Working backwards from me: the Dale side

My grandfather Edward Kennedy Dale was born in Georgia four years after the Civil War.

I can only work my way back to 1810 on my father's side of the family. That's when Margaret Selena was born in Baden, but I don't know if that refers to what was then a grand duchy but now a German state or to the town of Baden-Baden, which was called Baden at the time. A year later, in the same town, Peter Straub was born. When they grew up, they married. We know the Straubs came to America following their marriage, because they had a daughter, Clara, who was born Dec. 4, 1841, in Augusta, Ga.

The Straubs are among my great-great-grandparents. I don't know when either of them died, where they lived at the end of their lives, or what his profession was. So far, we haven't found any records of other children.

Their daughter Clara was my great-grandmother. She grew up to marry Henry Schmidt, who was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1835. I don't know how Clara and Henry met, or why she traveled for her wedding to Germany - which must have been a tough journey in those days - but Clara and Henry were married Dec. 30, 1858, in Mecklenburg, Germany. Had Henry first come to the U.S. and met Clara here, or had she gone to Germany and met him there? We can only speculate, but we know that the Schmidts quickly settled in Georgia.

(I knew next to nothing of the family's connection to Germany when I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1966 and was stationed at Bitburg and Spangdahlem in Germany, yet I found the country to be beautiful and alluring and have returned a dozen times since my three years there as a young man.)

The American Civil War began April 12, 1861. My great-grandfather Henry Schmidt enlisted in the Confederate army that same year in Savannah. He was a member of the DeKalb Rifles, First Regiment Georgia Sharpshooters. He was shot in the hip at Chickamauga on Sept. 19, 1863, apparently not seriously, and served until 1865, the year the war ended. He was discharged at Greensboro, N.C., and returned to Savannah. (Trust Southerners of my great-grandparents' generation to make sure history remembered, if not much else, that they well and truly served the Lost Cause.)

My great-grandparents had a son, Henry L. Schmidt, shortly after the war started. Henry L. Schmidt was born in 1862. (He was hit by a train on May 17, 1896, and died. He is buried in Cathedral Cemetery in Savannah.) A second son, Robert Lee Schmidt (named, no doubt, for the Confederate general) was born in 1864, but the reason for his death six years later, on Aug. 7, 1870, is unknown. The Schmidts had three more children, William L. Schmidt, born in November 1872, Mary Christine Theresa Schmidt, born in January 1874, and Eloise Agnes Schmidt, born April 15, 1876. Mary Christine Theresa Schmidt was my grandmother. You can see her picture in the previous post.

I don't know when or where my great-grandfather Henry Schmidt died. Clara, his wife, eventually applied for a Confederate pension and stated that Henry left Savannah in 1889 for North Carolina. She received three letters from him within three months, she stated in her application, and then never heard from him again. Clara Straub Schmidt lived to be an old lady, dying in Savannah on Dec. 15, 1930, at the age of 89.

There's another great-grandfather, James Dale, from whom I get my surname. Little is known about him other than his name. His son's death certificate lists James Dale's birthplace as Savannah and his wife's name as Eliza C. Doubrley (although it could be Doubeley; the handwriting is barely legible), who had been born in South Carolina. But James and Eliza Dale had a son, Edward Kennedy Dale, who was born in Georgia on Nov. 13, 1869. The son grew up to marry Mary Christine Theresa Schmidt on Dec. 17, 1890, in Savannah. Edward Kennedy Dale's death certificate lists his occupation as "upholsterer" at a hotel in Richmond. My father often told us that his father worked at one time for a weekly newspaper in Thomasville, Ga., where my father was born (which intrigued me as I began to focus on journalism as a career).

Edward Kennedy Dale and Mary Christine Theresa Schmidt Dale had a passel of children, as we say in the South. My Dale uncles and aunts were Gerald, Lorraine, Mildred, Happy (whose real name was either Harry or Bertram; the records are not clear), Pansy, William and Florine. My father, James Vernon Dale, was born on May 25, 1903. My grandparents Edward Kennedy Dale and Mary Christine Theresa Schmidt Dale both died before I was born. She died Jan. 23, 1932, here in Richmond. He died June 18, 1935, also in Richmond. Both are buried in Riverview Cemetery in Richmond.

Of their children, my aunts and uncles, I only knew Gerald, Lorraine, Mildred and Pansy. Uncle Gerald was almost the spitting image of my father and drove a taxicab in Washington, D.C. Aunt Lorraine and Pansy did not live in Virginia and I saw them rarely and only as a child. Aunt Mildred was the victim in an abusive marriage in the 1930s. She had what used to be called a "nervous breakdown" and was institutionalized in the state mental hospital in Williamsburg, Va. Our family would visit her often, sitting outside on benches on the broad lawn in warm weather, us children listening to her soft voice. She was a sweet and gentle woman, very kind and loving to my sister and me. Nobody would tell us kids the details of Aunt Mildred's story, and there is nobody left alive now who knows.

My father painted and hung wallpaper all of his life except for his service in the Navy during World War II. He was very good at it, doing work at Monticello in Charlottesville in the 1930s (there are family pictures somewhere of him and my mother as a young couple, picnicking on the lawn at Jefferson's home). By the time I became aware of what he did for a living, he was the go-to man in Richmond when it came to difficult jobs such as hanging murals and high-end wall-covering materials. He was active in the church we attended, eventually becoming chairman of the board at Fairmount Methodist Church. He died Aug. 28, 1972, at the age of 69 in Stuart Circle Hospital in Richmond. He had suffered several previous heart attacks in the 1950s and 1960s. He, my mother and my sister Dianne are buried in Washington Memorial Park in Henrico County.

Note: My sister Dianne's research in Georgia courthouses and cemeteries lists the birth date for our grandmother Mary Christine Theresa Schmidt Dale as you see it above. But when he provided information for her death certificate in 1932, my grandfather Edward Kennedy Dale listed her birth month as February (he gave no day) of 1870 and gave her age as 61.He also listed his father-in-law's name as William and his father-in-law's birthplace as Mecklenburg, Germany. The correct name was Henry, and Henry was actually born in Hanover, Germany. (Mary Christine Theresa Schmidt Dale did have a brother named William.) However, Edward Kennedy Dale's parents-in-law were married in Mecklenburg. I lend more credence to my sister's research, since Edward Kennedy Dale appears to have made so many mistakes in outlining his wife's family history and was also unable to supply the maiden name or birthplace of his wife's mother for the record. In the space for his mother-in-law's maiden name and birthplace are the words "don't know."

I am indebted to my late sister Dianne Christine Dale and to my niece Terry Lynn Dale Cavet for their help with the research on my family.