Thomas and Anna Shultze

My grandfather's name was Thomas Shultze.  He was born in 1880.  My grandmother, Anna Shultze, was born in 1885 and died on October 19, 1977.  I don't know her maiden name; for some reason the name "Schruck" sticks in my mind.  Their parents were all born in Germany.  

They had 5 living children, 3 boys and 2 girls, according to the 1920 United States Federal Census:

• Samuel - 15
• Isabel - 14
• Laura - 8
• Isadore - 4
• Sylvester - 2

I recognized my aunt's name (Isabel), my mother (Laura), and maybe one of my uncles. That would be my Uncle Lester if the name on his birth certificate was Sylvester.  They all lived in Waushara County, Wisconsin, in the village of Redgranite (I think).  That would leave the names Samuel and Isadore to match up with the uncle names I knew, Ed and Leonard.  Ed was the oldest of the group, which would make him Samuel.  That would leave Isadore to Leonard.  VERY confusing!

To add to the confusion, Ed (Samuel ?) was married to a charming German woman by the name of Anneliese.  They had two boys, Andy and Jan.  Later, Ed and Anneliese divorced and Anneliese married Ed's brother, Lester (Sylvester ?).  Needless to say, I don't remember big family reunions.

Here are pictures of Uncle Leonard.

Uncle Leonard and Aunt Ann Enroute to Portland

Taken in Centralia while visiting Dorothy

Who Dorothy is remains a mystery.

Mt. Tabor Park in Portland

Uncle Leonard and Aunt Ann went on to have a daughter named Bonnie Lee.  My brother, Tom, met Bonnie Lee and her husband, a Mormon who worked in a steel plant.  Their last name was Prather.  Tom was on an EPA trip to Corvallis at the time.

Uncle Leonard died quite young.

Uncle Ed died of leukemia.

When I was working at American Breeders Service in DeForest, Wisconsin, in the late 1980's, I traveled to Fort Collins on business and got to see Anneliese and Andy.  Lester was already dead by that time or else he was gone somewhere.

Anyway, Andy was an engineer who set up the computer portion of traffic lights.  I knew quite a bit about the computers back then and I was amazed by how simple this was.  There was a program back then called "Carbon Copy" that would allow you to remotely dial in to another computer that you had privileges to access.  Andy used this to fine-tune the timing of traffic lights when he was called upon to do so when he was many miles away from the lights he set up.  Jan was a banker, I think somewhere in Illinois.


Somewhere along the way, Shultze became Schultz.  It would make ancestry research a lot easier if people always used their given names and their original surnames!

I remember my grandma as never having teeth, never wearing glasses but using a magnifying glass to read large print, always having a fresh cup of green tea by her side, always wearing warm slippers, and usually sitting in front of a space heater.  (Somehow I became my grandma!)  I always wonder what she looked like when she was young, how she met my grandpa, and what their lives were like. 

Mrs. Thomas Schultz/Shultze (My Grandma)

Here's a picture of my grandma holding my twin cousins who were about 7 years older than me.