Clara Victoria Arndorfer, and her husband, Joseph Alexius Erdmann, had both been baptized in Iowa. He was thought to be in or associated with the military and to have died in some epidemic while on location. Military sites or towns is not known with certainty, but is consistent with moving regularly, so their children would be born in three states and raised in a fourth. Oldest to youngest, they were Mildred, born in Iowa; Thelma, in Missouri, Curtis, in Oklahoma, with some baptisms possibly done "back home" in Iowa. They were raised in Colorado.
THE OLD COUNTRY. Their ancestors came to the US before there was a country named Germany. To complicate the picture, tsars in Russia and a king of Bohemia had solicited Germans with certain skill sets, with those who migrated then becoming language minorities in those two countries. They would be respectively called Russian-Germans (affecting the Erdmann side) and Deutsch-Boehmish (German-speaking Bohemians, affecting Clara's mother, known here as Victoria).
Staying for centuries in Slavic countries before emigrating to the US, they would have no memories of living in any of "the Germanies". Yet, their families would still be speaking some old-style dialect of German upon arrival in the states, perhaps filled with "adopted" Slavic "loan words". One example would be Alexius as Alexander's "real name" in his baptismal record.
Clara's mother Victoria/Dora had arrived in a "Deutsch-Boehmish" group (that left Europe from a French port??) that included people name Pitterle, all going to Wisc., at first. Clara's father, Michael, had been raised in Wisconsin. Did they marry there? or in Iowa? Michael's people had been true-blue Bavarians, sandwiched between the "Blue Danube" of the famed waltz, to the south, and the forested mountains, northeastish. The mountains separated their easternmost chunk of Bavaria from Bohemia to the north, with a few Bohemian-sounding names to be found in the area's local histories. Austria was close, at the eastern end.
CHILDREN OF CLARA. Her son Curtis will die in Arizona (grave not yet found), in a county where multiple Erdman/Erdmanns are buried, possibly a place where cousins joined each other in retirement. His wife Loretta's bio in a Russian-German database places her in Colorado for her earlier death. We do not know what became of Clara's daughters, not knowing their married names. Did Colorado even track maiden names, as Iowa had been careful to do? Their descendants will need to link Clara's children to Clara's grave.
Note 1: Husband, parents used Erdmann spelling. Note 2: Married 1911, St. Benedict, Kossuth, Iowa Note 3: Widowed early, she & spouse born Iowa Note 4: Raised 3 children in Washington County,CO
Clara Victoria Arndorfer, and her husband, Joseph Alexius Erdmann, had both been baptized in Iowa. He was thought to be in or associated with the military and to have died in some epidemic while on location. Military sites or towns is not known with certainty, but is consistent with moving regularly, so their children would be born in three states and raised in a fourth. Oldest to youngest, they were Mildred, born in Iowa; Thelma, in Missouri, Curtis, in Oklahoma, with some baptisms possibly done "back home" in Iowa. They were raised in Colorado.
THE OLD COUNTRY. Their ancestors came to the US before there was a country named Germany. To complicate the picture, tsars in Russia and a king of Bohemia had solicited Germans with certain skill sets, with those who migrated then becoming language minorities in those two countries. They would be respectively called Russian-Germans (affecting the Erdmann side) and Deutsch-Boehmish (German-speaking Bohemians, affecting Clara's mother, known here as Victoria).
Staying for centuries in Slavic countries before emigrating to the US, they would have no memories of living in any of "the Germanies". Yet, their families would still be speaking some old-style dialect of German upon arrival in the states, perhaps filled with "adopted" Slavic "loan words". One example would be Alexius as Alexander's "real name" in his baptismal record.
Clara's mother Victoria/Dora had arrived in a "Deutsch-Boehmish" group (that left Europe from a French port??) that included people name Pitterle, all going to Wisc., at first. Clara's father, Michael, had been raised in Wisconsin. Did they marry there? or in Iowa? Michael's people had been true-blue Bavarians, sandwiched between the "Blue Danube" of the famed waltz, to the south, and the forested mountains, northeastish. The mountains separated their easternmost chunk of Bavaria from Bohemia to the north, with a few Bohemian-sounding names to be found in the area's local histories. Austria was close, at the eastern end.
CHILDREN OF CLARA. Her son Curtis will die in Arizona (grave not yet found), in a county where multiple Erdman/Erdmanns are buried, possibly a place where cousins joined each other in retirement. His wife Loretta's bio in a Russian-German database places her in Colorado for her earlier death. We do not know what became of Clara's daughters, not knowing their married names. Did Colorado even track maiden names, as Iowa had been careful to do? Their descendants will need to link Clara's children to Clara's grave.
Note 1: Husband, parents used Erdmann spelling. Note 2: Married 1911, St. Benedict, Kossuth, Iowa Note 3: Widowed early, she & spouse born Iowa Note 4: Raised 3 children in Washington County,CO
Inscription
Beloved Mother
CLARA VICTORIA ERDMAN
In God's Care
[Catholic stone portraying mother of Jesus]
Family Members
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