Montmorenci–Marie Conrad Lehr

Marie Conrad Lehr (1884-1921), was an owner of Montmorenci into the 1900’s, but is a Worthington Descendant. Found this newspaper article on her death:

Transcribed:

Baltimore Sun
June 7, 1921
Mortuary Notice

FUNERAL OF MRS LEHR TODAY

Body Placed In Memorial Chapel She Built Recently

Funeral services will be held at 4:30 o’clock this afternoon in Emmanuel Protestant Episcopal Church for Mrs. Marie Conrad Lehr, wife of Dr. Louis Charles Lehr, who died early yesterday of pneumonia at the home of the Misses Sally and Polly Carter, Washington Apartments. With a simple service, conducted by the Rev. Dr. Hugh Brickhead, the body was taken yesterday from the apartment and placed in the Memorial Chapel in Emmanuel Church that Mrs. Lehr built recently in memory of her mother, Mrs. Lawrence Lewis Conrad. Following the services in the church today the body will be taken to Montmorenci and interred in the old-family burying ground tomorrow.

Mrs. Lehr was the daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis Conrad. Her mother was Miss Sally Howard Worthington, of Montmorenci, in Worthington Valley. On the paternal side Mrs. Lehr was a direct descendent of Nellie Curtis, daughter of Martha Washington. On November 9, 1909, Mrs. Lehr married Dr. Lehr, son of the late Robert Lehr, who died in 1887. The ceremony was performed at the Hotel Belvedere by the late Cardinal Gibbons, assisted by the late Rev. Francis X. Brady, president of Loyola College.

During the war Dr. Lehr served in France and Mrs. Lehr worked under Miss Anne Morgan on the committee for reconstruction work in France.

End:

June 7, 1921 Mortuary Notice for Marie Conrad Lehr, Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, Maryland.  Genealogy Bank.

There are a number of follow up items, on my ToDo list, about her and I know there are other newspaper articles, and another visit to Baltimore will need to be scheduled.

She isn’t the first one to have a note about being buried in “the old-family burying ground”. I have other notes, indicating that some have been moved from this burial ground to Saint John’s Episcopal Church Cemetery. Will have to see if she was one of those who was moved.

Of interest, is the notation what she is a descendant of Nellie Curtis, daughter of Martha Washington.

Lesson Learned: The study of this house, continues to show the impact of the people in this house to their neighborhood. Based on this article, once again there appears to be an impact on the Episcopal Church in the area. I suspect that this will be more obvious as time goes on.

House History

Last evening, there was a presentation at the Second Life Association of Professional Genealogist (SL-APG) by mayrumblepois.

May, is her Second Life name, and I will refer to her by that name. I can only say that she IS the House Historian.

Her presentation was about her passion in this line of research. She explained that WE, those around the “Fire Pit” (as seen above) have the skills to also be House Historians. The skills are very much the same, the types of records might be the same, but what we are looking for is not about People, but the physical house.

The biggest difference is audience, and WHERE the research is done. “May” reminded us that her research is very local. No travel, no conferences, and it’s not ‘family’ who will receive any questions or reports based on the information gathered.

I have talked to “May” in RL (Real Life) about this, and shared a story with her about a project that I had done in 2007. It was on a House, a historical one at that, and a bit of the journey that I had in a presentation that I had done on that house. I have blogged about “Montmorenci” in the past, have a continuing search for the reason for a “staircase” that is in the Maryland Montmorenci, and the discovery of another Montmorenci Staircase. That search continues, as well as some contact, based on this blog, about family members from “the other” Montmorenci. What contact was within the past month or so. The search continues.

I re-looked at a book that I created, in 2007, and gave to the owners at that time, to see what it would take to really do a House History on that house, based on the presentation last night.

I have notes that track the owners of that house, from the beginning, through 2007, I have notes from the surrounding area and the impact of the families who owned that house to that area (History of the area), so I might have the beginning of a House History for this specific house. In addition, the notion of researching in a “local” area, might not be true, in this case, but it would mean a visit to one or two repositories to gather the “missing” information that might be important for the history of the house, rather then the family history of the families who lived there.

During the presentation, that some of these houses do have “stories” of their own. Some to be told, others, maybe not. While I have been “Looking for ….” Montmorenci, I have one of those stories. In researching that mystery, I saw a number of other stories of events that took place in that house, so I know the information is “out there”.

Once again, May, “the House Historian”, I may be up to your challenge. I will blog about it here.

The continued search for the Stair Case

In this Blog post: https://worthy2be.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/in-search-of-montmorenci/ I continue my search for these two staircases. Earlier, I mentioned that the 2nd staircase was located at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. I joined there, with my daughter, so we could visit this wonderful museum and learn more about it and the staircase Its a wonderful place to visit.

Recently, they started a blog:

http://museumblog.winterthur.org/

So, I posted this question:

To the Staff:

Wonderful new Blog. Thank you.

I hope it’s OK to ask here.

In the museum, you have the Montmorenci Staircase. That staircase, as I understand it, came from South Carolina from a house called Montmorenci. I have seen photos of that house and have seen a couple of brief stories.

However, not an hour south of Winterthur is another Montmorenci which also has a Montmorenci Stair case.

So, my question is, how come there are Two Montmorenci’s and both of those houses have similar staircases.

My guess is, that the answer lies within architectural information about one or both of the houses. Did the architect or Mr duPont know of the Maryland Montmorenci.

I have posted some information on the Maryland Montmorenci here:

https://worthy2be.wordpress.com/tag/montmorenci/

Thank you for your time an consideration and I look forward to your new Blog posts. With any luck, I’ll get back down to Winterthur this fall.

Thank you,

Russ

I did get an answer. Perhaps not the answer I wanted, but here it is.

Russ, I checked with our estate historian, and here’s what she says: The answer has to do with a coincidence of name. A French aristocrat named Montmorency commanded troops under Rochambeau in the American Revolution and became an American hero. There are many towns and houses named after him. The staircase in Maryland is curved like the one from the house named Montmorenci, which was located near Shocco Springs, North Carolina, but is not free-standing. The free-standing curve is what interested du Pont. Hope this helps!

So, for now, I will put my research aside for a while, as there may not have been a connection in the first place. The time for the naming of the property may be the connection, but what about the stairs. I need to make another visit to Maryland to get a better look at the staircase and to see if I can find “the rest of that story”.

So, for now, back to my Civil War Hero.

In Search of …. Don’t forget the Newspaper

I have posted a couple of times that I am searching for information about Montmorenci (Maryland) and it’s staircase. During this process, I received a comment, from the Blog, from someone who I has lost contact with. During our “conversation” I was told about an event that took place at Montmorenci.

I did some searching, but didn’t get anywhere. However, I had signed up for a Webinar that was being provided by Legacy Family Tree. The webinar’s title was:

Newspapers: Critical Resource to Complete Your Family Tree The speaker was Thomas Jay Kemp.

More about this webinar can be found on this website:

Legacy Family Tree

Looking at the menu at the top, is Training, and Webinars. I haven’t put the link directly to the Webinar, as the recording of that Webinar will not be available after March 10, 2011. But the Legacy Family Tree Webinars have been very educational.

The topic was on how to take advantage of the GenealogyBank website. Thomas said a couple of times, “don’t forget the newspapers“. (or at least that is what I heard).

That was on February 2, 2011. Just a couple of days earlier, I had received the email, mentioned earlier. In that email was:

“I was also told that a husband was murdered by his wife in .. house. I’ve always wanted to research that story!”

Thomas’ comment and that email stayed with me until the end of the Webinar. Didn’t want to miss any of his words of wisdom.

Webinar over, headed over to Genealogy Bank, and look at their Historical Documents collection. Having listened about how to search, I wanted the best results, quickly. Had to find that article.

What I knew was that the murder happened at Montmorenci. Of course, Worthington’s built that house and it was in the family until the early 1900’s. BUT, I didn’t want to guess that it was a Worthington. Didn’t know the name, nor date of the Murder. But, I did know that Montmorenci was in Maryland, and that it was in Baltimore County. So, I selected Maryland, and Baltimore County.

Didn’t want to enter anything BUT Montmorenci in the Include in keyword search. There were a couple of pages of “hits”. I looked at the articles which confirmed some of the information that I knew about the house, property, and people who lived in that house.

The 10th Hit was:

Shot Dead by His Wife: Sad Fate of Mr. L. L. Conrad
1883-08-08
Sun Newspaper (Baltimore)

Bingo.

What a story it was (is). There is a lot of genealogical information in that 1883 newspaper article. Some confirming what I knew, but the level of detail of the event were outstanding. I won’t go into the details about that, but what a story.

But, there is more work to do. As the opening line said:

“Lawrence Lewis Conrad, a great-great nephew of George Washington …” got my attention. His wife was “Miss Minnie Worthington”. So, another branch to follow.

Of course, I passed this information along to the person I was emailing.

But, the story doesn’t end there.

I attend a “local” Family History Interest Group (FHIG), in Bernards Township, NJ at the local library. I have been known to speak there, but it’s an hour away so I don’t always get there. The topic last night was on how to use America’s Genealogy Bank. The Reference Supervisor, Ruth Lufkin was the speaker. She gave a great presentation on the America’s Genealogy Bank, as the library uses it’s resources. She showed us (about 40 of us) how to use it, with tricks on how to use the search, what you might find.

I had mentioned to Ruth, when I got there, that I had a story about my experience with Genealogy Bank. She said that she had been looking for some connection between Genealogy Bank and FHIG.

As the say, “and the rest is history”.

The bottom line here are two fold:

1) Don’t forget your Library

2) Don’t forget the Newspaper

Thank you Ruth, for letting me share my story.

In Search of … Montmorenci

I continue to search for the links between two unique stair cases, from two houses, both named Montmorenci.

Yesterday, I listened to a Webinar, sponsored by Legacy Family Tree on Newspapers: Critical Resource to Complete Your Family Tree. The presenter was Thomas Jay Kemp. The Webinar can be found here:

http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/webinars.asp

Mr. Kemp, is a librarian, lecturer, newspaper expert, and the mover and shaker of GenealogyBank.com

He mentioned a number of times, ‘don’t forget to search the newspapers’. What a great reminder. So I did.

I have only just begun to search for my mystery (or should i say mysteries) and have fond out that there are many “Montmorenci’s” around, and a couple of French nobles that have that name. A Walk in Canada, and cities / towns in South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and I am sure I’ll find more.

So far, on the Maryland Montmorenci, I found a Obituary of a young child who died there, and a couple of other events that took place with names of the owners of Montmorenci. The names are known to me, but all the more reason to Not to Forget to look in the Newspapers.

Thank you Legacy and Mr. Kemp.