New Pictures for the Weis-Roser-Keller/Zercher Website

At the Kreichelt 90th/95th birthday celebration in Detroit in early September, Aunt Edna gave me some photos that I have never seen before, and neither had my mother (Mathilda). I have scanned these and recently added them to this site, but here they are all in one place.

I also recently was given some other things, either from my mother, or found them on the web, so I'm adding these also.

One very nice one, for starters, is a photograph of Mathilda, Irma, Edna, Alice and Lillian as featured in the Alpha Xi Delta Magazine. I don't have a date for this, but this was a clip from the magazine given to me.

So just to balance this off, here's an earlier one, also of just the five (minus Catherine, but including Grandpa Keller) at what I assume was Grandma and Grandpa Keller's 50th wedding anniversary (?), except that Grandma isn't present.

Here's some other photos I took on a recent visit to Ellis Island. As you may know, Ellis Island has a place where people have purchased memorials for their relatives who came through Ellis Island, and we have a number of Keller and Roser-Weis names there on plaques. The plaques are on large metal panels outside on the north side of the main building. I have some photos of Ellis Island as you approach it by ferry, as well as the railroad station on the Jersey City side from which many immigrants, our relatives as well, took trains to their intended destinations. There were more than two dozen railroad lines that had service from this station, which has recently been restored. From what my mother told me, Oma Keller, together with the four children (Elisabeth, Philip, Adolph, and Emma) left here to travel by train to Buffalo, NY (by Erie Railroad perhaps?) and changed trains there for another train to St. Louis. A kindly German woman she met on the train to Buffalo invited her and the kids to come to her home and take baths! (Bathing wouldn't have been possible in steerage on the boat, of course.)

Here's one view of Ellis Island as you approach it by ferry.

 

Here's a closer view, as you get off the ferry right at the entrance where immigrants would have also landed, having been ferried over from their transatlantic ship from New York harbor.

 

 

 

 

Here are some of the memorial plaques that have been donated by some of us in the family (I'll need your help identifying who actually arranged for these!). They're a little hard to locate, even with the on-line system they have where you look up names, because they're arranged by when the donation was received, not necessarily in alphabetical order. So they're all in different places on the memorial plaque walls.

Here's the plaque for Barbara Hauck Keller (whose name at the time would have been, of course, Barbara Hauck Zercher ):

Here's a plaque for Grandpa Phil, either as Philip Keller or as Philip Zercher Keller:

 

And here's one for Oma Weis, shown here as Katharine Roser Weis, which is also not quite right, since (a) she didn't come through Ellis Island, and (b) she wasn't married to Opa Josef Weis yet!

 

 

Speaking of Rosers and Weis's, I also was given some photos of Opa Weis as a young man, which were new to me, and of Roser relatives I don't know quite how to identify yet, but here they are:

Here is a picture of Josef Weis as a young man:

 

 

 

 

Here is an older photo of Oma Weis "waving":

And another of her with some friends:

This is Christian Roser.

 

 

This one (below) is labelled "Christian Roser Family" and you see the woman on the left wearing the typical "Tracht" or headdress of the area--a large, heavy black ribbon. There is a mother, a father, a son and three daughters. [Need to get ID's on these from Germany if possible.]

 

 

Here, just for interest, is a map I downloaded from the web, of the Herbolzheim/Tutschfelden area:

These towns were consolidated into one municipality a while back, so Tutschfelden is now "part of" Herbolzheim administratively, although there are open fields between them.  

 

  Here are some pictures of the Railroad Station on the Jersey side (NJRR, it seems to be called) where Oma and the children would have gone to by ferry from Ellis Island, from there to take the train to Buffalo and on to St. Louis:

 

 

 

 

Here's what New York City looks like from the ferry you take to get to Ellis Island and Liberty Island (Statue of Liberty):

And here are views of various sorts from Liberty Island, looking north toward Jersey City, and at the Statue itself:

We didn't get to go up in the Statue this visit, because they no longer allow people to use the stairs, and the wait for the elevator is hours long.