Cecilia Franciska (known as Cecilia Frances) Schaaf was the fifth of twelve children of immigrant parents, Joseph Schaaf (born 7 April 1828 in Memmelshoffen, Alsace, France - died 29 March 1911 in New Ulm, Brown, MN) and Franciska Cecilia (called Frances) Stimmler (born 30 May 1835 in Wilwisheim, Alsace, France - died 7 Feb. 1912 in New Ulm, Brown MN). Named after her mother, she was the fourth of their six daughters. Her exact birthdate is not known. In the earliest Federal census that records her (19 July 1870 in Laketown, MN) she is listed as age 6. Cecilia is 10 in the Minnesota Census of May 1, 1875 in Laketown, but 21 in the MN census of that same day ten years later, in 1885. So her birth year is likely 1863, and the month between late July and December of that year.

Married three times, Cecilia had only one child, with her first husband James Henry (called Gustav or Gust) Degler (1861-1887). They were married 17 Sept. 1883 in Minnepolis, MN, possibly by Valentine Stimmler, the bride’s uncle, a Catholic priest. Their son Silas Paul Degler was born in Minneapolis on 9 May 1884 and died 15 Dec. 1964 in Olympia, WA.

Cecilia moved to Washington Territory about the time it became a state (1889). There, as “Celia Degler,” in Seattle, she married an immigrant from Northern Ireland, George McCord, on Sept, 4, 1889. In the 1892 Federal census in Seattle, she is Celia McCord and says she was born in Germany (though she was actually born in MN); she is married to George McCord and her son Silas Degler is called "McCord" in this census. They had divorced by 30 Sept. 1900, when she married William M. Emerson (1868-1942) in Skagway, Alaska. Emerson was a bartender for the Board of Trade Saloon in Skagway. By 1910, the family is back in Washington, living in Mountain View Precinct, in King County. They are listed as William and Celia F. Emerson and Silas P. Degler (age 20), stepson of William. As is common in censuses, their ages are listed inaccurately and - as is also common - Cecilia did not known the birthplaces of her parents amd reported them differently in the censuses. In this census, she reports her father as born in “Germany" and her mother in PA. She does correctly report her own birth as having occurred in MN, though.

In 1920, she is listed as "Celia Emerson” and lives still with her husband and son, but in Endolyne Precinct, King Co., WA. The last census in which she appears was taken April 4, 1930, shortly before her death on 2 June 1930. She and husband William live next door to her son Silas and his family (wife and 4 children). Her death record cites cerebral hemorrhage (from which her mother also died) as the cause of her death, but she also had cancer; she is buried in Calvary Cemetery, Seattle, King County Washington, in Plot: section 3, lot 139, site 7, next to her husband W. M. Emerson.
(Contributed by: Judy Schaaf #47246018)