An update on Mary Evelyn Sorenson, the daughter of Alfred and Mae Sorenson. Between Ancestry’s Social Security Applications and Claims Index database and the death certificate of the person who had that Social Security Number, I had an idea that I’d found what had happened to my first cousin twice removed. However, her death certificate did not list parents, so I wasn’t certain that I had records for the right person.
In July I requested the Social Security SS-5 for the person with Mary’s Social Security Number. That’s the original application for a social security number. It has date of birth and parents on it usually. Here’s what I got:
SS-5 – Mary Evelyn Fredericks
Many of the items in this application match what I know about Mary Sorenson:
Father’s full name.
Mother’s first name.
Approximate year of birth.
Place of birth.
Name matches the name of Mae Sorenson’s daughter in the daughter’s announced marriage to George Grantzow.
That’s a lot of matching points. And unless someone took over her identity it’s the same woman who died in 1990, the S.S.N. and date of birth match the death certicate. I’m considering it pretty safe to assert these are all the same person.
Armed with that information, I was able to find a marriage record for Mary Evelyn Sorenson and Herbert George Fredericks in Los Angeles from 1935.
Marriage certificate for Herbert Fredericks and Mary Sorenson
For some reason, Mary Sorenson thought her mother’s maiden name was Radtke. The other indication I have for Mae’s maiden name comes from Mae’s marriage record, which gave her name as Gibbons. She was raised in an orphanage, so I don’t know how accurate either name is.
I can start to put together a timeline for Mary Sorenson now:
Date
Event
Place
Source
9 Mar 1914
Birth
Madison, Wisconsin
Death certificate SS-5
1 Jan 1920
Census, recorded living with parents
Madison, Wisconsin
1920 US Census
8 Sep 1935
Marriage to Herbert George Fredericks
Los Angeles, California
Marriage certificate
24 Feb 1937
Residence
Redondo Beach, California
SS-5
1 Apr 1940
Census, living with Herbert Fredericks
Inglewood, California
1940 US Census
23 Nov 1943
Marriage to George William Grantzow
Unknown, but announced in Madison, Wisconsin
Two announcements in the Wisconsin State Journal
23 Jan 1948
Divorce from George Grantzow
Madison, Wisconsin
News in Wisconsin State Journal
7 Jun 1948
Marriage to James “Shorty” Reigle
Dubuque, Iowa
Announcement in Wisconsin State Journal
1 Nov 1949
Marriage license with James “Shorty” Reigle
Madison, Wisconsin
Announcement in Wisconsin State Journal
18 May 1951
Divorce from James Reigle
Madison, Wisconsin
News in Wisconsin State Journal
7 Jun 1951
Divorce from James Reigle vacated
Madison, Wisconsin
News in Wisconsin State Journal
26 Mar 1952
Divorce from James Reigle
Madison, Wisconsin
News in Wisconsin State Journal
May 1956
Name under Frances Marie Sorenson
U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007
Oct 1956
Name under Frances Marie Newton
U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007
Nov 1957
Name under Frances Marie Vonhauzer
U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007
16 Nov 1958
Residence, name under Evelyn Tanner
California
Mother’s obituary in Capital Times
13 Oct 1990
Death, name as Frances Marie Newton
Lynwood, California
Death certificate
There’s still a lot of gaps in her life that I could research and document, in addition to better documenting the known events.
how and when did her marriage to Herbert Fredericks end
what was the deal with incongruent marriage records for Mary and James Reigle
how did Mary get the name Evelyn Tanner, and did she marry to get that name
when and where did she change her name to Frances Marie
A few weeks ago I found a record in an Ancestry database that indicated my relative Mary Evelyn Sorenson may have gone by Frances Marie Newton after moving to California from Wisconsin. (Mary Evelyn Sorenson, part 2)
I requested Frances Newton’s death certificate and got my copy recently.
Frances Marie Newton death certificate
Sadly, the record held almost no useful information for me.
Name of father: unknown
Birth place of father: unknown
Name of mother: unknown
Birth place of mother: unknown
Social Security Number: unknown
Name of surviving spouse: –
Usual occupation: unknown
Usual kind of business: unknown
Usual employer: unknown
Years in occupation: unknown
I hoped mostly to find a husband’s name for further research, or parent’s names to definitely connect Frances Newton with Mary Sorenson.
The death certificate may yet prove useful, but it didn’t provide much useful right off the bat.
I’ve previously written about my relatives Alfred and Mae Sorenson, who were involved in the Lemberger murder case, and their daughter Mary Evelyn. At their deaths in 1958, both Alfred’s and Mae’s obituaries stated that their daughter was living in Los Angeles as Evelyn Tanner. That was the latest I’d been able to track her.
Ancestry recently released their U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 database, which is based on computer extracts of Social Security Card applications. I believe this means that it is based on extracts from all of the applications for cards in addition to the original application.
In that database was the following entry:
Birth Date: 9 Mar 1914
Birth Place: Madison, Wisconsin
Father Name: Alfred Sorenson
Mother Name: Mae S Griffth
Death Date: Oct 1990
Notes: Feb 1937: Name listed as MARY EVELYN FREDERICKS; May 1944: Name listed as MARY EVELYN GRANTZOW; Feb 1955: Name listed as MARY EVELYN SORENSON; May 1956: Name listed as FRANCES MARIE SORENSON; Oct 1956: Name listed as FRANCES MARIE NEWTON; Nov 1957: Name listed as FRANCES MARIE VONHAUZER
That looks a lot like what I know about Alfred and Mae’s daughter. I have previously found a marriage announcement for Alfred’s daughter under the name Mary Evelyn Fredericks where she married a George Grantzow:
One of the reasons why I was unable to find her after 1958 is that it appears she started going by the name Frances Marie rather than Mary Evelyn. I now have a different trail of breadcrumbs to follow.
I think I now have a complete set of census records for my great great grandfather, Nels Hansen Sorenson. He’s part of my grandmother’s branch of the family; she was estranged from the family so everything I know I have to reconstruct from records.
Her grandfather Niels was born in Langelands Denmark to an unmarried couple, Johan Sørensen and Marthe Kirstine Nielsen. A couple years later Marthe had another child out of wedlock, though she eventually married that man.
Perhaps because he was illegitimate or perhaps because his parents were poor, but Nels was not raised by his parents. He is with his mother in the 1855 Denmark Census in Bøstrup when he is about 6 months old. But in 1860 he’s living with his grandmother in Skrøbelev, and 1870 he’s a servant/farmboy for another person in the same parish who at this point I do not know if is related.
Skrøbelev Kirke (CC Arne Alexander Fræer Eckmann)
In 1880, Nels is still in Langelands in Illebølle but he’s married to my great great grandmother. In 1883 they would emigrate to Madison Wisconsin, where he Americanized his name to Nels Sorenson. In the 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930 United States Censuses, he’s living at 1118 E Gorham Street in Madison. I’ve also got the 1905 Wisconsin State Census for him as well. He died in 1931.
1118 E Gorham St, Madison (Google Street View)
Assembling the Danish Census images was tough because it’s poorly indexed. I looked through them digital image by digital image. Luckily, the places he lived on Langelands are not particularly populated places. I think I only had to look through about 500 pages. Despite the use of patronymics, the name Niels Hansen Sorensen is pretty uncommon on Langelands. I’m not 100% certain the 1870 census I found is him though. The age, location, and birth place match with what he reported on other censuses, but I still don’t have a conclusive way to tie them together.
I am also missing the 1885 and 1895 Wisconsin Censuses for him. Those are theoretically well indexed, but he’s not in the indexes and Madison/Dane County are big places to search image by image. As those censuses include only the name of the head of household, I can’t search for other family members hoping that Nels himself was mis-transcribed.
I just noticed something interesting today. The 1930 US Census asked people at what age they first got married. Here are the answers for my great grandfather William Solle and great grandmother Flora Sorenson Solle:
William and Flora got married in 1910, which is verified by their marriage certificate. In 1930, Flora was 42 and first got married at age 22. That matches up with the date of her marriage to William in 1910. However, William is 65 and first got married at age 42. That works out to be 1907, which is not when he married Flora.
Census information isn’t particularly accurate or exact. However, that’s intriguing enough that I now am going to start looking for possible records of an earlier marriage. I may have additional relatives I didn’t know about.
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:
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.
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.
Mae Sorenson plot (no marker)Alfred Bernhard Sorenson
The mobility of my Xoom tablet was a major plus for me yesterday. I’m staying a few extra days in Wisconsin after Wiscon (more about Wiscon later perhaps) in order to do some genealogical research. I decided yesterday to search for graves. I first went to Resurrection Cemetery to find the graves for my great grandparents Weiss. The cemetery office printed up a helpful map and I found the plots with little difficulty.
Then I went across the street to Forest Hill Cemetery, where many of the Sorenson’s were laid to rot (“laid to rest” is the euphemism of choice I suppose). However, by that point it was after their office had closed. The burials records for Forest Hill are online though. I hadn’t written down the locations, but I was able to look up everything online while wandering the cemetery.
At this point, having the tablet with me only made up for having been lazy and not having written down the locations ahead of time. Which is awesome by the way. Anytime technology allows me to be lazier I am all in favor. But it was really useful beyond that. The locations at Forest Hill aren’t exactly easy to find. Some sections are on a grid. Some use rows and tiers. Some just numbered the plots semi-sequentially. They did not mark plots with their locations (Pacific Lutheran Cemetery in Seattle does). What I could do was look at names on markers and look them up as I walked, giving me their locations and thereby guesstimating how far away I was from the ones I sought, and whether I was getting hotter or colder.
At Resurrection Cemetery, in addition to my great grandparents Joseph Weiss and Frances Ryan Weiss, the plot also had the marker for my great uncle Joe Weiss, who died young. A family member had told me he thought Joe Jr. died around 1926, but that turned out to be 5 years off. The marker had his year of death as 1931. That allowed me to find his obituary (page 1 in 2 Madison newspapers).
At Forest Hill, I found my great great uncle Theodore Weiss and his wife Anna Franey Weiss. Then while walking away I serendipitously found my great grandfather William Solle, who I hadn’t looked up yet. Forest Hill is a giant cemetery, so that was kind of weird. Other graves found there included my great great grandparents Nels and Katherine Sorenson, their son Alfred Sorenson, daughter Marie Bouchard, son Emelius Sorenson and wife Anna Bjelde Sorenson, and other relatives William Martin Sorenson, Elmer Bouchard and Elizabeth Frutiger Bouchard, Edward Bouchard and Donna Moran Bouchard, and Carolyn (or Carlynn) Bouchard. I also photographed the space where Mae Sorenson should be buried, but there was no marker. I still don’t know if this is the ex-wife of Alfred or someone else. Today’s project is to research Alfred and Mae at the Madison Library.
One of the first branches of the family that I worked on was that of my grandmother, Lillian Solle. My aunts Sue and Jane put together a book of mementos about the Weiss, Solle and Sorenson families and gave it to me in 2004. Prior to that I knew nothing about my grandmother. She and my grandfather divorced in 1966. After that, according to my mother, Lillian would have nothing to do with the family.
I took the information in the memory book about Lillian and her parents and their parents, and started gathering what I could find. Lillian’s mother was Flora Sorenson, the 4th of Nels Hansen Sorenson and Katherine Hansen’s living children. Nels and Katherine emigrated to the U.S. in July of 1883, and settled in Madison, Wisconsin. They built a house at 1118 E. Gorham St., and lived there until they died. They were both from Langeland, Denmark, an island about 2/3 the size of Whidbey Island.
I’ve documented a number of other descendants of Nels and Katherine, some of whom make for a really good story. But I was kind of stuck at finding more information on their parents. I assumed the church in Denmark kept pretty good records, like the church in Sweden did. But I didn’t know how to obtain them and, being swamped with other branches, hadn’t pursued it yet. (I’m not kidding about being swamped. Click the thumbnail to the right to see my Windows desktop filled with icons of newspaper articles I’ve saved in the last few days and that I haven’t yet cataloged.)
A couple of days ago, I came across a profile on Ancestry.com that looked very much like it matched up with the Sorenson family as of the time they left Denmark. It was entered by a woman in Denmark. I wrote to her, then sat on pins and needles hoping for a reply. I get replies about half the time when I write to relatives I find. One in Sweden wrote back once, and then didn’t reply after that when he realized I wasn’t going to pay him. Like a few genealogy people, he’d turned his hobby into a business and was looking only to sell what he knew about the family. I have living relatives in Sweden who will correspond without payment, so I didn’t bother. I was hoping this woman wasn’t one of that group, because she’s the only person in Denmark I’ve found so far who is connected to the family.
I got a reply this morning! She traces her ancestry to Rasmus Jensen Jørgensen. He married Nels’ mother Marthe Kirstine Nielsen after she had Nels by someone else. So we aren’t related by blood, but do have some of our trees in common.
I had found Niels’ marriage and the birth of his two sons and then suddenly I could not find him anywhere. I should have guess that he emmigrated. Two of his halfsisters did.
So now I have a bunch of information to add. A lot.
My father, George Robert Weiss, died in 1972, when I was 2 years old and my brother Dan was yet to be born. For years, I believed that he’d died of lung cancer. It’s probably the biggest contributing motivation to me never wanting to start smoking. I have no memories of him. My first recollections are from 1974 or early 1975 at the house in which we lived on Phinney Ridge.
Unlike the Hathaway side, information on the Weiss side of the family was a little harder to come by. First is that my father died and mom remarried. The second is that Grandpa Weiss divorced in the mid 1960s and we had no contact with my grandmother. I suppose that my aunts and possibly even my grandfather would have told me anything I wanted to know, but I was too young to know I’d ever be interested.
The key about all this is that mom never really talked about the Weisses all that much. Daddy George was just a name growing up. We had various get togethers with my aunts and cousins, but my only contact with more extended Weiss family was with Steve and his wife Connie. Steve is my dad’s cousin who moved to Portland from the ancestral family home in Wisconsin.
Weiss Family Memory Book
About 6 years ago, my two Weiss aunts put together a book of information about the Weiss family. My grandmother died in 2001, and I think that spurred them to make this. I got my copy around Christmas 2004. It’s mostly a photo book with some information. There’s a photo of my great great grandparents, the Sorensons. There’s a few of my great grandparents, the Solles. There’s one of my great grandmother Weiss. Lots of photos of my grandfather, many of them taken in uniform. He was a navy enlistee in the 1920s and became an officer in the 1930s through World War II. Then lots of photos of my dad and his siblings, and their respective husbands and kids, and a sprinkling of Connie and Steve’s family.
It’s main purpose was memories for us. It has the only photos I possess of anyone in the Weiss family taken before I was born. But Aunt Jane and Aunt Sue did put some genealogical information in it too. There’s a copy of my great grandparents’ marriage certificate. There’s a list of my grandfather’s siblings. And there’s a couple of death certificates in the back.
The biggest surprise for me was that my father did not die of lung cancer like I believed. I’m sure he had cancer in his lungs and that was the proximate cause. The death certificate lists testicular cancer as the cause of death. And here I was avoiding smoking because I thought I was especially prone to lung cancer. I also found out that part of my family was Danish (the Sorensons), and part was French (the Solles). I knew the Weisses were German, because it’s a German name.
A couple of years ago, my great aunt Babe turned 100. This was right in the middle of the last months of mom’s life, so I wasn’t able to make her birthday party in Madison. I wish I could have. This year when I went to Wiscon in May, I paid a visit to her after the conference. She’s 102 now, and lives in the house where she was born (or moved to shortly afterward). That house will have to be torn down after she dies. It’s functional, but beyond repair or renovation. As of this summer, she didn’t even have 24 hour care. Just caregivers there during daylight hours. Her Alzheimer’s is pretty bad though. She didn’t remember me or my dad. She talked about Arch (my grandfather) some. But we had the same conversation about 10 times in the couple hours I was there. After a few minutes, she would start the conversation over where it began because she couldn’t remember what we’d talked about. I’ll stop by again this May around Wiscon again. She isn’t in great health, but she’s a tough bird, so I expect she’ll be around still. And hopefully she’ll have a little more lucid of a weekend. Armed with a few facts, I will attempt to get her to talk about old times.
I’ll write some more about the informational details shortly, but that’s the introduction.
