Heinrich (Henry) Kuehnle and Emma Christina Schemm Family Group

 

What We Know About This Family

Noteworthy

Henry was the brother of "Commodore" Louis Kuehnle, a prominent businessman and politician in Atlantic City credited by many for leading the growth of the city into a busy resort in its early days. He tangled with the then NJ Governor Woodrow Wilson, who won the skirmish when Louis was sentenced to prison. Emma was the daughter of Peter Schemm, who owned the Peter Schemm Brewery in Philadelphia. The activities of the family were often reported in the newspapers because they were related to Louis kuehnle or Peter Schemm. That fact yields many hits in the newspaper archives, but probably wasn't always that much fun for them.

An Overview of Their Lives

Henry Kuehnle was the youngest son of Louis Kuehnle, Sr. and Katherine Werdann. His father was a chef who had immigrated to New York City from Germany, and was successful enough to move to Egg Harbor City and invest in two hotels -- one in Atlantic City and one in Egg Harbor.

Henry lived with his parents in 1880 without a profession at the age of 20 according to the Federal Census taken that year. The Egg Harbor hotel his father built was situated on Atlantic Avenue facing the railroad tracks and the Egg Harbor station. A search of newspaper archives yielded a letter written in 1886 by Henry Kuehnle, "Proprietor" of the New York Hotel, praising a piano purchased for the hotel. A copy of his father's will is not available through Ancestry, but newspaper articles about his brother tell us that Louis Sr. handed the management of the Atlantic City hotel over to Louis, Jr. when he was 18. Did he leave the Egg Harbor hotel to Henry or was Henry an employee of the Kumpfs, who bought the hotel? Mystery or just coincidence - Emma Schemm's mother was Fredericka Schill Schemm and her mother was Fredericka Kumpf Schill. Were the Kumpfs in Egg Harbor related to the Kumpfs in Philadelphia? Family lore said that Emma and Henry met while she was a guest at a hotel. I'm guessing it was the New York Hotel.

A later Federal census listed Henry's profession as a "capitalist" and another as an "Inspector". We know from a newspaper clipping that he was appointed by the New Jersey governor as the Egg Harbor City Inspector of Factories in the State Department of Labor for three years in 1907, and that this was a reappointment.

Emma was the daughter of the brewer, Peter Schemm, in Philadelphia, and had ten sisters (one who died young and two of whom died as young women) and two brothers (one of whom died before she was born). Her sisters, Gertrude (Gertie), Carolina (Lina or Liney), and Emilie (Millie) were visitors to the Kuehnle home on occasions reported in the social pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Emma's father committed suicide in 1898, and each of his children inherited part of his estate. His son, Peter A. Schemm, inherited the brewery. When he developed a severe stomach ailment, he put the brewery up for sale, and the sale was pending in 1909 when he died. His will stipulated that his art collection be sold and that his sisters would receive equal shares of the bulk of his estate. Split eight ways, the amount was not a huge fortune, but probably enough on which to live comfortably. The Kuehnles purchased houses for most, if not all, of their children.

The lives of Henry and Emma Schemm were rich with activities surrounding their six children and their families as well as Henry's own brother, Louis "The Commodore" Kuehnle, and Emma's various sisters, who were frequent visitors to their home. Emma died in 1927 at age 63. One of his granddaughters reminisced that as children, they played Statue in their grandfather's yard every warm evening, and that they visited with him on his front porch where he spent a lot of time watching the trains go by. He died at the age of 77 in 1937.

Proof of Relationship

Oral family history is verified by the records that exist for the Kuehnles.

 

About the Children

• Daughter Emma, named for her mother, Emma, and an aunt, Louisa, who died the year before she was born. Emma remained single and was the loving aunt for the extended family. She lived in the "Big House" where she was raised first with her parents, then with her widowed father, and then with the Muellers (her sister Kate and her husband) until Snap Mueller died at which point she made her permanent residence with Kate while often visiting other relatives in Atlantic City.


• Katherine (Kate), named for her paternal grandmother, Katherine Werdann Kuehnle and two Sophies in the Kuehnle family, married Arthur "Snap" Mueller, an Egg Harbor man who gained local fame playing baseball in the minor league, They lived in her parents' house after the death of her father, and then at some time about 1950 they built a small house between her sister, Florence, and her parent's old home. Kate and Snap never had children, but she was a steady presence in the lives of her nieces and nephews and then their children.


• Henry Jr. married first a woman named Grace Somers. They resided in Atlantic City and apparently had a stormy marriage and two children, Henry and Emma, before they divorced. He worked as a civil servant for the City of Atlantic City. He married a woman named Helen, and they were divorced in Reno three or four years before his death at 60. One of his great nieces remembered admiring some of his glamorous dates when she was a child.


• Florence eloped with Joseph Harris Henderson of Philadelphia in 1914, and they had four children: Joseph Harris ("Harris"), Jr., Katherine ("Kay"), Florence ("Duke"), and Gloria Jean ("Jean"). Harris, Jr. and Duke settled in Egg Harbor City. Kay married and relocated to Madison, Wisconsin and then to Tucson, Arizona. Jean married a physician in the U.S. Navy and lived in several places during his career before settling in Raleigh, NC where he joined the UNC Medical School staff. Florence and Harris are our direct ancestors and are covered in more detail in their own family group page.


• Louis, named for his paternal grandfather, married Esther Bozarth, and they had two daughters, Gertrude and Helen. The family lived next door or very close to the Big House where he was raised. His daughter, Gertrude, died at 18 of tuberculosis. Louis himself died in Florida at only 58, and his wife a few years later in San Diego, where their younger daughter, Helen lived. Helen herself lost her husband a year after the death of her mother. Helen's second child was born a month after the death of her own father, and Helen herself died of a heart attack when her two children were about 12 and 3.


• Their youngest child, Charlie, also settled in the area and had three children, all of whom died young -- the two boys of muscular dystrophy before they were 20, and their daughter of cancer in her 30s. Charlie himself fought in World War I earning a Purple Heart, and lived to be 97.

What Else We Need to Learn

The goal of this project is to trace every line of ancestry to the arrival of its first immigrant to America. The basic information of each couple is considered complete when we know the dates of birth, marriage, and death for both spouses, their parents' names (or whether they were the immigrant), and the child or children in our ancestry line.

The research on this family is complete.