♀Mary Adams

Mary Adams (24 February 1850 – 15 September 1940) was a German-American woman of Chicago and Oak Park, Illinois, who was twice married and outlived both husbands. She lies at Forest Home Cemetery under a monument she shares with her second husband, Charles Mielke, and with his first wife, Emma, who was also born an Adams. She was the great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son Frank Frederick William Schulz (1882–1961) and his daughter Bernice Reinette Schulz (1905–1993).

Early life

Her birth date, 24 February 1850, is given identically by three records made decades apart: her confirmation in 1864, her marriage in 1873 and her death certificate in 1940. Her birthplace is less certain. The two earliest records, the marriage register of 1873 and the census of 1880, say she was born in Chicago or Illinois. Every record from 1900 onward, beginning with a census for which she was probably her own informant, says Germany, and the censuses of 1900 to 1930 give her arrival in the United States as 1854 (1855 in 1920). In 1940, five months before her death, she herself told the census taker that she was born in Germany. No record of her baptism has been found, and her family does not appear in the Chicago censuses of 1850 or 1860.

Her death certificate names her parents as John Adams and, for her mother, “Marie Unknown”, and gives her birthplace as “Unknown, Germany”. The informant is recorded as “Hospital Records”, so the parents’ names on it rest on a hospital file rather than on anyone who knew the family. On 20 March 1864, at the age of fourteen, she was confirmed at First St. Paul’s, which in 1850 had been the only German Lutheran congregation in Chicago.

First marriage

On 15 June 1873 Marie Adams, as the register of First Immanuel Lutheran Church in Chicago calls her, married Rudolph Schulz, a Prussian born at Gierswalde on 15 April 1837. One of the two witnesses was a Friederike Adams. In 1880 the couple were living in the town of Lake, in Cook County, where Rudolph worked in a meat-packing house. They had four children, of whom only two survived: a daughter, Elizabeth, born in December 1879, and a son, Frank, born at Chicago on 10 June 1882.

Rudolph died sometime between 1882 and 1900; no record of his death has been found. In 1900 Mary was a widow and head of her own household in the 30th Ward of Chicago, working as a housekeeper.

Second marriage and Oak Park

On 17 October 1908, in Cook County (the county marriage index writes the groom’s name “Mulke”), she married Charles Mielke, a German-born widower about a year younger than she was. His first wife, Emma Adams, had died in 1893. In 1910 the couple lived in Chicago’s 11th Ward with three of his children by Emma. They then moved to the village of Oak Park, where by 1920 they owned their house free of mortgage. From at least 1930 until their deaths they lived at 1135 South Elmwood Avenue, a house valued at $9,000 in 1930 and $6,000 in 1940.

Charles died on 24 April 1940, eleven days after the census taker’s visit. Mary died at Chicago on 15 September 1940, aged ninety, and was buried at Forest Home Cemetery, Forest Park, on 18 September. Her death notice in the Chicago Tribune of 17 September 1940 calls her “Mary Schulz Mielke [nee Adams], beloved wife of the late Charles Mielke, fond mother of Frank Schulz, sister of John Adams”, and names Waldheim for the interment. The notice names a brother, John Adams, who is not otherwise identified.

Notes

The shared monument calls the first wife “Emma Mielke, geb. Adams” (née Adams). Charles Mielke may have married two sisters, but no record has been found that makes Emma and Mary sisters. A Chicago census of 1870 lists a household that may be Mary’s family: John Adam, a teamster born in Mecklenburg, with his wife Marie and daughters Frederike, aged thirteen, and Emma, aged seven. Emma’s age there fits the Emma who married Charles Mielke, and Frederike’s name fits the witness at Mary’s wedding, but the household has not been proved to be hers. The 1880 census gives her parents’ birthplace as Prussia, not Mecklenburg. The question of her birthplace, and of whether she arrived in 1854, remains open.