Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Add Another Branch

Still perplexed about the birthplace of Herman Lutter, I decided to give the online Red Bank Register another try.  Herman died in Wall in Monmouth County, New Jersey.  The Red Bank register carried a notice of his pending divorce in December of 1923, citing a Spring Lake residence.  Previous searches turned up results mostly for the word "latter" or for ads of farm-fresh butter.  Today I lucked out.

Red Bank Register (Monmouth County, New Jersey)
23 July 1924  page 1
His will was probably probated in Monmouth.  His name is absent from the probate index in Essex County.  I do not know at this time if he and Emma divorced.  The notice of their pending divorce appeared in December of 1923; according to the above article, Herman wrote his will in June of last year [1923], which would have been before the divorce action.

So now I know that Herman was not an only child.  He had a sister with three children in Germany, as well as a brother, Otto, here in New Jersey.  A preliminary search of my own records shows that Otto appeared once in the Newark city directories in 1893; occupation blacksmith; residing at 36 Beacon.  He died Sunday, 11 July 1909, aged 64 years; leaving behind a widow, Martha.  Their address was 513 Middlesex in Harrison.  The notice of death appeared in the Newark Evening News on 12 July 1909.  He was buried at Woodland Cemetery in Newark in section 69; no tombstone exists; the undertaker was Schott.  I have all of this information already because I collected whatever information I could find on any Lutters in Newark.

Otto and Martha seemed to have only one child who survived to adulthood:  Augusta or Gussie.  She married James Kittson.  I have found only one child of hers, a son named James Kittson, born around 1920.  I need to find out what happened to this Kittson family.

I also need to get copies of the actual will and related estate papers.  This is very exciting to finally find more family for Herman.  But the witness to his 1888 marriage to Clara Uhl still looks like Alex Lutter.  Who was he?

According to Herman's death certificate, he was buried at Fairmount Cemetery in Newark, but no records of such a burial have been located.  No gravestone, never mind one costing at least $600, has been located for Herman.

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