Sara Rothschild Adler’s first child was her son Louis, born on December 4, 1884, in Niedermeier, Germany. Louis was just a teenager when he left home and immigrated to the United States. I could not find a passenger ship manifest for Louis despite hours of searching, but according to the 1910 census¹ he arrived in 1900 when he was going on sixteen years old. Louis also provided that year of arrival in a document he filed on February 11, 1918, to register as an “alien enemy” during World War I.² In fact, he was quite specific in saying he arrived on the Kaiser William in New York on April 22, 1900. Even with that information, however, I could not find him on a ship manifest on any ship arriving within two years before or after 1900.

But a few months before filing that February 11, 1918, document, Louis filed a different document required by his “alien enemy” status. In that document dated December 13, 1917, he stated that he had arrived in the US on April 21, 1901. (That’s why I searched for two years before and after 1900.)

Also, his naturalization registration dated September 14, 1921, lists April 1, 1901, as Louis’ date of arrival. And on the 1930 US census his date of arrival is also 1901.

Just to add to the confusion, the 1920 US census reports his arrival as 1903,³ and a 1925 Kansas census reports his arrival in 1895⁴ when he would have been eleven! (Louis also was inconsistent with how he reported his date of naturalization so perhaps we just should assume he was an unreliable reporter.)

In any event, Louis Adler likely arrived in New York from Germany in April of either 1900 or 1901 when he was either fifteen or sixteen years old. I have no evidence of where he first lived on arrival.

But on March 24, 1906, Louis Adler obtained a license to marry Edna Anderson in Kansas City, Missouri.⁵ According to the 1910 census⁶ and almost every subsequent US census record on which Edna appears, she was born in Denmark in about 1877-1878 and arrived in the US in 1903. I do not have any records that reveal more precisely where or when she was born, who her parents were, or when she arrived in the US.

In 1910, Louis and Edna were still living in Kansas City, and Louis was working in a butcher shop. They also had a boarder living with them.

By December 14, 1917, when Louis filed the first document (see 1917 document above) to register as an “alien enemy”  to obtain a permit to do business, Louis and Edna had moved from Kansas City to Leavenworth, Kansas, and Louis now was self-employed as a dairy farmer. The registration affidavit he filed a few months later in February 1918 (see above) also indicated that he was a “dairyman” living in Leavenworth.

Louis (despite being an alien enemy) registered for the US draft on September 12, 1918, listing Edna as his wife and his occupation as dairyman.

In looking for more information about Louis, I ran across numerous newspaper articles dated between 1918 and 1924 in which Louis was involved in either a legal dispute or a criminal charge. It seems he was a man who couldn’t escape conflicts.

Louis’ public problems seemed to start in July 1918 when his truck was hit by a train while he was taking two calves and a pig to the market in Kansas City. His truck was badly damaged and one of the calves was killed, but Louis escaped without injury. I did not find any articles following up on this incident.

But a year later on July 9, 1919, Louis was arrested and charged with selling milk that did not meet the standards required for the sale of milk in Leavenworth.

This would not be the last time he was accused of this behavior. In fact over and over again, Louis’ legal problems made the newspapers, often on the front page.

Less than a year later he was again charged with selling substandard milk. According to an article in the February 4, 1920, Leavenworth Tribune, Louis had been convicted on the earlier charge but released on a technicality because the ordinance regulating the sale of milk had been too vague. That ordinance had since been amended to provide more clarity. The February 4, 1920, article reported that “[f]our samples bought after the milk had been sold by Adler and while it was in bottles sealed by him showed, after straining, to have contained a quantity of dirt, according to [the inspector].”⁶ Yuck…

Louis’ troubles continued in June 1920 when he was sued by a local garage owner for non-payment of a bill for repairs to his truck. The headline on the article first discussing this lawsuit read, “Adler In Trouble Again.” Louis was ultimately held liable for payment of the bill.⁷

Meanwhile, the 1920 US census showed Louis and Edna in Leavenworth and owning a dairy farm where both were working. They had no children of their own, but living with them, as described on the census report, were Louis’ “brother” Julius and his three children. Julius was a widower and a baker born in about 1887. This really puzzled me. Who was Julius? I had no brother named Julius for Louis. I was intrigued. But that’s a story for another post.

Louis continued to have legal problems in 1921. In January he was arrested for disturbing the peace because he made “uncomplimentary remarks” about officials who were removing fixtures from a local hotel A subsequent article described his behavior as “loud and boisterous.” Ultimately Louis pled guilty, was sentenced to ten days in jail and subjected to a ten dollar fine; both penalties were then suspended by the judge.⁸

In April 1921, there was another train collision with a vehicle owned by Louis Adler. Louis was not driving this time; one of his hired drivers was. As the article in the April 24, 1921 Leavenworth Times reported:

Louis sued the railroad and ultimately received a verdict in his favor and a judgment of $350.⁹

On September 14, 1921, despite all these lawsuits and arrests, Louis became a naturalized citizen of the United States (after claiming on earlier census reports that he was already naturalized).¹⁰ But his legal problems did not end. In March 1922, he was sued by a man who had purchased a cow from Louis and claimed that Louis had misrepresented how much milk the cow would produce. Louis lost this case and was found liable for $150 to the plaintiff.¹¹ In July 1922, the Adlers were both sued by an ice cream company that claimed the Adlers owed $274.25 for milk and flour it sold to them.¹²

Things got worse when Louis was found guilty of violating Prohibition laws in March 1924. One article described him as the “king of the bootleggers” after two police raids found liquor on his property. A first raid uncovered 78 gallons of corn whiskey and a later one fifty gallons of corn whiskey.

A subsequent article in the Leavenworth Chronicle described Louis as a “wholesale moonshiner” and a “persistent violator of the prohibitionary law.” He was fined $1500 and sentenced to eighteen months in jail. As the article so glibly commented, he “may, on conviction, be away from the giddy whirl of society for a long, long time.”¹³

Louis appealed his conviction, but it was upheld by the Kansas Supreme Court with respect to the possession of alcohol.¹⁴

The court concluded:¹⁵

The defendants were also convicted of having intoxicating liquor in their possession. Thirteen five-gallon containers of whisky were found hidden in a barn on the Adler premises, which were claimed by them, however, to have been leased to some one else—a claim which the jury were warranted in discrediting. Other five-gallon bottles of whisky were also found along a fence under garbage cans in the street abutting on the Adler place, and in a neighboring ditch. The contention is made that there was no evidence of any of this liquor having been in the possession of the defendants, and particularly of Mrs. Adler. There was evidence fairly open to interpretation as showing an effort on the part of both to bribe the officers to abandon the raid and let them alone, after liquor had been discovered in the barn, and this with other circumstances warranted the verdict rendered.

I don’t know whether or how much time Louis spent in prison for this conviction.

And he didn’t learn his lesson! Despite this conviction, Louis continued to be involved in some aspects of bootlegging. In April 1931 he went on trial in federal court on charges of possession and transportation of liquor after authorities allegedly found fifty gallons of liquor in his car. Louis claimed he’d been framed because he had information that a group of men including the Leavenworth chief of police were selling liquor.¹⁶

I did not locate any later articles about Louis Adler after the 1931 arrest for possession and transportation of alcohol. Maybe that arrest really marked the end of his legal troubles or, more likely, maybe I just can’t find any more articles because the newspaper databases I use do not have Leavenworth papers for the years between 1925-1942.

Louis Adler died on February 1, 1942;¹⁷ he was 57 years old. Despite all the newspaper coverage of his life in earlier years, I could not locate one obituary for him. Sometime before 1950 his widow Edna remarried; her second husband was George W. Edwards.¹⁸ Edna died on May 14, 1959, in Leavenworth, Texas. She is buried in the same cemetery as both her husbands, Mount Muncie Cemetery in Lansing, Kansas. Her name on her headstone has both of her husbands’ surnames: Edna Adler Edwards.¹⁹

I wish I knew more about Louis Adler and why he was so often embroiled in legal troubles. Was it resentment on his part after being treated as an “alien enemy” during World War I? Or was he targeted because he was a German immigrant? Or because he was Jewish? Or was he just a difficult person, one who had left home as a troubled teenager? Whatever the reasons for all his troubles, it is noteworthy that his wife Edna stayed with him to the bitter end.

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I will be taking the next two weeks off from blogging, but will be back during the first week of December. Wishing you all a happy Thanksgiving a bit early!