Tag Archives: worrstadt

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.

 

 

Another Mystery Solved: Who was “Leonara Morreau”?

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It still amazes me that people find my blog, leave a comment, and then lead me to answers to questions about my family’s history.  Just a month ago someone named Shyanne left a comment that led me to answers to another question I had been unable to resolve several years ago.

First, some background: Back in November 2014, I posted about a book I had received from Bernie Brettschneider of Gau-Algesheim, Die Geschichte der Gau-Algesheimer Juden by Ludwig Hellriegel (1986, revised 2008)[The History of the Jews of Gau-Algesheim]. It was my first source of detailed information about my Seligmann relatives, and I had struggled to translate as much as I can.

One of the entries in the book mentioned a woman named Leonara Morreau, as I wrote back then:

There is also an entry for Elizabeth nee Seligman Arnfeld, who was born March 17, 1875.  She had moved to Mulheim on the Ruhr in 1938 and wanted to emigrate to the United States.  A woman named Leonara Morreau[1] had vouched for them, but for unknown reasons they were never able to emigrate.  Elizabeth died on January 23, 1943 at Theresienstadt.  Her son Heinz survived the war.

Eventually, once my cousin Wolfgang Seligmann found me, I learned more about “Elizabeth” Bettina Seligmann Arnfeld and her family, as I wrote about here and here. But back in November, 2014, I had not yet found Wolfgang nor had I yet found Beate Goetz, and my knowledge of my Seligmann relatives in Germany was very, very limited.

Bettina (Elizabeth) Arnfeld nee Seligmann

But I had been curious about this woman “Leonara Morreau,” and had tried to figure out her connection to the Seligmanns. Why had she vouched for them? Why hadn’t she been able to save them? As I wrote back then:

I found Leonara Morreau’s obituary and researched her a bit, but know of no reason that she would have had a connection to the Seligmanns in Germany.  She was born, married, and lived in Cleveland.  Her husband died in 1933, and she died in 1947.  As far as I can tell, they never traveled to Germany.  Leonara’s brother was Isaac Heller, who was also born in Cleveland, as was their father, Charles Heller.  Although their grandfather was born in Germany, it was not even in the same region as the Seligmanns.  Perhaps Leonara was active in trying to bring German Jews to the United States during Hitler’s reign, but I can find no evidence of that.  Her obituary only states that she was active in charitable and religious causes.

Stolperstein for Bettina Seligmann Arnfeld

And that was as far as I got. I put it aside and continued to work on my Seligmann family.  Beate connected with me a few weeks after that post in November, 2014, and Wolfgang found me in February, 2015, and I was then on an amazing and exciting run of good luck with their help and the help of Wolfgang’s mother Annlis. Many if not most of the holes in the Seligmann family tree were filled with our collective efforts. But I never returned to the question of Leonara Morreau.

Until last month when Shyanne commented on my blog:

Leonara Morreau. Now, I’m unsure if there are multiples in the same family, but in my ancestry, my great great grandfather Albert Morreau was married to a Lea Nora Morreau, multiple docuuments spell it differently, though. But she too, was born an Heller. Here in the states. However, Albert was born in Germany, which is where the connection from Germany could be.

When I read Shyanne’s comment, I could barely remember the whole question of “Leonara” Morreau (whose name is generally spelled Leanora but sometimes Lenora or Lea Nora). After all it had been almost three years before and just a passing question in the overall search for information about my Seligmann family. But I was intrigued and emailed Shyanne right away.

After a flurry of emails, exchanges of information, and a review of the Seligmann family tree, Shyanne and I had the answer. And it was right before my eyes. In all my initial research about Leanora back in the fall of 2014, I’d never thought to search for information about her husband, only about Leanora herself. The answer lay with her husband.

As Shyanne had said, Leanora was married to a man named Albert Morreau. And although there’d been no Morreaus in my tree in November 2014 when I wrote that blog post that mentioned Leanora, there was now an Albert Morreau in my Seligmann family tree. I had entered him back in July 2015, just eight months after I’d written the post about Leonara Morreau, but I’d never made the connection.

Albert was one of three children named on the handwritten family tree Wolfgang had sent me that we believe was written by Emil Seligmann.  I had written this on the blog on July 7, 2015, describing Emil’s tree:

The next child of Jacob and Marta, Caroline, married Moses Moreau (?) of Worrstadt, and they had four children whose names are written underneath; the first I cannot decipher (maybe Markus?), but the other three are Albert, Bertha, and Alice.

Page 1 of Emil Seligmann’s handwritten tree (snip)

That is, the Albert Morreau who married Leanora Heller was my cousin—he was a descendant of Jacob Seligmann and Martha Mayer, my four-times great-grandparents, through their daughter Caroline, the sister of my 3x-great-grandfather, Moritz Seligmann. Caroline had married Moses Morreau (it is correctly spelled with two Rs) of Worrstadt.  According to this tree, Albert was Caroline’s son.

I shared this information with Shyanne, but then found a biography of Albert from A History of Cleveland, Ohio: Biographical (Samuel Peter Orth, S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1910), that said that Albert’s parents were not Moses and Caroline Morreau, but in fact were named Leopold and Amelia Morreau:

Albert Morreau biography excerpt, A History of Cleveland, Ohio: Biographical (Samuel Peter Orth, S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1910), pp. 843-844

Shyanne found several other sources providing the same information. Shyanne and I were confused—was this the same Albert Morreau? And if so, who were Leopold and Amelia Morreau? Could all these sources be wrong?

Then I found UK naturalization papers for Markus Morreau, the brother of Albert, and those also stated this his parents were Leopold and Emilia Morreau. So why did Emil list Albert and Markus as the sons of Moses and Caroline on his family tree? And who was Leopold Morreau?

UK Naturalization papers 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
Description
Description : Piece 019: Certificate Numbers A6901 – A7300

When I looked again at the papers I’d received from Wolfgang, I realized that Wolfgang had sent a second handwritten family tree a few days after he’d sent the tree done by Emil.  On July 9, I wrote this on the blog:

This page [page seven of the second handwritten tree] is devoted to Caroline Seligmann, who married Moses Moreau from Worrstadt, another town not very far from Bingen.  Underneath are four names that the creator of this tree originally labeled as the children of Caroline and Moses, but then crossed out and wrote “grandchildren.”  The names are the same as those on the earlier tree—Markus, Albert, Bertha, and Alice.  Next to Markus it says “England,” and next to Albert it says “Amerika.” 

Second Seligmann handwritten tree, page 7

So Albert and his siblings Markus, Bertha, and Alice were not the children of Caroline Seligmann and Moses Morreau, but their grandchildren.

If the sources naming Albert’s father as Leopold Morreau were correct, that meant that Caroline and Moses Morreau had a son named Leopold. When Shyanne and I re-examined the page from the second handwritten family tree, we both concluded that one of the two names at the very bottom was Leopold Moreau. What do you think (see image directly above)? What do you think the second name at the bottom is?

UPDATE: I just figured out what the second name is! I will reveal it in a later post. 🙂

Meanwhile, Shyanne kept researching and so did I. And we ran into some incredible luck when I contacted Michael S. Phillips, a tree owner on Ancestry who generously shared with us his research on the Morreau family. Then two weeks after Shyanne’s initial comment, I received another comment about the Morreau family from a man named Paul; I emailed Paul and learned that he was related to Otto Mastbaum, who had married Albert Morreau’s sister Alice. Otto Mastbaum was Paul’s great-grandmother’s brother. And Paul filled in more gaps on the Morreau family. And I also learned more about Bertha Morreau and her husband Isidor Aschaffenburg with help from my friend in Cologne, Aaron Knappstein. And then my friend Dorothee connected me with Friedemann Hofmann, a man in Worrstadt who was able to send me the birth, death, and marriage records for the entire Morreau family from Worrstadt.

In subsequent posts, I will follow up and fill in these details and tell the full story of my Morreau cousins. But for now I just want to thank Shyanne (who I now know is my fifth cousin, once removed,), Paul, Aaron, Michael, Dorothee, and Friedemann for all their help in filling in these gaps in the Seligmann family tree.

This whole experience has been a real lesson to me. Even when you think you are “done,” there is always more to learn. And there are always incredibly generous people out there to help you do so.