King Rat

Alfred Sorenson, Mae Sorenson and the Lemberger case

My great great grandfather was Nels Sorenson (born in Denmark, emigrated to Madison in 1883, died in 1931). His son Alfred came to the U.S. with the family. Digging up information on Alfred has been a pain in the ass. Mae Sorenson was his wife, and the most sordid parts of the story involve her.

At first, what I knew about him was two census listings for him. In 1900, he was living with Nels in Madison, and listed under the name Albert. In 1905, it’s the same. However, I couldn’t find any other mention of Albert Sorenson for the longest time. I managed to dig up a copy of his mother Katherine’s obituary in 1947, which mentions a son named Alfred B. I found a 1910 census entry for an Alfred and May Sorenson (with son George) in Madison. For the longest time I found nothing else, and I wasn’t sure if his name was Alfred or Albert.

I got the bright idea to search the Forest Hill Cemetery burial records for him, and found an Alfred Sorenson buried there in 1958. I wasn’t sure if it was the right Alfred though. (I didn’t notice that his burial location was adjacent to Nels and Katherine Sorenson, which should have been a clue.)

When I subscribed to NewspaperArchive.com, I tried to look up his obituary. Unfortunately, the 1950s are more or less a black hole on that site for Madison newspapers. They never got copies of most of those issues. Later, I searched for Sorenson more generally. It took a lot of weeding, but I found an article that referenced him. You’ll notice his name is hyphenated across two lines, so the O.C.R. didn’t make Alfred out of the text. It’s an interesting story:

Scan of article on May Sorenson - Alfred Sorenson divorce, text below — Bond No. 1 Broken as Much Married May Fries Fish for Mate No. 2

Here’s the text of the article from 1 Jan 1933 in the Wisconsin State Journal:

Bond No. 1 Broken as Much-Married May Fries Fish for Mate No. 2

Mrs. May Sorenson, 47, Madison, has been a muchly married woman these last five years, it was brought out in circuit court Saturday when her husband, Alfred, 52, was awarded a divorce by Judge A. G. Zimmerman.

Sorenson recalled that they were married on Nov. 3, but he couldn’t tell the year, except that it must have been about 19 years ago.

Left, Came Back

After a number of years of married life, in which they didn’t get along any too well, Mrs. Sorenson obtained a divorce from bed and board and went her way. Her way eventually led back to him, in 1927, but before that she was married to two other men, Sorenson testified.

Herman Sachtjen, divorce counsel, told the court that in 1927 the Sorensons came to him and wanted the bed and boarddivorce judgment set aside. This was just before it would have become final after the regular five-year period required.

Enter Mate No. 2

Two days after the judgment had been set aside and the Sorensons had resumed relations as man and wife, Sachtjen was visited by William Baker, South Madison, who wanted to know:

What do you mean by taking away my wife?

He exhibited a marriage certificate from a county in Iowa. He was informed that the marriage was illegal, because Mrs. Sorenson had not received a final divorce decree.

Well, I’ll have her back again in two months, Sachtjen said Baker told him.

Baking for Baker

However, Sorenson saud he and his wife lived together until three months ago, when his wife went out to a rummage sale. He said he hadn’t seen her since.

Deputy Thomas Watson was called to the witness stand to testify as to where he served Mrs. Sorenson with the complaint in the divorce suit.

He said he found her in the home of William Baker, South Madison, frying a mess of fish.

Now, that’s likely to be the same Alfred Sorenson as in 1910, as there weren’t likely to be two couples in Madison with the names Alfred and Mae Sorenson. I’m not certain of the exact timeline, because I’ve found conflicting reports on the divorce dates and marriages and whatnot.

Searching for Mae Sorenson (and May Sorenson), I then pulled up some really interesting newspaper accounts from the early 1920s. Here’s the background, but you can search on Lemberger case or Martin Lemberger to get more information. In September 1911, a girl named Annie Lemberger disappeared from Madison. Several days later, her body was found in Lake Monona. Suspicion fell on a local laborer, John Johnson. He was arrested and locked up. He confessed under questioning and plead guilty. He recanted shortly thereafter, claiming that the police threatened to turn him over to a lynch mob if he didn’t confess. After his conviction, he was moved to a state facility, where he wasn’t in danger of extra-judicial mob killing. For ten years he maintained his innocence, but to no avail.

Here’s where Mae Sorenson comes in. In 1921, she came forward to testify that Annie Lemberger’s family told her in 1911 that the father, Martin Lemberger, had done it. Mae also said she saw a bloody nightgown on the floor of the Lemberger washroom. The police arrested Martin Lemberger (in court, Perry Mason style) and freed James Johnson. The charges against Lemberger didn’t stick though, because the statute of limitations had passed.

Article on Mae Sorenson testimony in the Lemberger case, text not transcribed — Mrs. Sorenson's Conscience Is Clear After Ten Years

Things got stickier another decade later though, according to reports. Mr. Johnson’s lawyer was Ole (O.A.) Stolen. He used the notoriety to wrangle himself a judgeship, but resigned in disgrace over corruption. A newspaper decided to do a 10 year retrospective of the case in the early 1930s, and uncovered that Stolen had paid Mae Sorenson for her testimony.

The article linked above says Mae’s husband is George. So it might not be the same Mae Sorenson that married Alfred Sorenson. I haven’t found any other Mae Sorenson’s in Madison either. So I saved a few of the articles and noted the connection as inconclusive for the moment.

I found a burial record for a Mae Sorenson in Forest Hill Cemetery that lists her as being buried in 1958 (the same year as Alfred). That record has her birth date as 10 Mar 1884. When I visited Madison in June, I spent some time at the Madison Public Library and the Wisconsin Historical Society, looking through issues of the Wisconsin State Journal and the Capital Times on microfilm. I found both of their obituaries. Neither mentions the ex-spouse, which isn’t surprising. But both mention a daughter Evelyn who lives in California, which confirmed to me that the two burials are for the former spouses. And that Alfred is the one related to me, because it’s in the same plot as my great great grandfather.

Today a major piece of the puzzle fell into my lap. It’s an affidavit made for a moot court competition in 2004 about the Lemberger case. It’s not the real thing, but it has details that aren’t easily dug up, so they had access to the actual case materials. And it has other details that definitively connect Mae Sorenson to the Mae Sorenson who married Alfred Sorenson, my great great uncle. The preparers either filled in blanks with information from the Mae Sorenson connected to me, or that information was in the case materials. The former is possible, but I consider the latter more likely. If they needed to fill in blanks, they could have used any old information, as it wasn’t germane to the Lemberger case.

What are those details? (They have male/female variants of names in case the people who play these characters in the mock court don’t match the original genders.)

1. My name is Mae/Mark Sorenson. I was born on March 10, 1884 in Sparta,
Wisconsin. I was an orphan and grew up as a ward of the State of Wisconsin. I
moved to Madison around 1900. I joined St. John’s Lutheran Church in Madison
when I moved here and have been a member since that time.

3. I married Alfred/Freda Sorenson in November of 1907 but we divorced years
later. I lost everything in the divorce and even lost custody of my one dear child
to Alfred/Freda.

The points of connection are: Mae’s birth date is the same as that given in her burial record, her husband is named Alfred, and their marriage date matches the approximate date in the 1910 census and the marriage date given in the newspaper article on their divorce.

Now, to be really an truly certain, I need to find a lot of confirming records. But at this point I’ve moved it from uncertain to pretty likely.

Things to obtain:

marriage record for Alfred and Mae Sorenson on 3 Nov 1907 from Madison, either from the state, Dane County, or possibly the Wisconsin Historical Society
death certificate for Mae Sorenson from 16 Nov 1958 from Dane County or the State of Wisconsin
copies or transcriptions of Mae Sorenson’s affidavits and testimony from the Lemberger case in 1921 and 1922

Some nice to have items, but aren’t completely necessary to confirming the connection:

records from the Sparta State School for Dependent & Neglected Children from the Wisconsin Dept. of Health and Family Services and/or Wisconsin State Archives
death certificate for Alfred Sorenson from 17 Feb 1958
copies of the news articles in the 1930s that revealed the payments to Mae Sorenson
divorce case record from 1922 bed and board divorce
divorce case record from the second divorce in 1931
copy of Crime of Magnitude by Mark Lemberger (out of print, but looks like there’s a Kindle edition
!) (got the Kindle edition. list of characters at the front lists the husband as Alfred.)

And to make this unnecessarily long article unnecessarily longer, here’s the photos I took in June of Alfred’s grave marker and the plot where Mae was buried. There’s no marker for her grave.

Grave marker for Alfred Bernhard Sorenson — Alfred Bernhard Sorenson

Mysterious Dr. Walter Solle

So here’s an interesting mystery. My grandmother was Lillian Solle. She was the daughter of William Solle, born in Springfield, Illinois in 1865, but moved to Madison sometime between 1900 and 1905. His father was an German immigrant from the Kingdom of Hanover (before Germany was a country), also named William Solle. Germany never centralized all the various records from all the principalities and kingdoms after it federated into the German Empire. So there’s not a whole lot of genealogy records online from Germany. If I ever want to dig into the German branches of the family, it’s not going to be easy like it has been with Sweden or Denmark. Consequently, I haven’t pursued much about the Solle family.

But now I kinda want to.

Solle is not a very common name in the U.S. Searching for “Solle” in Madison newspapers brings up only 732 hits. I haven’t looked through all of them, but I have poked around a lot. One was an item from the 26 Jun 1924 Capital Times about the Solles (Flora, Lillian, and William Jr.) visiting relatives in St. Louis. Much of the text is faded in the microfilm and unreadable. But it mentions a cousin, Dr. Walter Solle. I’d previously noted that and promptly forgot about it. Found my notation yesterday and searched a bit.

Solles visit St Louis (scan from the Capital Times) — Solles visit St Louis

The first thing I did was search for Walter Solle in the immigration databases on Ancestry.com. Though I can’t read the text of the article, it mentions Germany so I assumed he was visiting from Germany. And there are a lot of passenger manifests post 1900. Bingo. He arrived from Germany in New York on the ship Albert Ballin in May 1924, a month before the trip to St. Louis. And the manifest lists William Solle of Madison as his cousin, so I know this isn’t a different Walter Solle.

Walter Solle lines on Albert Ballin passenger manifest

The interesting thing here is that he lists his occupation as political economist. Which would be cool, because the world of political economy really wasn’t that large in the 1920s.

There’s also a second manifest with him on it from 1927, coming from Germany again. This time he’s listed as a merchant, and he’s also a resident alien.

I did a narrower search for Walter Solle in the Madison newspapers. If he’s living in Madison now, they were likely to have written about him at some point. Bingo. On 28 July 1924, the Capital Times had an article about him moving to the U.S.

Article on Walter Solle moving to Madison — Walter Solle to live in Madison

Only instead of being a political economist list he was a couple of months earlier, now his profession is a composer. The article goes into some detail about his exploits in the German Army during World War I. Since the source for those tales was likely Walter Solle himself, I’d tend to take them with a grain of salt.

Anyhow, all I know about Walter Solle is contained in those four items. He doesn’t show up in the 1930 Census. No other mentions I could find quickly in the Madison newspapers. Did he return to Germany? Did he die? What was his real profession?

On This Day: Othelia and Ken

37 years ago today, my great grandmother Othelia married Ken Wallace. My great grandfather died six years before that. The second marriage was short-lived. I’d known about it only because my mom had mentioned Ken a couple of times, but all she said was that it didn’t last long. I was alive, but I don’t remember a bit of it.

One cousin saw the marriage listed on my genealogy site and that was the first time she’d known about the marriage. It was over before she was born less than three years later.

Ken’s relatives have little recollection even. I got a message from one of his descendants thanking me for posting the information. Ken had married a couple of women after his first wife died, but she didn’t have Othelia’s name. Just a photo of the two of them together.

Washington State has a treasure trove of documents available via the Washington Digital Archives. One of the things that is up there is a copy of the marriage certificate from Othelia and Ken’s marriage.

Marriage certificate for Othelia Hallin and Kenneth F. Wallace — Marriage certificate for Othelia Hallin and Ken Wallace

Also, I noticed my great grandmother made sure to spell Piteå (her place of birth) with a diacritic. In almost all documents here in America the umlaut is dropped. Officially, Piteå uses the ring above diacritic, so I assume that the umlaut was a common way it was written. I am not familiar with the history of that diacritic.

Tracking down the living Weisses

My great great grand-father Anton Weiss had 8 children: Robert, Celia, Frank, Theodore, Joe, Mary, Clarissa, and Agnes.

Robert married Martha Grace and they had one child who died before he was a year old. Martha and Robert divorced and I don’t believe either had any more children. Martha and her third husband do not have any children connected to them in their census records. Robert does not appear to have married again, and if he fathered any more children they are likely illegitimate and untraceable.

Celia married Henry Klindt. They moved to South Dakota and then to Ontario, California and had a few children. I’ve tracked down a number of living descendants but hadn’t found current contact information for any. Yesterday, I found a memorial for one of their children on Find-A-Grave (a site for cataloging grave sites along with virtual memorials and flowers). It had been put up last week, and included photographs of the person. The photos indicated to me that a living relative had put up the page, so I emailed her. She responded this morning, and is related by marriage on the other side of that family. But she is forwarding my email on to her cousin, a Klindt who is living.

Frank married Nancy Conaway and lived in South Dakota. His children mostly lived in South Dakota as well, but the next generation moved to Illinois, Minnesota, and Tacoma. Unfortunately, the Tacoma branch is no longer local. However, one of the Minnesota branch lives in Issaquah now. I attempted contact today, and am keeping my fingers crossed that he’ll respond.

Theodore married Kathryn Franey and stayed in Madison, Wisconsin. However, they had no children.

Joe married Frances Ryan and they also lived in Madison. Only two of their children have descendants. There’s me and my cousins, and a few others spread all over from Minnesota to Texas to New York to Virginia to Massachusetts to California. Although I was unable to attend, a number of them gathered three years ago for the 100th birthday of Joe’s daughter, my great aunt Babe. I know a fair number of second cousins.

Mary never married and died at age 28. She lived most of her life with Anton and Clara in Cassville, but died in Denver. I still don’t know why she was there. No children that I’ve found.

Clarissa married Conrad Troeller and moved first to South Dakota, then Iowa, and finally California. Though she died young, she had four children before she passed. Their descendants live in California, Idaho, and Alaska. And one fellow who has lived in dozens of places, but seems to have settled in Ohio. I’ve corresponded with four living descendants of Clarissa and the wife of another.

Agnes died at age 25, still living in Cassville with her parents. She did not marry or have any children.

If the two contacts made today are successful, I’ll have a line of communication to descendants of each of Anton’s children that have some.

Google Movies

Last night I tried out watching a movie through Google’s movie service on my Xoom tablet. Was super easy and I think will facilitate more impulse movie watching. It would be great for traveling, as movies can be downloaded for watching when not connected to a network. Maybe I’ll get back to watching more movies now, like I am getting back listening to more music. Convenience, I like it.

Curried coconut chicken

I liked curry but have never tried actually cooking a curry dish. This was pretty easy and I had most of the ingredients. Next time I’ll probably make it with rice instead of noodles though. Basic recipe comes from Cooking Light Annual Recipes 2001.

2½ cups uncooked egg noodles
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
½ large onion
2 cups fresh basil leaves
2 teaspoons minced garlic
2 teaspoons Madras curry powder
dash of salt
¼ teaspoon ground red pepper
1 boneless chicken breast half
¾ cup light coconut milk

Prepare noodles according to package directions, but without salt.
Cut chicken into 1 inch pieces
Slice onion thinly
Heat 1 teaspoon oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat
Add onion and stir-fry for one minute
Add basil leaves and stir fry for an additional two minutes
Remove from pan
Add remaining teaspoon of oil to pan and heat
Add garlic and stir-fry for one minute
Add curry, salt, and red pepper and stir-fry for 10 seconds
Add chicken and stir fry for three minutes
Add coconut milk
Reduce heat to medium
Cook until chicken is done (about 4 minutes for me)
Add basil-onion mixture and toss well
Serve over the noodles

The result:

Mood momentum

Last summer was really rough for me. While taking care of my grandparents was stressful, a lot of the time I could power through the part where it brought me down. I had stuff to do and people’s lives depended on it. But after they died, I went into depression for months. I couldn’t deal with other people hardly at all. For example, I stopped checking if people wanted to take my extra ticket to the Sounders games. I didn’t want to negotiate over whether they could go, where to meet before, etc. So I just went alone.

That passed somewhat in the fall, but I’ve been been up and down since then. Over the years, my mood swings were smoother because I had close friends who I was able to call on. When I was in Idaho, it was the people I sobered up with. Here it has been Jason. Without those daily influences, I hole up a lot. It’s not a deep depression. I’m able to function. But a lot of stuff doesn’t get done, and I tend to do only the things that need doing now.

I’ve actually had a few days in a row now where I’ve felt good. I have a side job that I can focus on, for one. I’ve gotten myself out walking. I cooked today. (I know, I wrote I was going to cook 3 times a week. I’ve not stuck to that.) I’m about to suit up and go out for the evening. The last month I’ve generally felt better.

I don’t know if the momentum is something that builds on itself, if doing something help me do something else. Or perhaps it’s just that my moods have a natural frequency and not a virtuous cycle. I really hope it’s the former.

Mary D. Ryan

Yes, this is all genealogy all the time. Deal! Right now, I share with you something that occurred since about 10:30 last night. It is 12:07 a.m. right now. This is mostly to document how pieces get connected.

The story starts with Mary Weiss, my 2nd great aunt. According to the inscription in 2010 Quotations of Emo, she died June 21st, 1898 in Denver Colorado. That’s a long way from Cassville, Wisconsin. Because the 1890 census was destroyed in a fire, I have no easy to find records of her between 1880, when she was 11, and her death in 1898. Why did she move to Colorado? Teaching? Nursing? Was she running a hardware store like her brothers?

The Colorado State Archives has an online index of documents, and one of them was the death record for a Mary Weiss in June of 1898, which meant it was pretty likely the same Mary Ryan. The document itself is available for purchase. However, they want $25 for a copy of it, so I put off buying it. Last week I bought it for myself as a birthday present, and it arrived today. No scan of it yet. But really, it’s pretty minimal, and it doesn’t even look like the original document. More like a transcription that was typed out. Mainly it is independent confirmation of the information inscribed in 2010 Quotations of Emo. Otherwise, it didn’t give me much additional information of the useful variety.

She died in St. Anthony’s Hospital, where a cursory search of the internet did not reveal it’s history. This confirms her status as single, which was easy to guess since she still had the Weiss surname. The cause of death is listed as pulmonary tuberculosis. Which made me think perhaps St. Anthony’s was a famous sanatorium at the time and she was shipped there by her parents as a chance for her to get better. No idea as yet. It has a line for Dr., which is listed as J.N. Hall, and the undertaker as Waters and Simpson. None of that will be useful in tracking her down except that she died in St. Anthony’s.

So I started searching. The Google search didn’t have anything. So I jumped on NewspaperArchive.com, which has an extensive inventory of Madison newspapers, but previously only had a paper from Colorado Springs from that state. Still the case. But for some reason, this time I Googled Colorado newspaper archives perhaps hoping to find something I could eventually visit and dig through microfilm. But on the first page was the Colorado Historical Newspaper Archive. Holy crap! Why didn’t I know that was around?

So I searched for Weiss in 1898 in Denver, but found nothing relevant. Some perusing around seems to indicate they have no digitized newspapers from that year for Denver. Damn.

On a whim, before I closed my laptop for the evening, I search for Nat Leonard. That’s the son-in-law of my another 2nd great aunt, Julia Ryan Dolphin. Julia Ryan married Harry Dolphin and moved to Colorado from Glen Haven with her sister Laura Ryan and daughter from her first marriage to William Grimm. They are buried in the main city cemetery in Colorado Springs. Her daughter Kathleen married Nat Leonard, who was a boxer and later ran tour companies. But I hadn’t been able to track down who Nat’s parents or other immediate family. I have a couple of clues from their graves, but I hadn’t pursued them yet.

The first couple of items that showed up were from 1918 and were about Nat and his wife visiting her parents in Colorado Springs arriving by stagecoach. The 4th item was from July 1923:

Plateau Voice 20 Jul 1923 — News item from the Plateau Voice

Mrs. George Gibson is entertaining her sister, Miss Laura Ryan; nephew, Edward Leonard; and an uncle, Nat Leonard, of Colorado Springs.

I immediately said (out loud even), Holy crap! Laura Ryan had 4 sisters: Frances Ryan Weiss (my great grandmother), Alice Ryan (who lived in Beetown, Wisconsin), Julia Ryan Dolphin, and Mary D. Ryan. The last had disappeared after the 1900 census. I’ve been trying to find her for 8 months! She has to be Mrs. George Gibson!

Not necessarily. I know she doesn’t have a nephew named Edward Leonard (grand-nephew though), and Nat Leonard himself would be a nephew, not an uncle. So if those are wrong, its possible the sister designation is wrong too.

But I think it is her. Plugging her husband into the Ancestry.com search engine finds him in Collbran, Colorado in 1910, 1920, and 1930. All with a wife named Mary listed as being born in Wisconsin around 1868. Which matches what I know about Mary Ryan.

So I did a search on Find a Grave, to see if I could find her burial site. Bingo! There’s a George and Mary Gibson buried in Calvary Cemetery in Orchard Mesa, Colorado, not far from Collbran and Plateau City.

And now that I have an online source for Colorado newspapers, I have a lot of digging to do.

Burial records

A great source of information for my family genealogy has been burial records. I don’t mean lists of tombs in cemeteries, though those have been a good source too. Some cemeteries have put their burial records online, and they have been awesome.

The first relevant cemetery I found that did this is Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison. I stumbled on this last summer. They don’t put original copies of their records online, but at some point they transcribed everything into electronic form and that is there. Here’s what they had for my great grandfather, William Solle:

Prior to finding that, I’d thought he’d died in 1945, as that’s the year I was told. Mind you, the information isn’t all correct. For instance, the record states that there is no monument and no marker. I’ve been there and have photographed the marker.

Brigham City Cemetery and Ogden City Cemetery in Utah have also transcribed their records, including parents and spouses of the deceased. Evergreen Cemetery in Colorado Springs put a listing of their burials online too. Theirs has plot location and year of burial, and sometimes birth and death dates.

Even though I don’t have any relations buried at the grounds, Lake View Cemetery locally put their records online.

Most of the ones that put their records online are government owned cemeteries. A lot of private cemeteries will charge anyone but family wanting to look up where a grave is. I find that kind of irritating.

I found a really fun one last week though. The Solle family originally settled in Springfield, Illinois. There are a number of them buried in Calvary Cemetery. I came across a set of interment records for Oak Ridge Cemetery last week. Curiously, all the Solles are listed in their records. I don’t know why this is, but perhaps the two cemeteries were jointly managed for a while. I don’t know. Anyway, this was an awesome find because this set of records are scans of the original burial log books. They include age, date of death, location of death, and cause of death.

Edit: I found out why they are listed in Oak Ridge Cemetery in the official records but Calvary Cemetery elsewhere. The two cemeteries abut each other, and there isn’t clear demarcation in all places. Years ago, someone inventoried graves in Calvary Cemetery and the Sangamon County Genealogical Society posted their list. However, due to the lack of a good boundary, they included some markers from Oak Ridge in their list, including my family. Then people copied that list to other places, and so the misinformation spread.

Here’s the page for my second great grandmother, Maria Solle.

One obstacle to using these records is that the Illinois Digital Archives decided to display these images one section at a time.

Row 2, image 1 of page containing Maria Solle burial record

No problem. I downloaded all the pieces and started lining them up. But that was very time consuming. Thanks to the lazyweb (specifically Fes) I found Microsoft Image Composite Editor. It’s made for stitching together panoramas, but these is a very easy case of the same problem. I simply dropped in all the pieces and it sorts and merges them, though I had to adjust things once or twice. There are a few old maps that I can get pieces of online the same way, so this is gonna be a great tool.

And here’s a bonus for reading this far. Oak Ridge Cemetery is where Abraham Lincoln was buried. Like everyone else there, the cemetery entered his information in the log book. Here’s the re-assembled page. I’m sure someone else on the internet has already done this, but I couldn’t find it.

Coffee Delivery

Ever wonder why there aren’t any places that deliver coffee to you? Some days I’m not capable of contemplating going to the coffee shop until I’ve had my coffee first. It’s just too much.

A Cup of Coffee by Maxime Seguin (CC By-Nc-Nd)

Today, I relieve the dilemma for you. Comment here (or on the Facebook thread to be posted when I wake up) with your coffee order(s) and delivery address*. I will deliver to you free of charge. You know you want it.

* within Seattle metro area