The plot thickens…

January 21, 2023

Elly and the husbands

Okay, The Legal Genealogist has had it with Elly.

Elly Emma Martha Maria Geissler Nasgowitz Froemke is going to drive me nuts.

Elly was one of the older sisters of my paternal grandfather. Fifth child and fourth daughter of Hermann and Emma (Graumüller) Geissler, she was born in the village of Bad Köstritz on 31 December 1888 and baptized in the Lutheran church there on 24 January 1889.1 That was in what was then the principality of Reuß jüngerer Linie and is now the German State of Thüringen.2

Birth record, check.

And Elly died in Riverside, California, on 10 December 1964.3

Death record, check.

It’s her marriages that are the problem.

Marriage #1 was to Max Wilhelm Nasgowitz in Gera, Thüringen, on 10 February 1920.4

And what I thought was marriage #2 was to Paul Froemke in Chicago on 4 May 1935.5

So that had me wondering how she could have entered the United States on a re-entry visa in 1927 under the name Elly Froemke.6 Some eight years before that marriage to Paul.

I did some ruminating about that back on New Year’s Eve — what would have been Elly’s 134th birthday — and theorized that Elly took Paul home to Germany in 1927 to meet the family and married him there, but didn’t have adequate documentation to prove the marriage in the United States, so they married again in Chicago to make sure all their record ducks were in a row.7

Well, that was my theory until an eagle-eyed reader spotted a record I had completely missed — an index entry on FamilySearch to another marriage — on 28 June 1926, in Cook County, Illinois. To … sigh … Paul Froemke.8

Okay, now wait just a darned minute. What’s she doing marrying Paul twice???

So… task #1. Get a copy of the actual record from that 1926 index entry. So I sent off for that from the Cook County clerk.

I mean, it could be that they just got a license then and didn’t actually marry. So my theory could still hold up.

Except for task #2. Getting a copy of the marriage license application for the 1935 marriage and not just the marriage license and return.

1935 license application

Guess what? On that license application, it says that Paul Froemke “being duly sworn deposes and says … he was married” but was now divorced. It even gives the date — 8 January 1935 — and the Court — the Circuit Court of Cook County. 9

And then it says that Elly Geisler “was married” but was now divorced. And it gives the date and place for her divorce: 8 January 1935 in the Circuit Court of Cook County.10

Exactly the same.

For both of them.

So you know what task #3 is, right?

Right.

Getting a copy of that divorce record.

Because I have a feeling it’s going to give me a whole ‘nother theory here…

Maybe that 1926 marriage wasn’t legal because maybe Elly had never bothered getting a divorce from Max.

Or maybe this goofy couple actually split up in January 1935 — they do list slightly different addresses in May — and discovered by then that they couldn’t live without each other and …

Or maybe…

In any case, for sure, the plot thickens…

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “The plot thickens…,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 21 Jan 2023).

SOURCES

  1. Kirchenbuch Bad Köstritz, Taufregister Seite 57 Nr. 89 aus 1888 (Church book, Baptismal Register, Page 57, no. 89 of 1888); digital image of entry in the possession of JG Russell. ↩
  2. See generally Wikipedia (https://de.wikipedia.org), “Reuß jüngerer Linie,” rev. 15 Dec 2022. ↩
  3. Riverside County, California, Death Certificate 3397, state file 03058, Elly Marie Froemke, 10 Dec 1964. ↩
  4. Marriage Certificate, Nr. 81 (1920), Max Wilhelm Nasgowitz and Elly Marie Geissler; Standesamt Gera, 4 January 1929 (photocopy provided by Stadtarchiv Gera). ↩
  5. Cook County, Ill., Marriage License and Return No. 1446337, Froemke-Geissler, 4 May 1935; digital image in the possession of JG Russell. ↩
  6. Manifest, S.S. George Washington, 9 September 1927, 218 (stamped), line 7, Elly Froemke; digital images, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 31 Dec 2022); citing NARA microfilm publication T715, roll 4125. ↩
  7. See Judy G. Russell, “The New Year’s Eve baby and the resolution,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 31 Dec 2022 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 20 Jan 2023). ↩
  8. “Illinois, Cook County Marriages, 1871-1968,” entry for Paul A Froemke and Elly Geissler, 28 June 1926; database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1463145 : accessed 20 Jan 2023). ↩
  9. Cook County, Ill., Marriage License Application No. 1446337, Froemke-Geissler, 4 May 1935; digital image in the possession of JG Russell. ↩
  10. Ibid. ↩


* This article was originally published here

Colburn Hintze Maletta is a Phoenix Criminal Defense and Family Law Firm. Visit them at https://chmlaw.com

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