Notes

1. Otto Wurster, Heimat-Geschichte: Plochingen (Plochingen, 1949), p. 412. Manfred Reiner, a local Plochingen historian, shared with me the history of the ownership of the Plochingen mill in this period. The other half of the mill had been controlled by Georg Friedrich Knoll since 1754. Prior to that it had been owned by the Witzig family (1750-54) and before that, the Betschelen family. Manfred Reiner, Letter to Ken Wolf (11/25/98).
Wurster's history (ibid.) indicates that Johann Jacob had been a miller in Jesingen (Kirchheim) before burying into the mill in Plochingen. But the records for Jesingen are in poor condition and in some cases impossible to read. Helmut Conz, the current pastor of Jesingen, told me (in a letter dated 12/16/98) that there are still Wolfs living in his community and that an unwritten tradition has it that their ancestors came to Jesingen about the year 1700 from Heiningen near Göppingen. The Heiningen records also contain references to a Wolf family, but we have so far been unable to find the "missing link."

3. The Plochingen Familienregister indicates that Jacob Wolf married "before 1734."

4. The Plochingen Familienregister specifically states that Elias was born "nicht in Plochingen" but does not say where he was born.

5. Plochingen Familienregister.

6. The duke at the time was Carl Eugen.

7. Schrieben des Herzoglichen Regierungsrats an das Herzogliche Amtsoberant Stuttgart vom 25. Januar 1760.

8. Stadtarchiv Plochingen, Band B 300.

9. Manfred Reiner, Letter (11/25/98) to Ken Wolf. On February 11, 1778, Knoll sold the entire mill to Nicolaus Bauer from Denkendorf. Reiner identified Hofman as Johann Jacob Wolf's son-in-law, based on the use of the word Tochtermann in the contract. But church records make it clear that the only daughter of Johann Jacob Wolf who lived long enough to marry (i.e., Anna Maria; see text) married another miller named Konrad Weinhard in 1758. Moreover, it would be odd for Wolf's son-in-law to sell his share of the mill to Wolf's estranged partner.

13. He is listed as "Bürger und Beck" in the Plochingen records and "Bäckermeister" in the entry for his son in the Tailfingen Familienregister.

14. Otto Wurster, Heimat-Geschichte: Plochingen (Plochingen, 1949), p. 352.

16. Familienregister, Aichschieß, fol 248. Born in Plochingen (2/13/1802), Christian's wife Regina was the daughter of Christian Gottlob Maier, "Bürger und Weingartner" and Regina Katharina Geibel. The name "Gottlob" suggests a family tie between Regina and her sister-in-law's (Kunigunde's) husband Ludwig Gottlob. Christian and Regina had seven children: Heinrike Eberhardine Wolf (b. 11/12/1827; married August Heinrich Haas, a master woodworker in Eßlingen, on 8/14/1856), Regina Katharina Wolf (11/13/1828; married in 1855), Johanna Christiane Wolf (6/2/1830-6/16/1830), Christiane Rosine Wolf (9/25/1831-10/13/1831), Christian Friedrich Wolf (10/21/1832-9/2/1878; moved to Stuttgart from Plochingen in 1860) married Pauline Sofie Hertner (12/15/1833-2/18/1897; born in Stuttgart; died in Schwäbisch Gmund) on 8/9/1860 and moved to Stuttgart the same year, where he became a master bookbinder), Wilhelm Friedrich Wolf (10/15/1834-10/29/1834), and Rosine Barbara Wolf (2/4/1836-7/9/1836). The Familienregister in Stuttgart (KB 2023) reveals that Christian Friedrich Wolf and his wife Pauline (the only couple that would have produced children with the last name "Wolf") had four children: 1) a stillborn boy (2/16/1861; conceived some months before they married); 2) Marie Wilhelmine Wolf (1/6/1868-5/30/1868), who died at four month old; 3) Carl August Wolf (3/20/1869-6/4/1869), who died at two and a half months; and 4) Pauline Wilhelmine Sofie (5/29/1870-3/27/1956 in Schwäbisch Gmund), who lived to be 86, but never married. Wilhelm Friedrich's family, in other words, proved to be a genealogical dead end.

17. But not before she had the chance to attend her nephew Wilhelm's baptism June 7, 1831 (see below).

18. International Genealogical Index, Batch M932272 (1808-1885), source call number: 1055996. Heinrike's christening (Lutheran) took place on June 23, 1796, in Mühlhausen-Cannstatt. See: FamilySearch.

20. According to records in Emmingen-am-Nagold, Johann Jacob Wolf (III) and Heinrike were married in 1790. Their five children (up to that time) were: Luise Friederike (5/30/1792-6/5/1863), single, died of heart problems in Emmingen); Friederike Philippine (9/28/1793-7/3/1867), single, died in Emmingen; Heinrike Eberhardine (see text), Auguste Caroline (5/7/1801-3/25/1870), died in Emmingen; and Christian Heinrich (9/29/1805-8/22/1864, died in Emmingen). Burkhart Oertel, ed., Ortssippenbuch Nagold, v. 2 (Neubiberg, 1994), #32. See also: Familienregister, Aichschieß, f. 248 (Gustav's baptism).

23. This is according to the Tailfingen Familienregister, which brackets the first four births (including Heinrike) in the family as "g(ebore)n Aichschieß."

25. Kirchenregisteramt, Albstadt-Tailfingen, Familien-Vezeichnis Nr. II/666a.

26. It should be noted that the Württemberg Immigration Index, vol. 6, p. 480, contains references to Eberhard Ludwig (#577764.00), Wilhelmine (#577770.00), and Amalie Louise Wolf (#577770.00). Wilhelmine's birthplace is given as "Aichschieß, dist. Eßlingen", but Eberhard's and Amalie's are given as "Plochingen, dist. Eßlingen", which contradicts the information in the Tailfingen baptismal records. Moreover census records from St. Louis indicate that Eberhard Wolf, cabinet maker, was born in Metzingen. Given that the actual baptismal records are to be found in Tailfingen, we can be confident in identifying that town as Eberhard's birthplace. That he, after his arrival in St. Louis, should remember his hometown as Metzingen is logical enough given the fact that his family moved there when he was a boy of six and lived there at least five years.

27. Ältfamilienregister, Metzingen, Band 5, 1841.

28. ibid.

29. An entry in the Metzingen Familienregister explains that Heinrike left "with her children for Emmingen am Nagold in 1848" and died in 1852.

30. According to the Nagold civil family register (59), Christian Heinrich Baumgarth was born in Muhlhausen am Neckar on 9/20/1805 and died in Emmingen am Nagold on 8/22/1864. In the same year that he assumed his position as schoolteacher, he married (11/5/1839 in Emmingen am Nagold) Eva Dorothea Geisig (4/5/1818-5/7/1884; daughter of Johann Adam Geisig, "Bürger und Bauer," and Sabine Sinn; died in Wildberg), a native of Biberach (near Heilbronn, 40 km north of Stuttgart). The couple had seven children, all born in Emmingen-Nagold: Franz Carl Friedrich Ferdinand Baumgarth (b. 2/1/1841); anonymous (stillborn: 5/5/1845); Eberhard Gustav Ludwig Baumgarth (5/19/1848-9/9/1848); Anna Louise Baumgarth (b. 5/18/ 1850); Friedrich Gottlieb Adam Baumgarth (5/26/1852); Friederike Heinrike Auguste Baumgarth (3/1/1856); and Wilhelmine Pauline Baumgarth (1/28/1860). The register entry indicates that Anna married (11/26/1874) Gottlob Ludwig Gluser in Wildberg (just north of Emmingen), and Friedrich left for America in 1879. This is confirmed by the Württemberg Emigration Index, v. 2. His application date was February 1879 and his destination, North America.

31. Burkhart Oertel, ed., Ortssippenbuch Nagold, v. 2 (Neubiberg, 1994), #1534.

32. According to the local archivist--Helmut Conz--in Jesingen, there are Wolfs living in that village who look to Heiningen as their ancestral home. But so far no link has been found.

33. The reference to Tailfingen in Amalie's note was, by the way, the key to picking up the trail of the Wolf line in Germany. It led me to write a letter to the Tailfingen Lutheran church, which yielded a copy of a page in the Familienregister that listed Amalie Wolf and all of her siblings. The original note is in the possession of W. John Wolf's mother.

34. Württemberg Emigration Index, ed. Trudy Schenk and Ruth Froelke, v. 7 (Ancestry, 1998), p. 464, 465.

35. Ibid., p. 464.

36. Germans to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports, 1850-55, ed. Ira Glazier and P. William Filby, v. 5 (Wilmington, DE, 1984), p. 363-65. The Trumbell is listed as a brigantine (a type of two-masted sailing ship) in Passenger Ships Arriving in New York Harbor, ed. Bradley W. Steuart, v. 1 (Bountiful, Utah, 1991), p. 340. It had sailed to New York at least once before (in 1829).

37. Germans to America, v. 7, pp. 318-19. There are three ships with the name Antelope listed in Passenger Ships, v. 1, p. 191, the most likely candidate being the brigantine that had sailed the New York at least three times before, in 1830, 1834, and 1844.

38. The originals are in the hands of W. John Wolf's mother.

39. R. Burnett and K. Luebbering, German Settlement in Missouri: New Land, Old Ways, University of Missouri Press, 1996, pp. 13, 18, 22.

40. Germans to America, pp. x-xii.

41. William Bromwell, ed., History of Immigration to the United States, Exhibiting the Number, Sex, Age, Occupation, and Country of Birth of Passengers Arriving from Foreign Countries by Sea from 1819 to 1855 (1855; repr.: New York, 1969), pp. 160-69.

42. Ever since 1819, ship masters were required (by an act of Congress: 3 Stat. 489) to submit passenger lists to the customs collectors in the ports where they arrived.

42a. Given that Bremerhaven was such an important link in the American tabacco trade, northern Germans could expect to make landfall in the tabacco-producing states of Virginia and Maryland. Audrey L. Olson, St. Louis Germans, 1850-1920: The Nature of an Immigrant Community and Its Relation to the Assimilation Process (New York, Arno Press: 1980), pp. 2-3.

43. St. Louis Citizenship Records, Vol J p 430. Eberhard's brothers Gustav and William, "citizens of the United States," served as witnesses. The document indicates that to qualify for American citizenship in Missouri, one had to have been a resident of the U.S. for at least five years and a resident of Missouri for at least one year. Therefore Eberhard must have moved from Philadelphia to St. Louis sometime before August, 1858. We know from the date of his oath that Eberhard was renouncing his allegiance to King Wilhelm I, who ruled the newly-formed kingdom of Württemberg from 1816 to 1864.

44. Luisa is listed as a native of "Fellbach, Baden." Fellbach is, like so many of the towns that pertain to the family's history, near Eßlingen and Stuttgart. In order for Louisa to have been 25 (as indicated in the 1860 census), she must have been born c. 1835. Schedule 1, p, 57, Free Inhabitants in 2nd Ward, City of St. Louis, 1860.

45. Charles would become a carpenter and marry Bertha Will in St. Louis on August 23, 1873. The St. Louis Marriage Register (vol. 16, p. 162) indicates that she was from Cincinnati, Ohio. The couple divorced on June 30, 1905, after which Charles married Katie Boss. Charles lived until December 6, 1931 (death certificate; lists place of birth as "Pennsylvania" and parents "unknown."). See also census records from 1880, 1910, and 1920. The December 7, 1931 issue of the St. Louis Post Dispatch carried the following obituary: "Wolf, Charles G., on Sunday, December 6, 1931. Beloved husband of Katherine Wolf (nee Boss), father of Micheal, William, Ollie Wolf; Mrs. Joseph King and Sarah Herman...."

46. Carolyn Cook, "St. Louis--Gateway to the West," German Life (June/July 2001), p. 44.

47. We have a note that she wrote in German on February 19, 1861, from St. Louis to her "loving sister-in-law" and signed "Marie Wolf, born Kuebler." If this note was, as one would suspect, intended for someone in Germany, then the brother-in-law or sister-in-law in question would have had to be someone married to one of her siblings, not someone married to a member of the Wolf family (all of whom married after they reached America).

48. A minor complication with regard to Gustav's date of death has to do with the two doctor bills (see below) that survive as part of Gustav's probate records. One of them bills the estate for a "visit at night" on August 23, while the other lists two prescriptions written on August 23 and 26 respectively. Either August 26 was recorded in error or the prescription (of "juniper berries" and "smelling salts") was directed at the newly widowed Mary.

49. Timothy L. Kimball, "Fischer's German-American Artillery Volunteers on the Santa Fe Trail, 1846-1847" (presented at 2011 Symposium, Dodge City, Kansas), Wagon Tracks. Volume 26, Issue 1 (November, 2011).

50. The scanned version of this page in the Registry of Deaths is not fully legible. My thanks to Chris Naffziger, Archives Researcher at the Recorder of Deeds Office in St. Louis, for consulting the original record and recovering the missing word. "Disease of brain" is not very specific but, as Chris has noted, Gustav was not the only one to succumb to such a malady. "Congestion of brain" also appears as a cause of death in the records of the time.

51. St. Louis Marriage Index, 1804-76 , St. Louis, MO: St. Louis Genealogical Society, 1999, v. 11, p. 319.

52. The Index to Death Records in the City of St. Louis, 1850-1908, St. Louis, MO: St. Louis Genealogical Society, 1999, v. 25, p. 164 actually lists her as Louise Hanser, but the fact that Louisa Hauser's probate case began in 1891 stongly suggests that we are dealing with the same person in both cases.

53. According to St. Louis City Death Records, 1850-1902

54. It may not be coincidental that--according to the 1860 census--Gustav Wolf's household included a fourteen-year-old servant named Clara Kuhn from Bavaria. She may well have been related to Henry. 55. St. Louis County Observer v. 12, no. 33.

56. It is not clear where Mary's children from her pervious marriage went to live after the deaths of their mother and step-father.

57. Bertha Wolf married Charles Vogt and had three children: Everette C. Vogt, Percy Vogt, and Mildred Marie Vogt. William Wolf married Betty and had two children: Elsie Louise Wolf (1/21/1900) and William John Wolf (6/27/1906).

58. Helen learned of the anniversary when she saw an announcement for it in the Pacific Missouri newspaper that Will and Betty had sent to her in Denver. Clearly the two families had been out of touch for some time, since Helen took the occasion to report on the ages of her grandchildren: Gretchen (11) and Barbara (3), the children of Helen's son Louis Euegene ("Gene") Ernst; and Carl (7) and Christie (4), the children of her son Howard.

59. According to Record of marriages, St. Louis.

61a. Johanna Clara "Bruglet's" last name is not easy to decipher. It has been rendered "Bright" in the Ancestry.com records, but that would not be a logical last name for a German immigrant. On the other hand, "Bruglet" is no more typical. Until some other document referring to her turns up, it will be hard to come up with a definitive version of the name.

54. The following information about Tuberculosis in nineteenth-century American history, comes from Sheila M. Rothman, Living in the Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History (Johns Hopkins, 1994).

62. The letter is addressed to "Mr. William Wolf, Pacific, Mo., care of "Mrs. Louise Geister."

63. The letter refers to Clara's upcoming trip.

64. Her death certificate indicates that Marie's body was cremated. But that would not have precluded having a grave stone in the cemetary.

65. The St. Louis Marriage Register, v. 16, p. 566.

66. Marie's death certificate indicates that she had resided in Colorado for eight and a half years before she died. There is no indication that any Mr. Fehlman came with her leading me to the conclsion that he had already passed away. His death and her age may have combined to encourage her to relocate to Denver, where her daughter-in-law and three grandchildren were still living.

67. According to Helen, Walter's wife (see below).

68. Letter from Gene Ernst to Carol Marshall, 3/17/90.

69. 4121 Eagle Rock Blvd, according to a return address label.

70. Like her sister Helen, Marie kept in close touch with "cousin Minnie" Geister (Eugene's first cousin, the daughter of Amalie Louise Wolf Geister). We have an envelope that originally contained a sewing booklet that Marie sent to Minnie--who was at the time a patient in Jewish Hospital, St. Louis--on August 20, 1941. The return address on the envelope indicates that Marie lived at 2639 Medlow Ave., Los Angeles. Minnie Geister of Pacific Missouri also appears as a witness on Walter Wolf's "Delayed Birth Certificate," which he secured from the Missouri State Board of Health on April 15, 1942. At the time, Walter was living at 14367 Sherman Way,Van Nuys, California.

71. Letter from Gene Ernst to Carol Marchall, 3/17/90.

72. Thomas Grubbs Keyt married Hazel May Freeman (8/9/1904--10/6/1990, d. Ventura) and had two children: Gardner Morton Keyt (b. 10/28/1923, Pasadena) and Barbara Arlean Keyt (b. 10/8/1931, Santa Barbara). Tom worked for National Cash Register, running the office in Glendale. Tom helped his niece Carol by advising her to learn bookkeeping at the Los Angeles office, a skill that served her well throughout her working life. Tom's nephew Bob worked with him at NCR in Glendale and when Tom transferred to Santa Barbara, he convinced Bob (and his wife, Jo) to move closer so they could continue to work together. That is how Bob and Jo ended up in Ventura. Tom's move to Santa Barbara was complicated by the fact that his last name contained the same letters as the local TV station (KEYT) leading to him having to field regular phone calls by disgruntled viewers. Tom died at age 56 of lung cancer.

73. Alexander Fred Ernst (b. 2/7/1883) was the younger brother of Louis Willian Ernst. His wife Elizabeth (Betty) Jackson Ernst, whom he married on June 14, 1911, was a close friend of Helen Keyt Wolf. Like Helen's father, William Baxter Keyt, Alex Ernst was a dentist. Alex and Helen's daughter, Helen Shanteau, and Betty's daughter, Ruth Kendrick, kept the connection going in the next generation.

74. In a letter to his cousin Carol: 3/17/90.

74a. Walter built the house of Fourth Avenue himself. Walter Wolf, Jr., "A Lifetime Love Affair with Aviation." In due course his boys would follow suit, building homes for their families. Baxter built a home for his young family at 150 W. Foothill Blvd (now called Altadena Drive) in Altadena (c. 1945), and Bob built one shortly after at 4726 Jessica Drive in Eagle Rock.

74b. Walter Wolf, Jr., in his essay, "A Man and his Wheels," states that his father built and opened the shop in the spring of 1931, "on a sandy lot a few doors south of the main intersection in town, one long block from the ocean." When he built it, the family lived in a house about two miles away. But in the fall of 1932, they moved to a "house on Hermosa Avenue, just three blocks" from the waffle shop.

75. Gertrude was the widow of William Baxter Keyt (3/16/1860-9/2/1911), an affluent Denver dentist and one of the earliest graduates of the University of Colorado.

76. Letter from Gene Ernst to Ken Wolf: 7/31/98.

Helen's widowed mother Mima (a name given to her my her son Tom when he was a small boy) rented a small apartment in downtown Glendale. Walter Wolf, Jr., "A Man and his Wheels."

76a. According to family lore, Margaret's gift came at the price of family harmony. Helen's younger brother Tom, charged by Margaret with the responsibility of managing the money and the purchase, felt entitled to a portion of the money himself, so he used part of it to make a down payment on a home for his family before giving the rest to his sister. This reduced amount was not enough for Helen to secure ownership of the house that she and her family were renting at the time, so she settled for the house Roberta Street in Glendale. The relationship between brother and sister never fully recovered from this, though "Uncle Tom" would remain close to his nephews, particularly Baxter, who found Tom to be something of a father figure in the absence of his own dad.

77. In a letter to W. John Wolf, February 27, 1990.

78. This strikes his children as odd, since they remember him chewing his cigars, never actually smoking them.

79. His body was cremated at Chapel of the Pines three days after his death.

80. Who was her ex-husband Walter's brother-in-law.

81. The grandson of William and Betty Wolf.