In my last post, I discussed the
biggest brick wall encountered in my research.
I spent many years searching for information about the fate of my
husband’s great-grandmother, Lena Schmidt.
Here’s how I recently managed to crack this difficult case.
Lena Schmidt: Part Two
In April 2012, the 1940 census was made
available to the public for the first time.
Records were slowly transcribed by volunteers and became visible on Ancestry.com, among other genealogy
sites. I searched the database
initially, but couldn’t find anything that seemed connected to Lena. A full year later, a search I ran for “Lena
Hook” turned up a possible match.
Name:
|
Lena
Hook
|
||||||||
Respondent:
|
Yes
|
||||||||
Age:
|
47
|
||||||||
Estimated Birth Year:
|
abt
1893
|
||||||||
Gender:
|
Female
|
||||||||
Race:
|
White
|
||||||||
Birthplace:
|
Illinois
|
||||||||
Marital Status:
|
Married
|
||||||||
Relation to Head of House:
|
Wife
|
||||||||
Home in 1940:
|
St
Louis, St Louis City, Missouri
View Map |
||||||||
Street:
|
Nicholson
Place
|
||||||||
House Number:
|
1747
|
||||||||
Inferred Residence in 1935:
|
St
Louis, St Louis City, Missouri
|
||||||||
Residence in 1935:
|
Same
Place
|
||||||||
Attended School or College:
|
No
|
||||||||
Highest Grade Completed:
|
Elementary
school, 8th grade
|
||||||||
Household Members:
|
|
The birth year and location of
residence looked like a match for Lena Schmidt Laun.
However, no one in the family had heard that Lena might have had another
child, and this census clearly states that Lena was the mother of Billy Hook,
age 8.
I searched death records online and
found a Missouri death certificate for this Lena Hook. It listed her date of death as October 5,
1947 in St. Louis, Missouri.
This also told me Lena Hook’s
birthdate, September 3, 1891, and the place of her birth, Belleville,
Illinois. It listed her cause of death
as coronary artery disease. She was
survived by her husband, William D. Hook.
However, because Lucille Laun Towell’s children both remember their
mother attending their grandmother’s funeral in the early 1950s, there was
still a big question as to whether this could be the correct Lena.
I wrote to the St. Louis Genealogical
Society and asked them to search local records for an obituary for Lena Hook. They located an obituary that was published
in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on October 6, 1947. It reads as follows:
HOOK, LENA R. – 5544
Chippewa, Sun., Oct. 5, 1947, beloved wife of William D. Hook, dear mother of
William Ray Hook and Lucille Towell of Houston, Tex., dear mother-in-law,
grandmother, sister, sister-in-law and aunt.
Funeral from C.
HOFFMEISTER Colonial Mortuary, 6464 Chippewa at Watson, Wed., 10:30am to Sunset
Burial Park.
This tells us pretty conclusively that
Lena Hook was the Lena Schmidt Laun we’d been trying to locate, since she is
identified as the mother of Lucille Laun Towell. I can’t even articulate how excited I was to have
this breakthrough after so many frustrating years of searching for Lena!
Now that we know what happened to Lena
after her marriage to Harry Laun, there are more things to research. Firstly, Lena had another child, William, born
in about 1932. I reached out to someone
on Ancestry.com who has William R. Hook in his family tree, and lists him as
the widower of Marian Claire Schemkes. That
contact confirmed that he is a relative of the late Billy Hook, but was unable
to tell me any more about Lena. He was
also searching for information about her, and was eager to hear what I
knew. I am still hoping that someone on
this side of the family might turn out to have photos of Lena or more
information about her.
The other thing left to determine is
who Lena’s parents were. The records
I’ve already located tell us quite a bit about them. They were both born in Illinois, and were
living in Belleville, Illinois when Lena was born, just a half-hour drive from
St. Louis.
I started searching for a Magdelene
Rose Schmidt born in Belleville around 1891, and uncovered a census listing
that looks likely to be Lena’s family.
This is not conclusively proven at this time, but is a strong
possibility. The 1900 census lists the
family of Howard and Elizabeth Schmidt of Belleville, Illinois, along with
their 7-year old daughter, Magdaline.
Magdaline was the youngest of ten children, with her parents being in
their 40s at the time of her birth.
Further research into this family reveals that the father’s name was
actually Herman, not Howard, and the mother’s full name was Elizabeth “Elisa”
Bosch. Herman Schmidt died on December
14, 1913, just a month after Lena Schmidt married Harry Laun in St. Louis. Hermann and Elisa’s parents all came from
Germany.
I have two question marks surrounding
this family. The first is that Magdaline
Schmidt’s birth is listed as September 1892, when Lena Laun Hook’s death
certificate establishes her birth as being September 1891. This doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t the right
person, but it warrants some additional investigation. After all, two of the census records listing
the person we are certain is Lena record her year of birth as 1893, so there is
some overall discrepancy about her birth date. There
is further research to be done before Lena's parentage can be proven.
Of Lena’s second husband, William
Dewitte Hook, I’ve learned quite a few things.
He was born March 11, 1890 in Round Prairie, Missouri. He was the son of Benjamin Hook and Viola
Pemberton, one of nine children from this marriage. William had been married earlier, to a woman
named Naomia, but they’d had no children together. He served in World War I. William Hook died in St. Louis in December
1962.
The next steps will be to continue
trying to prove Lena’s parentage, and ultimately learn more details about her life. I'd love to find a photo of her! Hopefully,
there will be more information to come in the near future.
So, my biggest brick wall is smashed,
which is absolutely thrilling. As often
seems to be the case in genealogical research, every question answered creates
many more riddles, so I suspect I will still be working on Lena for quite some
time.
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