Posts

My Third Great Grandmother, Amalie Ebritsch Mühlpfordt of Arnstadt and Wittenberg, Germany

 My grandmother Viola told me that her family came from Germany and that she only spoke German until she went to school. Her middle name was Bertha, after her mother’s mother, Bertha Milford. My grandmother told me that Bertha came to America and lived with her father. Since Bertha was single, “an old maid,” in the language of that time, her father expected her to take care of all the children in his new family. He told her he would never speak to her again if she married Robert Feldweg, who was almost a decade younger. She saw her chance and took it, and now we are all here. [1] Genealogy documents having come online since I talked with my grandmother, I was able to learn that Bertha’s full name was Amalie Bertha Auguste Mühlpfordt, her father’s name was Johann Carl August Mühlpfordt, and her mother’s name was Johanne Amalie Ernestine Ebritsch. [2] Germans often had three or four given names, but commonly used one. Here I will call them Amalie and Carl. In 1854, Carl left his s...
Post a Comment
Read more

EUGENE LOOMIS DOWNS – THE REST OF THE STORY

Image
  Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandfather, Herbert Eugene Downs, and used to ask him to tell me about his life when he was young. My grandfather told me that his father was Eugene Loomis Downs, and that he was born in Iowa, but moved to New Jersey when he was a teenager. Eugene married Laura Eloise Ludlow, and they had three daughters before my grandfather was born; he was the youngest. [1] My grandfather recalled that his father had a Nash dealership. (Nash was one of the first auto manufacturers). With that information, I was able to find many newspaper articles about Eugene’s career in the auto industry, including racing early cars. However, I found almost nothing about him between early 1920 and his death in 1929. My grandfather also told me how, when he was sixteen years old, his parents divorced, and he had to drop out of high school to get a job to support his mother and sister. This was in 1920. I thought this was why my grandfather didn’t have a photo of...
Post a Comment
Read more

EUGENE LOOMIS DOWNS (1869-1929)

Image
One of my maternal great-grandparents was Eugene Loomis Downs. He was among the first generation of his branch of the Downs family in two hundred years to be born outside of the New Haven, Connecticut area. The Downs name was also written as Downes half the time. We only have one photo of Eugene. In it, he is wearing a light-colored suit and holding a pipe. It appears there was a person standing next to him, who has been cut out of the photo; you can see a striped fabric next to his leg. Eugene’s parents were Edwin Barlow Downs and Margaret Timmons Downs. [1] They were married in Rahway, New Jersey on November 28, 1854 [2] and after a move to St. Louis, Missouri, where Edwin was a car conductor in 1860, [3] they moved to Rahway, Union County, New Jersey, where Margaret’s parents Archibald and Eliza F. and brothers William W. and Daniel L. Timmons lived. [4] Eugene’s older brothers and sister were born in Rahway: Edwin S. Downs on September 16, 1860, [5] George W. Downs, August 26,...
Post a Comment
Read more