Remember, we are searching for my grandmother Arabella's snobby sisters, who looked down on her because her husband didn't make as much money as theirs did. (see Sulzbach Pedigree chart). My choices are: Amelia, Barbara Josephine, Alexandra, Annie, or Kate. By 1870, they were 23, 21, 17, 13, and 8, but the oldest three weren't at home. Where were they?
Then, a Eureka! moment. Familysearch put New York City marriage records on their website, and they had considerable info. Turns out that the Alexandra Zoeller in the record who got married at the unlikely age of 15, really was 15! Even more incredible, she married Charles Plettau, age 19, at the rectory of the Lutheran minister. Complete heresy for a Catholic family. 15 years old, wrong boy, wrong religion? She definitely eloped.
Just as certain, she could never come home again, and probably even contacting her family would be verboten. The child who was named Alexandra Theodora after her father turned out to be a big disappointment to him. Alexandra's marriage coincides with the year the Zoeller family moved from Manhattan to College Point. Coincidence, or were they trying to get her away from an unsuitable love?
Cross Alexandra off the list of snobby sister candidates.
Eureka! moment #2, Alexandra gives her parents' names, including her mother's maiden surname, Kress. Before this, we had erroneous info on a completely different name. And that name Gertrude Kress looked familiar...oh yes, she is on the passenger list, traveling with the Zoellers from Bavaria! They did know each other before America. Thanks Alexandra!
Sadly, I can't find Alexandra after the wedding. Two years later, Charles is living with his parents, single. What happened? It didn't work out? She died? Ran away again? I don't know.
With all these records on Familysearch, I decided to make a strategy for finding Arabella's sisters. I found every marriage certificate in NYC for every person with the right first name and a surname something like Zoeller. Then I made an Excel spreadsheet with an entry for each person's name, birth date, marriage date, marriage place, and husband's name.
I started with the least common first name. That was Alexandra - there was only one Alexandra Zoeller who got married between 1860 and 1900. The second least common was Amelia - there were 8 Amelia Zoeller/Zellers who got married in that time frame. Then I followed those Amelia wives into their married lives - where they lived, who their children were. Amelia Windt and Amelia Brandner seemed to match the best - married at 18 or 20, children soon followed, living in Downtown Manhattan in Kleindeutschland (Little Germany).
New York City 1870
Kleindeutschland was an area of 1800s Manhattan that had more Germans than any other city in the world, after Berlin and Vienna. It encompassed the area from Rivington St to 14th St and the East River to The Bowery, including Avenues D, C, B, A, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. At that time, most cities were divided into districts called wards. Kleindeutschland covered Wards 10, 12, 13, and 17.
I became fascinated with Mrs. Amelia Brandner of 16th St. and 3rd Avenue. Her husband Leonard was a confectioner - a candy maker - who died young. They had 2 kids - Alice who died in her 20s and Benjamin who became a lawyer and forever bachelor living with his mother. At age 24, Benjamin had a law office on Broadway.
When he was 44, the bachelor lawyer son married 31-year-old Theresa Wallenstein and moved uptown to 165th Street, the neighborhood of Washington Heights. Grand mansions of the wealthy, including John Jay Audobon and Boss Tweed, had been built there. The Brandners lived in a huge building with accountants, real estate brokers, and a moving picture actress. Amelia went too, and of course they had a maid. In 1923 Amelia died, and the following year Benjamin and Theresa took a cruise to Barbados.
600 W. 165th St. in 2019Does Amelia fit the snobby sister profile? Lawyer on Broadway, moving picture actress, cruises....she sure does. I still needed proof she was Arabella's sister, and I found that when Benjamin gave his mother's parents' names on her death certificate.
Wait, there's more. Theresa died later on that year. Benjamin must have liked the shipboard life. The next year, at age 57, he married 20-year-old Fanny Pilgrim. A cruise to Jamaica followed in 1927, and one to Havana the year after that.
Benjamin died at age 60 shortly before the stock market crash. As the Depression begins, we find 24-year-old Fanny paying $140 a month rent, the equivalent of over $2000 today, in the huge apartment building. Her neighbors are salesmen, real estate brokers, and a silk importer from Egypt. Who does Fanny have living with her? Her parents, an iron moulder from England and a housewife from Kentucky.
Fanny lived to be 91 and never re-married. If only I had found her in the 1990s! What a story she could have told.
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