Luse Burials

Aunt Kate Luse is buried in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland along with her husband James and her son, Charles Wilson Luse. Many thanks to Lake View for providing copies of the interment records.

These records have provided me with birth and death dates for James and Kate Luse; confirmation of Kate's middle name (Olivia), and Kate's location of death (Youngstown). This is the first record I have that shows precisely when Kate and James Luce died, and also the first with a definitive date of birth for Aunt Kate. Using this information, I should be able to find obituaries for all three relatives.

James Lemuel Luse born February 16, 1862; died August 19 1939.

Kathryn Olivia (Mehl) Luse born August 27, 1867; died April 14, 1951.

Charles Wilson Luse born May 8, 1889; died May 18, 1917.

Anna Maisenbacher as a Child

This is a picture of Anna Maisenbacher Mehl as a child, with her mother, her two sisters, and her brother.

I have a new friend on the internet named Sara, and she is descended from Anna Mehl'sister, Mary Ann Maisenbacher Voight Young. Sara also has some old family pictures, and in a few cases we have prints of the same photograph. Sara is lucky enough to have identifications on her copies. This is one such case.

This photo is of Margareth Knapp Maisenbacher and her four children – Mary Ann, John, Elizabeth, and Anna. Margareth was married to John Maisenbacher in Newark, NJ at the incredibly young age of 16. He was 29. Their children were born in about 1854 (John), 1856 (Mary Ann), 1859 (Lizzie), and 1865 (Anna). Anna was born while her father was serving in the Civil War. After John's service in the war, he must have brought the family to Mercer County, for that is where this picture was taken. How long the family stayed together after that is open to question – Margareth took her children back to Illinois, while John settled in Sharpsville. Sara's family lore says the son (John) and daughter (Anna) may have stayed with John in PA. Our Mehl history is unspecific about the early years, or even how John ended up in Sharpville. However, Frances Mehl's version of the story says that Anna came to Sharpsville as a young woman, while the rest of the family remained in Illinois. Anna clearly spent her teenage years in Illinois, as she lived in Petersburg in 1880 (based on the census) and a signature book of hers that I have in my collection shows almost her friends at that time were in Illinois.

JJ and Anna Mehl's children used to visit their relatives in Illinois at the turn of the century (1900). Frances Mehl, Anna's daughter, said they visited "Uncle Frank" Markert, but she did not say how they were related to him. Sara's records show that Frank Markert's mother, Elizabeth Markert, was in fact Margareth Maisenbacher's sister. The Markerts had also lived in New Jersey before the war, and Sara's family says that Margareth and the children traveled with the Markerts to Illinois while John was serving in the war, thinking he had died.

138 Shenango Street, Sharpsville, PA

Welcome Sheryl Mehl!

I decided to post an old picture of the Mehl house at 138 Shenango Street. This picture is undated and I don't know who the woman in front of the house might be. The reason I find this picture interesting is because of the house paint.

In the '60s and '70s, when I was there frequently, the house was painted kind of an ivory yellow, same color all over. But Victorian era houses such as this one usually had much more ornate paint schemes, with multiple colors used to accent different portions of the house. This picture shows that the Mehls did indeed have traditional Victorian approach when the house was newer and younger.

Today, the house looks very much like this picture. The new owner has repainted the house in traditional colors, so much like this photo that it's possible they found and used an old picture to lead them in the repainting. The two small stone steps in the front are still there, and the original slate/stone sidewalk is still in place, although bumpy and cracked in spots. At one point the landscaping in front of the house was so tall it covered the windows, but that has all been removed now, and smaller shrubs placed in gardens very similar to those shown in the picture. While the house suffered from neglect a decade ago, today the house is occupied and well cared for.

138 Shenango Street was built by John J Mehl in the mid-1890s, on land he purchased from the Pierces. The house originally had an open front porch, and the family decided to enclose the porch in 1905 or so. As you can see from the photo, the street was unpaved (or perhaps badly paved?). Sharpsville started paving its streets in the mid-1910s, so that may help with establishing a date for this photo.

Welcome cousin Loretta!

This blog is where I'm recording some of the family history work I am doing. I'm on an eight week sabbatical from work and am focused on the Mehl family history. My goal is to have John Mehl's life – what I know of it – written up in narrative form by October 4. I will not be writing that narrative here – I'll be drafting it in Word – but this blog will record the effort. Feel free to share the blog with others in the family and to comment!

A reminder to all – I need a contact in the Hamlin and Mitcheltree families to bring those lines up to date! If you have a current contact name and address please help!

Writing writing…

At some point the research has to stop, and the writing has to begin.

It is incredibly difficult to let the research go and begin writing. Every research effort begets more questions, another fact to check, another detail to verify. As I've researched Charles Luse, I've uncovered more and more questions. Did he and his wife have any kids? Is there an obituary anywhere that would tell us more about how he died, maybe a few notes on his funeral? Why isn't he in the Mercer County birth registers, if he was really born in Sharpsville?

I've spent more than a week now scanning in Mehl photos, and I've scanned over 120 photos at this point. I've organized the master photos into archival boxes. But there are a couple of hundred more to go. However, if I don't start writing, I won't have enough time to get a product done in the next few weeks, and that's my goal.

So… I have to let Charles Luse go.

I wrote up what I know about his life this morning. I've ordered a marriage record from Cuyahoga County to confirm or deny his marriage to Hazel Moinet. I sat down and wrote up the history, as I know it, of the Mehl photo collection. I've formatted up a book in Word that I can use as a base format. I formatted up a report in Legacy that I can use to export the information I have, and paste it into the report. Stories have to be added manually, but the life facts are there, ready to be used, and the footnotes – the sources – copy over beautifully! So my book should have solid and believable sources, something I feel very strongly about.

My goal is to have something to show cousin Bill within the next few weeks. My secondary goal is to create a tree that includes every descendant of John Mehl, but that depends on whether I can find the Mitcheltrees and the Hamlins. Please, if you are out there, give a holler!

New Info on Charles Luse

Yesterday's great new discovery was the death certificate for Charles W. Luse, son of James L and Kate (Mehl) Luce. I was aware that Charles had "died young" and I took that to mean he was a child, but in fact Charles was 28 and married when he died.

Charles was born in Sharpsville PA in May of 1889, the only son of James and Kate Mehl Luce. I have only one picture of Charles that I know of. He appears in the attached photo in the standing row, second from the left. At the time this picture was taken, Charles was about 11 years old.

I know nothing of Charles' life as of this writing. Based only on the death certificate, he lived in Cleveland, OH, and he died on May 18, 1917. He died as the result of surgical shock following an operation at Charity Hospital in Cleveland. The type of operation is illegible on the death certificate, as is the name of the doctor treating. If you'd like to have a look yourself, you can look at the death certificate online at FamilySearch.org. (If this link doesn't take you directly to the record, search for Charles Wilson Luse with exact matching set.)

At the time of his death, Charles was married and lived at 1830 E 81^st Street in Cleveland. He was a clerical worker at Carnegie Steel. His parents and their birthplaces are listed on the death certificate so there is no doubt of the correctness of this certificate. His wife signed the death certificate, but signed her name "Mrs C. W. Luse" so we have no information to tell us who she was. There is no mention of whether Charles had children. Charles was buried in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland. I have emailed the cemetery for more information, including whether James and Kate are buried there as well.

Coincidentally, an older woman named Katheron Luce died the same day as Charles in Cleveland and her death certificate is sequential to Charles'. She did not die of the same cause or in the same place, but she was buried in the same cemetery. I did not see any relationship between this person and our family.

Scanning Old Photos – a Labor of Love

For the past three mornings I have been working steadily on the scanning and preservation of the old Mehl photos. I'm not sure how many photos there are – about 150, I think – and although that didn't seem like much, scanning them is taking quite awhile. I've finished about 75 of them and have at least that many more to go.

Through my training as an archivist, I know that the best way to scan old photos is into high-resolution, uncompressed TIF images. (Note to archivists out there - I define "best" as not just ideal from a preservational perspective but also "practical" for a home user who can't spend tons of money on professional conservation.) TIF is a relatively standard format. I also know that you can't use TIF images for anything – they are 10s of megabytes in size, so I'll have to make copies in JPG in order to share the photos online. The third thing I know is that putting photos onto the computer will not preserve them. Think about it – some of these paper and metal photos I'm scanning were taken as early as the 1860s. Not many, but some. That's 150 years ago. Do you think any of my carefully prepared TIF files will be readable in 150 years? Not likely, unless some future computer geek keeps reformatting them and moving them to new disks (or whatever they are using then – microscopic carbon nanotube storage maybe?)

So in order to preserve the photos – the paper ones, my friends – I'm filing them in archival storage boxes, flat, separated by archival acid-free paper so their backings don't continue to contaminate each other. This filing method will keep them safe for another 40 to 50 years, and then some descendant of mine (or yours) will need to re-do the filing with new boxes and new paper separators. And so on, every 50 years or so, to maintain these prints for 500 years (or so), which is the maximum archival life of paper.

Assuming proper storage, of course. Which is unlikely.

One other thing the TIF files are good for – making new prints, on new, acid free photo paper, and keeping them even longer!

Family Members Needed

Looking for members of the Hamlin family, descendants of Martha Lininger Hamlin. I know you are out there, just need to find one of you so I can get in touch with you and share everything I've collected. I know you are interested, because you have posted information about the family on Ancestry.com, but you can't be contacted through Ancestry because you've set it up to prevent people from contacting you. So – please contact me!

Also looking for any descendants of Clara Mehl Mitcheltree. Walter Mitcheltree was born in Sharpsville and moved to Indiana with his wife Peggy eons ago. They both died in the 1970s but I know that their daughter Peggy and perhaps their sons had families of their own. The other Mitcheltree son was William Mitcheltree, and his daughter Dorothy has been lost to us – some family members believe she lived (or perhaps still lives) in Annapolis but without a married name I'm stumped. If you have any information, please let me know!

Catching Up

Long time between posts, I know. Over the past twelve months I've learned a lot and I'm sure I will learn even more over the coming months.

I'm taking a sabbatical from work, and while I am free of the daily commitment, I am researching and will be writing the Mehl portion of the family history. The last two weeks have been fascinating, as I have delved into records of the Mitcheltrees and Maisenbachers – both areas where I've done little research – or had little success – so far. Maisenbacher has proven incredibly difficult to research, since we knew little about the family to start with and the surname is spelled wrong in the records more often than it is spelled right. I was fortunate to discover a cousin researcher who is descended from Anna Maisenbacher Mehl's sister, and as a result knows a little more about that family. Using information she had, I was able to get marriage records from New Jersey for Margareth Knapp and John Maisenbacher. I also now know that "Uncle Frank" Markert – the mysterious relative in Bath, Illinois, was in fact Anna's first cousin. His mother, Elizabeth Knapp Markert, was Margareth's sister.

The Mitcheltrees are challenging because to our knowledge there are no living Mitcheltree descendants in Pennsylvania, or has anyone stayed in touch with any of them. Based on information cousin Bill Mehl gave me, I was able to track down a marriage record for Walter Mitcheltree, and census records through 1930 (the latest census available.) I was also able to locate a passport application for William Mitcheltree that he submitted prior to his trip to India, and it included a picture. However I did not find passport applications for his wife and daughter, and I haven't been able to find them in any census to date. William Mitcheltree and both his parents – Clara Mehl Mitcheltree and William Benjamin Mitcheltree – are buried in Haywood Cemetery in West Middlesex, PA.

This week is occupied with scanning photos and beginning to contact descendants of John Mehl so I can begin writing the family history. A few of the new facts are on my family tree on ancestry.com, but are not public yet – contact me if you would like to have access.