Family album – Biwerse.

Since marriage is much on my mind these days, I was interested to run across an old newspaper article about a relative’s difficulties getting married. In 1908, my great-grandaunt made the front page of a local newspaper in a story revealing that her prospective in-laws considered her a scheming older woman.

Hulda Hedwig Baalke (1888-1965) was my great-grandmother’s younger sister, the youngest of fourteen or fifteen children born to John and Mary Baalke. (I’ve only documented fourteen of them, but census records from both 1900 and 1910 reported that Mary had borne fifteen children.) Great-Grandma must have had a soft spot in her heart for the baby of the family, since she named her first child – my grandmother – after her. Even a hundred years ago, you didn’t name your child Hulda without a good reason.

I wonder how Aunt Hulda and the rest of the family reacted when they saw the article in the Sheboygan Daily Press that Monday evening.

The city of Sheboygan evidently is not such an entirely unromantic place after all. Boyish love, the secret engagement, the enraged father, all appear in this romance which we are going to relate. It appears that a young man, Michael Biwerse by name became deeply infatuated with and enamoured of a young lady Miss Hulda Baalke three years his senior. The parents of the hero objected most vehemently to the match and declared that they would never give their consent to the engagement. But Michael says that all is right in love and war and he consequently refused to obey. So he proposed to the young lady and was accepted. The engagement was announced in several of the local newspapers. This was the first inkling that the parents of the young man had of the engagement. They declared that the boy who is only nineteen years old would never get their consent.

The article continued, quoting an open letter written to the newspaper by “a relative of the Biwerses.” The letter, signed “C.W.,” protests:

Young Mr. Biwerse is only 19 years of age, and of this it seems Miss Baalke took advantage. The question now arises will she also be successful in marrying him? As he is still a minor, he has to obtain the consent of his parents, and this will in all probability be with held. Miss Baalke is 3 years Mr. Biwerse’s senior and this seems sufficient ground to withhold their consent. When the wife is older than the husband marriage is not only [not] advisable but also not justifiable.

What was really going on here? Why did “C.W.” write the letter?

“C.W.” was Charles Louis Wein (1877-1937), husband of Mike’s eldest sister, Emily. Did John and Lena Biwerse ask their son-in-law to write the letter? Did he write at his wife’s behest? Did he take it upon himself to write? There’s no way to know, but it seems like a safe bet that he wouldn’t have written unless his wife and her parents were opposed to the prospective marriage.

Now, here’s the thing: Mike Biwerse was twenty years old when the article was published, and Hulda wasn’t three years his senior; she was several months younger than he, and still only nineteen herself. If the Biwerse family thought Hulda was three years older than Mike, they were mistaken. Is it possible they confused her with an older sister?

The Baalkes did have a daughter who was three years older than Mike: Hulda’s sister Lulu. Lulu wasn’t just three years older than Mike; she was also a single mother, having borne a son out of wedlock the previous year. I can imagine the parents objecting to a daughter-in-law with a past. I can even imagine their son-in-law delicately trying to sidestep that issue by emphasizing her age in his letter.

My great-grandmother, Anna, told me once that before she was married she often spent time with her sister’s child. (I think she was talking about her sister Emma’s daughter, Luella.) Great-grandma indignantly recalled that at her own wedding she overheard one of the guests say, “It’s about time she got married; she’s been carrying that baby around for a couple of years.”

Was Hulda the victim of a similar case of mistaken identity? Did some local gossip tag Hulda with her sister’s age and baby?

Whatever the problem was, the Biwerses managed to get the facts straight, or at least to reconcile themselves to the inevitable. Mike’s 21st birthday was the following March, and in May he and Hulda were married. The wedding was celebrated at his parents’ home.

This is my only photo of Mike and Hulda together:

Mike became a successful businessman and a member of the Elks, and Hulda became active in the Episcopal Church. They had a large circle of friends, and were well enough off to send their only son to prep school in Washington, D.C. The son, Denis, became a career Navy man. He was aboard the USS Panay when it was sunk by the Japanese in 1937, and he was at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. In between, he married a California girl and presented Mike and Hulda with a granddaughter. During World War II, Denis attained a local celebrity in his hometown as a war hero, with the local newspaper following his exploits and his opinions about “the Nip.”

In 1953 Mike died aged 64 at Milwaukee of a heart attack, and Hulda moved out to California to be closer to her son and his family. She died in 1965.

Hulda probably had her fair share of joy and sorrow, of worry and anticipation. I wonder whether she ever looked back at that old newspaper story and laughed. Or did she, like her older sister, bristle at a remembered insult for the rest of her life?