Last week, I introduced you to Charleston’s Bethany Cemetery. Many of the city’s German immigrants who found success are buried there. We’ll spend some more time learning about them today. But I’ll also share the tragic story of a not-so-wealthy family who suffered great loss.

The Hollings monument intrigues me because its main feature is a stack of books.

Like Jacob Seebeck (see last week’s post), Behrend Hollings was a German immigrant but he arrived in Charleston many years earlier. He, too, went into the grocery trade. The 1860 U.S. Census indicates he was operating a store with his brother-in-law, Adolf Carstens. Jacob was married to Adolf’s sister, Catherine, and together, they had several children.

Sadly, Behrend died at the age of 44 of pneumonia in 1863. But the Hollings sons went on to run the family business for many years after that. Catherine died of apoplexy in 1893 at the age of 66.

One of the grandest monuments at Bethany is for the Bischoff family. Like the Hollings and Seabeck families, Henry Bischoff had a successful grocery business but his wealth was considerably greater than that of his peers.

Henry arrived in Charleston before the Civil War and married the daughter of another prominent German immigrant, Jennie Melchers. During the Civil War, he was a Second Lieutenant in Theodore Cordes’ Company, South Carolina Cavalry Militia (German Hussars). In addition to his grocery business, he made quite a bit of money with a patent medicine enterprise selling something called Carolina Tolu Tonic.

Thanks to an article by Dr. Susan Millar Williams, I learned that in addition to the South American herb for which it was named, Carolina Tolu Tonic had plenty of sugar and whiskey. While it may not have had much of a medicinal impact, those that took it were surely pleased with the effect. Here’s an advertising card from that era promoting the product.

In 1874, Henry bought three rice plantations along the Edisto River near Jacksonboro, S.C. and renamed them collectively as Rice Hope. I wanted to post a photo of the remaining plantation home that stands but the only photo I could find required written consent to use.

Henry died in 1878, leaving Jennie to manage his fortune. The plantation stayed in the family until 1918. Jennie died in 1906 and is buried with Henry at Bethany, along with several of their children.

The men I’ve featured thus far have been “Switzers” or German immigrants who were from the merchant class when they arrived in the 1800s. But I’d like to highlight a Palatine who shares some qualities with my ancestor Jacob Claar, who arrived in the 1700s in Philadelphia as an indentured servant from Germany. Michael Kalteisen, however, went much further than Jacob ever would.

A native of Wuerrtemburg, Germany, Michael was the son of an educated but large family with little money. He arrived as an indentured servant in South Carolina in 1747. In other words, he had to work long enough to repay his master what it had cost to bring him to America. He had few rights and faced a lot of hard work.

After completing his indenture in the mid-1750s, Michael applied for and received 50 acres on Indian Creek between the Saluda and Congaree Rivers. In 10 years, he amassed more than 2,000 acres in the colony and had a spacious home that he and his wife turned into a wayfarer’s inn. He also operated a mule train between Charleston and the settlements of the upstate.

Michael was elected to both Provincial Assemblies in the mid-1770s and was awarded a captain’s commission so that he could coordinate the logistics of war materiel from the fork of the Saluda and the Congaree down to the coast. He acted as an intermediary for German Whigs in their struggle against the Tories in the center of the state.

Michael was also one of the founders of St. John’s Lutheran Church and first president of the German Friendly Society in 1766, the second oldest German Society in America. He was serving as colonel and commanding officer of Fort Johnson when he died in 1807. He was originally buried in front of the German Friendly Society’s building in Charleston but in 1908 when this monument was installed, his remains were moved to Bethany.

Kind reader Sandy O’Neale shared this final tragic tale with me via e-mail. She’s done a great deal of research into her husband’s family. It’s the story of a couple who were the children of German immigrants. They were not wealthy like the Bischoff or Hollings families by any means. However, their names were known by all of Charleston when the tragedy was over.

Theodore Knickmeyer and his wife, Rebecca O’Neale Knickmeyer, were of humble means. The son of an orchestra leader, Theodore was a carpenter by trade and a fireman by night.

Rebecca was the daughter of carpenter William O’ Neale, who was also trained as an organist. Her uncle, Thomas, was a respected music professor and organist at the French Huguenot Church. After the 1865 fall of Charleston, Union soldiers dismantled the church’s organ and were loading it onto a New York-bound ship when it was saved by a group led by Thomas O’Neale, who begged the soldiers to leave it in Charleston.

By 1898, Theodore and Rebecca had six children and were living in a third-floor apartment on Church Street. Rebecca’s father and her two brothers, Albert (16) and Caswell (14), were residing with them as well. Theodore had just brought his nephews home from the orphanage they had been living in to get a new start.

In the early morning hours of Feb. 28, 1898, fire broke out in the rear of the front room on the ground floor, spreading rapidly. A couple living on the second floor with their two children were saved, one of their children tossed out a window to a waiting fireman below. Another woman on the second floor was saved. But the fire, which  consumed the stairway that ran up the center of the building, cut off the Knickmeyers and O’Neales living on the third floor.

In those dark hours, wife Rebecca (35), Josephine (17), Katie (16), Leonora (9), Frances (6), Lillie Mae (3) and month-old Anna all died of smoke inhalation.

After breaking out a window, William O’Neale climbed out onto the roof of a shed to await rescue. But Albert and Caswell perished, too overcome by smoke to follow him.

Theodore, on duty that evening, heard the alarm and arrived at his family home too late to save his loved ones. A fund was set up to pay for their funeral expenses and they were buried together at Bethany Cemetery. Theodore remained a fireman for the rest of his life, moving to Augusta, Ga. for a time before returning to Charleston. He remarried and the couple had a daughter. He died of heart failure in 1920 in Charleston.

A tragic footnote to this story. Theodore’s brother, Albert L. Knickmeyer, was a longshoreman and a fireman with Charleston’s Engine 6. He died on Oct. 6, 1910 when he was running to the scene of a fire and was knocked over by the ladder of the fire engine as it turned the corner. He died two hours later. A widower whose wife had died of tuberculosis in 1902, Albert left behind six children. He is also buried at Bethany, his grave unmarked.

Thank you, Sandy, for sharing this story with me so I could share it with my readers today. It’s one I will never forget.

Next time, I’ll be down the street at St. Lawrence Cemetery with more Charleston stories.

Back to Charleston!

Before I dive in, I have a confession to make. The first cemetery I’m featuring is not from my Summer 2017 visit (from which the rest of my posts in this series will come from). It’s from Summer 2016. I posted a lengthy series on the African-American burial society cemeteries from that visit. Somehow, Bethany Cemetery got left out.

That fact nagged at me so when I circled back to Charleston again, I was not going to let Bethany remain ignored! Having uncovered what I did, I’m very glad I made that decision.

St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church opened Bethany Cemetery in 1856 after its first cemetery (Hampstedt Cemetery) on Reid Street was filled after several yellow fever outbreaks devastated Charleston’s immigrant German population. In the 1930s, the property Hampstedt Cemetery was located on was sold at auction and divided into lots when assessments for a street paving project weren’t paid.

Lo and behold, the Charleston Housing Authority discovered human remains on the property in 1981 whilst preparing to build on it. How they didn’t know seems a bit far fetched to me but nevertheless, close to 500 of those graves were moved to Bethany Cemetery in 2009.

Situated on over 50 acres, Find a Grave lists about 11,300 burials at Bethany. While it started as a Lutheran Cemetery, it is open to all faiths and is home to a large number of Greek burials. When I spoke with the manager, he told me he didn’t know how that happened but that they were happy to have them.

What was a chapel at one time is now the cemetery office. It is not in the best condition, nor is the receiving tomb beside it. The receiving tomb is now used as a maintenance building to store equipment, it appears.

Both Bethany and neighbor Magnolia Cemetery have receiving tombs. These are mostly found in the North because snow/ice would freeze the ground, causing delays in burial. South Carolina doesn’t have that problem. But my guess is that like Atlanta’s Westview, sometimes they had long stretches of rain and burials had to be delayed due to muddy conditions. They had to store the bodies somewhere.

There are plenty of monuments to see at Bethany, like this one.

And this one.

Most German-speaking immigrants arriving in Charleston during the Colonial period were from one of of two groups: German-Swiss (Switzers) and Palatines (from upper Bavaria and parts of southwestern Germany). The Switzers tended to be more prosperous, while the Palatines often arrived as indentured servants. I have ancestors who came to Philadelphia in the 1700s that were Palatines and indentured servants, so this makes sense to me.

While many of the colony’s German-speakers sided with the patriots, another sizable group supported the Loyalist cause. In May 1775 Charleston’s Germans formed the first German military company in America, the German Fusiliers, which distinguished itself at the Battle of Savannah.

Charleston’s German-Americans were prosperous in the 1850s, with several German groceries/retail stores, its own newspaper (the Deutsche Zeitung), a firefighting company, several fraternal and sports organizations, six militia companies, and two Lutheran churches. During the Civil War, South Carolina’s German immigrants adopted the values (states’ rights and slavery among them) of their new home. Many Germans fought for the Confederacy, resulting in their almost complete assimilation into South Carolina society.

Jacob Seebeck was one of those German immigrants who found success in Charleston. A native of Hanover, he arrived in Charleston in the 1860s and worked as a miller. He eventually owned and operated a successful grocery/liquor store that became JHC Seebeck & Sons. He did serve in the Confederacy during the Civil War in Melcher’s Company as part of South Carolina’s German Artillery.

I found little about his first wife, Anna, whose marker was beautifully carved and inscribed in German. She came to America from Germany in 1861 and died in 1869 of pneumonia. Jacob remarried to German native Christine Doecker a year later and they had several children (the eldest buried in nearby Magnolia Cemetery). She is buried near Anna. Jacob died in 1919 but has no marker.

I noticed at the bottom of Anna’s monument was the name D.A. Walker. You can barely see it in the picture. Charleston is one of the few places where I’ve been fortunate enough to find carver names on monuments.

David Walker was one of the sons of master carver Thomas Walker. A native of Scotland, Thomas arrived in Charleston after the American Revolution and worked from 1790 to 1836. He was best known for his “winged soul” markers found in many of the city’s cemeteries. Four of his sons, including David, went into the business and did well. Anna Seebeck’s marker is evidence of their talent.

It did not surprise me to find a number of children’s graves at Bethany because that’s pretty much the case whenever I visit any older historic cemetery. This one is for the Bittersohn children. But in researching their marker, I uncovered a story I was not expecting at all.

Claus Diedrich and Anna Bittersohn (misspelled Bittesohn on the marker) were the children of saloon owner H.F. Bittersohn and Meta Meyers Bittersohn. Claus was 12 when he died on May 18, 1886. His little sister, Anna, was less than a year old when she died the next day. One can only imagine the heartbreak. The motif of a hand reaching down from Heaven is one I have only seen once before in Magnolia Cemetery in Augusta, Ga. for a young woman who died in her 20s. It means a life taken much too soon.

Like Anna Seebeck’s marker, there was a name at the bottom. I was surprised  to learn that Joseph A. Purcell was black. While Charleston was less rigid in its social structure than some major Southern cities for people of color (slave or free), that Joseph not only operated but owned his own stone cutting business blew me away. Yet it appears that this was indeed the case because he appears as early as 1888 in Charleston directories.

Joseph’s age is a bit of a mystery. On some census records, his gravestone and his marriage certificate list him as being born in 1858. But his death certificate says he was born in 1867. He was the son of Joseph A. Purcell (mostly likely white) and a mixed race mother, Laura Huggins. I never found them living in the same household in census records, so I don’t think they ever married.

I do think the Joseph Purcell, Sr. that operated the Mills House Hotel in Charleston in the early 1860s may be Joseph Jr.’s father. According to what I’ve read, “dozens of people, white and black, free and slave, found employment at the Mills House.” So it’s possible that’s where he met Laura Huggins, who may have worked there.

In census records, Joseph and his brothers are listed under the name Huggins until the 1900 Census when their last name changed to Purcell. Did Joseph Purcell, Sr. decide to do right by his children and assist them in their career pursuits? How else would his son, Joseph, have gotten the financial backing to open his business or son Herbert get the money to go to medical school?

I found very little about Joseph, unfortunately. The 1913 Journal of the National Medical Association notes that he contributed a cornerstone to the new A. Markley Lee Memorial Annex of the Hospital and Training School for Nurses, a facility for young black women. He and his wife, Mary Julia Perry Purcell, had a son and a daughter.

Joseph’s younger brother, Herbert, got his medical degree from the Howard University School of Medicine in 1894. After living in St. Louis, he shared a home with Joseph and Mary Julia in Charleston until he married a woman named Mae sometime after 1930. Brother Arthur worked as a tinsmith.

I remembered the name Laura Huggins because I had photographed her grave that same summer just across the street in the African-American cemetery, Friendly Union Cemetery. Also buried there are some of her children, including Joseph, Samuel, and Herbert. In looking through my pictures, I realized I had unwittingly taken a picture of Joseph’s grave while focusing on Mae Purcell’s grave.

When you put it all together, Joseph’s work is standing in a cemetery he could not have been buried in when he died in 1932. The laws back then were against it. Instead, he was buried across the street in a cemetery for the elite mixed race and black business and religious leaders of his time. It was as close as he could get.

More to come next time from Bethany Cemetery.

Last week, we spent some time at the front of the Ellsworth Old Burial Ground. As the ground starts to slope downward, you’ll notice that the organization of the markers get increasingly haphazard. Some are lying flat, others look like they might have been moved. Some are broken.

The Wooster family presented a bit of a mystery to me. Four of the five Wooster children are buried at the Old Burial Ground. But their parents, Daniel and Louisa, are not.

Born in 1814 in Hancock, Maine to Summers and Hannah Bowden Wooster, Daniel Wooster married Louisa Norris in 1843 and settled in Ellsworth. He was employed as a millwright and farmer. They had five children, the first of whom was Helen, born in 1844. She died less than two years later.

Next came Oscar, born in 1848 and died a little over a year later. Like his sister, Oscar’s marker features a lone willow tree at the top.

Another son, Watson, was born in 1850. But he, too, would die before his first birthday. His marker differs from his siblings in that it has both an urn and a willow tree on the top.

George Wooster was born just a few months after the death of Watson in 1851. He almost made it to his third birthday, dying in November 1854. He is buried on the left side of the cemetery by himself while his other three siblings are all together further down the hill.

A few months before George’s death, daughter Mary Ella Wooster was born in August 1854. According to the 1860 U.S. Census, she was living with Daniel and Louisa in Ellsworth. She does not appear again with them in the 1870 Census. Daniel and Louisa Wooster both appear in the 1880 Census. The Ellsworth American reported the death of Louisa in 1882 and the marriage of a “Mary E. Wooster” in 1883. Daniel’s fate remains unknown.

The Herbert family also lost its fair share of children over the years. Their history is a bit more cloudy as it goes back a bit further than the Woosters.

Born in Deerfield, Mass. in 1778, George Herbert was the son of George and Honour Herbert. George Jr. came to Ellsworth to practice law in 1803 shortly after passing the bar. He is thought to be one of the first attorneys to practice in Ellsworth. He represented Ellsworth in the general court of Massachusetts from 1813 to 1815. In 1816, he was appointed county attorney of Hancock. He died at the age of 41 in 1820 of “consumption of the lungs”.

George married Charlotte Tuttle in 1808 in Littleton, Mass. They had at least five children during their marriage and three died in infancy. The first two were both named George and the third William. Interestingly, there is a photo on Find a Grave of two different markers representing all three boys. The one below is the marker I photographed.

The first George was born in late 1809 and died in October 1812. The second George was born in January 1813 and died in October 1816. William was born in 1819 and died the same year as his father, 1820.

Charlotte lived many years after George’s death. The 1850 Census shows her living with daughter Charlotte and son, Charles. She died of paralysis in Springfield, Mass. in 1869 and is buried with her husband.

Another mysterious footnote to this story is at the bottom of the marker I photographed. A William Abbot, son of William and Rebecca Atherton Abbott of Castine, is mentioned with no dates. Why he is added to this marker is unknown and how he’s related to the Herbert sons. His brother, Charles, graduated from Harvard with the class of 1825, which included Jonathan Cilley (discussed here a few weeks ago).

I did learn that William Abbot Sr. was a distinguished attorney in nearby Castine and was a representative in the state legislature in 1823, 1824, and 1826. He later moved to Bangor where he served as mayor in 1848. He died in 1849 and his burial site is unknown, as is that of his wife, Rebecca. It’s possible he knew the Herberts because of his legal career or was related to them by marriage. But nobody truly knows.

There are five Browns listed as being buried at the Old Burial Grounds, three of them being definitely connected. The first two wives of Enoch Lurvey Brown share a marker.

It wasn’t unusual for the wives of the same man to share a grave marker, especially if they died within a few years of each other. So seeing Julia and Louisa Brown on the same marker didn’t surprise me. But it did spur me to try to untangle the branches in the Brown family tree.

Enoch Brown was born in 1816 in “Eden”, Maine (which we now know as Bar Harbor) to James Pettus and Susanna Lurvey Brown. His mother died shortly after Enoch’s birth and the fate of the Brown children was in chaos as their father prepared to remarry to a widow with children of her own. Enoch was sent to live with various friends and family in the Cranberry Islands in his first years, then apprenticed out to learn the blacksmith trade. He married Julia Ann Mayo in 1838 and they settled in Ellsworth where he did quite well in his trade.

Enoch and Julia Ann had nine children during their marriage and most lived well into adulthood. Hamilton Brown, born in 1851, did not make it to his second birthday and is buried near his mother.

Julia Ann died in 1858. In 1860, Enoch married 23-year-old widow Louisa Wilbur Devereaux. They had two children, George and Cora. Louisa died in 1864 at the age of 27. Three months later, Enoch married a third time to 29-year-old Cynthia Grindle and they had four children of their own, making Enoch the father of an estimated 15 children over his lifetime. At least one of his sons also became a blacksmith.

So what became of Enoch? He died of pneumonia in 1902 at the age of 85 and is buried at Woodbine Cemetery in Ellsworth by himself, his grave unmarked. Cynthia died in 1903 and is buried by herself in Hillside Cemetery in Bucksport, Maine. Why they are buried in separate cemeteries is unknown.

It may seem disrespectful to end on a humorous note, but I can’t resist. As I was looking down the hillside, I noticed that at the foot was the parking lot for the Ellsworth Bureau of Motor Vehicles. I wonder if the town joke is that waiting in line at the local BMV can suck the life right out of you, landing you in the burial grounds.

With all seriousness, our Maine adventure was more than I could have hoped for. As always, these feelings are coupled with the realization that there are so many wonderful cemeteries I didn’t have the opportunity to see. But I did get to spend some much-needed time with my husband and son hunting for sea glass, scrambling over huge rocks, taking in some breathtaking vistas and enjoying time on the water.

This fifth trip to Maine only confirmed what I already knew. This state captures my heart in a way few others have and demands even more visits to take in all it has to offer. So that means I’ll be bringing you back with me eventually.

I hope you’ll stick around until then.

Saying good bye to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park was difficult, but it was time to head back to Portland to catch our flight back to Atlanta.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try to hit at least one more cemetery on the way to the airport. I chose the Old Burial Ground in Ellsworth for my final hop and it didn’t disappoint.

Situated on the Union River that feeds into Union River Bay, Ellsworth is one of those picturesque New England towns that typify the area. Lots of historic homes, places to grab a lobster roll or chowder, a quaint bridge. It’s a tourist’s dream.

Finding the Old Burial Ground was easy, they’re close to the bustling main artery that runs through town. You can find it behind the very handsome looking First Congregational United Church of Christ, organized in 1812. The current Greek Revival building was constructed in 1846, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Old Burial Ground, according to Find a Grave, has about 155 graves. Eighty percent of those have been photographed. It starts out level but then goes down a gradual hillside that ends in a parking lot for the Department of Motor Vehicles, of all things. More on that later!

Near the front of the cemetery, you can see two sets of three markers. In both cases, two parents are buried with an unmarried daughter between them. And in both cases, the wife died a few months after her husband.

Born in Litchfield, Maine in July 1801, Thomas Robinson was the ninth child of William and Mary Stinson Robinson’s 10 children. He attended what was then Waterville College (later to became Colby College, of which he would become a trustee) and graduated in 1827. He moved to Ellsworth after that and studied law with the Hon. John Deane. At some point, he married Elizabeth Chamberlain. They would have five children over the course of their marriage.

Thomas served at least one term in the Maine State Senate in 1838 and may have served in other capacities. In 1844, he was president of the Maine State Whig Convention. When Thomas died in 1856 at the age of 57, his obituary noted that “He was a man of quiet but earnest character, and had gathered to himself many warm personal friends, who mourn his loss.”

Elizabeth died in 1849 at the age of 40. Thomas’ will indicates he remarried at some point to a woman named Margaret and they had two children, to whom half his estate was bequeathed. He left his only unwed daughter, Frances, $500. I was impressed at the detail of his will but since he was a skilled lawyer, he wanted his final affairs to be as orderly as possible.

Frances, who is buried between her parents, died at the age of 23 in 1864. She never married.

Buried behind the Robinsons are three members of the Chamberlain family, their plot surrounded by an iron fence. Judge John Chamberlain, his wife, Mary, and their daughter, Caroline are buried there.

Born in 1781, John Chamberlain was the son of John and Mary Jackson Chamberlain. He married Mary Hopkins, daughter of James Hopkins, one of the first settlers of what is now Ellsworth.

A judge, John Chamberlain served as a justice of the peace, merchant, businessman, and farmer. He was also a Selectman and county commissioner during his life. He died in 1839 at the age of 59. Wife Mary died just a few months later.

It’s unknown how many children he and Mary had. But daughter Caroline is buried between them. She never married and died at the age of 29.

Judge Chamberlain built a Federal-style home that became known as the Chamberlain House. It was later purchased and used as a dentist’s office, known by many as the Whitney House. The building now serves as the site off the Ellsworth Historical Society and is being restored to its original glory.

Across the path, a much older slate stone marks the grave of Melatiah Jordan, the man for whom the church and the burial ground owe their existence.

Born in 1753 to Samuel and Merry Bourne Jordan, Melatiah came from a distinguished family that included the Rev. Robert Jordan, who came to Maine in 1640 from England. Samuel, a graduate of Harvard, was a member of the general court and a Town Officer in Biddeford for many years.

Samuel and Melatiah operated a lumber business together near Franklin, Maine before Melatiah settled in Ellsworth. He married Elizabeth Jellison in 1776 and they would have a total of 13 children over the course of their marriage. She died in 1819, not long after her husband.

A Revolutionary War veteran, Melatiah was often referred to as “Colonel Jordan”. He was commissioned to be the first collector of customs of Frenchman’s Bay by President George Washington. This basically meant collecting the duties imposed by the government on any vessels coming through the area, depending on the ship’s tonnage and goods carried. He served from 1789 until his death in 1818.

Apparently, it was a good time to be a customs officer because of the amount of smuggling that took place. Melatiah and his fellow collectors benefited greatly by dividing the profits that came from the seizure of ships carrying contraband. It made Melathiah Jordan quite a wealthy man over the years.

The Federal-style house Melathiah built in 1817 for his son, Benjamin, was called the Jordan House. Today it serves as the Ellsworth Public Library.

Not long before his death, Melatiah donated the land for the Congregational Church and paid for construction of a meeting house on it. The building was not completed until after he died. He also donated the land for the old burial ground, in which he is now interred.

Buried near his parents is son Benjamin Jordan. He and his wife, Sarah Dutton Jordan, had at least six children. They lived in the Jordan House for several years until he sold it to shipbuilder Seth Tisdale. Benjamin lived to the ripe age of 79.

Next time, we’ll make our way down the hillside at the Ellsworth Old Burial Ground.