The Braun Family

The Brauns

Gerald Hannigan's mother was born Catherine Braun in Chicago in 1875. 

Catherine's father, Joseph Braun, was born in Germany around 1845. Catherine's mother, Catherine Baltes, was born in Trier, Germany around 1848. Many Germans emigrated after the upheaval of the Austro-Prussian war and the strict laws put in place by Bismarck to unify the country. The kaiser began an anti-Catholic kulturkampf in 1871 because the German Catholic bishops held a lot of power.


By 1880, Catherine and Joseph have three girls, Gertrude 9 years old, Catherine 4, and Mary Margareth 2, but Joseph has died. Now calling herself Kate Brown, she is a widow and lives with her sister and brother-in-law Mathew and Catherine Kew (which is misspelled for their true last name Kill) and their children. They all list their birth country as Prussia. They lived at 3706 S. Halsted and Mathew was a carpenter. Kate Brown worked as a laundress. Two blocks away was the parish church of Sts. Peter and Paul, established for the German immigrants. In 1882, 90 students were enrolled so the Kill children and the Brown children may have been enrolled.

http://www.neiu.edu/~reseller/scstpetpaul.html

In 1892, elder sister, Gertrude was 19 and married an Irish immigrant, David Fitzgerald. They lived at 915 38th St. in Chicago.

Kate Brown died at the age of 52 in 1900. The younger Kate, 23 and Mary, 21 were living with their elder sister Gertrude Fitzgerald and the three Fitzgerald children: Fannie, little Gertrude, and David. The two young women worked as seamstresses.

This website from the Newberry Library details the difficult life for German and Irish immigrants in the Back of the Yards at the turn of the last century.

In the next few years, Mary Margareth would meet Joseph Klaus, also a German immigrant, marry and start a family. They had four boys right away, Joseph, Norbert, Roy and Gerald. A year later, Catherine Braun would meet and marry Francis P. Hannigan.

This photo is Frank Hannigan on the far right and the Hannigan children, Catherine, Gerald, and Frank, Jr. I believe that the three women in the middle are the Braun sisters. David Fitzgerald on the left, young Joseph Fitzgerald (?), Gertrude Braun Fitzgerald, Mary Braun Klaus, Catherine Braun Hannigan, and Frank Hannigan. In the front is Catherine Hannigan, Gerald Hannigan, Elmer Fitzgerald, and young Frank Hannigan.