The Morreau Family Discovered, With the Help of Many: Part I

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As I wrote in my last post, it took the combined efforts of many people to put together the full picture of my Morreau cousins.  Without Wolfgang and the handwritten trees, Shyanne, Michael Phillips, Paul, Dorothee, and Friedemann Hofmann, I never would have been able to find all the names and dates. Dorothee provided the final and essential link to Friedemann Hofmann, who sent me images of the actual records and of the gravestones of the Morreau family, helping me to corroborate the factual assertions I’d seen on secondary sources. Many of the records and images in this post came from Friedemann. Thank you all again for your help!

The records establish that my four times-great-aunt Caroline Seligmann (1802-1876), sister of Moritz Seligmann and daughter of Jacob Seligmann and Martha Mayer, was married to Moses Morreau, son of Maximilian Morreau and Janette Nathan, on October 8, 1830.

Marriage record of Caroline Seligmann and Moses Morreau October 8, 1930
Wörrstadt Marriage Record, 1830-10

P. 2 of Marriage record of Caroline Seligmann and Moses Morreau

Moses was born in Wörrstadt, Germany, on June 28, 1804.

Moses Morreau birth record, June 28, 1804
Wörrstadt birth records, 1804-34

Moses and Caroline settled in Wörrstadt, which is less than twelve miles from Gau-Algesheim where Caroline’s parents lived.

 

Moses and Caroline had two children, both of whom were born in Wörrstadt: Levi (Leopold), who was born September 25, 1831, and Klara, who was born July 9, 1838. This post will focus on Levi and his descendants; the one to follow will focus on Klara and her family.

Birth record of Levi Morreau
September 23, 1831
Wörrstadt birth records 1831-39

Levi married Emelia Levi. Emelia’s death record reveals that she was born in Alsheim, Germany, in 1836. Levi and Emelia had five children, all born in Wörrstadt where Levi was a merchant: Markus (1859), Albert (1861), Adolf (1863), Barbara (1867), and Camilla Alice (1874).

Markus Morreau birth record, August 27, 1859
 Wörrstadt birth records, 1859-36

Albert Morreau birth record, Aug 18, 1861
Wörrstadt birth records 1861-51

Adolf Morreau birth record, May 15 1863
Wörrstadt birth records 1863-21

Barbara Morreau birth record, April 11 1867
 Wörrstadt birth records 1867-27

Camilla Alice Morreau birth record, July 14 1874
Wörrstadt birth records 1874-39

Adolf died when he was nine years old in 1872.

Adolf Morreau death record, June 16, 1872
Wörrstadt death records 1872-29

Adolf Morreau gravestone

Levi’s mother Caroline Seligmann Morreau died in 1876, and his father Moses Morreau died the following year, both in Wörrstadt. Caroline was 74 when she died, and Moses was 72.

Caroline Seligmann Morreau death record, April 7, 1876
Wörrstadt death records 1876-13

Moses Morreau death record, March 9, 1877
Wörrstadt death records 1877-10

Carolina Seligmann Morreau gravestone

Moses Morreau gravestone

After their grandparents died, both Markus and Albert Morreau left Germany. By 1881, Markus Morreau, the oldest child of Levi and Emelia and oldest grandchild of Caroline and Moses Morreau, had moved to Withington, England, where he was living as a lodger. Markus became a naturalized citizen of England in 1892:

UK Naturalization Certificate for Markus Morreau
The National Archives; Kew, Surrey, England; Duplicate Certificates of Naturalisation, Declarations of British Nationality, and Declarations of Alienage; Class: HO 334; Piece: 19

By 1902, Markus married Alice Frederique Weinmann, who was born in 1880. They had three children: Rene (1902), Cecil (1905), and Madeline (1908). (England & Wales, FreeBMD Birth Index, 1837-1915.)

Markus’ brother Albert also left Germany as a young man.  According to the biography of Albert Morreau in A History of Cleveland, Ohio: Biographical (S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1910) by Samuel Peter Orth, after Albert finished school, he went to Frankfurt, where he worked as an apprentice for five years in a dry goods store. He then went to England, where he worked as an assistant correspondent in an export house. After two more years, he left for America and settled in Cleveland, where he worked as stock clerk and salesman for Landesman, Hirschheimer & Company for five years.

After being in the US for five years, Albert started his own business manufacturing gas lighting fixtures in 1887. In 1893, he married Lea Nora Heller in Cleveland, Ohio.

Marriage record of Albert Morreau and Leanora Heller
Cuyahoga County Archive; Cleveland, Ohio; Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Marriage Records, 1810-1973; Volume: Vol 38-39; Page: 352; Year Range: 1892 Feb – 1893 Jul

Leanora, as I’ve written before, was born in Ohio in 1867. Her parents were also American born. Albert and Leanora had two sons, Myron (1895) and Lee (1898).

Meanwhile, Albert’s company, Morreau Gas Fixture Manufacturing, was expanding. It grew from a small three-person operation in 1887 to a company that employed over 150 people by 1910; the company was selling its products throughout the United States and was one of the largest businesses in Cleveland, according to Orth. The company did its own product design and had “a reputation for great excellence.” Orth, p. 844. Thus, Albert Morreau found great success in Cleveland.

Albert Morreau and Leanora Heller Morreau 1915  United States Passport Applications, 1795-1925,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVJP-423K : 4 September 2015), Albert Morreau, 1915; citing Passport Application, Ohio, United States, source certificate #49162, Passport Applications, January 2, 1906 – March 31, 1925, 234, NARA microfilm publications M1490 and M1372 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 1,514,173.

As for Albert’s two sisters back in Germany, Barbara/Bertha (generally known as Bertha) married Isidor Aschaffenburg in Wörrstadt on July 29, 1886.  She was nineteen, and he was 36. Isidor was a merchant and was born in Albersweiler, Germany, the son of Rabbi Hertz Aschaffenburg and Nanette Mayer, on December 4, 1849. Isidor and his parents were living in Cologne at the time of the marriage, and Bertha soon relocated to Cologne with her new husband.

Marriage record of Barbara Morreau and Isidor Aschaffenburg, July 29, 1886
Wörrstadt marriage records, 1886-16

Isidor and Bertha had two sons born in Cologne: Paul, who died before he was a year old while visiting Bertha’s parents in Wörrstadt, and Ernst, who was born July 15, 1890.

Death record and gravestone for Paul Aschaffenburg, July 27, 1889
Wörrstadt death records 1889-31

Sometime before 1897, Levi Morreau and his wife Emilia and their daughter Camilla Alice (generally known later as Alice) moved to Monchengladbach.  Monchengladbach is located north of Cologne and is about 140 miles from Wörrstadt. Since Bertha and Isidor were living in Cologne, I assume that Levi, Emilia, and Alice moved there to be closer to their daughter and surviving grandson sometime after their grandson Paul died in Wörrstadt in 1888.

Levi Morreau died in Mochengladbach on July 12, 1897:

Levi Morreau death record
Ancestry.com. Mönchengladbach, Germany, Death Records, 1798-1950 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.

On March 31, 1898, eight months after her father’s death, Alice, the youngest child of Levi and Emilia Morreau, married Otto Mastbaum, a doctor, in Monchengladbach.  Alice was 23, and Otto was 31.  Otto was born in Cologne on May 16, 1866, the son of David and Helene Mastbaum. Alice and Otto did not have children.

Marriage record of Alice Morreau and Otto Mastbaum
Ancestry.com. Mönchengladbach, Germany, Marriages, 1798-1933 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.

Emilia Levi Morreau died on July 5, 1913, in Monchengladbach; she was 77 years old.

Death record for Emilia Levi Morreau
Ancestry.com. Mönchengladbach, Germany, Death Records, 1798-1950 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.

Sadly, both Bertha and Alice were widowed at relatively young ages. Otto Mastbaum, Alice’s husband, died in 1919, according to sources in Cologne; he was fifty-three, and Alice was only 45. Bertha’s husband Isidor Aschaffenburg died on May 26, 1920; he was seventy, and Bertha was 53.

In addition, Bertha and Alice’s older brother Markus died in England on March 6, 1920, when he was only sixty years old. (England & Wales, Death Index, 1916-2006 on Ancestry.com)

Alice and Bertha remained in Monchengladbach, Germany. They traveled together to the US on the SS Albert Ballen in April, 1924, to visit their brother Albert in Cleveland.

Bertha and Alice listed on ship manifest
Year: 1924; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 3482; Line: 1; Page Number: 6

Apparently they also visited in 1925 and toured much of the United States.

Alice visited Albert again in 1932:

Year: 1932; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 5213; Line: 1; Page Number: 10

Albert died the following year on June 11, 1933; he was 71.

Albert Morreau obituary

His son Myron died just three years later on April 16, 1936. He was only 41 years old and had not married.

Myron’s first cousin Cecil Morreau, the son of Markus Morreau and Alice Weinmann, also died young; he died in England on March 2, 1939, just a month before his 34th birthday.

Burial record of Cecil Morreau
Ancestry.com. Surrey, England, Church of England Burials, 1813-1987 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.
Original data: Anglican Parish Registers. Woking, Surrey, England: Surrey History Centre

Sometime after 1935 and before 1939, both Alice and Bertha as well as Bertha’s son Ernst Aschaffenburg escaped from Nazi Germany and moved to England. Bertha died not long after in December 1939; her son Ernst died on May 16, 1943; he was 53 years old. Alice died four years later on September 15, 1947; she was 73. (England & Wales, Death Index, 1916-2006 on Ancestry.com)

Thus, by 1947, all of the children of Levi Morreau and Emilia Levi had died as had four of their seven grandchildren. Only three grandchildren remained: Rene Morreau and Madeline Morreau, the surviving children of Markus Morreau and Alice Weinmann, and Lee Heller Morreau, the surviving son of Albert Morreau and Leanora Heller.

Lee died in 1962 when he was 63.

The only grandchildren of Levi Morreau and Emilia Levi who lived past seventy were Rene, who died in 1982 a few months shy of his 80th birthday, and Madeline, who somehow beat the odds in her family and lived to 88, dying in 1996.

Fortunately, despite the fact that so many of Levi Morreau and Emilia Levi’s grandchildren died at relatively young ages, there are living descendants. One of them is my cousin Shyanne, whose comment and research started me on this journey to learn about my Morreau relatives.

The next post will be about Klara Morreau, the daughter of Caroline Seligmann and Moses Morreau.

 

 

34 thoughts on “The Morreau Family Discovered, With the Help of Many: Part I”

  2. I was surprised to see the Wörrstadt records look so much like the records in Luxembourg. I wanted to zoom in on the text of the document before reading your post to see if you had relatives marrying in Luxembourg. Not having worked with German civil records, I thought they all looked like the other set of records with the large spacing and on a full page. Congratulations on all the help you received – your blog is a great example of cousin bait.

    Liked by 1 person

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    • They look like many older German records I’ve seen. Now I can’t really read them and had to rely on Friedemann for the translation. I sure wish Germans had used “regular” script so I could at least make out the words!

      Liked by 1 person

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    • Thanks, Sharon—you are doing incredible work yourself! I am enjoying the Italian records; I always hoped I’d find I had some Italian ancestor! And believe me, embedding a map is easy or I wouldn’t do it!

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    • Hi Lotte! Great to hear from you. Caroline Seligmann was your 3x-great-aunt. She was the sister of Moritz Seligmann, who was your great-great-grandfather and my 3x-great-grandfather. Moritz was the father of Hyronimus, who was the father of Laura, who was your mother’s mother. 🙂 Hope all is well with you and your family. xoxo

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  6. Currently I am working on trying to work on Maximillien…. Seeing if Moses had any siblings or if there are any ascendants further up…. I actually have run across a couple “almosts” like Karl Marx’ father or brother but the dates dont actually coordinate so i tossed it out however one lead involves a Cain/Cahn family whos son is a mordechai marx, born 1770, which is also what maximillien has been listed as in some of our findings…. Which could mean he was adopted into the Cahn family, or adopted out, or even not at all. There was no source on what I found so it is still needing research to confirm it….

    However, I am so greatful that I could help you put these peices together, not only to find my own family, but to help you find some too. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

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    • Thanks, Shyanne! I hope you are able to learn more about Moses’ parents and siblings. Of course, they are not related to me except by Moses’ marriage to Caroline. But if I can help in any way, let me know. 🙂

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  7. My question to you working on the Morreau family – a unique last name for Jews in Germany.
    It sounds very French and this part of Germany was ‘occupied’ by the French during the Napoleanian wars. Part of French reforms, ca. 1810: Jews had to adopt a last namen at once!!
    So in this territory, Jewish families were forced to take last names earlier than in many other areas – p.e. across the Rhine in Nassau …..

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    • I think you’ve answered the question, haven’t you? This part of Germany is close to France, and I read somewhere that Jewish people in the region liked Napoleon because he granted Jews more rights (while also taxing them). So perhaps a French sounding name was attractive to those German Jews in that region and at that time?

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  9. I am not only amazed at the records you have, but at the patience of you and others to figure out what they mean. I lose patience with those types of records and put them aside never to be looked at again. And I also love to hear someone died when they were “only” 60 – not that they died but that 60 is not considered old.

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    • Well, I do rely on others to translate the German records and Hebrew gravestones. I could never do it alone. And having crossed the 60 marker myself a few years back, I consider anything before 85 to be an early death. And in a few years, I will move that up to 95!

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  10. First – I LOVE seeing fingers in one of those first record images! That means someone was touching the actual book the record was originally recorded in. That is some genealogy-goosebump-causing excitement right there!

    I was so happy not to read about a single Holocaust death in this family. It cheered my heart a bit. I’ve been reading “Survivor: A portrait of the survivors of the Holocaust” by, Harry Borden. I am really enjoying it, it’s so beautifully presented and powerfully moving, but sad. So reading about your family and hearing they made it safely out of Germany was good for my soul today.

    I’m happy for you and your cousin connections. Exciting stuff!

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  11. This is an amazing collection of documentation. I am happy you have made such connections and with those who are so willing to help. This is fascinating. I’m thankful for today’s technology in help with translating documents, email, and on-line record collections. My mom did her research all long hand and snail mail. I need to remind myself how lucky I am to have such help. Looking forward to reading about Klara.

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    • I know—I can’t imagine doing this in the pre-internet days. If I had to wait to travel to an archive or even sit and wait for snail mail, I’d have given up long ago. I admire those like your mother who had the patience and persistence to do it the old-fashioned way.

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  12. Hi Amy
    My name is jo and my grandfather was Cecil Morreau who sadly died in his 30s but he has 3 surviving children who are all still alive. My mother, mary and aunt Rosalind live in Ireland and my uncle Patrick lives in London , England . They are now 79,81, and 83. I know my uncle especially has quite a bit of family history information … I would be very interested in conmunicating more with you and linking up distant cousins- there are quite a few of us here in England and Ireland ! My youngest daughter is called Amy by the way 😊
    Kind regards
    Jo Flinn nee Sheridan and my mum was Mary Morreau!

    Liked by 1 person

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    • Hi Jo! I am delighted to hear from you and to learn more about your grandfather and his family. I knew that he had died young, but I do not have any information about your grandmother or their three children. I will email you so that we can communicate more directly. THANK YOU!

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  13. My name is Annette Morreau, daughter of Rene Morreau and Beryl Scawen Blunt. I am 73 years old and live in London. My elder sister Jill Renee Morreau is married to Joseph Rouleau and lives in Montreal.
    I would like to know more about the name MORREAU. It is very unusual. It is a very, very common name in France but spelt MOREAU. How did it acquire a second r?

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    • Hello, Annette! We are fourth cousins, once removed! We are both descendants of Moritz Seligmann of Germany. His granddaughter Caroline married Moses Morreau in 1830. He was born in Worrstadt, Germany in 1804. I think the family might have originally spelled the name Marou, but it’s hard to decipher the old German script. By the time your grandfather Markus Morreau was born in 1859, the family was definitely spelling it MORREAU. I have lots of records from that era with that spelling. I will email you so we can share these documents and more! Thanks again for reading and commenting!

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  14. Pingback: A Morreau Family Update: In Memory of Patrick Morreau 1934-2019 | Brotmanblog: A Family Journey

  15. Pingback: Mystery solved! The Marriage of Marcus Morreau and Alice Weinmann | Brotmanblog: A Family Journey

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