The documentation related to the settling of Gustav's estate turns out to be full of fascinating information. One particularly poignant document is a request from Gustav's widow for a one-time allowance of $182.50 to support her for one year, because "at the time of the decease of her said husband there was no grain, meat, vegetables, groceries or other provisions on hand." Testifying to the legitimacy of the request is none other than Gustav's younger brother, Eberhard Wolf. It might seem odd that Mary, who had recently inherited a third of her step-father's estate, needed this kind of subvention. But in all likelihood, the inheritance that she and Gustav received was tied up in the family business, which Gustav and Mary must have regarded as perfectly consistent with Charles' entrepreneurial trajectory.

The "Inventory of all the Real and Personal Estate of Gustavus Wolf," recorded on September 5, 1860, indicates that Gustav had secured a three-year lease (commencing May 15, 1858) at a cost him $1,500 per year) on a three-story brick house "situated on the north side of Market Street between Main and Second streets" on the west side of the alley that ran between Market and Chestnut Streets. This description fits what we learned above from St. Louis Directory: that Gustav ran a hotel and restaurant at 23 Market Street and a saloon as 56 S. 2nd Street. But the inventory is more precise, indicating that Gustav had sublet the hotel that occupied the upper floors to Christian Fluhr beginning June 1, 1860. As noted above, it is likely that Gustav's physical condition was deteriorating and he felt the need to take on a partner to run part of the business. The inventory further shows that Gustav was the owner of "six lots of ground" along Pennsylvania Avenue, property that he had purchased on May 21, 1858. It is not clear what he intended to do with this real estate. As it turns out, Gustav's investments were not confined to St. Louis. He also bought a share stock in the town of Havana, in Shawnee County, Kansas Territory, entitling him to "one eightieth part of the said town." This investment, made on May 11, 1858, was connected to the creation of a stage coach stop in Havana, a development that could have made the remote settlement an important stop on the Santa Fe Trail. Havana did end up attracting some fifty German and French families as settlers. But in the end the settlement failed and was abandoned altogether in early 1870s. The remains of the station and hotel are today commemorated by a historical marker on Kansas State Highway 31 not far from Burlingame in Osage County, Kansas.

The official inventory of Gustav's moveable property is a remarkable, if banal, piece of social history since it reveals precisely what a hotel owner and restauranteer in St. Louis in 1860 required to run such a business. Of particular interest is the selection of beverages, including not only the usual whiskeys, brandies, and other hard spirits, but a wide variety of wines by the barrel: Haute Sauterne, Catawba (from Germany as well as Cincinnati), "Rhine wines" (including Hochsteiner, Durchheimer, Feuerberger, Ungsteiner, Forster Rieslinger, Wachenheimer), and two forms of "Neckar wine," which of all his wines would have reminded him most of his youth in Plochingen. No beer is mentioned in the inventory, but the list does include twenty beer mugs. Food items are not as well represented as drink in the inventory, though there are plenty of references to the implements necessary to hold or prepare them, including a pewter cracker box and a "cabbage plane," used to make coleslaw. The fact that Gustav had 1,750 cigars in stock when he died (along with the accumulation of seventy-seven empty cigar boxes) testifies to what his customers liked to do when they drank. Two chess boards and two sets of dominoes round out the entertainment options. Whether intended to be used by his clients or simply a part of his own personal property, Gustav's small library reflects his immigrant status and his father's career as a school teacher. Among the German titles, which constitute the majority of the collection, were the works of contemporary authors such as Heinrich Heine (1821-1881) and Friedrich Wilhelm von Hacklander (1816-77), as well as recently deceased ones like Heinrich Zschokke (1771-1848) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). The handful of English titles bears witness to an immigrant's effort to manage his new environment: Brucker's Geography of America, Brownell's Indian Races (1857), Allendorf's English Grammar, and the Constitution of the United States. One title missing from this inventory is the German-language book on the Spanish Inquisition, which we know Gustav purchased from the estate of his father-in-law.

The total estimated value of all of Gustav's moveable goods: $2227.66.

Gustav Friedrich Wolf's Siblings in St Louis

The 1860 census describes Gustav's youngest brother, Eberhard Ludwig Wolf, as a 26-year-old cabinet maker from Metzingen, Wuerttemberg, married to Louise, a 25-year old immigrant from Fellbach, Baden. The couple had four young children: Fred (6), Charles (5), Wilhelm (3), and Louise (1). The first three were born in Philadelphia; only Louise was a native of St. Louis. Remember that Eberhard's naturalization process (which culminated in St. Louis in the month of August, 1859) required that he be a resident of Missouri for at least one year before he could be granted citizenship. That means that Eberhard must have relocated no later than the summer of 1858 (and not much before).

Eberhard's new life in St. Louis was interrupted by the the Civil War, which officially began with the shelling of Fort Sumter on April 13, 1861. Pension records indicate that Eberhard served in Company F of the 2nd Regiment of the U.S. Reserve Corps (Infantry) and Company D of the 5th Regiment of Missouri (Infantry). Neither the exact date of his enlistment nor that of his death is known, but we do know from the St. Louis Marriage Index that his wife Louise married again on June 16, 1864, this time to a man named Charles Hauser.51 Louisa's remarriage is corroborated by her and her children's appearance as "Hausers" in the 1870 census. There Louise Hauser is indentified in the as a 35-year-old "washwoman," originally from Baden, Germany. "Fred" is listed as a 16-year-old brush maker and Charles, a 15-year-old errand boy. "Will," age 13, and "Louise," age 11, round out the list of formerly Wolf children. Mr. Hauser, who must himself have been dead by the time of this census given the absence of his name from the entry, had added two children of his own to the family: Dina and Alex, age 9 and 5 respectively. These two, like young Louise, were born in Missouri; the four older children were, as already noted, natives of Pennsylvania. Judging from the list of jobs held by Louise and her two oldest boys, life for the Wolf-Hausers after the war was not easy. Twenty years later, we find Louise Hauser filing for Eberhard's pension (June 5, 1890). Her death on February 21, 1891 opened the door for her married daughter, Louise Wolf Wahl, to claim the pension for herself on June 14, 1891.52

Wilhelmine "Minna" Wolf, the second oldest of the Wolf immigrants, was 21 when she crossed the Atlantic in June, 1854. In was in St. Louis that she met and married Henry Kuhn in July 1858. It was Henry who ended up witnessing and signing the court petition with which his sister-in-law, Mary Kuebler Wolf, authorized Frederick Steigerwalt to handle Gustav's estate. We happen to have a loving note in Henry's hand, written to his Wiebchen ("little wife") on February 19, 1861. Sometime before 1870 Henry died, but not before giving Minna a baby boy named James. The appropriate entry in the census records of 1870 indicate that James was seven at the time, suggesting a birthdate of 1863. This is contradicted by local death records, stating that a "Henry Kuhn" died in St. Louis on February 18, 1862. 53 If, as seems likely, this is a reference to Minna's husband, then James could not have been born any later than November, 1862, making him eight rather than seven at the time of the census. In any case, the census of 1870 finds "Minna Kuhn" (age 38) living in Washington, Missouri, about sixty miles due west of St. Louis, with her son James (7) in the home of Alex Brunner, a Bavarian-born "bar keeper" for whom Minna kept house. It would appear that the widowed Minna and her son had moved in the wake of Henry's death so that they could live near Minna's brother Wilhelm/William (see below). Ten years later, according to the 1880 census, we find Minna back in St. Louis living with her brother Gustav's widow Mary, who had since remarried a man named John Fehlmann (see below). 54 When the 1900 census was taken, Minna was living in Pacific, Missouri (twenty miles southwest of St. Louis) with her widowed sister (see below), Amalie Louise Geister (age 60, a "nurse") and her unmarried daughter Minnie (age 31). Minna died in Pacific on March 13, 1912, at age 79. On her death certificate she is described as a German-born housekeeper and widow who died of diabetes.

Wilhelm/William Wolf appears in the St. Louis Directory of 1859 as a boarder with the same address as Gustav's saloon. About four years later, William married a young widow with similar Württemberg roots named Mary Seifert Fausel. When her first husband, William Fausel, died in 1862, Mary was already the mother of four children--Pauline (b. 1855), Herman (b. 1857), Caroline (b. 1859), and George (b. 1861). After marrying William Wolf, Mary gave birth to five more children. By the next census (1870), William and family were living in Washington, Missouri, where William is identified as a 39-year-old "hotel keeper." With him and his wife Mary (age 30) lived not only Mary's four children from her previous marriage (ages 15, 13, 11, and 9), but the three surviving ones of their own: Bertha Wolf (age 6), Mary Wolf(age 4), and William Wolf (age 2). A local newspaper (3/14/1873)55 contains an advertisement for the "Washington Hotel and saloon, Wm Wolf, Proprietor." The ad describes the Wolf hotel as "especially furnished and fitted up, for the accommodation of the travelling public, open at all hours day and night. Opposite R.R. Depot, Washington, Mo." William's and Mary's lives in Washington, Missouri, were marred by personal tragedy. Beyond the two of their children (Gustav and Heinrich) who died in infancy, a third one (Mary) died at age 16 after her dress caught on fire while she was cleaning the hearth. As if this were not enough, both William and Mary died of pneumonia in 1876, when he was only 45 and Mary 36. Their two youngest surviving children, Bertha (age 12) and "Will" (age 8) moved in with their aunt Amalie Louise Wolf Geister (see below) in Pacific, Missouri.56 Both of them would marry and contribute five children to the next generation.57 Will and his wife Betty would actually live to see their golden wedding anniversary, a feat acknowledged by Will's cousin Helen Wolf Ernst, the daughter of Eugene (see below) in a letter dated July 24, 1947.58

Amalie Louise (a.k.a. Louisa) Wolf, the youngest of the Wolf immigrants, married Valentin Geister (8/7/1829--9/8/1884), another German immigrant, on May 16, 1864, in St. Louis.59 The two of them moved to Pacific, Missouri a short time later and had their only child, a daughter named Minnie (6/5/1865--8/28/1950). Minnie was eleven when her orphaned cousins Bertha and Will came to live with her family. The 1880 census identifies Valentine Geister as a 51-year-old farmer in Pacific, living with his wife Louise (age 40), his daughter Minnie (age 15), and his nephew William Wolf (age 12). For some reason there is no mention of Bertha, who would have been 16 years old at the time. Valentine died only four years later, in September 1884. Will Wolf stayed with his Aunt Louise up to the time of his marriage to Betty in 1897. Amalie Louise remained in Pacific until she died on January 19, 1926 at age 85. Minnie Geister, her only child, never married.

The Eugene Wolf Family

As we saw above, Eugene Wolf (8/23/1859--7/30/1901), the only child of Gustav Wolf and Mary Kuebler Wolf, completed his first year of life the very day his father died. He was fifteen when his widowed mother married a Swiss immigrant named John Fehlmann (8/4/1832--11/24/1904) on March 31, 1875. Like his new wife, Fehlmann had been married before. In fact his first wife, Margaret Steigerwalt, whom he married on March 6 1864, was the sister of Frederick Steigerwalt, who (as we saw above) handled the estates of Gustav Wolf, Charles C. Kuebler, and his son Christian. This relationship is confirmed by Frederick's will (march 4, 1871), where he names as secondary heirs his step-daughter, Bertha, and his two sisters, Apollonia and Margaret, the latter identified as "the wife of John Fehlmann." It is worth noting here that John Fehlmann had served (seven years before) as one of the two "securities" for Frederick Steigerwalt, the "principal" in the handling Christian Kuebler's estate in October 1864. Anyway, John Fehlmann and Margaret Steigerwalt married on March 6, 1864 and had three children in quick succession: Adolph Kuebler (3/7/1865--2/2/1946, Mary Kuebler (b. 4/1/1866), and Anna Kuebler (b. 1868). In the 1870 census, John is listed as an 38-year-old "importer of cigars" from Switzerland. His wife Margaret, 27, responsible for "keeping house," is from "Prussia." Adolph (5), Mary (4), and Anna (2) are all listed as products of Missouri. Margaret died on December 24, 1873 and fifteen months later John married the widowed Mary Kuebler Wolf. [Note that at this point Mary began using the German spelling of her name (Marie), perhaps because her new husband preferred it.] The newly blended family appears in the 1880 census, with John listed as a 47-year-old "cigar dealer" in St. Louis, supporting his wife "Marie" (age 43, from "Alabama"), her son Eugene (age 20), and three of John and Marie's own children: Adolf (age 15), Marie (age 14), and Anna (age 12). By then Eugene, identified as the "stepson" of the "head of the household," was working as a bookkeeper for a pulley company. He seems to have begin pursuing this career at age 18, appearing in the 1877 edition of the St. Louis City Directory as an "assistant bookkeeper" for the U.S. Savings Institution. The only other person listed in the census as part of the Fehlmann household is "Minna Kuhn," identified as a "sister-in-law" of John Fehlmann, even though she was actually Mary's sister-in-law (see above). The 1900 census has John and "Marie L" Fehlmann still living in St. Louis, ages 68 and 62 respectively, with John still plying his trade as a "cigar merchant." Four years later, on November 24, 1904, John passed away. According to the entry in the St. Louis Register of Deaths, the death occurred at 927 Morrison Ave. in St Louis, presumably the family home.

On July 20, 1883, Eugene, age 23, married Clara Bremermann (8/23/1863--10/15/1916), age 19, in the town of Greenleaf Kansas, some 400 miles west of St. Louis. Why the marriage was celebrated there rather than in St. Louis is not clear. Clara was the daughter of Gerd Bremermann, a prosperous merchant who had immigrated from Bremen, and Johanna Clara Briegleb (m. 4/20/1844 in St Louis).61a

[Bremermann, Briegleb, and Bartenstein lines]

We have a letter that Eugene wrote from this address to his cousin "Will" Wolf on June 21, 1897. In the letter Eugene congratulates Will on his upcoming marriage to Betty and refers in passing to his own "broken road of health."62 His illness would prevent him from joining his wife Clara on her trip to see the newlyweds the following month.63 Sometime in 1898 the family moved to 2933 Gilpin St., and Eugene began working for the L. Anfenger Agency Company. The 1900 census, the last one to include Eugene as the head of household, lists him as an "accountant" living on Gilpin St. with his wife and three school-aged children. The census takers found the Wolf family still intact in June of that year. The City Directory of 1900 indicates that Eugene worked as a clerk for Schirmer Insurance & Investment Company (1900). It was in this capacity that, on August 30 of that year, Eugene gained a bit of notoriety . According to the report in The Rocky Mountain News that ran the following day, Eugene was visited around noon by a well-dressed man who invited him to step outside the office on Sixteenth Street to discuss a business matter with his associate, who was waiting for him with his horse and buggy on the street. While Eugene was engaged in conversation with him, the first man made his way back into the office and forced open the cash drawer, making away with $98.30. The two casually made their getaway in the buggy, their heist remaining undiscovered until after they were gone. Eugene notified the police but to no avail; "The description given of them does not tally with that of any crook now sojourning in the city." Despite this incident, Eugene remained employed at the company through the first half of 1901. On July 30 of that year he died at age 41. A "card of thanks" published in the same newspaer on August 5, reads: "We wish to extend thanks to friends who took such [a] kind interest in [the] sickness and death of Eugene Wolf." signed: Mrs. Clara Wolf and Mr. Mary Fehlmann. Eugene finally succombed to tuberculosis on July 30, 1901, less than a month before he would have turned 42. A few days after his death, his widow "Clara Wolf" and his mother "Marie Fehlmann," co-signed a "card of thanks" published in The Rocky Mountain Times: "We wish to extend thanks to friends who took such kind interest in the sickness and death of Eugene Wolf" [RMN Aug 5 1901]. Eugene was buried in Denver's Fairmount cemetery. His wife Clara, who is not given an occupation in the 1900 census, became a school teacher and continued to raise their three children in Denver until her own death in 1916. The 1910 census identifies her (age 45) as the head of a household at 3234 Marion St. that included her daughter Marie (age 22) and her son Walter (age 19); Clara's oldest daughter Helen (age 24) had already married by then, though she, her husband, and her young son lived right next door (at 3136 Marion). All three members of the Clara Wolf household were working at the time: Clara as a public school teacher, Marie as a stenographer, and Walter as a clerk in a seed company. On October 18, 1916, Clara Bremmerman Wolf died and was buried next to her husband in Denver's Fairmount Cemetery. Less than two years after that, on March 16, 1918, Marie Kuebler Wolf Fehlmann passed away and was laid to rest next to the bodies of her son and daughter-in-law. 64 Marie's death certificate indicates that she had resided in Colorado for eight and a half years before she died. That means that she moved to Denver from St. Louis in 1909, five years after her husband John Fehlmann's died. Helen, Marie, and Walter thus got to know their grandmother well, calling her "Grossmama," one of the last few traces of spoken German in the Wolf household. 67 It is likely that Clara was the original source of the Christmas cookie recipes that have made their way down through the succeeding generations of the Wolf family.

Eugene's three children, born in St. Louis but raised in Denver, ultimately followed very different paths. Helen Wolf married a Texas-born accountant by the name of Louis William Ernst (9/5/1879-6/5/1970) in 1908. He was the son of Charles W. Ernst and Joanna Hannah Lamers. Helen and Louis purchased a $3,200 house at 1233 Elizabeth Street in Denver with the help of Helen's share of Marie Fehlmann's estate. There they raised two sons: Louis Eugene ("Gene") Ernst (1909-2006) and Howard Ernst (1912-2005). Looking back late in his own life, Gene Ernst described his mother as "gifted in all the homemaking arts" and an active member of the Divine Science Church in Denver.68

Helen's younger sister Marie Wolf--who, according to the 1920 Census, moved in with her sister after their mother's death--used her share of the inheritance to go to New York. She returned to Denver in 1929 with her friend Helen Althouse (a.k.a. Trigg) and took a job as an advertising manager at the bank where she had worked before she left for New York. But Helen Althouse, who was originally from California, wanted to return to the "Golden State" and Marie followed her in the very early 1930s, living in Los Angeles for the rest of her life. At one point Marie owned a bookstore in Eagle Rock (at 4121 Eagle Rock Blvd.), which would have catered to the needs of Occidental College students, among others.69 Her California nephews and nieces (Walter's children; see below) got to know Marie well as they were growing up, referring to her affectionately as "Auntie Me."70 Gene Ernst remembered his Aunt Marie as a wonderful story teller, an amateur actress, and an avid sportswoman who enjoyed mountain climbing and tennis.71

The Walter Richard Wolf Family

Walter Richard Wolf seems to have used his share of his grandmother's estate to finance his relocation to California in 1920. Four years earlier, Walter had married Helen Cary Keyt (7/24/1894--7/25/1963), the daughter of William Baxter Keyt (3/16/1860--8/2/1911) and his second wife, Gertrude Gardner Grubbs (5/29/1860--4/8/1945). Helen had a younger brother named Thomas ("Tom") Grubbs Keyt (3/24/1902--11/20/1958) 72.

[The Keyt, Degolyer, and Grubbs lines]

Helen Keyt was actually engaged to a local banker named Kent Whitman when she first met Walter. According to family lore, one day Walter Wolf came to the Keyt house and, upon seeing Helen coming down the stairs, addressed her as "my dear little girl." That bit of gallantry seems to have made a deep impression on Helen, who ultimately called off her engagement to Whitman. Helen and Walter applied for a marriage license in Denver on March 30, 1916. Their wedding took place at the home of Alex and Betty Ernst73 on April 1 (April Fool's Day). Disappointed with Helen's choice of husband, her widowed mother Gertrude Grubbs Keyt did not attend the ceremony. Presumably she thought that Helen's former beau was a better match for the daughter of a dentist. Fourteen months later--on June 5, 1917--Walter Wolf filled out his military registration card . It tells us that at the time he was 25 and lived at 4009 Quitman St. in Denver with his wife, Helen, who was pregnant with their first child. It also reveals that he worked as a clerk at the "Colorado Seed Company," presumably the seed company mentioned in the 1910 census. Walter is described physically as "medium" in height and build, with blue eyes and dark brown hair. Very little additional information from Walter's Denver days has survived. Gene Ernst had fond memories of his "Uncle Walter,"74 dating back to the time when Walter still lived in Denver. Gene remembered the kites, the wooden swords and guns, and the "little cannons and mud bombs" that Walter made for him. He also recalled that his mother Helen [Ernst] and her younger brother Walter were like children every Halloween and Fourth of July.

[Helen Cary Keyt Wolf's photo album].

Walter's and Helen's first child, Baxter Keyt Wolf (11/28/1917--6/16/1973), was born in late November, 1917. His name was a tribute to his maternal grandfather, who died of a heart attack at age 50 when Helen was only seventeen. Baxter was the only one of the five children born before the move to California in 1918. That date is based on Walter R. Wolf's death certificate, which indicates that he lived in the "county of his death" for 51 years. Since he died on January 25, 1969, that would put the move in 1918. The 1920 census takers found the young family--including two-year-old Baxter--living at 299 Fourth Avenue in "Arcadia City" of "Pasadena township." It was a small wooden house that Walter built with his own hands in an otherwise wide-open field.74a Due to the construction of the 210 Freeway (the relevant section of which was completed in the fall of 1968), the original Wolf address no longer exists, much less the house that Walter built. Currently the lowest numerical addresses on Fourth Avenue are 306 and 311, flanking either side of a dead end butting up against the freeway wall. The 1920 census identifies Walter as a carpenter. Voter records from the same year confirm the address ("4th Ave") and the occupations ("carpenter" and "housewife" respectively) of these two democrats, Walter and Helen. The first Wolf Christmas in California was overshadowed by the arrival of twins the follwoing day: Walter Richard Wolf, Jr., (12/26/1920--3/39/2007) and Clara Louise ("Helen") Wolf (12/26/1920--12/29/2007). Apparently it was Walter, Sr. who lobbied to name his daughter after his mother, but his wife always considered her to be "Helen, Jr." The family was still living in Arcadia three years later when, on February 21, 1923, Robert Eugene ("Bob") Wolf (2/21/1923--4/20/1996) was born. In 1925, the family moved to nearby Monrovia, where, according to Walter, Jr., they had a goat that provided them with milk ... and eventually a baby goat! Walter, Jr., recalls a subsequent move to Highland Park, where they lived in four different places, each for only a short period of time. It was there that the Wolfs got their first car: a 1922 Chevrolet touring car, which, Walter, Jr., remembers, was used on occasion to take the family to Hermosa Beach.

By 1930, the allure of the coast inspired yet another move, this one to Redondo Beach, which Helen Keyt Wolf had always remembered fondly as the place where she and her Denver family had vacationed on her fifteenth birthday. It was in this coastal enclave that the 1930 census takers found the Walter Wolf family. Aside from his wife Helen (age 35), the household included the four children, ranging in age from Baxter (12) to "Bobby" (7), plus a "lodger" named Helen J. Pruner (age 10) from Michigan. In that census Walter is listed as a 38-year-old independent commercial artist, which seems mostly to have involved painting cardboard displays for department store windows in downtown Los Angeles. At one point Walter worked for the Metlox ceramics company in Manhattan Beach. According to a local history website, The "early success [of Metlox] came in the manufacturing of large ceramic letters for neon signs in an eye-catching style that was used for the early movie palaces in the late 1920s and early 1930s, most famously for the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, which opened in 1930." Walter applied his freehand lettering skills to help create patterns for the neon signs. This was good work for him, but the Depression prompted Metlox to terminate the neon sign part of their business and focus on more conventional ceramics. This would have been about the time that Walter purchased his second car (as reported by Walter, Jr.), a 1926 Studebaker "Big-Six" touring car. In the South Bay area, the family moved frequently from one rental to the next, regular paychecks being hard to come by. According to Walter, Jr., his uncle Tom teased his brother-in-law, Walter, saying "it must be cheaper to move than to pay rent." The summer of 1932 brought the Olympics to Los Angeles; Walter Wolf remembers a visit to Olympic Village, where he and his siblings met some of the athletes. Less than a month after the closing ceremony, the family welcomed little Carol Ann Wolf (9/7/32--), the last of Walter and Helen's five children. Carol was born in Hermosa Beach. At that time the family was attending a Christian Science church, so Carol Ann was born with a "practitioner" present. In the end, complications with the delivery led to the timely intervention of a conventional doctor.

The family involvement with Christian Science seems to have begun with William Baxter Keyt, Jr., evolving over the years into his daughter Helen's close relationship with Religious Science, and especially Unity Church. In July 1939 at age 18, Helen's oldest daughter Clara Louise (a.k.a, "Helen") would make the pilgrimage to Lee's Summit, Missouri, the headquarters of Unity Church, to attend a "Youth of Unity" (YOU) conference. She set out by train from Los Angeles' Union Station, which had opened for business only two months before. Carol Ann--who remembers the excitement of seeing her older sister off at the station--also reports being steeped in Religious Science and other manifestations of the "New Thought" movement as she was growing up, thanks to her mother. Many of the poems that Helen wrote and left behind in her "button box" reflect her unwavering faith in the power of positive thinking.

[Helen Cary Keyt Wolf's "Button Box" poems].

Walter Wolf was a "jack-of-all-trades" with an eighth-grade education. Though remembered as a man who could fix or build anything, he never seems to have found an economic niche that satisfied him or allowed him to support his large family with any consistency. At different points he plied his skills in carpentry, construction, sign painting, neon-sign designing, and furniture building. At one point he even ran for City Clerk in Hermosa Beach. His sons Walter, Jr. and Bob remembered hanging up hand-painted postes and passing out leaflets during his father's unsuccessful campaign. But it was "Walter Wolf's Wonder Waffles"(a.k.a. "Walter Wolf's World-Wide Wonder Waffles," a.k.a. "Walter's Wonderful World of Waffles," and "Walter Wolf's Wonder Waffles") that stands out as his most memorable entrepreneurial venture.74b By building this tiny brick diner himself (in the spring of 1931), he avoided much of the overhead normally associated with a new business. And it survived the big Long Beach earthquake of March 10, 1933. Walter, Jr. recalls his father applying his sign-making skills in crafting a big metal waffle sign. There are unfortunately no images of that sign, but the two pictures of the waffle shop that do exist not only testify to its diminutive dimensions, but provide a glimpse of the menu: "Waffles 15 cents, Toasted Sandwiches 10 cents, Soup 5 cents, Salad 5 cents, Chilli [sic] & Beans 5 cents, Entrees... Sandwiches... Desserts... Coffee...." The fact that the restaurant was so small (offering its customers no more than a counter to sit at) and the fact that Walter had financed the building by selling meal cards--cards that entitled the holder to a break on the cost of a number of meals--meant that when he finally opened for business, Walter suffered from a real cash flow problem. He also found it expedient to expand the menu, and so he enlisted Helen to cook other dishes at home. This "outsourcing" was made possible by Baxter delivering the home-cooked food to the waffle shop in the family Studebaker, even though he was only thirteen at the time. As his younger brother Walter would later recall, "On his 14th birthday, Baxter went to the City Hall to get his license. Eddie Messenger, the Chief of Police, surprised Baxter by saying there was no need for a driving test. "I've seen you driving past here many times." Even after expanding the menu, Walter had trouble breaking even, and his waffle business lasted only a year and a half. In November 1933 the Wolf family left the South Bay area altogether and relocated to Glendale. According to Walter, Jr., the point was to be closer to potential commercial art jobs. In 1934, Helen's widowed mother, Gertrude Grubbs Keyt ("Mima," to her grandchildren), appears in the voting records as a resident of 117 S. Isabel Street in Glendale. Depending on when she moved there, this might explain the choice of Glendale as a new home for the Wolf family. In any case, Walter Jr. remembers being a part of the Boy Scout honor guard for the dedication of the new Glendale post office building (1933), where he got to shake the hand of Vice President, John Nance Garner, a.k.a, "Cactus Jack." Voter records from 1938 place Walter, Sr. ("artist") and Helen ("housewife"), both registered democrats, at 1262 Ruberta Avenue in Glendale.

For an inside look at the Wolf family in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as the wartime experiences of Walter, Jr., who served in the Air Force, there is no better source than Walter's own beautifully written, autobiographical short stories.
"A Life-long Love Affair with Aviation"
"A Man and his Wheels"
"To My Sister, Carol from Walt"
"Politics and I"
"The Boy Scout and the Vice-President"
"St. Patrick's Day, 1944"
"War's End/Hiroshima"
"Hiroshima"
"Homeward Bound. Osaka to San Francisco, 1946"
"KEYT-TV, an Adventure in Time"

Equally impressive are Carol Ann's recorded memories of life with her older sister, Helen, which she wroe in honor of Helen's 90th birthday (Dec 2010), see:
"Memories of Helen Clara Louise Wolf Shanteau"

Needless to say, under such economic circumstances, Walter's children remember their youth as a time of "doing without." As noted, the family moved many times (Young Helen remembers 28 moves in 25 years!), living in Arcadia, Monrovia, Highland Park, Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach (five different homes in that town alone), and Glendale. The Great Depression only added to the family's economic woes. Economic problems strained relations between Walter and his older children. He insisted from very early on that they earn their keep by taking on odd-jobs to help support the family. More than once, when Walter couldn't find work in Los Angeles, he left for Denver and stayed with his older sister, Helen Ernst, and her family. But there were no more job opportunities there than in Los Angeles very little money found its way home to his family. According to Helen's son Gene Ernst, his family did not condone Walter's periodic abandonment of his family. Nevertheless they felt obliged to assist him when he turned up on their doorstep, confident that his mother-in-law Gertrude75 would help keep her daughter's family afloat.76 But the real "angel" as far as the Glendale Wolfs were concerned was "Cousin Margaret" from Cincinnati.

"Cousin Margaret's" precise blood tie to the family was not entirely clear to the Wolf children, despte being the regular beneficiaries of her largesse. All they were told by their mother Helen was that Margaret was "Otie's daughter," without any of them knowing who "Otie" was. In fact "Cousin Margaret" was Margaret Kent Burchenal (11/9/1887--1/15/1973) of Glendale, Ohio, who married a man named Roger Kemp Rogan (5/15/1877--1/28/1947, b. Chicago), who rose through the ranks to became a vice president of Procter and Gamble. Margaret's parents were John Jackson Burchenal and Leota Blanche Grubbs (b. 9/14/1862 in Richmond, Indiana). "Otie" must have been an informal version of "Leota." She was was the youngest of four children of John Warren Grubbs (6/6/1820--3/17/1893) of Cynthiana, Kentucky and Mary-Margaret Ramsey (5/8/1823--2/?/1881) of Washington County, Pennsyvania. John Warren Grubbs was the son of William Gardiner Grubbs (11/27/1786--4/20/1850) of Fayette, Kentucky and his second wife, Rebecca Croake (10/26/1796-1872) of Virginia. They had nine children, the oldest of which was John Warren Grubbs, Leota's father. The fourth oldest was Thomas Marshall Grubbs (9/12/1825--4/27/1864; born in Kentucky), the father of Gertrude Gardner Grubbs (5/29/1860--4/8/1945). Because John Warren Grubbs and Thomas Marshall Grubbs were brothers, Leota ("Otie") Grubbs and Gertrude Grubbs were first cousins, making Helen Cary Keyt and Margaret Kent Burchenal Rogan second cousins. Despite the genealogical and geographical distance between Margaret Rogan of Glendale, Ohio and Helen Keyt Wolf, of Glendale, California, "Cousin Margaret" took it upon herself to help her struggling west-coast kin. Being in the habit of wintering in Pasadena at the famous Gamble House, Margaret had regular contact with Helen and her family. Margaret helped finance three different home purchases in Glendale for Helen and her family: one on Idlewood Road, another at 1262 Ruberta Street, and a third at 1064 Newby, where Helen and family would stay for many years.76a According to Walter, Jr., an affluent friend of Margaret's was so impressed by Baxter's efforts to keep the family afloat that she bought him a used 1932 Chevrolet sedan to replace his tired 1926 Chevy. But the Wolf children's fondest memories of Cousin Margaret centered around Christmas, when she would provide boxes of gifts for them. Once she even arranged for a New Year's Day (1931) family excursion from San Pedro to Catalina Island on board the S.S. "Catalina." But Margaret's generosity was not confined to the holiday season. She also regularly provided young Helen with formal dresses for her dances and Carol Ann with dolls and ultimately voice lessons. Carol vividly remembers the time in the late 1940s when Margaret came to pick her up from high school in a limousine, taking her to her singing lesson in style. Margaret even offered to pay for Carol to attend the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, but Carol declined, already engaged to be married at the time (1951). In 1952, Carol went by train to visit Margaret in Ohio. The last time that Carol remembers seeing Margaret was in 1962, when she and her four small children went to visit Margaret at the Gamble House.

Getting back to Walter, it was Baxter, as the oldest, who bore the brunt of his absenteeism. A promising artist who had clearly inherited his father's talent, Baxter was forced to walk away from a scholarship (1935) to Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles so that he could work at a service station for trucks and help support his mother and younger siblings. Baxter also put in time at the the federally-sponsored WPA gardens not far from the Wolf home on Newby so as to earn a share of the produce. Before long he secured a night-shift job at Gladding, McBean ceramics company, putting his own high school art class experience to work making terra cotta pots. In the midst of this, Baxter and his brother Walter Jr.--who both towered over their father--executed a sort of familial "coup d'état," by insisting that he (who had returned from Colorado after Helen had secured the house on Newby) share more of the burden of supporting the family. Walter, in turn, insisted that his older children contribute 50 percent of their earnings to the household budget. Angry at the insubordination of his sons, Walter made Helen choose between him or her children. When she (apparently with some reluctance, because her relationship with her husband was always a passionate one) chose the children, Walter left the family for good, returning temporarily to Denver where he worked in a feed store. That was in September, 1940. His youngest child, Carol, remembers her mother saying that out of her first eight years of life (1932-40), her father was present for only four of them. Carol remembers writing her father a letter in late 1940 asking him to come home for Christmas, which he thought best not to do. Walter did return to California, but he seems to have had little or no contact with his family. Carol remembers that once in 1942, when she was ten years old, he showed up completely unannounced at her grammar school in order to see her. Fast-forwarding to about 1950, Carol remembers her boyfriend, Bob Baldwin, asking to meet her father, a request that upset her mother even though that visit never materialized.

At some point, presumably after he returned to California, Walter met a woman named Hazel May Miller (10/8/1908-8/6/1984), whom Walter for some reason called "Susan." In order to marry her, Walter had to file for divorce from Helen. Helen challenged this, counter-filing on the grounds of desertion and she won, though she never succeeded in collecting any alimony or child support. According to family lore, Walter and Hazel once ran into Tom Keyt, his former brother-in-law, who had not yet been informed of the divorce. An awkward moment, no doubt. In any case, Walter and Hazel married on September 11, 1944. According to voter records from that year, the couple--identified professionally as an "artist" and a "housewife"--began their new life together at 557 N. Berendo Street in East Hollywood. Walter was 52 at the time of his second marriage and Hazel, 35. They seem never to have had children of their own.

The only one of Walter's children with whom he maintained contact was his youngest son Bob. The two seem to have enjoyed a special bond. Reminiscing about his father, Bob remembered him as an avid USC football fan, who loved to listen to the games on the radio while munching popcorn. Bob fondly recalled accompanying his father to see USC play in the Rose Bowl. Not surprisingly, Bob's success as a "light-weight, signal-calling fullback" for Hoover High was a source of immense pride for his father. For his part, Bob remembered being impressed with his father's command of the English language, despite his lack of formal education, as well as his uncanny ability to fix and build things. "There was nothing that dad couldn't do and do well. He was a perfectionist." But in the end even Bob's connections with his father wore thin when Walter took offense at a donation that Bob made in his name to the Heart Association, for which Bob worked at the time; Walter made it clear that he preferred the kind of gift that came wrapped in a box. Walter managed to maintain better ties with his family in Denver. Gene Ernst, Walter's nephew, kept in touch with his uncle, and remembered Walter and "Susan" (Hazel) as a reasonably happy couple despite their perpetual financial problems. After Gene's last trip to California in 1957, Christmas cards and cookies were the only link between uncle and nephew. Walter clearly played a much more active role in his second wife's family. Teresa Miller Swafford (a granddaughter of Hazel's brother) came across this website and informed me that Walter was her dad's (David Miller's) favorite uncle and that he "was a real character."

Shortly after Carol Ann's marriage to Bob Baldwin in 1951, Helen Keyt Wolf sold her now empty house on Newby and went to visit Cousin Margaret in Cincinnati. During the visit, Margaret received a call from the president of The Masters School, a private girl's boarding school in Dobb's Ferry, New York. A medical emergency had left him in need of a resident house mother and he sought Margaret's recommendation for a suitable substitute. It just so happened that the perfect person for the job was sitting right there in her living room, and so Helen was off to New York to begin a new chapter in her life. In 1952 Helen's daughter Carol took the train to visit Margaret in Cincinnati and then continued on to visit her mother in Dobb's Ferry, staying with her there for a few days. She remembers how happy her mother was at the Masters School. Unfortunately Helen was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1956 and underwent a colostomy. Thank goodness (recalls Carol) that the school provided medical insurance. Undaunted, Helen continued working as the housemother of "Second House" through the 1958-59 school year, by which time she had reached the mandatory retirement age of 65. A scrapbook given to her by the last students to benefit from her guidance contains an assortment of pictures, cards, and letters of recommendation. Helen's reputation at Dobbs Ferry helped her secure a similar position at the The Bishop School in La Jolla, California. When her cancer returned, Helen, now fully retired, went to live with her son Bob and his family in Ventura, in a room decorated in purple, her favorite color. She died there at the age of 69 on July 25, 1963.78

Five and a half years later (on January 25, 1969), Helen's ex-husband Walter died in a convalescent hospital in Arcadia, where he had suffered from the final stages of lung cancer. His memorial service was held at Unity Church of San Gabriel and he was buried in Inglewood Cemetery. The section in which he is buried affords an impressive and unobstructed view of Sofi Stadium to the south. Walter was survived by his widow, Hazel ("Susan") and his five estranged children from his previous marriage. They seem never to have been informed of their father's demise. His death certificate lists his last place of residence as 9522 Giovane St. in South El Monte, and his occupation as a vacuum cleaner salesman. He had worked for the Electrolux Company for at least seventeen years.

The Baxter Keyt Wolf Family

Baxter Keyt Wolf, the eldest son of Walter Richard Wolf, married Ruth Elizabeth Stuart Adams (3/20/1919--4/13/2016) on April 18, 1941. Ruth was the daughter of William Stuart Adams (6/23/1892--12/3/1930) and Ruth Lillian Owen (7/25/1894--10/18/1974), both of Brooklyn.

[The Stuart and Adams lines]

[The Owen line]

[A Trip Down Memory Lane: Ruth Adams Wolf Reflects on the Glendale/Altadena Years (1927-1954)]

The Wolf and Adams children seem to have met shortly after the Wolf family moved to Glendale, the first connection being between Ruth and Helen, Baxter's sister, as the teens walked to school together. Eventually Baxter made his interest in Ruth clear by offering to carry her books for her. In 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson recorded and example of the same form of courtship, which made him think of his youth in Scotland, where he remembered "wrathful swains of eight and nine confronting each other stride-legs, flushed with jealousy; for to carry home a young lady's books was both a delicate attention and a privilege." [From Scotland to Silverado, 7]. As in the case of Stevenson's book carrying "swain," Baxter eventually popped the question to "Ruthie" while they were making their way along Chevy Chase Drive. He asked her if she would like a stick of gum, directing her to remove it from the car's glove compartment. Ruth reached in and found not gum, but a small box with an engagement ring inside. The ceremony took place at the Church of the Lighted Window in La Cañada. Shortly thereafter, Baxter and Ruth left for their honeymoon on Catalina Island, and then set up their new home in one of the units of a court on Justin Avenue in Glendale, not far from the Wolf family home on Newby Street. Later they moved to a house on Stocker Street, where they were living when Linda Jean Wolf was born on July 27, 1942. At that time the United States was in the process of mobilizing for war in Europe and the Pacific. Due to Ruth's pregnancy, Baxter was eligible for a draft deferment that led to his employment at Lockheed Corporation in Burbank, where he contributed to the war effort and learned draftsmanship in the process. While Linda was still a toddler, Baxter and Ruth bought their first home in Roscoe (now called Sun Valley) in the San Fernando Valley, but soon decided that that part of greater Los Angeles was not for them. So Baxter bought an empty lot in Altadena, (at 150 W. Foothill Boulevard, now Altadena drive), secured temporary quarters for his family at his mother's house at 1064 Newby, Street, and, in his "spare time" (while working long hours at Lockheed), began building a home. Baxter's plan was to build the garage first and then use it, in modified form, as a home while he finished the house proper. In the end, that provisional garage-home was deemed sufficient, with one subsequent addition, and no separate house was ever built. Baxter and Ruth's first son, William ("Bill") Baxter Wolf--born three days after the Japanese surrendered on August 18, 1945--was six months old when the family moved into their new garage home. Baxter, Ruth, Linda, and Billy, lived there from the beginning of 1946 until August 1954, when they moved to Santa Barbara. Unfortunately the house that Baxter built in Altadena, like so many others in that area, burned to the ground as a result of the Eaton fire in January, 2025.

The decision to move to Santa Barbara was an easy one for Baxter and Ruth. Baxter's favorite uncle, Tom Keyt, had lived Santa Barbara on and off from shortly after his marriage (September 6, 1922) until his death (November 20, 1958), making the town a natural focus of visits for Baxter and family. Baxter's love of the sea, stemming from the time he spent growing up in the South Bay, and the rising smog levels in Altadena ultimately led him to follow Tom's example and relocate to Santa Barbara. The family first rented a house at 408 Grove Lane, in the middle of the lemon orchards just south of Foothill Road. There, on September 17, 1954--just a month after the move--Ruth gave birth to Richard ("Rick") Baxter Wolf. Less than three years later, on June 1, 1957, came Kenneth ("Ken") Baxter Wolf, the last of Baxter's and Ruth's children. In the spring of 1961, after seven years on Grove Lane, Baxter and family moved to a brand-new house in the Mesa area of Santa Barbara that he purchased for $16,000. A year later, Baxter decided to take a job in Campbell, California (near San Jose), but it was only a matter of months before he and Ruth decided to move back. Fortunately the house they had left behind at 333 Linda Rd. was still on the market, so they were able to move right back in.

Though Baxter's work career was nowhere near as checkered as his father Walter's, he was still hampered by his lack of formal education beyond high school. Like his father, he was a natural artist, he could craft anything with his hands, and he innately understood how all things mechanical worked. When he married Ruth in 1941, he was working for Vega, a subsidiary of Lockheed in Burbank. Then he worked for Lockheed itself. After the move to Santa Barbara, he worked, among other places, at Smith-Nelson, a machine shop, and Astro Research, a company that supplied parts for the nascent space program. But he was always drawn to the sea. For a time he had a barge in Santa Barbara harbor and made a living securing and maintaining permanent moorings. His son Bill remembers long hours as a young teen working on the barge. Later Baxter decided to apply his Lockheed-honed talents as a draftsman to boat design. After serving an apprenticeship with John Leuschen, a local naval architect with an office at the harbor, Baxter ultimately bought the business and entered into the most fulfilling phase of his work career, as a naval architect, marine surveyor, and compass adjuster. His sons Rick and Ken remember spending lots of time down at the harbor, sometimes helping in the office, but mostly fishing in the harbor with drop lines purchased at Carter's Bait and Tackle or renting rowboats from Otto Fisk. One of the other fringe benefits of Baxter's new career was the fresh fish that grateful clients would send his way. A master of the backyard barbeque, Baxter's swordfish came to be as legendary as his chicken. Baxter worked at the harbor for a number of years, witnessing first hand the famous oil spill of 1969. But ultimately he could not make a consistent living so he accepted a position as an engineer at Rolair Corporation in nearby Goleta. As disappointing as it was to leave the harbor behind, his family thrived on the regular paychecks.

Baxter was passionate about his interests and threw himself fully into each of them in turn. While he was still living in Altadena, he and Ruth became avid square dancers. At one point they were part of a group that called themselves the "Buzzin' Boots," the members having little leather boot-shaped badges pinned to their outfits. Ruth, who knew her way around the sewing machine, made cowboy shirts for Baxter that matched her own western-style dance dresses. Soon Baxter was doing his own calling, carting with him a phonograph, a microphone, and a wooden file box full of records wherever he went. Young Bill, dressed in boots and a matching, home-made shirt would often accompany Baxter on his gigs. Baxter also loved boating. The garage on Newby in Glendale witnessed his first boat-building effort. After the move to Santa Barbara, he built or refurbished other small boats, including "Los Lobos" and "Lil Toot." He also borrowed bigger ones, leading to the occasional family expedition to the Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara, and Catalina off of Los Angeles. Baxter became a member in the United States Power Squadron, an organization dedicated to the promotion of safe boating, and rose to the position of District Commander. When he no longer worked at the harbor, Baxter followed his two youngest sons into scouting, becoming the scoutmaster of Troop 52. Under his leadership, with Jim Davis as his principal assistant, Troop 52 rose to be the flagship troop of Mission Council, with weekend backpack trips into the mountains behind Santa Barbara and Ojai every month, an annual week-long stint at Rancho Alegre Summer Camp, and a 50-mile trek in the Sierras every summer.

[Ruth Elizabeth Stuart Adams Wolf's photo album].

Baxter suffered his first heart attack in November, 1969, just days short of his 52nd birthday. True to form, he threw himself into his recovery. Determined to get back in shape, he began each day with an hour's worth of exercise on the living room floor, ending each time with "push-ups." The first time that he tried a push-up after the heart attack, he managed to produce only one. Four years later, on the morning of Saturday, June 16, 1973, he proudly knocked out 90 of them. But later that day, on the trail to Haddock campground (off of Highway 33, north of Ojai), Baxter had a second, this time fatal, heart attack. His two youngest sons delivered the news to their mother later that evening, the night before the saddest Father's Day in history. To her great credit, Ruth, age 53 at the time, quickly moved beyond this tragedy, thankful that she still had children at home (age 16 and 18) to care for. She found work as a baker in the local school cafeteria system, where she had worked previously as a substitute. Every school morning for the next 22 years, she reported to work, mostly at La Cumbre Junior High and Santa Barbara High, at the crack of dawn. At age 75 she finally retired, not so much because she was tired of the work but because the services of a true baker were no longer needed in the new microwave age. She continued to make the house at 333 Linda Road a home for another 22 years until her death at age 97 on April 13, 2016. She died in her own bedroom at 333 Linda Rd., where she had lived for 55 years.