Elizabeth Emma (Spielmann) Andrews, 1882-1956

 

ELIZABETH EMMA (SPIELMANN) ANDREWS was born on 15 December 1882 in Schondorf, Prussia, to parents Constantinus Leo Spielmann and Anna Louisa (Seeling) Spielmann.[1]  Schondorf was located outside the city of Bromberg when it was part of the German empire prior to World War I, but is now in the suburbs of Bydgoszcz, Poland.  She married (William) Arthur Andrews on 20 January 1902, and died on 26 July 1956.

Elizabeth’s birth was reported to the Klein Bartelsee officials on 20 December 1882 by Rudolf Seeling, who was Luisa’s brother (Anna Louisa Americanized her name after immigrating), and who lived with them at the time.[2]  Elizabeth was the second girl of four born in Prussia, with an additional sister born in Pennsylvania.

She and her family immigrated to the United States in 1893 when Lise (as she was documented on the tickets) was 10 years old.  Her father immigrated first, then purchased tickets in June through the Rosenbaum Steamship Co. for his wife and four girls – the tickets cost $29.50 each for mom and oldest daughter, and $14.75 each for the younger girls.[3]  The women departed from Bremen, arrived in the port of Philadelphia on the Steamship Dresden on 30 August 1893, and settled in to their home at 4825 Paschall Avenue in Philadelphia.[4]

In 1900, Elizabeth lived with her parents and two younger sisters on Grove Street in Philadelphia.  She and both of her sisters were employed as “rubber workers,” probably at the local Philadelphia Rubber Works, located on the Schuykill River around Reed and Schuykill Avenues, where her father also worked.[5]

On 20 January 1902, she married Arthur Andrews.  The marriage certificate states that Elizabeth was born in 1880, not the 1882 that her birth certificate proves; using 1880 as her birth year would make her  21 years old at the time of the marriage.  It is possible that she thought she wouldn’t be able to marry without parental consent if she was under 21, but the laws of the time allowed a female to be 18 years old when married.  In addition to this “error,” the marriage license application also states that she was born in Philadelphia, which we know is not true – the preponderance of evidence points to Prussia as her birth place.  Her birth certficate with her parent’s residence of Schondorf, the passenger tickets showing the specific street address of “Schondorf Lorenzstr 3 by Bromberg, Posen,” and all four known U.S. censuses with Elizabeth showing “Germany” as place of birth prove that she was not born in Philadelphia.

A little over a year later, Arthur and Elizabeth started to grow their large family.  By 1910, they were living with Arthur’s father and stepmother on Paschall Avenue in Philadelphia, with three children under 8 years old – Elizabeth, Edward and Elsie.[6]  They had seven children between 1903 and 1917, with only one child that passed young.  Lillian Esther, born 4 March 1916, died just a month later on 5 April 1916 due to a hole in the upper chambers of her heart.[7]  All of the other six children lived into adulthood, all marrying and having children of their own.

In 1920, after her husband had passed, Elizabeth lived in a home on Wheeler Street in Philadelphia with six children, her widowed sister Emma, and Emma’s two children[8] – 10 people in total, in a 3 bedroom/1 bath house of ~1200 square feet.[9]  Three people in the household worked to support the rest:

·        Elizabeth Andrews (daughter), 17 years old, was a telephone company operator

·        Edward Andrews (son), 14 years old, was an errand boy for a department store

·        Emma Harrigan (sister), 33 years old, was a knitter at a stitching mill

Elizabeth was married to Harry Singer on 26 April 1920, a second marriage for both of them.[10]  This marriage license application also said that Elizabeth was born in Philadelphia, but that has already been disproved.  Unlike the license to marry Arthur, this one does have the correct birth date of 15 December 1882 – no need for white lies when you are almost 38 years old!  Her father’s name is listed as Leo, and her mother as “Louise Celie.”  Phonetically, Celie (with a soft ‘c’) and Seeling are very close, and it would be easy to make this mistake in transcription.

In late 1920, Elizabeth and Harry had a daughter named Esther.  This would be the only child that they had together.  By the time the 1930 census was taken, Harry was not living with Elizabeth, but with his son from his first marriage.  Both he and Elizabeth, although married, were both listed on the census as widowed.[11]  It is apparent that their marriage must have fallen apart pretty quickly – Elizabeth’s headstone doesn’t even have the Singer name on it.  And, when Harry passed in 1943 of lobar pneumonia, there was no mention of Elizabeth, his surviving wife, in his obituary.[12]

Between 1935 and 1940, Elizabeth moved to Upper Darby, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, in the Philadelphia suburbs, living with her namesake daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law Wilbur Thawley in a row home on Huntley Road.[13]  She continued to live in Upper Darby, but had moved to a single family home on Dermond Road (again with her daughter and son-in-law) sometime before 1950.[14]  Her grandson Charles Andrews shares a memory:

“My Grandmother lived with my Aunt Betty & Uncle Bill as long as I can remember. The family would go to visit them from time to time, mostly around the holidays.”[15]

On 26 July 1956, Elizabeth died at the Women’s Hospital of Philadelphia of cerebrovascular accident-thrombosis, commonly called a stroke.[16]  She is buried in Arlington Cemetery, Drexel Hill, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, in the same plot as her two oldest daughters Elizabeth (Andrews) Thawley and Elsie (Andrews) DeLong, and her son-in-law Wilbur Thawley.[17]

Arlington Cemetery (Drexel Hill, Delaware County, Pennsylvania), Elizabeth Andrews marker, Silverbrook section;  photo taken by Dawn Vanderwolf, 2019.

 

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     [1].  Birth book, registry office in Bydgoszcz ("Ksiega Urodzen Urzad Stanu Cywilnego Bydgoszcz") - Male Bartodzeje, Nr 1-185, no. 177, Eliz. Spielmann (1882); Family History Library microfilm 008023183, image 845.  For Anna’s maiden name, see "Zivilstandsregister, 1874-1883," Klein Bartelsee (Posen) Registry Office ("Standesamt"), entry 31, Spielmann-Seeling (1876); Salt Lake City, Utah; Family History Library microfilm 1189038.

     [2].  Birth book, Bydgoszcz, no. 177, Spielmann.

    [3].  Rosenbaum Steamship Company (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), "Ticket purchase books, 1890-1934," book 2, p. 31 (1893) for Louise Spielman and daughters, ticket no. R.121, Family History Library microfilm 1,550,639, image 348; image, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS64-Z9HL-2 : viewed 31 March 2022), image 348.

     [4].  New York Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957, microfilm publication M237 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), SS Dresden, 30 Aug 1893, for Louise Spielman and daughters, passenger no. 168-172; image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/7488/images/NYM237_617-0027 : viewed 28 Nov 2020), image 22.  For home address, see Rosenbaum Steamship tickets.

     [5].  1900 U.S. census, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, population schedule, Philadelphia, ward 36, enumeration district (ED) 0942, sheet 12A, dwelling 228, family 227, Lev. Speilman; image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/7602/images/4115219_00197 : viewed 23 Nov 2020), image 23.  For father’s place of employment, see "Died," The Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) Inquirer, 2 February 1919, p.54, col.6; image, newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/image/170016998/ : viewed 11 June 2021).

     [6].  1910 U.S. census, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, population schedule, Philadelphia, ward 40, Philadelphia, enumeration district (ED) 1030, sheet 2A, dwelling 30, family 30, Edward C. Andrews Sr.; image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/7884/images/4449776_00605: viewed 23 Nov 2020), image 3.

     [7].  Pennsylvania, Department of Health, death certificate no. 47320 (1916), Lillian Esther Andrews; Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission, Harrisburg; image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/5164/images/41381_2421401696_0889-03153 : viewed 11 June 2021), image 3153.  Cause of death is stated as “patulous foramen ovale;” the Mayo Clinic website at https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/patent-foramen-ovale/symptoms-causes/syc-20353487 provides the definition.

     [8].  1920 U.S. census, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, population schedule, Philadelphia, ward 40, enumeration district (ED) 1456, sheet 33B, dwelling 657, family 669, Elizabeth Andrews; image, Ancestry  (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/6061/images/4384804_00209 : viewed 20 Nov 2020), image 66.

     [9].  Zillow (https://www.zillow.com : viewed 11 June 2021), search for “6142 Wheeler St, Philadelphia, PA 19142.”

     [10].  Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, affidavit of applicant for marriage license, file no. 421898 (1920), for Harry Singer and Elizabeth Andrews; Family History Library microfilm 0044448161; image, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-69Z7-7CM : viewed 28 Nov 2020), images 438-439.

     [11].  For Elizabeth, see 1930 U.S. census, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, population schedule, Philadelphia, ward 40, enumeration district (ED) 0200, sheet 30A, dwelling 417, family 457, Elizabeth Singer; image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/6224/images/4639466_01067 : viewed 20 Nov 2020), image 51.  For Harry, see 1930 U.S. census, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, population schedule, Philadelphia, ward 40, ED 0221, sheet 1A, dwelling 5, family 5, William F. Singer; image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/6224/images/4639467_00011 : viewed 12 June 2021), image 2.

     [12].  “Obituaries, Harry Singer,” Intelligencer Journal (Lancaster, Pennsylvania), 29 December 1943, p.2, col.2; image, newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/image/557531321/ : viewed 12 June 2021).

     [13].  1940 U.S. census, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, population schedule, Upper Darby, enumeration district (ED) 23-211, sheet 26B, dwelling 683, Wilbur W Thawley; image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2442/images/M-T0627-03498-00055 : viewed 12 June 2021), image  55.

    [14].  1950 U.S. census, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, population schedule, Upper Darby, enumeration district (ED) 23-308B, sheet 82, dwelling 344, Wilbur W Thawley household; Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, NAID 43290879; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; image, NationalArchives.gov (https://1950census.archives.gov/search/?county=Delaware&page=16&state=PA : viewed 12 May 2022), image 49.

     [15].  Charles Warren Andrews, "Family History Questionnaire," 27 December 2020, copy in author's file.

    [16].  Pennsylvania, Department of Health, death certficate no. 66612 (1956), Elizabeth L. Singer; Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/5164/images/42410_2421401574_0655-00023 : viewed 24 Nov 2020), image 23.

[17] Arlington Cemetery (Drexel Hill, Delaware County, Pennsylvania), Elizabeth Andrews marker, Silverbrook section;  photo taken by Dawn Vanderwolf, 2019.