Two children, who shared my maiden name, found in the Cincinnati Children’s Home in the 1900 U.S. census.  I passed them by – Lilly Bierman, age eight, and John Bierman, age two – they aren’t my family, I thought.  I knew of no orphaned Biermann children in my family.  I was looking for my grandfather, John Joseph Biermann, who was born in 1899, but this was the wrong one.  I forgot these children.

United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1900. T623, 18

This is a story that comes from a place where genealogy, DNA and drama all merge.

Last year, a Lily Bierman turned up again in the tree of three of my dad’s DNA matches.  On closer inspection, it was clear that three  generations of women from one family had tested.  I searched Ancestry.com for Lily Biermann (Terrell) Aultman and realized that she was the Lilly from the orphanage, the one I had chosen to ignore.  In the family tree of our DNA matches, Lily’s father was shown as William Bierman and her mother as Anna Smith.  That didn’t seem to correspond with my family, even though I DO have a William Biermann who was my great-granduncle.  Again, though, I dismissed the possibility of a close relationship.

In July, I noticed that the three descendants of Lily Bierman were all now on Gedmatch.  For those who don’t know, Gedmatch is a DNA sharing website that gives you tools to compare your DNA to your matches by uploading their raw DNA to the website. One of Lily’s descendants was among my father’s closest matches.  I referred back to Ancestry DNA and recalled why I hadn’t made contact the first time around.   Even though this appeared to be a dead end, I decided to send a message to them.  This is when I learned that the matches were:  Louise, a contemporary of my 94 year-old father; Terry, Louise’s daughter; and Amy, Louise’s granddaughter.

Ancestry DNA was predicting a 4th to 6th cousin match between my dad and Louise. Because the projected relationship wasn’t close, I thought perhaps this family might be a branch that connected back in Germany.  True, my second great-grandfather was named William Joseph Beermann (the original spelling of the name), and he did have a son named William Biermann (born in Cincinnati in 1872); but that would make my dad and Louise second cousins, rather than 4th to 6th cousins.

I was about to write Terry and Amy a message to this effect, when I got an invitation from them to share DNA matches.  I only had to look at Louise’s matches for a few minutes to realize that she shared DNA with Maune descendants.  My second great-grandmother was Maria Elisabetha Maune and she married Wilhelm Joseph Beermann.  I suddenly had little doubt that Louise, Terry and Amy were descended directly from my immigrant great-great grandparents.  This had to mean that William Biermann, my great-grandfather’s brother, was the father of Lilly.  Here is the actual relationship between my dad and Louise:

John H. Biermann’s relationship to Louise

William A. Biermann was born on 22 February 1870 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and he didn’t die until 19 April 1951.  This was a bit disconcerting.  It means that his children were not orphans when they resided in the Children’s Home.  Further, William had living parents and siblings, including my great-grandparents, who didn’t take in Lilly and John.

While Terry updated her family tree, I began to search for records relating to Lilly Bierman.  I found what I was looking for among Cincinnati Birth and Death Records, 1865-1912, housed at the University of Cincinnati Digital Library and Repository.  I located Lilly born on January 14, 1892 in Cincinnati.  Her parents were given as William Bierman and Annie Schmidt.

I kept hunting and discovered that there were four children in total.  We already knew about John from the Children’s Home.  He must be the male child known just as “J. Bierman,” born in January 1898.  The father was William and the mother —–Smith. It seems strange that the information on this record was so vague, but maybe the original was difficult to read.

Additionally, there were two middle children, Anna and William, who were born between Lilly and John:

There was also a death record for the child, Annie Biermann, and I found her burial in my family plot at St. Mary’s Cemetery.  She died of meningitis at the age of two:

My next question was whether or not William Biermann and Annie Schmidt were married.  I found that they married on 13 January 1892 one day before Lilly was born.  They were married by banns in St. Anthony’s Catholic Church.

We can draw a preliminary picture of this couple.  They don’t appear to have planned this marriage or, at least, their first child.  William is listed as a “laborer” on each of the children’s birth records, except the last, when his occupation is shown as “tanner.” His death record indicates that he was a “grave  digger,” further suggesting that he was an unskilled laborer.  When each child was born, a different address was given.  William looks like a man who may not have wanted to marry, who had no substantial occupation, and whose housing was somewhat itinerant.  What else could we learn about William Biermann and Annie Schmidt?

I thought I would check the newspapers to see if Annie may have died, since that was often the reason that children ended up in orphanages.  A single working parent was often unable to care for the children, and so, they were given up.  I did find out the rest of the story, but it is not what Terry and I expected.  The first story regarding Lily and John appeared in the Cincinnati Post on 28 October 1899:

A few days later, this follow-up appeared in the Cincinnati Post:

An on the same date the post ran this:

Now here was something new!  The last line identifies Annie Schmidt Biermann as the daughter of a Mrs. Schmidt who apparently met with violence and died.  There seems to have been more to this story than a simple domestic argument.

Terry and I e-mailed back and forth as new findings continued to come to light.  I back-tracked to find the story that unfolded in the autumn of 1899:

The article incorrectly gave the name of the victim as “Annie” Schmidt, but we already knew that her name was really Lizzie.  Lizzie Schmidt, we later learned, was born Holtmeyer (Holtmeier) in Germany.  She had been married to Charles (Carl) Schmidt, but was a widow before 1899.  The coroner believed that her death was a homicide.

Apparently, Annie Biermann was a witness to the assault on her mother and she, along with other witnesses, gave contradictory testimony about Lizzie Schmidt’s death.  The result was a 2 November 1899 news report of “No Indictment Found Against Pfitzer.”  From the dates, we could see that this was happening around the same time that Lilly and John were sent to the Children’s Home.

Lily and John Biermann were never returned to their biological families despite a November 3 article in the Cincinnati Post saying that the Children’s home was a capacity and overcrowded.  A few days later, the Children’s Home Society of Columbus Ohio ran this classified advertisement:

This was the fate of Lily and John. We know that Lily was adopted upstate by an elderly couple of the surname Terrell.  Presumably, she became a servant/caregiver.  John went to another elderly family named Tousley.  In many cases, children were not much more than indentured servants to the families that took them in, although I am sure that some went to loving homes.

Lily Mae Biermann Taken at the Terrell’s Home in Continental, Ohio

And what do we know about Lily and John’s parents?  In the 1910 census, William Biermann was listed as divorced and a border in the home of Peter and Anna Hammer.   Five years later, William married Anna Darling Hammer, presumably the widow of  Peter Hammer.  The Hammer’s had several children and William became their stepfather.  In the 1920 census, William is listed as the step father to two grown Hammer boys and the adoptive father of a seven year-old Mary Biermann.  We aren’t certain who Mary Biermann is. Perhaps she was the daughter of one of the older Hammer children who was listed as widowed.  There is some irony to William Biermann rearing the children of other people when he didn’t rear his own.

We still don’t know what became of Annie Schmidt Biermann.  Did she remarry?  Did she have another family? Or, did she die before she could retrieve her children from the Children’s Home?

Finally, William Biermann, namesake of his father and his grandfather, seems to have vanished.  Was he adopted before the 1900 census or had he died?  These are the questions we are still trying to answer.

As Terry and I explored her grandmother’s story, we both felt like it was happening in the present.  We felt such grief for these relatives who were experiencing family tragedy. In the meantime, I am always grateful when DNA brings me together with new cousins. I want to thank Terry, Amy and Louise for sharing Lily’s story and Terry for helping me write this blog entry.