Sunday's Obituary - Edna Veith

Sunday’s Obituary is an ongoing blogging prompt developed by Leslie Ann at Ancestors Live Here and tallied on the Geneablogger's site.

Edna Veith
1903 - 1994

Edna Veith was one of my grandfather's sisters. She and her twin brother, Edwin, were the youngest of five children and Edna is the only child who never married. She was born on 20 August 1903 in Hollisterville, Wayne County, Pennsylvania to Gottlieb Veith and Hannah Zeiler, and died 22 February 1994 in Atlanta, Georgia.  She had moved from her parents' farm in northeastern Pennsylvania by 1920 and lived with her sister and brother-in-law, Carrie and Charles Heffner in Hoboken, New Jersey. At some point, she and her sister, Esther Veith Foster, shared an apartment at 7 East 86th Street in New York City before they both retired and moved near their nephew Art Foster and his family in Georgia.

VEITH, Miss Edna, 90, Avondale Estates, Georgia, died Tuesday, February 22 at the Budd Terrace Nursing Home, Atlanta, Georgia.
   Born in Hollisterville, daughter of the late Gottlieb and Hannah Zeiler Veith, she was the last surviving member of her family. A graduate of Wyoming Seminary, she was an executive secretary in the banking business in New York City before retiring in 1964 to Atlanta, Georgia.
  Surviving are two nephews, Harold Veith, Jr., Lake Wylie, S.C., and Arthur D. Foster, Duluth, Ga.; a niece, Mrs Warren Grant, Little Falls, NJ; grand nieces and nephews, including Mrs. David Dulay and James Foster, both of Honesdale; several great-grandnieces and nephews.
   She was preceded in death by a brother, Harold Veith Sr; two sisters, Carrie Veith Heffner and Ester Veith Foster, twin brother, Edwin Veith; also a nephew, Burton W. Foster.

I met cousins!

I am exhausted.

Since I left home last week, I have driven almost 900 miles (from NJ to PA to NY to RI to MA) and met up with one first cousin once removed and one second cousin  (Skinner), one Aunt (Grant),  four third cousins and two third cousins once removed (descendants of Cassie Zeiler),  two second cousins and one second cousin once removed (Foster), and three first cousins once removed and one second cousin (Blackmar),. I've also spent the most part of three days in county and town courthouses (Lackawanna County in Pennsylvania, and Central Falls and Cumberland, Rhode Island) and visited three cemeteries in Pennsylvania, and three in Rhode Island. I've taken 133 pictures, and gone through five sets of batteries for my Flip-Pal scanner (which goes through batteries much quicker in hot weather). And most of the time it's been over 90 degrees (101 degrees in Providence today!).

I loved seeing all these cousins and I thank them all for sharing their time and information with me.

I have many vital records, cemetery records, wills and deeds, town histories, compiled family records, and lots of scanned copies of documents and photos. It will take me weeks to sort through all the information I've received and get it all into my database! I will also make copies of it all and distribute the information to these cousins.

Perhaps the most intriguing discovery so far is my g-g-g-grandfather Ernest Lord Mellor's death record at the Cumberland Town Hall in Cumberland, Rhode Island. Cause of death: Gun Shot.

I think I have a mystery to investigate!

Second Cousins

I sent a letter last week to Jill, a 2nd cousin I have not seen in at least 40 years. My mother, Dorothy Veith, and her father, Burton W. Foster, were first cousins, and thus, Burt was my first cousin once removed. However since Burt was near my mother's age, we kids called him Uncle Burt. He and his family lived not too far away from us in Cresskill, New Jersey during the 1960s and early 1970s until they moved to Pennsylvania.

Burt's parents were Arthur Foster and Esther Veith. Esther was my grandfather's Harold T. Veith's sister. They had two children, Arthur D. Foster, born in 1926 and Burton W. Foster born in 1928.

Burt and Art Foster, about 1929

Dorothy Veith and Harold C. Veith with their cousins Burt and Art Foster
at their grandparent's farm in Hollisterville, PA
 summer 1936

The exciting thing is that Jill and I are going to meet each other for the first time as adults in a few weeks time. We talked briefly last night and she told me that she and her brother both had pictures of our mutual g-grandparents, Gottlieb Veith and Hannah Zeiler. She also said one of Art Foster's daughters is interested in genealogy! I think I may have met her when I was young too but lost track of that side of the family. I did contact Art Foster once when I first started getting interested in genealogy back around 2001, and he told me he had a pile of information he was putting aside for me. Unfortunately, he died before it was ever sent. Maybe this newest 2nd cousin will be the one who might have the portraits hanging on Gottlieb's wall that I noted in my post last week, My Grand-father's Siblings. Wouldn't that be truly exciting?

Gottlieb Johannes Veith

Gottlieb Veith was my great-grandfather on my mother's side.

Gottlieb Johannes Veith

My mother's paternal grandfather was Gottlieb Johannes Veith. Gottlieb was born in Altdorf, Germany on 3 November 1866 to Johann Martin Veith and Anna Maria (Annie) Helle. Altdorf is a small town in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg, around 10 miles south of Stuttgart. Gottlieb traveled on the Holland-America ship "Zaandam" which left from Amsterdam and arrived in New York on 3 April 1886, when Gottlieb was 16 years old. The ship's manifest indicates that he had one piece of luggage when he arrived in New York. It is not known if Gottlieb traveled with friends or who he stayed with when he first arrived in the United States. Gottlieb's son, Harold, told one of his grandchildren that Gottlieb left Germany to avoid being conscripted into the military. Gottlieb had at least one brother who stayed in Germany, as did his parents.

Veith Farm around 1920

Gottlieb was living in Scranton, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania and working as a teamster when he  married Hannah Zeiler at age 21 on the 8th of March 1888 in Jefferson Twp, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania. My mother's cousin Art Foster told me Gottlieb and Hannah moved into the new farm they had just bought in Salem Township, Wayne County, Pennsylvania soon after marriage and were there for the Great Blizzard of March 11-14, 1888.  However, the Wayne County death records for both Hannah and Gottlieb recorded how long they lived in "the community" prior to their deaths. These records indicate they lived in the rural Wayne County community since about 1895, not 1888 (when they married) so I will need  to search for a deed that indicates when the farm was purchased.

Gottlieb Veith

Gottlieb and his wife raised 5 children while living on their farm. He died there on 27th of February 1947 from a cerebral hemorrhage. His wife, Hannah, predeceased him by 5 years. The farm was sold soon after Gottlieb died.