♂Charles Mielke

Charles Mielke (born about 1851 – died about 1940) was a German-born factory finisher who lived in Chicago and, from about 1920, in Oak Park, Illinois. He was the husband of Mary Adams (1850–1940), who was the great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007). Both of his wives were recorded under the surname Adams, which is unusual enough to notice: the records do not say whether Emma and Mary were related.

Emigration and first marriage

The family tree gives his birthplace as Hohenfelde, now a district of Hamburg; the censuses say only Germany. The 1910 census gives his year of immigration as 1869, when he would have been about eighteen. On 26 October 1879, in Chicago, he married Emma Adams, a Chicago girl of eighteen according to the marriage index; he was twenty-eight. The couple had children in the 1880s and early 1890s. Emma died on 23 August 1893, aged thirty, and was buried at Waldheim Cemetery, leaving him a widower for the next fifteen years.

Second marriage and Oak Park

A Cook County marriage index dates his marriage to Mary Adams to 17 October 1908, when she was a widow. The county index writes his surname “Mulke”, and later records spell it Millke and Milke. In the census of April 1910 the couple were living in Chicago’s 11th Ward with three children the census lists as his, who are most likely by Emma: Arthur J., twenty-nine and working a telephone switchboard, Charles E., twenty-six and a post-office clerk, and Ruth H., seventeen. Charles himself was a finisher in a factory. By 1920 he and Mary were alone in Oak Park and owned their house free of mortgage. From at least 1930 they lived at 1135 South Elmwood Avenue, valued at $9,000 in 1930 and $6,000 in 1940, and neither had an occupation.

Death

The census taker called at the house on 13 April 1940 and wrote down Charles as eighty-nine and Mary as ninety. The family tree gives his death as 24 April 1940 and his burial as 27 April. Counting from that date, Mary survived him by almost five months. A monument at Forest Home Cemetery carries his name, hers, and a third inscription in German, “Emma Mielke, geb. Adams”, which commemorates his first wife although the 1893 death index places her burial at Waldheim.

Notes

Birth and age

The birth date and Hohenfelde birthplace carry no source of their own. The census ages agree with the date: against 7 April 1851 his stated ages are 59 in 1910, 68 in 1920, 79 in 1930 and 89 in 1940, and the 1930 and 1940 figures are both rounded up by the same six days. The death and burial dates likewise carry no source of their own.

Spellings

The same man is indexed as Mielke, Mieke, Mulke, Milke, Millke and Meilke. The 1892 birth register entries for his youngest child are indexed under “Henry Milke”, which the records do not explain.

Children

The three children in the 1910 household were born in Illinois of German parents, and the 1910 census credits Mary with four births and two survivors, the same figures as in 1900, so they are most likely Charles’s children by Emma. A compiled FamilySearch profile lists four children for Charles and Emma: George (1880), Clara (1881), Charles Ernst (1883–1976) and Ruth Henrietta (1892–1971). It does not list an Arthur, and the two lists have not been reconciled. No children are recorded from his marriage to Mary.