Surnames

Louis F. Schillinger Death Certificate – A New Family Mystery

I got Louis F. Schillinger’s death certificate today from the NYC Municipal Archives, and now I have a bit of a mystery on my hands.

Louis F. Schillinger Death Certificate

The problem arises when I examine the section about the deceased’s parents. It says:

Name of Father of Decedent: Francis X.
Birthplace of Father: Germany
Name of Mother of Decedent: Mary Boch
Birthplace of Mother: Germany

Louis F. Schillinger Death Certificate - Detail

What??? His mother is listed as Mary Boch? I don’t know who Mary Boch is. My records all show his mother as Catherine Autretter. In census records, the mother in the household was always listed as Catherine. I’ve never seen anything where is mother is listed as a Mary Boch. (On the plus side, I finally have a document that lists his father’s first name as Francis. Everywhere else, his father went by his middle name Xaver.)

Who is Mary Boch? That is a really good question. The first thing I want to do is verify other information on the certificate to confirm that I have the correct Louis F. Schillinger.

Occupation: listed as retired architect. That’s a match.
Address: listed as 169 Van Siclen Avenue, Brooklyn. That is also a match to his last known address.
Wife: Louise. Match.
Birthdate: 29 November 1863, Highland Falls, NY. Match.
Death date: 3 November 1943. Match.

Five other facts match facts I know about my Louis F. Schillinger. I’m confident this is the right person. Back to the mysterious Mary Boch.

The next thing I want to look at is who the informant was on the death certificate. In this case, it is Louis Schillinger, his son. The son was born in 1896, nine years before the death of Catherine Autretter, so as he would have known his grandmother early in his life. The family all lived within blocks of each other while he was growing up, so he likely saw his grandparents on a regular basis. It’s reasonable to assume that he would have reliable knowledge about his grandparents’ identities.

This leaves me with a bit of a conundrum – who is Mary Boch and why is she listed as the mother on Louis F. Schillinger’s death certificate? Now I have a new family mystery to solve.

Discovering the Notebooms

My understanding of the Noteboom line of my family history ended with my third great-grandfather Walter Noteboom, who was born in 1845 in the Netherlands. That’s it – nothing more. The Noteboom line was an enigma… until recently. I had the fortunate luck of receiving some assistance from a visitor to this blog, Peter Miebies. He pointed me to a database for Dutch genealogy at www.geneaologie.nl.

On that site, I found a pedigree that included Walter Noteboom (though this pedigree listed his first name as Wolter). The Stamboom Dusseljee [Dusseljee Pedigree] was published by J. Lodewijks in 2008. We’ve exchanged preliminary emails and information – she’s sent me information from her database and I’m sending her information about what happened to Walter and his family in the United States.

I’ve been spending time going through all the information in her tree – it documents four more generations back from Walter. It’s a lot of data, and there is not a lot of source documentation, so at this point the information is largely anecdotal and/or unproven. However, there is a lot of really interesting information that will be fun to delve into.

One of the first things to pique my interest was the marriage 6th great grandparents Sjouke Sijes Noteboom and Jannetje Zweersen. Sjouke Sijes Noteboom was baptized in the Dutch Reformed Church on October 2, 1707 in Oenkerk, Friesland, Netherlands. As an adult, he was a master carpenter. He married Jannetje Zweersen on May 1, 1733 at the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. Jannetje was born on February 8, 1713 in Zwolle.

According to Wikipedia, the Oude Kerk is Amsterdam’s oldest building from circa 1213, and its oldest parish church, consecrated in 1306. Saint Nicolas is its patron saint. It is situated on Oudekerksplein, the square in the main red-light district of Amsterdam. Following the Reformation in 1578, it became the home of the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church.

Some interesting historical notes about the Oude Kerk:

Rembrandt’s children were all christened there and his wife is buried there.
The wooden roof vault dates to 1390.
The floor is gravestones. Citizens of Amsterdam were buried there until 1865 and there are more 2500 graves within the confines of the church.

Louis Schillinger Marries Louisa Bauer

Louis and Louisa Schillinger

Louis Schillinger and Louisa Bauer were married on 21 September 1885 in East New York. I recently acquired their marriage record from the New York Municipal Archives, and it contains vital clues to further research on the Bauer family. Previously, all I had confirmed was that Louisa Bauer’s mother was also named Louisa, as she shows up in census records as a widow living with her daughter and son-in-law. I did not know the father’s name or the mother’s maiden name. Now I do, thanks to this valuable vital record.

According to the Marriage Record of Town of New Lots, East New York:

Louis Schillinger married Louisa Bauer on 21 September 1885.
Both were residents of East New York at the time of their marriage.
Louis was 22 years old and Louisa was 20 years old (which would make their birth years approximately 1863 and 1865, respectively).
Louis was working as an architect.
It was the first marriage for both of them.
Louis’ parents were listed as Xavier Schillinger and Catherine Autetter. [These names were already known to me, but they are alternate spellings for his first name and her last name.]
Here’s the really exciting news! Louisa’s parents are listed as Anton Bauer and Louisa Hoefler.
The attestator [witness] was A. Nieman of East New York.

Louis Schillinger-Louisa Bauer Marriage Record

The Reilly & Douglas Families by the Numbers

I got this idea from fellow genealogy blogger History Repeating. I thought it was a really interesting idea, and using the Statistics report in the Legacy software that I use to track my research, I pulled together my own infographic about my family tree. Here is the Reilly & Douglas Families by the Numbers:

easel.ly

Hour Glass Chart for Louis and Louise Schillinger

I created a family hourglass chart to illustrate how the Schillinger generations go. I’ve also created a family group record as a .pdf file that has more information than last night’s post. To explain:

An hourglass chart shows both the ancestors and descendants of the couple at the center of the hourglass. In this case, I’m showing all the information about the known ancestors, but I have limited the descendants to 2 generations and blanked out the information on the one living person (my Pop) for privacy reasons.
A family group record is all the information about one family laid out in a very organized fashion and is a standard form in genealogical research. In this case, I’m only including the FGR for Louis F. Schillinger and his wife, which will include their children, but not their ancestors or their descendants beyond their children. I’ve only included notes from Louis and his wife.