(1) Notice printed by the Kunz family, cousins on his mothers' side, at KunzBradyReunion.weebly.com:

Curtis J. Erdman

(great grandson of Franz and Rosalia (Schmeiser) Schoeberle)

(son of Clara (Arndorfer and Alexander J. Erdman)

Birth 29 Dec 1915 in Oklahoma

Death 25 Oct 2004 in Mesa, Manicopa, Arizona

(2) NOTES from JBrown, daughter of Donna Arndorfer:

His mother often went by Clair, though her name would be Clara Victoria Arndorfer Erdman, to members of her family.

His father, Alexis/Alexander Erdmann, was in, or connected, to the military. The family traveled until his father died of a sickness in camp in 1916. The children were born in the years between 1912 and 1916, so between the 1910 and 1920 Censuses, and thus were never seen with Alexander in a census. Only church records show them together.

He had two sisters. When he was about five, they and their widowed mother were in Colorado for the 1920 Census (Washington County, in Akron). They were at the farmhouse of an uncle, Ed Arndorfer, with their mother working out of the house as a dressmaker.

All three children and their mother were then in the 1930 Census, still in the same Colorado County (now in West Akron). Their mother lived near farmers, headed her own house, and worked out of it, with her occupation maybe nursing. Her and Ed's mother (the widowed Victoria Schoebele Arndorfer) had come from Iowa to visit them, for that Census. Curtis would have been about 15 then.

Both times, Curtis' birthplace was listed as Oklahoma, while sister Thelma's was listed as Missouri. Curtis had a separate and second "birth record" in Kossuth County, Iowa, showing a later date than his true birth. That county record is actually a baptismal record, postponed until about a year after he was born, hence, its lateness. His parents, Clara and Alexander, brought him to their "home church" for that family event. The courthouse for Kossuth County had burned down, destroying original records, so church records were substituted. For a small percentage, the church records would be for "out-of-towners".

(4) Curtis' wife, Loretta Schneider, came from a group called German-speaking Russians, people that had migrated to the Ukraine frontier at the invitation of Czarina Caterina/Katerine (Catherine the Great).

Something they were not used to, back in their "old country", pre-Russia? Once in the Ukraine, German-speakers with different religions were assigned separate towns in the Ukraine, segregating them. Their faiths ranged, from Mennonite, to Lutheran, to Jewish, to Catholic. The different faiths were together there for several hundred years, but, eventually, non-German speakers wanted the land and towns and pressured many (not all) of the German-speakers to leave.

We have not researched what specific families left the Ukraine together with wife Loretta's family. We do know some general things. Music was a big thing in their culture, with Lawrence Welk an example of a transplant from the Ukraine.

Had they not lived in Colorado, his wife Loretta probably would have fit well into the international Germans of Kossuth County, Iowa. The Iowa people of their era loved wedding dances and singing in church choirs or playing instruments. Their ethnicities ranged, from Belgian, to Swiss, to Alsace-Lorraine transplants, to Bavarians, to Deutsch-Boehmish. The Deutsch-Boehmish family of his grandmother Victoria were German-speaking Bohemians, her Schoeberles coming to the States via Wisconsin, with the Schmeisers, the Pitterles, and others. There was a tendency to marry mostly Germanic speakers at first, then gradually adding Bohemians, once here, as English was gradually learned by both, maybe as both immigrant cultures were musical.

(5) His older sister was known usually as Mildred V., but another time as Mildreth (married name not found as of 2016, but her sister's obituary said she was deceased and they called her Letha). His younger sister was Thelma Gwendolyn. Thelma attended Denver schools and then married Louis "Bus" Thomas. They had a printing business in LA until they retired in Washington state to be near a son. After Bus died, she did a "solo" retirement in Baker City, Oregon, in Settler's Park.

Info provided by Find A Grave contributor JBrown, IA, MN, Calif, AustinTX