Bleimes Family History
Chapter 19. Louisa
NOBODY in our family ever mentioned Louisa. It is as if she had taken a path leading away from the rest – so the ‘rest’ ignored her and her descendants. This is not entirely the case because I found her son’s address in a tiny notebook in which my Grandmother Bertha kept odd, unrelated references. It would date from the 1920’s. Still, it took much assembly, from faint clues, to piece together her story.
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My first exposure to her name was in the 1860 Kentucky census where it appeared and showed her to be age 6 and born in New York. At first I took her to be Adam Smith's daughter by a previous marriage, a theory that later proved to be false. I believe the age given is likely correct, or pretty close, but other data does conflict. The next place she shows up is Memphis - no doubt having traveled there with Emelie, Bertha and Mary. A Prussian immigrant shoemaker named Charles Titus Hellstern took her for his bride in December of 1870. She gave her name as Louisa Schmidt. They had two boys: William Frederick, 1871; Charles Titus Jr. 1873. Then Titus Sr. died of congestive fever at age 33 in July 1875. Their third boy was stillborn in September of that year and was buried on top of Titus - unnamed. |
Soon after, arrangements were made for Louisa to move in the opposite direction from the rest of the ladies. She went back to her birthplace, Newburgh, New York. Her father, Christopher Schreeder, lived there with his second wife and six children. (So now you know her real surname.) Probably about mid-year 1876 Louisa married another shoemaker, James McCleery, a second-generation Protestant Irishman. It would seem that James and Louisa could not completely care for the two boys since they were at times residents of a children’s home known as McQuade Children’s Services, and are listed there in the 1880 US census of Newburgh. Strangely, in that same census, the Hellstern boys are also listed in the McCleery household [Census Record].
Names in this family, more than most, floated around and added confusion
to the tracing effort. In the Newburgh era, if not before, Louisa was
usually known as Lena. Her son Charles Hellstern took up the name of ‘Chick’
McCleery. When he was injured on his job that was the name given in the
newspaper article. The injury was a fractured skull and he died as a result
of it in April 1900 at 27. A couple of generations later all of the Hellstern’s
dropped one ‘L’ out of the name. It is Helstern today.
Charles married Amelia Harding about 1895 and had a son, Charles Steven.
William had married in 1892 to Sarah Turner and started his family of
nine children. [Willaim Frederick Hellstern's
Family Chart] Lena got to see her boys starting their families before
she died in Newburgh of convulsions from pneumonia in December 1897. She
probably was a bit over the age of forty-four.
In attempting to obtain details about Lena’s last days, I found
that the assigned funeral home had been closed in recent years and their
records were not saved. The provider of this information was the successor
organization who said also that the former mortician had gone to jail
for fraud.
The family of William F. Hellstern Sr. expanded and there are many of
Lena’s descendants living today. More than her sister Bertha and
almost as many as her sister Mamie.
Christopher Schreeder is reported to have had a grandfather, Johann Joachim
Schreder, a private in the Revolution. According to a fellow researcher,
he was a Hessian, born 1745 in Sontra, Hesse-Kassel, who deserted the
British and joined our revolutionaries. He died in 1825 at Newburgh. Christopher’s
uncle, John Ferdinand Schreder, was a veteran of the 1812 war. Born in
Newburgh, he moved to Michigan and reared his family there.