Edith May or Emma Mariha?
Last week I ran into a genealogical stumbling block with the Leuenberger family: Edith May Leuenberger has no birth certificate on file at the Green County Vital Records office. Since birth certificates were not mandatory prior to 1907, this is an odd but not an impossible situation. What makes the lack of documentation troubling is that all her siblings do have birth certificates and Edith was the third of four children to Albert and Eva Leuenberger. (The elder two siblings’ births were not registered until 1958 and evidenced by census data and the affidavit of their mother.) Why fail to register Edith only?
The archivist in charge of my request asked me if I’d made a mistake with Edith May’s name, as only eight months after Edith May’s supposed birth date (June 22nd 1903), an Emma Mariha Leuenberger was born in the nearby hamlet of Spring Grove. The Leuenberger family is well represented in our area, but it’s not a massive group of people, either. “Emma Mariha” is the only Leuenberger born in Green County during the surrounding years with a name anything like “Edith May”.
Emma Mariha’s birth certificate has very little identifying information about her parents. Her father was “John Leuenberger” from “Switzerland”; her mother was “Rosa Wilhelmine Rubin” from “Switzerland”. There are no other vital records for Emma Mariha Leuenberger held in Green County; I’ve found nothing for “John Leuenberger” at this time period, so I cannot establish any relationship to Albert nor his father Gottlieb Leuenberger.
This lack of information isn’t surprising, given social conditions at the time. In the final decades of the nineteenth century a huge number of single men from Switzerland came to Green County to work in our famous cheese factories— a very labor intensive business in which Swiss immigrants had the cultural know-how to thrive. These men tended to live in boarding houses which provided small bedrooms and meals. One surviving boarding house is the “Suisse Haus”, a restaurant/tavern just south of the Square and a block from the 1931 Goetz Theater. Little Emma Mariha’s birth certificate gives no US address for her mother nor her father, it just lists John Leuenberger as “Cheesemaker”.
In the 1890s, Monroe enjoyed an influx of both Swiss and Jewish immigrants. The Jewish community was small and tightly knit, had its own dedicated rabbi named Charles Belter and most occupied houses on 12th street between 18th Avenue and 20th Avenue. (Abutting the commercial street of 17th Ave.) “Mariha” is a Hebrew name meaning bitterness according to some sources, and a variation of “Mary” (joyful/exalted) according to others. Here’s E. C. Hamilton’s description of the community from “The Story of Monroe”:
Monroe’s Jewish population , which had been increasing since the late 1880s with the steady arrival of store operators, tailors and other merchandisers, was reaching its peak in 1894-1895. Most of these families, who contributed greatly to the city’s business and community life, settled along 12th street between 20th and 18th Avenues.
The 1895 City Directory shows the Jewish community had a resident rabbi, Charles Belter, who lived with his large family in a house on 14th Avenue, immediately north of the present Ralph Lindsay home. ( That rabbi’s house was razed many years ago.)
Many of these Jewish families moved on to Madison or other cities in the years marking the beginning of the new century. A few others remained but Monroe never saw another influx to match the 1890s period.
(Some luxurious homes were built on 14th avenue during this period— this residential area is several blocks away from where the majority of Jewish people lived, according to Hamilton.)
Gottlieb Leuenberger (Edith May’s grandfather) was a prosperous man, he owned a brewery “on 12th street” and a saloon/beer distribution business in the 1888 Joseph Schlitz building just off the the town’s central Square and behind the site of the 1931 Goetz Theater. Edith May’s uncle Henry G. Leuenberger, the Cheese Days founder and business partner of William Wesley Young’s nephew, appears to have taken over his father’s brewing business prior to it ending/being bought. According to bottle historian “Mr. Bottles”:
“G LEUENBERGER & CO MONROE WIS.” This company lasted ten years, but had three different resurrections -- Gottlieb Leuenberger & Co. Brewery from 1874 to 1879, then G. Leuenberger Brewery from 1879 to 1880 (only one year!) and finally G. Leuenberger & Co. Brewery from 1880-1884.
Mr. Bottles: “One of the few beer bottles dating to the 1870s from a smaller sized city in Wisconsin. This bottle is very squatty looking and wide in shape for a quart size! Notice the rectangular mold marking between both lines of embossing. It is embossed-"G. LEUNEBERGER, MONROE, WIS." It’s a quart-size amber blob top beer bottle from the 1870s. The glass maker-"C.& I." is embossed on the base of the bottle!”
(Interestingly, the Hefti brewery is also represented in Mr. Bottles’ collection. Leon Goetz’s father John Conrad Goetz, the merchant tailor, married into this family.)
Below is a modern map of the area Hamilton writes about; the yellow line down 17th Avenue represents possible locations of the Leuenberger Brewery based on my knowledge of the area.
Street blocks south of the yellow line (off the map) are part of a historic district with expensive housing from the 1860 period onward— earlier than Leuenberger’s brewery. My guess is that the brewery was located across the street from the saloon, as a natural spring could have provided it with quality water. (The saloon outlasted the Leuenberger brewery.) An 1871 map of Monroe from the Wisconsin Historical Society supports my supposition, but doesn’t give a precise location of the brewery.
Detail from 1871 Monroe map, the black star represents the approximate location of Gottlieb Leuenberger’s brewery. The natural spring is behind the building with tall smokestack. (The nearly empty corner of the block is where the spring is located.)
Gottlieb Leuenberger owned property on 12th street too, according to an architectural analysis of Monroe’s historic district undertaken by the Womens’ Club in 1982:
1616-12th Street (Lots 162-164) Monroe Cheese Corporation 1888
Architect: unknown. Owner Edwin Rufenacht, Pres., 1616-12th Street, Box 260, Monroe (now owned by Bank of Monticello). This building was originally part of the Gottlieb Leuenberger Brewery, a small local brewery that lasted only through the late 19th century. The building was eventually sold to Kraft Foods, and is now a local cheese manufactory (business now closed and building empty). (Hamilton, 158,190).
The Leuenberger Saloon building still exists, here’s the Womens’ Club description:
1114-17th Avenue (Lots 27-28) Schlitz Building 1888
Architect: unknown. Owners: Richard L. and Gertrude Soddy, 2204-8th Street, Monroe, WI 53566 (now Mary Soddy). This building exemplifies an interesting aspect of the early brewery business in Wisconsin. The structure was built by the Schlitz Brewing Co. of Milwaukee as an outlet for their beer; that is, the company leased the building for many years to a local saloon, which offered only Schlitz products. For many years after 1920, the building was used as a printing office, and now has branched out to a general office supplies store, (Information about the early uses of the building based on interview with Mr. Fred Kohli, former owner of the building, and supplied by Mrs. Bessie L. Houser).
A street view of the saloon:
An outside image of the Leuenberger saloon building from November, 2018. Photograph courtesy of Corey Coyle via Google.
It is almost impossible to find out what happened to Emma Mariha, but the situation suggests that she might have been adopted by Albert and Eva as “Edith May”. The Green County Clerk of Courts has no record of adoption proceedings involving an “Emma Mariha Leuenberger” and if files exist elsewhere, they would be closed to me. I can say from my own family history that local adoptions of illegitimate children happened— three decades after Emma Mariha’s birth, my sister-in-law’s family adopted my great half-uncle. (Small town!) This was a common way of dealing with the dishonor of illegitimacy.
As readers can see, Swiss laborers’ housing was close to the merchant area on the Square; the Jewish neighborhood; as well as the Leuenberger industrial properties: altogether a crucible for romantic or aspirational misunderstandings. Spring Grove would have been an easily accessible and quiet place to complete an illegitimate pregnancy. An adoption under shameful circumstances— possibly even an adoption within the father’s family— might not have been legally conducted and recorded.
If Edith May is Emma Mariha, and if the Leuenbergers were connected to Monroe’s transient Jewish community, it might explain why Edith May’s grandmother Mary Ann Leuenberger— Gottlieb’s wife— was so keen to have her granddaughter work at Ziegfeld’s Follies, which was a star attraction in the NYC theatrical universe that was inspired by Yiddish theater. More typically, area residents saw such an undertaking as dangerous for a young, inexperienced girl. Zoe Beckley had to work hard to convince Monroe Evening Times readers that Edith May’s win was good for the community and especially the cheese industry. Coverage of the Ziegfeld experience was more typically like this:
Undated contemporary press coverage of Edith May’s win, held by the Green County Historical Society. Although the name of the paper is not recorded, it is unlikely to be from The Monroe Evening Times, which was in general supportive of the National Salesgirls Beauty Contest.
Whereas Gottlieb’s wife came from a very different viewpoint:
Wisconsin State Journal, September 29th, 1920. Part 1/2
Wisconsin State Journal, Septembere 29th 1920. Part 2/2
Edith May’s experiences would demonstrate the wisdom of crowds…
