After two years of intense searching, it was incredible to believe: the name was right, the birth date was right, and the parents' names were right. We had finally found it, and the rush of excitement was almost too much.
Adolph Lewis had been an enigma, and we were almost ready to give up on him for the time being. 1 He was born 9 July 1857 in Germany and came to this country when sixteen years old. According to his oldest daughter, Frances Marie, he was the youngest of thirteen children born to a French father and a German mother in Alsace-Loraine. The daughter also reported that an uncle taught Adolph the cigar manufacturing trade when he was twelve. His son said that the family name had always been Lewis, and that the family had been Welsh miners who had immigrated to Alsace-Loraine long enough ago to have assimilated the local language.
Various sources seemed to confirm the story. On his petition for naturalization in 1906, Adolph Lewis listed his birth date as 9 July 1857 in Strasbourg, Germany.2 Strasbourg was located in Alsace-Loraine, and the family had mentioned this town in connection with Adolph Lewis' origins.
The 1900 and 1910 census records showed Germany as Adolph's birthplace and also as that of his parents. In the 1920 census, he indicated that he and his father were born in France, that he spoke German, that his father spoke French, and that his mother was born in Germany and spoke German. After World War I, the area in Germany where he was born had become part of France, a fact which would explain the change in his story between 1910 and 1920.3
While these sources all seemed to tell essentially the same story, some discrepancies complicated the picture. A cousin who had lived with Adolph at the end of his life claimed that Adolph was from a Jewish family; however, two of Adolph's own children denied this claim
Lewis-Louis-Lange-Ludwig
Although Adolph's son denied it, there was a rumor that the family name had been changed from either Lange or Ludwig to Lewis. This rumor was substantiated by information handwritten on the letterhead of his employer, New York Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The paper listed the name as Louis-Lewis.
Adolph Lewis had apparently never told anyone that he had changed his name, and for the most part the change had remained a secret. Confirmation of the change was finally discovered in a passenger list. Adolph's naturalization papers mentioned that he embarked from Hamburg, Germany, on the Cimbria on 22 October 1873, arriving in New York 6 November 1873. The Hamburg and New York passenger lists for the Cimbria for these dates do not list an Adolph Lewis; however, they do show an Adolph Lange, sixteen years old, from Berlin, a cigar maker.4
Relatives in America
From a German letter that Adolph carried in his wallet, it was learned that he had a sister, Bertha, who had arrived in America by 1895. The corner of the letter where the return address would have appeared was torn. It suggested that Adolph Lewis did not want his family to know where his parents were and had destroyed even the evidence from this letter.
Another shred of evidence came from another handwritten note, which may have been written about the same time as the Louis-Lewis note. This paper listed Adolph's sister Bertha and his other siblings:
Father: Louis/Lewis,
Grandmother Hanna
Mother
Frankfort on the Rhine
Sisters: Bertha (Olga, Lena, Martha, Wm Blumenthal*),
Pauline, Cecilia, Minnie.
Brothers" Ceasar, Adolph, Hermann
*children of Bertha
An old envelope addressed to Mr. A. Lewis was sent from a William Blumenthal of Chicago in 1938. Was this Bertha's son, Wm. Blumenthal, who was listed on the paper? Research in the city directories and vital records of Chicago from 1885 to 1896 and 1935 to 1945 proved that a Bertha Lange married a Moses Blumenthal and had children named Olga, Lena, Martha, and William. This family was definitely Jewish!
With so many new leads, every effort was made to trace the Blumenthal family. An obituary for Bertha indicated a tragic death by suicide.5 Her death certificate listed her birth as 18 December 1861 in Germany to Lazar Lang and Caroline Donich.6 The informant was her daughter. A passenger list showed that she had come from Berlin to America in 1882.7
All of the descendants of Bertha Lange Blumenthal were researched, but none was able to tell where she came from originally. Apparently this information was lost when the last of her children died in 1984.
Place of Origin
Apparently, Adolph Lewis had gone to some extreme measures to keep his own children and grandchildren from knowing about his Jewish heritage, his original surname, and his true European origin. Research had now shown that the family name was originally Lange, not Lewis, and that the family was originally Jewish. Still missing was information as to where in Europe the family was from.
The naturalization record had seemed to indicate Strasbourg. Adolph's own son and daughter said that he was from Alsace-Loraine, information confirmed by the 1920 census record and other family documents.
With all this evidence pointing to the same area, extensive research was conducted in the Alsace-Loraine region, including various sources for Jews. While some Lang families were located, none matched our information and none spelled their name with the final "e" (Lange).
The French kept wonderful civil registration records with ten-year indexes, and these were searched for all ninety-four parishes in the present Bas-Rhin French Department. Almost half of the parishes in the Haut-Rhin Department were also searched. With as many leads as were available, the family should have turned up in at least some of these records.
As both Adolph and Bertha Lange listed their place of origin as Berlin on their passenger lists, it seemed likely that they went there from Alsace prior to immigrating to America. Perhaps the uncle who taught the cigar-making trade to Adolph lived there. The Jewish records of Berlin were searched, but the births of Bertha and Adolph were not listed in them.
On the piece of letterhead mentioned previously, Frankfort on the Rhine was mentioned in connection with the family. Also, a great-granddaughter (my client, Marian Lewis) had had a personal experience that caused her to believe the family might have come from northern Germany, somewhere along the Baltic Sea. The New York life insurance company was contacted, Jewish synagogue records and cemetery inscriptions in Chicago were requested, marriage records were searched, and further efforts were made with descendants of Bertha Lange Blumenthal. Nothing, however, provided the desired information.
Jewish Records
A nagging thought was that both Adolph and Bertha were in Berlin just prior to emigrating. Why were they there? Was their uncle, the cigar maker, from there? If he were a relative by marriage, we might never have found him, but in desperation the Jewish records of Berlin were again searched. This time all Lange and Donich (Bertha's mother's maiden name) names were noted. Although no Donich families were listed, some Langes were listed in the index.
The index listed a Ceaser Lange who was a cigar factory worker in 1873. 8 Adolph had a brother named Ceaser. If the Ceasar listed in the index was the uncle who had taught Adolph the cigar trade, Ceaser might have been a family name. Finding a Jewish Lange in Berlin who was in the cigar trade was the best lead yet.
The real excitement came when checking the earlier Berlin Jewish birth records for other Lange names. A David Lange was listed in the index; checking the original, the following was found.9
David Lange born 22 February 1863 to merchant Laser Lange of Schwochow near Bahn in Pommern and wife Caroline, maiden name Donich.
These were the parents listed on Bertha's death certificate! Finally, the information seemed to be coming together. After a struggle to make out the names of the towns Schwochow and Bahn, the gazetteers were searched. In 1908 there were 236 people living in Schwochow, of whom three were Jewish and all but one other were Lutheran. This town lies about midway between Berlin and Stettin and is now part of Poland, however, formerly it was part of the Prussian state of Pomerania (Pommern).10
The nearby town of Bahn (now Banie, Poland) had a population of 2628 in 1908, of whom twenty-three were Jews. Another larger town in the area was Pyritz (now Pyrzyce, Poland); it had a population of 8600; 141 of them Jews.
After finally locating this couple in Germany, Jewish birth, marriage, and death records from the town of Bahn from 1848 to 1874 were found on microfilm. These records had been microfilmed from manuscripts in Berlin in 1938 as part of Hitler's attempts to preserve records. After finding the family in these records, it seemed almost too incredible to believe that after so much work and effort the following entry was actually there:11
The wife of the merchant Laser Lange, Caroline (maiden name Dunig)12 gave birth to a son here on July 9, 1857 who was given the name:
Adolph Louis
How interesting that he would change the spelling of his middle name to make it his new surname in America (Louis became Lewis).
Conclusion
My client, and by now my friend, Marian Lewis, had been right in her belief that the family was from the North Sea area. Apparently, Adolph Lewis had fabricated the story that he was from Alsace-Loraine and had destroyed any evidence that might prove otherwise. He lied to the census takers, other officials, and his children. His father may well have spoken French, as he was a merchant and apparently did a lot of traveling, but the family were apparently Pomeranian-Prussian Jews, not Alsatian Jews.
Although one chapter in the search for Adolph Lange-Lewis has ended, the next chapter, trying to locate his German Jewish relatives, has begun. Perhaps two years from now there will be a new story about the search for the relatives of Adolph Lewis who were left behind in Germany and what became of them through the Holocaust. Let us hope that their story ends as well as this one.
Notes
1. Adolph Lewis is the great-grandfather of one of my clients, who graciously gave her permission to present her family in this article: Marian Lewis, 2358 Harbor Blvd. No. 103, Costa Mesa, CA 92626
2. Department of Labor, registration No. 496205, Petition for Naturalization from District Court of Oklahoma City, no. 1707666; Certificate of Naturalization No. 496205.
3. 1900 census: Marion, Jasper, Indiana; ED-20, SH-17.
1910 census: Norman City, Cleveland, Oklahoma; ED-31; SH-10a.
1920 census: Blackwell, Kay, Oklahoma: ED-128; SH-9.
4. Hamburg passenger list, 22 October 1873, Cimbria, FHL #472906; New York arrival list for this same ship, dated 6 November 1873, FHL #175740.
5. Copied from The Times, 27 October 1921, by Gloria Dosen of the East Chicago Public Library.
6. Indiana State Board of Health, No. 29451.
7. Hamburg passenger lists, 1882, p. 1035; FHL #472917-9.
8. Jewish parish in Berlin, marriage records; FHL #477303, p. 168.
9. Jewish parish in Berlin, births 1859-1863; FHL #477296, p. 212, No. 86.
10. From the Pomeranian gazetteer: Gemeindelexikon Für Die Provinz Pommern.
Berlin: Verlag des Königlichen Statistischen Landesamts, 1908. FHL #943 E5kp, v.4.
11. Bahn Jewish Records; 1848-1874; FHL #1334562, i.2; p. 13, no. 28.
12. The name Donich is listed both as Donich and Donig in the German records of Bahn.
Gary T. Horlacher is the author of several family histories. He has been a genealogist for fifteen years, specializing in German and Scandinavian research.
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