#52 Ancestors 2019 Week 16: Out of Place--How did Martha Weems from Anne Arundel County MD end up in Bozeman MT?

in #52 Ancestors 2019 Week 16: Out of Place--How did Martha Weems from Anne Arundel County MD end up in Bozeman MT?

Martha Weems, the daughter of Edwin Dawson Weems and Rosa Norman and a distant cousin to me, was born 16 April 1872 in Elk Ridge Landing MD.  She had a far more adventurous life than one might have expected from the daughter of a steamboat engineer on the Chesapeake Bay.  According to her son, Edwin Weems Winkler, "Dolly" Weems was a vivacious girl who loved company and parties and could drive and ride with the best of them.  Her mother was apparently a very strict woman with severe Victorian ideas of what was appropriate behavior for her daughter, and this made Dolly long to get away from home.

In pursuit of this goal, Dolly took up with a man named Cole, according to her son, "a handsome man, a drinker, a gambler, and one who never worked if he could get out of it." They were married in 1890 and divorced within a year or two, which her mother saw as disgraceful.  So Dolly was sent off to live with her mother's sister, Eugenia Norman, who had married a Civil War veteran, Walter Arnold, and had a ranch near Helena MT, to live down the scandal.

After a year or two in Montana, Dolly returned home to Maryland, but found her mother still bitter about her divorce and soon moved to Baltimore to live with a cousin.  She found work in the Bayview Asylum, where she met her second husband, Louis Winkler (about whom I have written in a previous post See

https://annesgenealogyadventures.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-disappearance-of-louis-winkler.html

), an immigrant from Hungary who also worked at the Asylum.  They were married in 1899 and two children followed: Mary in 1900 and Edwin in 1903.

The marriage went from bad to worse as the family faced financial difficulty, and Dolly became more and more quarrelsome. Finally, after a particularly loud quarrel, Louis simply walked out on his pregnant wife and daughter.  After the birth of her son a few days later, Dolly took the children back to her parents' home in Solomon's Island, but found that situation untenable with her mother's continuing disapproval.  Dolly wrote to her uncle (Walter Arnold) in Montana, whose wife had just died, and finally went back to the ranch to act as his housekeeper in the spring of 1904, and formally filed for a divorce from Louis when she got to Montana.

Dolly married in Montana for a third time in 1910 to George Clifford James, a WWI veteran who had served in France, as his second wife.  They had a son, Clifford George James, in 1911. The third marriage apparently didn't go much better than the first two.  By 1913, Dolly applied for a homestead in Montana and by 1917, George was declaring that he would not be responsible for any debts incurred by his wife.

Martha "Dolly" Weems died in Bozeman MT in 1923. Her daughter Mary Winkler died of the Spanish flu in 1918.  Her son Edwin Winkler eventually moved to North Carolina and worked as a professor at UNC and NC State.

The Disappearance of Louis Winkler

I came across Louis Winkler in the course of doing my due diligence on the Weems family.  Following up on the children of Edwin Dawson Weems and Rosetta Norman, I found a marriage for their daughter Martha Weems with one Louis Winkler in Washington DC in 1899.

Louis, a 38-year-old native of Hungary, showed up with his wife Martha in Baltimore in the 1900 Census where Louis was working as the Supervisor of the Insane at Bayview Asylum.

Then, a search in Baltimore newspapers turned up the strange story of Louis's disappearance.  On January 14, 1903, Louis apparently walked out of the house and did not return.  "He kissed his wife and two-year-old child good-bye, saying that he would be back about five o-clock, if not earlier and spoke in his accustomed endearing way to his wife.  He left about 10 o'clock in the morning  and since that time has not been seen or heard from."

His father-in-law called for the police to find Winkler, speculating that either he had met with foul play or he had sailed back to Hungary.  Meanwhile, his pregnant wife gave birth to a son, Edwin Weems Winkler, on January 29. 

I was never able to find a follow-up story, so I was forced leave this mystery unsolved.

Some years later, I came across a Find-A-Grave entry for Martha Weems Winkler who was buried in, of all places, Bozeman MT.   Her memorial was also linked to that of her son Edwin Weems where  little more of the story was filled in. His memorial said that his father had died when he was three years old and that the family had moved to Bozeman in 1910.

With that information, I went back to look for a death certificate for Louis Winkler and I did find one in 1906 in Baltimore, so that fit the information in Find-A-Grave. I made a note to go get a copy of the death certificate from the Maryland Archives.

Then I also went back to Ancestry and searched again for Louis Winkler.  This time,  a passport application from 1921 turned up.

This Louis Winkler, also from Hungary, was living in Cleveland OH and clearly had not died in Baltimore in 1906.  Were there two Louis Winklers?

Update: 7 April 2017

Yes, it turns out there were two Louis Winklers and the one that died in Baltimore in 1906 was not Martha Weems' husband.

I found the death certificate for Louis Winkler who died in Baltimore in 1906 and he was from Germany, not Hungary and was a laborer, not working in a hospital.

The Death Certificate of Louis Winkler in Cleveland showed that he was from Hungary.

Further, his occupation was hospital orderly.  A story from a Cleveland newspaper indicates that in 1906, Louis Winkler was a hero who rescued hospital patients from a damaging fire.

I got another piece of the puzzle when someone saw the picture of Louis I had posted in Find-A-Grave.  Louis and Martha's son, Edwin Weems Winkler, published notes about his mother and father, which were kindly shared with me. 

Martha, or "Dolly" as she was known, was apparently a lively, vivacious girl who badly wanted to get away from her strict parents.  She married and quickly divorced a drinking, gambling man named Cole.  The family considered this disgraceful and sent her out West to Montana to stay with her mother's sister and returned to Maryland about 1894, but still was not getting along well with her family.  She went to live with a cousin in Baltimore and ended up with a job in a hospital, which is probably where she met Louis Winkler.  They were married in Washington DC in 1899.  According to the notes, Louis was well-educated and spoke seven languages, though his English had a pronounced accent.  He was trained as a male nurse, which was uncommon in Maryland and he had difficulty finding work in this field.  He tried his hand at selling insurance, but this was not successful.  The couple had a daughter about 1900 and a son in 1903, but faced many financial difficulties and quarreled quite a bit.  This resulted in the "disappearance" article where I first noticed Louis.  Martha took her two young children back to her aunt in Montana since she did not feel welcome at the family home in Maryland and divorced Louis when she got there.  She apparently had nothing more to do with Louis and his son did not know what happened to his father.