The Unknown Final Resting Place of Herman Lutter

In a quest to discover the burial location of Herman Lutter (1860-1924), my great great grandfather, I procured further documents relating to the disposition of his estate.

Herman was a resident of Newark, Essex County, New Jersey, from the time of his immigration around 1881 until the early 1920s. According to the 1922 Newark City Directory, Herman moved to Asbury Park.

Clara R Lutter (born Uhl) was Herman's first wife and the mother of Howard Lutter.

Herman died July 3, 1924.

Where was he buried? This is a standard question for everyone I study.

The death certificate and obituary list Fairmount as his final resting place. This is a large cemetery on the outskirts of the City of Newark. Both of Herman's wives are buried here.

But- Fairmount Cemetery has no record of receiving Herman's body. He was not buried in the days following his death on July 3, 1924. He has no individual plot. He is not listed in the plots with his wives. He is not listed in any mausoleum. 

Death of Herman Lutter
July 3, 1924 in Wall, Monmouth County, New Jersey

Obituary of Herman Lutter
The Newark Evening News is online and searchable for free for the years 1883-1926.

Manger Funeral home lists the place of interment as Fairview Cemetery, not Fairmount. No town was listed. I contacted three cemeteries of this name in New Jersey. All denied having a record of Herman:

Fairview Cemetery in Fairview, Bergen County

Fairview Cemetery in Westfield, Union County

Fair View Cemetery in Middletown, Monmouth County

Manger Funeral Home, Newark, New Jersey
(Project of the New Jersey Records Preservation Group)

Herman's will provided at least $600 for a headstone.

Someone (thank you M. L.) suggested I obtain copies of the accounting to find out who made the headstone and where it was delivered. So I wrote to Monmouth County. His will was probated in Monmouth County because he was a resident of Spring Lake in Monmouth County. No proceedings were listed in Essex County. 

You can find an index of proceedings for twenty of New Jersey's 21 counties at FamilySearch.org. (Morris County was removed.)

Unfortunately, no accounting was found. The only available documents were releases signed by the devisees to receive money from Herman's estate- $659 each to four people. No mention of a headstone.

The nieces and nephew named in the will:

• Gussie Kitson, daughter of Herman's brother, Otto Luther or Lutter (1845-1909)
• Paul, Edeline, and Anna Michel, children of Herman's sister, Ottillia

The names and locations of the people who signed releases helped me to further trace their lines:

• Gussie Kittson, daughter of Otto Lutter, signed in Harrison, Hudson County, New Jersey on January 6, 1926.
• Anna Heym, born Michel, signed in Neuhaus, Thueringen, Germany on March 4, 1926.
• Edeline Vorwerk, born Michel, signed in Germina, Saxony, Germany on March 16, 1926.
• Mina Michel signed in South Orange, Essex County, New Jersey on March 31, 1926.

Paul Michel, the third child of Ottillia, did not sign a release and there was no explanation of his absence.

I did not know who Mina Michel was and why she signed a release, as she was not mentioned in the will, but was delighted to see that she resided in nearby South Orange.

The next articles discuss these people.

New York City Records Online

Images of New York City vital records are now online- for free!

The included years start in the mid 1860s or upon creation of the five boroughs in 1898. The final years for each type of record:

Births through 1909

Deaths through 1948

Marriages through 1937

The records for earlier years are available elsewhere. To obtain records for subsequent years, you need to jump through the hoops of the Department of Health.

Also not included are affidavits for marriage, usually issued between 1908-1937. If your couple of interest married during these years, obtaining copies of the affidavit from the Municipal Archives might provide additional information.

Search or browse birth, marriage, and death records for New York City
Website as of this writing: https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/search

The digitized images are in color. Compare the digitized versus paper copy of the marriage certificate of my great grandfather, Howard Lutter, and his second wife, Fiorita Lorenz, in 1928.

The affidavit for a license to marry provided details about the divorces of both parties.

Ancestry has an index of these vital records, including copies of the indexes.

I will note a caveat I uncovered when trying to find a marriage record in the new digitized records.

I was looking up a couple, George Stegman and Charlotte Taylor. They were born in the 1890s in New York. Ancestry's index of licenses has the date as December 30, 1913, which corresponds to the images of the indexes. This is not the marriage date. This is the date the license was issued.

I sought the marriage record to discover the names of the parents of the bride and groom. The record was not found in 1913. I expanded the search and found the record in 1914. The ceremony was January 4, 1914 in Manhattan.

George Stegman and Charlotte Taylor married January 4, 1914 in Manhattan, New York County, New York.
Groom's parents- Henry Stegman and Martha Tuthill.
Bride's parents- Edmund Taylor and Catherine Sweeney.

It is understandable that the marriage ceremony occurred a short time after the license was issued. When the license is obtained at the end of a year, the couple might not marry until the following year. This is an important distinction when reporting dates of events or looking for subsequent records.

Locating the Death of Anna Hyser (1860-1934)

Anna Belle Hyser (1860-1934) was one of my great, great, great grandmothers. She was widowed three times. I descend from her first marriage to William Henry Cumming (1856-1882).

Anna was from Catskill in Greene County, New York. By 1885, she had relocated to Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey. She shares a headstone with her parents, Louman Hyser (1826-1895) and Catherine Eckler (1835-1889), and her siblings in the Catskill Village Cemetery. The year of death is on her headstone, but I could not find the exact date and location of her death.

Picture by Jody Lutter
November 21, 2010

This month, with the receipt of a death certificate from the State of Florida, I finally have Anna's exact date and location of passing.

Death certificate
Anna Brower (born Hyser)
February 12, 1934

Anna died February 12, 1934 in Orlando, Orange County, Florida at 440 West Minister [Westminster?] Avenue. Her address was in Greenwich, Connecticut. Informant was Mrs Edna Bullock of the same address. I don't know who this person is. Why was Anna at this place? Was she visiting friends?

The last record I could find for Anna was the 1920 census. She was living in Orangetown, Rockland County, New York with her daughter, Beulah Miller (1890-1940), and Beulah's husband, Raymond Sprague (1887-1983), and their children.

In the 1930 census, Beulah and Raymond Sprague were living in Greenwich, Fairfield County, Connecticut. Anna was not listed with them. My grandmother had told me that Anna married four times. It was possible that Anna had remarried, then died using her husband's surname, making her very difficult to find. I had to look at marriages and deaths in New York State, New York City, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The indexes for all of these locations have been enhanced and expanded over the years, yet I could not find Anna.

The Connecticut death index can be accessed for free through the State Library's website. These are deaths for the years 1897-2001.

There is no good match for Anna, died 1934, in the index of deaths in Connecticut.

Anna's daughter, Beulah (for whom my grandmother was named), died in Florida in 1940 while returning home from a vacation trip. I found this information in a newspaper from Kentucky. This is why you need to search states unrelated to the geographic area in which your people of interest resided. Beulah's death was probably reported far away because of her husband's business with the New York Stock Exchange. "Beulah" was not named directly in the article.

The family was not living in Florida, so I had not thought to check there for Anna. When I checked the Florida death index, I found an entry for Anna Brower, died 1934 in Orange County.

Florida Death Index at FamilySearch.org

The Florida death index is free at FamilySearch. The index is also at Ancestry behind a paywall. The difference at Ancestry is that you can view the actual index and see a certificate number. In the transcribed indexed, Anna's certificate number was missing.

Florida Death Index at Ancestry.com

Based on the index alone, I could not ascertain if this is my Anna or not. I needed the actual record of death. Applications for copies of vital records are on the website of the Florida State Department of Health. (This is the current website as of this writing.) The cost was five dollars and the wait time was two weeks. The cause of death was not blocked and I did not have to send any proof of identity. (Compare this to the hurdles in New York and New Jersey.)

Although the information on the death certificate was scarce, this was my Anna.

---If anyone researches on location in Florida, could you let us know if you can walk into a repository and look through records yourself? Thank you.---

I also requested the death certificate for Anna's daughter, Beulah.

Beulah died April 11, 1940 in Sanford, Seminole County, Florida from head and chest wounds due to a car accident. The newspaper article stated that she died instantly; however, the death certificate states that she died at the Fernald-Laughton Hospital 25 minutes later. She was removed to Greenwich, Connecticut- her residence. No cemetery was named.

Had I relied on the 1940 census for Beulah's date of death, I would have been misguided. Although the information was supposed to reflect who was alive on April 1, 1940, Raymond was listed as a widow.

Since the couple was driving home after returning from the Virgin Islands, I checked ship records. Beulah and Raymond were on a ship sailing from Ponce, Puerto Rico to Tampa, Florida from March 30 through April 2, 1940. The enumeration date on the census is blank, but must have been after Beulah died on April 11th.

Isn't that eerie? She died soon after this record was made.

Beulah's widower, Raymond Sprague, remarried to Janet Griffith (1904-1982). I do not know where Beulah or Raymond are buried. If anyone knows, please send word.