This is the story of a 140-year-old letter and its writer. The letter is puzzling not because of its contents, but because of its intriguing history and the many questions it raises. Why was it never mailed? Why was it torn up and by whom? Why was it pasted back together again and saved? And how did it find its way from Brooklyn, New York, to Spokane, Washington, 125 years after it was written? The writer of the letter was a thirty-six-year-old man who was dying, a man who had lived in the United States for less than twenty-five years—my great-grandfather Frederick Ecker.

When I consider my four great-grandfathers, Frederick Ecker is the relatively unknown member of the group. He is my mother’s maternal grandfather. Mother told me a little about him—things she had learned from her mother—and with limited success I was able to uncover some additional details about his life before the letter appeared on the research scene. Following is a brief history of Frederick’s life as we knew it before the advent of the letter with its tantalizing history. This is his story.

Sadly, we have no idea where in that area Frederick was born. Without the name of a town or parish, it is virtually impossible to find a birth or baptismal record, and to date the LDS Church has not extracted any Alsace-Lorraine parish registers on the IGI. When and if it does, we may have the pleasure of finding Frederick Ecker there at last.

The date of Frederick’s arrival in America is unknown, but he was in New York City before 1852, when he married a young German girl by the name of Barbara Engel. Although we have no marriage license for this couple, family tradition gives us his wife’s name (not very strong evidence to be sure, but there has never been any reason to doubt it). The death certificate of their daughter Louise, my grandmother, gives the names of her parents as Frederick Ecker of France and Barbara Engel of Germany, so we accept the Ecker/Engel marriage.

Frederick was a barber, first found in the New York city directories in 1853 at 373 Avenue G. The ensuing years find him at various addresses in the same general area. By 1862, his business address is given as 29 Williams Street in Brooklyn. This also substantiates the family story.

The most important information concerning Frederick’s family comes from the 1860 Census, when they were living at 476 Ninth Avenue in the 20th Ward of New York City. The census gives the following information: Frederick Ecker, age thirty-one, male, barber, personal property $100, born in Germany. Barbara Ecker, age twenty-six, female, born in Germany.

The children, all born in New York City, are Emily Ecker, age six; Charles Ecker, age five; and Louise Ecker, age three. Also in the household is a Margaret Sipple(?), age fifty-nine, a housekeeper, born in Germany. The identity of Margaret Sipple is questionable. Furthermore, the name is not clearly written in the census, and it may not be Sipple at all. Barbara Engel’s mother’s name was Margaret, and the age of fifty-nine would be correct to identify this woman as her mother, but if this is the case, there is no explanation for the odd last name. Margaret Engel is found in later censuses, and this is the name given on her death certificate and on her tombstone, so perhaps Margaret Sipple was simply a woman who worked for the family.

While all of this information was fairly substantial, there were still many unknowns in Frederick Ecker’s life. Most importantly, we knew nothing about his origins, the names of his parents, or who his ancestors were. Before finding his letter, nothing was known about any siblings either.

In June 1863, Frederick Ecker died of tuberculosis at only thirty-seven years of age. His wife Barbara had given birth to a fourth child, Louis, in January of 1863, who also died in June of the same year. The young widow bought a cemetery plot at Lutheran Cemetery in Middle Village, Long Island, just east of Brooklyn. Here she buried her young husband on June 9th and her baby boy on June 18th. It must have been almost too much for a young twenty-nine-year-old woman to endure. But somehow she managed to keep her little family together, probably with the help of her mother. The family remained in Manhattan. Barbara earned a living as a dressmaker, and both of her daughters later followed the same profession. When she was older, daughter Louise spoke very little about her early life in New York City, but she clearly remembered a day in 1865 when she and her family witnessed the emotional procession of Abraham Lincoln’s cortege as it moved through the streets on its long journey back to Springfield, Illinois. It was a sight that eight-year-old Louise never forgot.

Unfortunately for the Ecker family, tragedy was to strike again. By June of 1870 Barbara had died, at the age of thirty-six, and was also buried at Lutheran Cemetery. Undoubtedly, Barbara never realized that it would be the final resting place of not only the Ecker family and her mother, Margaret Engel, but also of daughter Louise, Louise’s husband John Fletcher, and many of their Fletcher descendants.  After Barbara’s death, her children were cared for by their elderly German grandmother until they were old enough to care for themselves.

The story of Frederick and Barbara is a tragic one, and it is made even more poignant by the letter Frederick wrote two months before his death to his brother Jacob, who was living in Ohio. How this letter came into my hands is, I believe, a remarkable story.

John Fletcher died in 1914, and eventually the Fletcher children all married and moved into their own homes. Several remained in Brooklyn; one moved to Massena, New York; and daughter Carolyn with husband Ed Woodward moved to La Grange, Illinois. Mother Louise gave up her home and spent the remainder of her long life living with one child or another. She spent at least one month every year with our family in Illinois. Apparently the letter went everywhere with her, because in 1932 she and the letter were in our home in La Grange.

To say I was stunned is a monumental understatement. Would I like to have Frederick Ecker’s letter? I had never even heard of Frederick Ecker’s letter. Of course I would like to have it! By that time, Natalie had been living in Santa Monica for forty years, and neither of us knows why she kept those two pieces of cardboard all that time. Fortunately she remembered them and had the notion that I might have more use for them than she, so into the mail they went. A letter that had been written more than 125 years before was being mailed for the first time.

The last sentence on the first page said, “I will remove my family to New York for the summer. Last spring…” The next page began, “… and he thinks of coming home on the first of May.” This was odd. Something was missing here, perhaps an entire page. Fortuitously, one of the pieces on the first page was coming loose, and when I lifted it off, I found my answer. There was writing on the back. This was not a two-page letter at all—it was three! The second page was written on the back of the first and was pasted down on the cardboard. How was I ever going to be able to read it?

Fortunately, Natalie and our dad had only used library paste in putting the letter together. Working carefully, I was able to detach all the pieces and put them back on a sheet of clear contact paper. When everything was nicely completed, I turned the sheet over to read a considerable amount of new material on that second page.

Frederick was a very sick man when he wrote his letter to “Dear Brouther Jacob.” However, he still hoped that he could move his family to the west, where the climate might be healthier and not as damp as Brooklyn. He described to Jacob his stay at “Bricklings” in Rockland County, probably a tuberculosis sanatorium. Sadly his three-month stay there did not help him at all. He wanted Jacob to tell him how much it would cost to move his family to Ohio and whether the trip could be made by railroad or if some of it would have to be across one of the Great Lakes.

On page two he proceeded to write about “my brother Chris,” who was doing well in the army. He wrote, “He thinks of coming home on the first of May, his two years being up.” He also mentions “mother,” but as a truly frustrating genealogical glitch, it isn’t clear if he is referring to his and Jacob’s mother or to Barbara’s mother. He closed the letter with his “best regards to you and your sons Peter and J… [torn]” His signature, while not complete, is still clear.

Brother Jacob was easy to find. In 1850, he and his wife Mary were living in New York City with their three sons and two daughters. Jacob was thirty-eight years old, a shoemaker, and his birthplace is given as France. Two of his sons were named Peter and John, which confirmed the names in Frederick’s letter. With Jacob we knew we had found a bona fide member of the family.

According to New York city directories, Jacob was living in New York City by 1836–1837. A check of the 1840 Census shows that Frederick was probably living with Jacob at that time, as there was a male in the household ten to fifteen years old, and none of Jacob’s sons were that old in 1840. In 1860 Jacob is still found in a New York city directory, but by the time the 1860 Census was taken, he was living in Baughman Township, Wayne County, Ohio. Here he is called a boot and shoemaker, and his birthplace again is given as France. Only two sons, Peter and John, are living with him. His wife was presumably dead and the other children married by that time.

Jacob lived in Wayne County the remainder of his long life and is buried there. Unfortunately, his death certificate contains no information about his parents or place of birth. His son John later moved to Missouri, and son Peter served in the Civil War. As an interesting note, Peter later applied for a Civil War pension due to lung disease, perhaps a family weakness.

Finding Jacob was a positive step forward in learning more about Frederick, although it did not help in finding where the brothers originally came from. I found naturalization papers for them both, in which they abjured allegiance to the Emperor of the French. This fact lends credence to the idea that they came from Alsace-Lorraine.

The last major clue in the letter is his reference to “my brother Chris.” It was exciting to consider the possibility that I might find a Christopher or Christian Ecker who served in the Civil War and perhaps applied for a pension afterward. Sadly, this was not to be the case. All attempts to find such a man were negative, so I followed a well-worn axiom of genealogy: after you’ve read something once, try reading it again for a new perspective. Even though I had read the letter many times, I did so again and was stunned to realize that I had overlooked a major clue. Frederick’s reference is to “my” brother Chris. Why did he phrase it in that fashion when he was writing to his brother Jacob? Wouldn’t he have said “brother Chris” or “our brother Chris”? The idea that he was referring to a brother-in-law, a brother of his wife Barbara Engel, became a distinct possibility. The search was on for a Chris Engel.

I would like to relate a successful search for Chris, but that has not happened. “Chris” is probably short for Christian, a fairly common name in Germany. Knowing his name may help me to eventually identify the Engel family, with a mother named Margaret, a daughter named Barbara, and a son named Christian.

Having this letter in Frederick’s handwriting gave me another opportunity that is not often available with our more distant ancestors—that of handwriting analysis. Although there are varying opinions about this technique, at the very least it offers insight into the writer’s personality traits and abilities. Of most importance to me in studying the results of this analysis were the following characteristics: Frederick had great dignity and pride; he had the ability to concentrate, preferring to do one thing at a time; he was honest and reliable; he had the desire to have things done properly; and he was fairly well-educated for those times. The analyst saw evidences of depression, undoubtedly due to his illness. Acknowledging that very little is known about this man, the handwriting analysis has helped a great deal in understanding more about him.

Frederick’s letter will probably always be a mystery. The many questions remain, and I have been unable to answer any of them: why he never mailed it, why it was torn up, why it was saved, why my grandmother carried it around with her for so long, and how it managed to survive for 140 years. I can simply add that I am very glad it did, if only because it adds some dimension to the life of this little-known ancestor.

Doris J. Woodward, a native of La Grange, Illinois, is the editor of The Bulletin, the quarterly journal of the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society. She is also an award-winning freelance writer.

Return to the May/June 2003 Table of Contents.