestern corner of Yosemite National Park) in his barber/beauty shop tell him that I saw an airport barber before I arrived home from Luxembourg, will you? That should put his mind a little at ease. If you’re lucky you’ll just run into Mike instead. Just watch for falling trees as he’s really handy with a chainsaw.

After taking the below photo of Mike, Wakova, and Trent (seen stuck to my sister), I realized something was wrong…

Perfect...

But the place of honor at the reunion belonged to none other than Maggy Wolff-Diedrich. Without her the American contingent of

the Wolff clan would never have descended upon Luxembourg and become acquainted with the other side of our roots…and what a joy it has been. 

Maggy with Ferd: her right-hand man and gentleman extraordinaire 

In the above group photo as well as in the photo to the left, are Maggy's daughter Nadine Diedrich and son Marc Diedrich along with their children. Marc's wife (also named Nadine) and his younger son are not shown. These photos of the reunion leave something to be desired as it does not reflect the 70-or-so people who were gathered there. Perhaps at some point I will be able to get a large group photo and share it...

In concluding, I really did marvel to be at a family reunion in which every person there (except my sister) I had never met before…and many of them spoke limited English and some not at all. And yet, strange as it was, the many gravestones we looked at

in a couple church cemeteries that said “Wolff” told me that I was indeed home. In my mind I have always been an American. My father was an American and his father was an American. I never really thought past that except in a somewhat nebulous way that my ancestors came from Europe, but it was never all that tangible. But here I was, in the land of my paternal great-grandfather and wondering why he ever left. But he did, and I, with my Yankee-born way of thinking, speech, and mannerisms, was welcomed by strangers in a strange land. Of course, this is only one part of my heritage, but it is the part whose name I have inherited, and this strange land has buried generations of dead with my surname.

Brendan Wolff

November 2014
(brenwolff@hushmail.com)

In the cathedral in Luxembourg city. Bless us indeed, Our Lady