Will Herting's Sad Demise

John Herting 1818 - 1881

Will Herting Contests his Father's Will

Will Herting's Sad Fate & Ensuing Contest to his Will

InterOcean newspaper, August 1888

Link to pdf of article

  

Julia Herting Contests her Husband, William's Will

The Widow, Julia Herting, Settles

John Herting Obituary

 

St. Boniface stands atop the Herting memorial in St. Boniface Cemetery.

The woman on the North side is Agnes Schmitt Dieden Herting, my 3rd great-grandmother.

O'Malleys of Cloonfoher

 The O'Malleys

The O'Malley family, at one time, lived near the townland of Cloonfoher, north of Newport and Westport in County Mayo. Cloonfoher, Newport, and Westport are all in the same area of the west coast of County Mayo in rural western Ireland. Grandma had said they were from Westport and we assume this was because it was the largest town near them to be found on a map.

Beautiful Burrishoole Abbey is on the road from Newport towards Cloonfoher. We believe some ancestors are buried here.

The Townland History from Burrishoole Parish provides a very general  background to part of the family history.

Below is the Griffith's Land Valuation of 1846 showing Peter Malley, born roughly around 1800, was both a tenant and landlord. Peter's landlord was the infamous Sir Roger Palmer who owned 90,000 acres in County Mayo. In 1848, at the height of the famine, Palmer sent his thugs in with crowbars to pull down homes of tenants who couldn't pay rent. Our Peter Malley somehow managed to hang onto his property.

You can see that Peter lived at property "f" and leased property "g" to Peter Joyce. John and James Malley, in properties "a" and "l",  are assumed to be Peter's brothers.

We just found this spot on the earth in the Spring of 2015. Until this time, we had no idea exactly where they were from. In this image from Google Satellite, the ruins of the homestead are still visible. Peggy O'Malley-Dean was able to walk the land in July, 2015 and met neighbors who knew and played with our cousins. This is the land and buildings as they stand today. 

Peter Malley had four sons. His eldest, Peter was born in 1830 (our great grandfather). John was born in 1835, James 1837, and Martin in 1840. (Martin's grandson, Michael John Fahey will be the cousin our grandfather Michael stays with when he emigrates to America.) Peter Junior married Rose McDonnell around 1860 (this is the family who remained on the Cloonfoher property until  approximately 1960 when the children went to England).

Peter and Rose (our great-grandparents) had five children born and we believe lived in Cloonfoher: Mary born in 1866, Michael Patrick in 1868 (our grandfather), Peter in 1870, Anthony in 1872, and Sarah in 1875. 

Mary emigrated to Chicago in 1886 when she was 20 years old. She married Joseph Williamson, a Canadian immigrant who worked in Real Estate. Mary and Joseph had no children. She died in 1943 and is buried in Calvary Cemetery although there is no headstone.

Sarah, the youngest, emigrated in 1894 with two of her friends from Newport, Mary Cusick and Maryanna Coyne, to work as domestics at 62 East Huron in Chicago. Sarah married John Delaney in 1900. Sarah Delaney died very young in 1931 and was the first O'Malley sister to be buried in Calvary.




About the same time Sarah emigrated in 1894, her brother Michael moved to Glasgow. He found work as a bricklayer's laborer and also met and married Elizabeth Masterson. (O'Malley's Set Sail)

While the girls and Michael left Ireland, Anthony and Peter stayed near home.

Their father, Peter, was quite a curmudgeon as seen in this 1896 newspaper article about a case from Petty Court. 

Peter takes his son and wife to court 

Anthony married Lisabeth in 1898 and they had two girls, Rose born in 1902 and Sarah born in 1904. 

The senior Peter passed away in 1899 and Peter and his mother appear in the 1901 census. They both spoke Irish and English. 

Peter married Bridget Grady in 1902 and they had five children: Mary, James, Rose, John, and Sarah was born in 1916.  

Bridget died in 1931 as a young woman and she is buried in Burrishoole Abbey cemetery. The family remained on the Cloonfoher property until about 1960.

Lord have mercy on the soul of Mrs. Bridget O'Malley of Cloonfoher

Lord have Mercy on the soul of Peter O’Malley of Cloonfoher 
died 12th March 1955 aged 84 years

John O'Malley moved to London where his children and their families still reside.

Sarah married Edward Moore and also emigrated to the Chicago-area. 

To America

The farm in Newport could not support all these young men with new families so Anthony, Lisabeth and their two infant daughters sailed for America in 1905. By 1910, Anthony is working in building construction in Chicago and another daughter has arrived, Lizzie, born in 1907. 

Michael followed his brother Anthony and sailed to Chicago on April 25, 1906. He left Elizabeth in Glasgow, returned to Ireland, and sailed from Queenstown. He listed his profession as a laborer and was 35 years old. He was going to stay with someone he listed as his nephew, Michael John Fahey, who lived at 57 Superior St in Chicago. Michael John was actually his cousin, Maria O'Malley Fahey's son. Maria's father, Martin and Peter were brothers, all growing up in the same townland of Cloonfoher. Michael John had emigrated a few years after his cousin Sarah.

The Drantz Family

The Drantz Family

This document is the 1885 passenger manifest for the New York arrival of Fr. Bernhard (Friedrich) and Wilhelmine Braendle Drautz, known as Minnie (passengers 258 & 9). The Drautz family listed their home as Wurttemberg and their hometown as Heilbronn. Frederick, a farmer, was 26 and Minnie, 25.

With them are their four daughters: Emma 6 years old, Louise 4, Minnie 11 months old, and Marie was 1 month old.

http://www.wolfhard.info/Pfarrerskinder-3-Anna-Dorthea,-Stammmutter-eines-amerikanischen-Clans-1646-bis-1703/

Below is the baptismal record for Marie Caroline Drauz baptised on November 29, 1883 in the Evangelical Lutheran church. "Kirchenbucher" means, literally, Church Book. The far right column shows the Godparents, the witnesses to the baptism which I can't make out the names. Friedrich and Minnie had both been baptized and married in the same church. 

https://www.citykirche-heilbronn.de/

Deutschland, ausgewählte evangelische Kirchenbücher 1564-1971

The Drautz family sailed from Hamburg on the Moravia and sailed past Lady Liberty on August 18, 1885. After their arrival, Marie was known as Mary and often stated that she was from Bremen, Germany.  Bremen was an enclave for German families as they awaited their passage, departing from the port of Hamburg. The Immigrants Experience is a wonderful website detailing the life of a European immigrant in the 19th century.

There are many factors that could have contributed to their decision to leave Germany. Often, German conscription, or obligated participation in the military, is cited as the main reason for young men to emigrate at this time. Perhaps it was the political upheaval around the unification of Germany or perhaps it was the religious crises that were so intricately woven among these political changes. This time is often known as the German Kulturkampf.

Christmas Kindlmarkt in the Heilbronn town square.

The next record of the Drantz family is the 1900 census in the small town of Gilman, Illinois in Iroquois county. 

The family lived on Main Street and Frederick worked as a laborer in the tile factory. By now, the letters of their name have been changed to Drantz and Fred and Minnie have six more children: Fred was born in 1888, Annie 1890, Frank "Fran" 1892, Albert 1895, Helen 1897, and baby Florence was 4 months old. 

The eldest, Emma had married Charles Jones in 1899 and they started a family in the town of Washington, Illinois. Not verified, one of their sons may be Russel "Bulldog" Jones who moved to Alabama to pursue a career as a professional wrestler. 

Louisa, 19 years old, was working as a domestic servant in Gilman. Minnie married Harry O'Neill, also in 1899, and they had two children, Harry and Dorothy, and moved to Kankakee.

In 1905, lovely Mary married the dashing George Bechtloff, the Real Estate Broker of Chicago, and the couple moved next door to George's parents in the 7000 block of South Halsted. The Bechtloff Family

Dear Mother Minnie passed away on Feb 16, 1908 and she is buried in Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago now called Forest Home.  Her final resting place can be viewed here.  Minnie's sister, Lisette Caroline Braendle had also emigrated to Illinois. She married Henry Henrichs and remained in Iroquois County, Illinois.

The Drantz family has moved to the city by now and in 1909, Anna married Edward Johnson and they had one daughter, Mildred, and lived in the 14th ward of Chicago.  

In the 1910 census, Fred, the patriarch, is living at 221 North Oakley in Chicago and he has been married to his new wife, Sadie Hasson Drantz, for one year. Fred is a salesman in a grocery store along with his sons, Frank and Albert who live in the same house. 

In 1914, Fred, Jr. married Helen Rowley and they had a son, also named Fred. In that same year, Fran married Mabel Gottsch and they had two boys, Francis and Russell. Frank became a police officer and a top-rated homicide detective in Chicago and worked the famous Richard Speck case in the 1960s.
See the page about Frank Drantz here. 

By 1920, the elder Drantz's had moved to 920 N Karlov Ave and the youngest, Helen and Florence, still lived at home. 

Also in 1920, Fred, Jr. and his family and Albert and his young family all lived on Kimball Ave in Humboldt Park, Chicago. 

Fran and Mabel Drantz now lived on South Halsted down the block from the Bechtloffs, with their three adorable girls: Mabel, 13 and the twins, Lucille and Louise were 7 years old, delighting all the neighbors with their matching dresses and sweet smiles.

This Drantz Family Picnic was taken around 1920, perhaps in celebration of the recent marriage of Helen Drantz and Joe Lippe. 
I have a chart here where I've named as many of the faces as I can.

These photos are screenshots from Finding Your Roots with Melissa McCarthy. Professor Gates points out that Germans were very quick to abandon their German identities and cultures and religions, perhaps.

Fred, Sr. passed away on Feb 27, 1929 and he is buried along with his first wife, Minnie, in Waldheim Cemetery. The following year, 1930, the widow Sadie took in two female boarders. Not a mile away, at 850 N. Monticello, Elizabeth and Ben Wrenn lived in a two-flat with her sister Helen and Joe Lippe. Through the '30s and '40s these neighborhoods are where the Drantz family members chose to raise their families.  

Drantz Family Picnic 1920

Frank Drantz - Chicago Detective and Zanesville Cubs Pitcher

Frank "Bud" Drantz was a pitcher and player for the Zanesville Cubs in the 1940's leading up to WWII where he was a decorated Sergeant and probably walked the beach with General Patton in Casablanca. He returned to Chicago as a detective in the Chicago Police Department and worked some well-known cases.

From The Chicago Tribune