May: Dates and Places and Names

As I’m getting older (and because I have grandchildren), when I look back at an incident from my childhood I find myself mentally calculating how old my grandparents were at that time.  As long as I know how old I was, this is pretty easy.  Three of my grandparents were born in 1890, and I was born sixty years later - so I just have to add 60 to my age at any given time during my childhood, and I know their approximate age then.

My Grandma (May Ludwig Brown Morgan) was born on September 14, 1890, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I have a copy of the birth certificate to prove it.

On Tuesday I began to write my blog post and then I decided that I needed to track down some research results from several years ago.

I know that I need to implement my system for keeping track of the wonderful bits of information I find.  I have a great filing system, and I know what I need to do; but sometimes the hour is late when I stop searching for information; and I end up with a large number of screenshots, stuck in a folder called some variation of ‘name and file’.  In the past I have often failed to ever go back to name and file the contents, although I am doing a little better with current research.

I did find the files I needed on Tuesday, buried in a ‘name and file’ folder from 2013, with folders inside which I had (fortunately!) given names to - like “Ludwigs in Pittsburgh” (52 files to name) and “Gallaghers in Pittsburgh” (56 files to name) - along with a few others.  I worked into the evening, and began to see  a pattern emerging, as to the whereabouts of the Ludwig family when Grandma was born.  When I name items like these, I always begin the name of the document with a year (like "1890-09-12 name and event"), so that when viewed as a list, I automatically have a timeline.  I heard my phone ‘pinging’ as I worked, and knew I’d gotten some new emails.

When I finished naming the screenshots, I decided to check my email.  What a wonderful surprise awaited me there! 

I have been corresponding by email with Joanne Cowden, a genealogist who lives in Pittsburgh, for a little over a year.  I had benefited from many of her blog posts (at Researching Relatives).  For instance, she once had a blog post which suggesting looking in The Plumbers Trade Journal for information about relatives who had been plumbers in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s - and I promptly followed her instructions and found info on May’s father, August Ludwig!  I had recently corresponded again with Joanne.

When I opened my email Tuesday evening, I found the following documents, which gave a new understanding to the birth location mentioned above:

Click on photo to enlarge; begin reading on bottom right of 1st document, bulk of deed continues on 2nd document.

I did the ‘genealogy happy dance’ when I saw these!

The documents detailed that a home on Arch Street in Pittsburgh was sold to Delia by her mother, Mary Gallagher.  The lot Mary sold to Delia was abt 20x100 feet, with a selling price of $1,470.00;  it's interesting to note that the lot description for another sale shown on this document was for a lot 25x110 feet, which listed a sale amount of $400. 

Also mentioned in the above documents is the fact that Mary Gallagher had purchased this Lot #275 from the developer, E.P. Jones, on August 3, 1885.  Even though I want this post be about May, rather than her ancestors, I can’t resist sharing another document, an 1889 map showing T. Gallagher as the owner of Lot #276 (also located for me by Joanne Cowden!) - I’m finding it hard to separate these things out by person.  May's grandfather, Thomas Gallagher, had passed away earlier; but this could indicate that May spent some time living next door to her grandmother, Mary Gallagher:

The name on Lot 276 is "T Gallagher".  His wife Mary Gallagher later sold lot 275 to their daughter, Delia Ludwig, as seen above.

Since the sales document is dated July 12, 1890, I believe we can assume that August and Delia Ludwig were living at that address by September 14, 1890, which sheds a new light on the information on May's birth certificate.  I had previously thought that perhaps Delia went to her mother’s home for the birth, but it was better than that - Delia apparently now owned a home next to her mother:

While the omission of Grandma’s name on the birth certificate is disappointing, the location is given, her parents’ names are given, her father’s occupation as a plumber is confirmed, and we learn that he went by “Gus” at that time.  (I am so used to calling him Daddah, but he obviously had an earlier nickname - as did most members of the family!)  The address for where Grandma was born (“Arch St above Jones”) makes sense when you look at the above map.

You may notice something about this certificate that is not quite right.  Have you spotted the glaring error?  It appears that Grandma sent for this certificate in 1951, when she was nearly 61 years of age.  She must have been bothered by being incorrectly listed as a male!  I remember Grandma using a red ‘grease pen’ for list making.  She cut up old envelopes, using the blank inside for list-writing, and clamped the lists together with a bull clip, and kept the lists on her kitchen counter.  She may have used her grease pen to mark this notice; but that must have been the end of the matter, since we do not have a copy of a corrected birth certificate.

What I learned from my labeling of screenshots on Tuesday confirmed the location of May’s home during her early years.  In the Pittsburgh City Directories for 1890, 1891, 1893, 1894, 1896, and 1897, the home of August Ludwig, plumber, is given as Arch, sometimes with the notation “near Jones”.   But in 1900, the home address is the same as his business address:  2646 Penn avenue.

May’s name has been a matter of confusion for me, also.  Here is what I know:

Grandma was named for her Irish grandma, thus she was named Mary King Ludwig.  This was the traditional naming pattern for both Irish and German families - the first daughter was named for the mother’s mother.  Then, the second daughter was named for the father’s mother; and thus May’s sister was named Lizette, after her father’s mother (Lizzette/Elizabeth Feig Ludwig Schubert).

I had understood that the sisters had their names changed to May and Peg when they grew up, and that is probably when it was done legally, since May’s baptismal certificate, from 1907, states her full name as Mary King Ludwig:

However, she may have had the nickname of ‘May’ many years before that; the Pittsburgh 1900 census lists May, born Sep 1890; and Zetta, born Sept 1893.

Perhaps this photo of May and Zetta (Peg) was taken about that time:

Now that we know a few details about dates and places and names for May, we are ready to enjoy more photos and stories about her early days in Pittsburgh - and maybe even about her move to California - in our next blog post.