Our Favorite Walks — Number One: Rome (again)

It was Holy Thursday, April 8, 2009 and we began our walk from our hotel down the Via Emilia steps to Via Veneto and then further down a couple of blocks to Piazza Barberini. Most of our Roman ventures started this way. Sometimes we took the Metro at Piazza Barberini. And sometimes we walked westward through the piazza to central Rome. But today we walked past Bernini’s Fontana della Api and exited the piazza at its southeast corner. We were going to explore Quirinal Hill, one of the legendary seven hills of Rome. Before our walk was over we would visit two churches, pass by several government buildings, linger at a half dozen piazzas and marvel at both the ancient and Renaissance architectural and sculptural wonders we viewed. Our walk would also take us to both the highest and lowest elevations in ancient Rome.

Bernini's Fontana del Api (Fountain of the Bees) in Piazza Barberini

We walked a few blocks up Via Barberini hardly noticing the slight incline. Then we turned right on Via di Santa Susanna and soon came to our first stop when we reached Via XX Settembre: the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria. This church was on our list of things to see in Rome ever since we read Angels and Demons by Dan Brown and saw the movie starring Tom Hanks.  The architect Carlo Maderno designed this church as well as Santa Susanna across the street in the 17th century. And in a tiny chapel to the left of the main altar stands one of the most famous sculptures by the the great baroque artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Saint Teresa in Ecstasy.

Saint Teresa in Ecstasy

Another view of Bernini's famous work of art

Bernini immortalized his sponsors by placing them on either side of Saint Teresa.

View of the back and ceiling of Santa Maria della Vittoria

My wife decided to visit Santa Susanna, the National American Church in Rome,  across the street while I dallied inside Santa Maria taking more than a hundred shots of St Teresa and other works of art . We then walked westward along Via XX Settembre (Italy was unified on September 20, 1870) which runs atop the Quirinal Hill ridge.

Scenes on Via XX Settembre

We soon came to the famous intersection of the Four Fountains which is the highest elevation on the highest hill in ancient Rome and where Via XX Settembre gives way to Via del Quirinale.  If you were to form a triangle that joins the three obelisks at Piazza del Quirinale, Piazza dell’Esquilino (behind Santa Maria Maggiore) and Piazza Trinita dei Monti (Spanish Steps), the Quattro Fontana would be in the exact center of this triangle.

One of the Four Fountains

A second fountain

A third fountain

Close-up view of the third fountain

The rich Romans of 500 years ago built their mansions and private gardens on Quirinal Hill. Most of these mansions are now government buildings and some of the gardens are now public parks.

One of several formal gardens that are now parks

Once a private mansion; now a government building

Guard at attention at the Presidential Palace (once the Pope's summer residence). I asked a guard with a machine gun if it would be OK to take this picture. He barked something back in Italian. He didn't shoot me; so I guess it was OK.

The west end of Quirinal Hill ends at Piazza del Quirinale, about a mile from Santa Maria della Vittoria. The famous statues of Castor and Pollux, the Horse Tamers, dominate this piazza which also allows the best view of St. Peter’s Basilica from central Rome.

Piazza del Quirinale

The Horse Tamers

View of St. Peter's from the Piazza del Quirinale

One of the entrances to the Presidential Palace

From the piazza we walked down the Quirinal Hill steps near the President’s Palace and continued downhill another block and then turned right and walked downhill again another couple of blocks until we were immersed in a crowd all attempting to get to one of the smallest piazzas and largest fountains in Rome. It’s called Fontana di Trevi and it is arguably the most famous fountain in the world.

The steps down from the Piazza del Quirinale with the Presidential Palace in the background

We passed a Chinese restaurant on the way.

Fontana di Trevi

You have to walk downhill from three directions — north, east and south — to get to the Trevi Fountain. The only downhill direction from the fountain is west and so we continued our walk downhill a few more blocks until we reached the absolutely lowest elevation of ancient Rome and the base of four of its seven hills. And there we found an old Roman temple called the Pantheon that is now a Catholic church (and has been for more than 1000 years). Michelangelo and other great architects of the Italian Renaissance studied the dome of this temple to see how the ancient Romans did it and then they went off to build their own duomos and basilicas.

These old columns are all that's left of Hadrian's Temple. The building now houses the stock exchange and chamber of commerce and is a couple of blocks down from the Trevi Fountain.

The Pantheon

The Piazza della Rotunda in front of the Pantheon

The domed ceiling inside the Pantheon

The tomb of Victor Emmanuel, the first king of Italy

Tomb of Umberto I, the second king of Italy. He was assassinated by an anarchist a year before McKinley was shot, also by an anarchist.

From the Pantheon we walked in a northerly direction past the Piazza Colonna and the Column of Marcus Aurelius and then turned east on Via del Tritone until we reached Piazza Barberini again. We then retraced our steps up Via Veneto and the Via Emilia steps to our hotel. Our walk was either pretty level or downhill all the way to the Pantheon but from the Pantheon it was all uphill and we were tired when we finally arrived back at our hotel. It was altogether about four miles and it took about five hours. We also stopped for lunch at a fast food restaurant about a block from the Trevi Fountain.

The residence of Italy's Prime Minister in the Piazza Colonna

The Column of Marcus Aurelius in the Piazza Colonna

We returned to the Trevi Fountain on the day after Easter, our last day in Rome. This time we threw some coins in. We want to return to Rome someday. And take this walk again!

Our Five Favorite Walks — Number Two: Kyoto

We were in Kyoto in April, 1981 and it was our last day in Japan before flying off to Guam. What to do? That was easy: visit some temples and gardens — they are all over the city. Where to go? Now that question is a little harder. It would take a year to visit each of the more than 1600 temples and shrines in the city and we only had a few hours. So we checked out a map and decided that there is a ward in the eastern part of the city called Higashiyama that has many of the oldest and most popular temples and it looked like it would be a nice walk. So off we ventured, hoping that we get a few hours of sightseeing before the forecasted rain.

Our first stop was the Kiyomizu-dera Temple halfway up a hill in the southern area of Higashiyama. Our plan from there was to walk north to an area east of the Gion district that was filled with temples and gardens. Then we would cross the canal and visit the huge Heian Shrine. After that we would decide whether we wanted to continue on east of the shrine to visit some more temples that were nestled in the eastern hills.

On the way to Kiyomizu-dera

A block away

Here we are.

The main gate to Kiyomizu-dera

School kids at the main gate

The streets north of the temple are preserved to look like they did in the old days.

The two most famous streets in this area -- Sannen-zaka and Ninen-zaka -- are mostly steps.

Ryzon Kannon. This temple is dedicated to Japan's Unknown Soldiers.

Maruyama Park is adjacent to Yasaki Shrine.

View of central Kyoto

Behind the cherry blossoms

This temple is next to Kodai-ji

We visited several lovely gardens.

Some of the nearby homes looked as old as the temples.

The famous weeping cherry tree of Maruyama Park

Along the Biwako Canal looking toward the Kyoto Zoo

The Biwako Canal

View from the bridge over the canal

We strolled through the Zoo and visited the deer compound.

The Heian Shrine Torii -- one of the largest gates in Japan

Heian Shrine

There are many beautiful gardens and ponds on the grounds of the Heian Shrine.

Back to the main area of the Heian Shrine

By the time we reached this temple it started to rain and the kids were pretty "templed out." So we hailed a cab and went back to our hotel.

We all agreed our walk was quite an  experience as we caught an inkling about what Japanese architecture and landscaping is all about and we derived a slight understanding of a sacred culture outside our Christian world. Today we would say “amazing” and “awesome” but we didn’t use those words thirty years ago.

Our Favorite Walks: # 3 — Rome

On Holy Saturday in 2009 we took a sightseeing bus around Rome and when we reached the stop for Piazza del Popolo we hopped off and decided to walk the rest of the way back to our hotel.

Entering Piazza Popolo through the Porta del Popolo

The piazza begins at the ancient Roman Aurelian Wall and we entered through the city’s northern gate. The Pope commissioned Bernini to enhance the Porta del Popolo for the expected arrival of the Queen of Sweden in 1655 (Queen Christina converted to Catholicism, abdicated her throne and spent the rest of her life in Rome). To the left of the gate is the church of Santa Maria del Popolo. On the right is a police station with a matching dome. On the other end of the piazza are the twin churches of Santa Maria dei Miracoli and Santa Maria di Montesanto. The Tiber river and the Vatican are off to the right and Pincio Hill is to the left. In the middle of the oval-shaped piazza is an authentic Egyptian obelisk brought back to Rome by Caesar Augustus. Four lions guard the fountain that surrounds the obelisk.

North side of Santa Maria del Popolo

Crowd at the Obelisk and fountain in the middle of the piazza

Riding the lions

Another view of Fontana dell'Obelisco

Fountain and steps to Pincio hill on the east side of the piazza

View of Santa Maria Popolo from the Pincio steps

Fountain of Neptune on the west side of the piazza

Santa Maria di Montesanto

Santa Maria dei Miracoli

Three streets collectively called The Trident lead out to central Rome from the south side of the piazza. There is Via del Babuino on the left of Santa Maria di Montesanto and Via di Ripetta begins to the right of Santa Maria dei Miracoli and eventually reaches the shores of the Tiber. Via del Corso is the street between the twin churches and it goes all the way to the Piazza Venezia and the imposing Victor Emmanuel monument. You take this street if you want to go shopping in Rome. But we chose Via del Babuino because it is the most direct route to our next stop, The Spanish Steps.

Approaching Piazza di Spagna at the end of Via Babuino

The Spanish Steps

The church at the top of the Steps

Lots of picture-taking

Where's that centurion?

Fontana del Barcaccia

Via Del Babuino ends at the Piazza di Spagna. It’s a pleasant walk of about seven blocks. Only one or two cars dared to enter the street and most pedestrians just walked in the middle of the street most of the way from Piazza Popolo. All of a sudden a thousand people appeared to our left. We visited the Spanish Steps three times during our week-long stay in Rome and it was crowded all three times.

Santissima Trinita dei Monti

View from the top of the Steps

Vendors and artists sell their wares in front of the church. The building in the background is the Villa Medici which today houses the French Academy in Rome.

The steps are the widest in all of Europe. At the top of the steps stands the church of Santissima Trinita dei Monti. At the bottom is a boat-shaped fountain called the Fontana della Barcaccia that was designed by Pietro Bernini, father of Gian Lorenzo. The building to the right of the steps is where the poet John Keats died in 1821. The poet’s epitaph, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water,” refers to the fountain’s water that he could hear on his deathbed.

One time we left the area from the top of the steps in front of the church. We then took Via Sistina all the way to Piazza Barberini. But on Holy Saturday we left from the bottom of the steps and so continued walking south on Via dei Due Macelli and then east on Via del Tritone to Piazza Barberini.  It’s a little longer than the Via Sistina route but not as steep.

A block from the obelisk in front of the church

The Colonna dell"Immacolata a block from the Steps

Close-up view of the Column of the Immaculate Conception

We passed a mobile restaurant on the way to Piazza Barberini.

Piazza Barberini. The metro station here was the closest to our hotel. The Triton Fountain was sculpted by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Via Veneto of La Dolce Vita fame begins at Piazza Barberini. The street was named after one of the last major battles of World War I. We walked either to or through this Piazza each and every day of the seven days we spent in Rome. Three times we walked to catch the Metro and the other four times we passed by on our various city strolls. Via Veneto winds its way up to the Roman wall and ends there. The Borghese Gardens begin on the other side of the wall. After a couple of blocks from the Piazza Barberini the Via makes a big “S” curve. There are steps (Via Emilia) at the center of this curve that go to the next street up (Via Liguria) and then it’s only a hop and a skip to our hotel.

Via Veneto

View of Via Veneto from the Via Emilia steps

Our walk ended at the Hotel La Residenza on Via Emilia. We chose this hotel because it was highly recommended by TripAdvisor and was within walking distance of most of the sights we wanted to see. Their breakfasts were delicious and they also twice a week threw lively parties for their guests, including live music and complementary wine and hors d’oeuvres. The Via Veneto area has lost some of its luster since the days of La Dolce Vita but we encountered no danger on our daily walks around the neighborhood. The morning walks were easy because everything except the Borghese Gardens are downhill from our hotel. In the evenings, however, we huffed and puffed uphill all the way to our hotel. But we slept well every night!

Entrance to our hotel

View of the hotel entrance from our balcony

Our Five Favorite Walks — Number Four: Madrid

We spent a week in Portugal in May of 2010 and on a sunny Sunday morning we flew from Lisbon to Madrid to begin the next step in our journey, a two-week vacation in Spain. It took a while to retrieve our luggage, clear customs, taxi from Barajas airport and settle down in our hotel. So it was mid-afternoon before we were ready for our first Madrid walk.

We had chosen the Best Western Atlantico Hotel on Calle Gran Via because it was rated # 1 by TripAdvisor and it seemed to be within walking distance of many of the sights we wanted to see. So off we went to test that theory.

Gran Via looking east from our hotel. In 2010 Madrid celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Gran Via and just about all of the buildings lining the street were built between 1912 and 1920.

We turned right and walked westward from our hotel past the Plaza Callao for about a mile to where Gran Via turns into Calle de la Princessa and there to our left was our first stop on our walk: Plaza de Espana.

The movie theater at Plaza Callao

The Plaza was full of Madrilenos out for their Sunday stroll. We lingered at a small flea market where most of the vendors seemed to be from one or another South American country. A singer and her guitar accompaniest provided some musical entertainment at the base of the market and beyond the stage several people, young and old, were happily climbing all over the huge memorial dedicated to Spain’s most revered literary hero, Miguel de Cervantes.

The Cervantes monument in Plaza de Espana

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza

Most of the market stalls displayed South American goods but one was from India.

I listened to guitar music while my wife shopped.

We ventured a few more blocks up Calle de la Princessa and then turned left and walked another four blocks to see the Temple of Debod, a 2000-year-old temple that the Egyptian government gave to the people of Spain in 1968. It was reassembled in this park and opened to the public in 1972. From the southern edge of the park there is a nice view of southwest Madrid, including the Royal Palace and the Almudena Cathedal.

Temple of Debod

Another view of the Temple of Debod

View of Royal Palace and Almudena Cathedral from the temple park

We then walked down Calle de Ferraz and continued on Calle de Bailen to the Sabatini Gardens on the north side of the Royal Palace. Sabatini was an Italian architect who designed extensions to the Royal Palace in the 18th century, including the king’s stable which was originally on this sight. The gardens were designed in the 1930s to store several statues of Spanish kings that were formerly crowding the Royal Palace.

We passed this building on our way to the Sabatini Gardens.

Another prominent building along our walk to the Gardens.

The north side of the Royal Palace from the Sabatini Gardens

Statuary in the Sabatini Gardens

The Palacio Real de Madrid is the largest palace in Europe and is still used for official state functions even though the present royal family live in a smaller palace just outside Madrid. The last tour of the Royal Palace was at 2:30pm and we were too late (the palace is also closed to tourists on days where state meetings are scheduled). So we strolled past the palace to Madrid’s cathedral.

The Cathedral of Santa Maria la Real de La Almudena was begun in the 1880s but not finished until 1992. There were lots of activities going on during our visit. A large group of mostly youths but also including some priests and nuns were singing, dancing and clapping near the cathedral’s front steps. Inside, many of Madrid’s devout Catholics were paying homage to Santa Maria and to a local Carmelite nun named Santa Maria Maravillas de Jesus who was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2003.

Almudena Cathedral

Dancing and singing near the cathedral steps and in front of the south side of the Royal Palace

Paying homage to Santa Maria

We then doubled back toward the palace again and walked across the street and through the Plaza de Oriente and past the Opera House (Teatro Real) until we found a thoroughfare that would take us back to Plaza Callao and our hotel, confirming our guess that the hotel was within walking distance of the major sights we wanted to see.

Plaza de Oriente. The Royal Opera House (Teatro Real) is in the background.

Statues of more than 40 Spanish kings line the aisles of the Plaza de Oriente.

famous statue of King Felipe IV in the Plaza de Oriente

We visited the Plaza Callao every day during our visit, once to take the Metro across town to the Prado museum and El Retiro park and other times to walk to and from two other popular tourist sites, Puerta del Sol and Plaza Major.

Plaza Callao

Plaza Callao at Gran Via, one block from our hotel

Our hotel on Gran Via

We will always remember the many interesting things we saw on our first walk in Madrid. We also remember how tired we were when we got back from our four-hour walk and how well we slept that night!

Our Five Favorite Walks — Number Five: San Francisco

I grew up in San Francisco and walked all over town during my first 24 years. Then I moved across the Bay. But I still go on my favorite San Francisco walk at least once a year — when I attend a Giants baseball game.

Our annual adventure to AT&T Park on a sunny Summer Sunday begins with a BART ride from Castro Valley to The Embarcadero, the train’s first stop after going through the Transbay Tube.  We then take the northeast exit and arrive above ground right in front of the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Market Street.

We usually walk past the hotel’s main entrance through the sidewalk souvenir stands and arts and crafts stalls and gaze at Vaillancourt Fountain in Justin Herman Plaza before crossing the Embarcadero and finding ourselves in front of the Ferry Building.  If we have time, though, we might walk around the hotel and linger for awhile at one of the small cafes facing the fountain. Justin Herman Plaza has become quite a touristy area these days and they even have a Zip Line installed near the fountain. Note that the Hyatt is part of Embarcadero Center, the eastern tip of San Francisco’s FIDI (Financial District) and these restaurants serve the breakfast and lunch crowd and are usually closed by 3:00pm.

Walking around the Hyatt Regency

Justin Herman Plaza

Vaillancourt Fountain in Justin Herman Plaza

Or we might do our lingering after we cross the street to Ferry Plaza and the Ferry Building and then visit the Farmer’s Market there. There are  some nice restaurants on this side of the street, too, some in front of the Ferry Building facing the Embarcadero and some in the back of the building facing the Bay. But whether we linger here or not at some point we will head South and start walking along the Embarcadero. In about 20 minutes or so we will find ourselves at 24 Willie Mays Plaza, all ready for an exciting three hours of baseball.  On our right we will pass the old Hills Bros Coffee Building and I will remember the wonderful aroma drivers used to experience as they crossed the bridge from the East Bay. Then we pass Rincon Park with its Cupid’s Bow sculpture.  And soon we find ourselves under the Bay Bridge.  The Embarcadero goes on for a few more blocks and then runs into King Street and AT&T Park is on King between 2nd and 3rd.

The Ferry Building from the Embarcadero

Vaillancourt Fountain and the Hyatt Regency

Two heads behind the fountain

The Ferry Building is on the left; Justin Herman Plaza on the right. We usually cross the Embarcadero at the signal.

View from Ferry Building seafood restaurant

The Bay Bridge

Cupid's Arrow at Rincon Park

Hill's Bros Coffee Building

AT&T Park

Back to the Ferry Building

After the game we do the walk again in reverse. Sometimes we will stop along the way at a waterfront cafe for a hamburger and a beer. Sometimes we don’t stop until we hit the Ferry Building and then we will visit one of their outdoor restaurants before retracing our steps back to the BART station. More than likely we will linger again as we examine the paintings and jewelry on display along the Market Street border of Justin Herman Plaza. Our San Francisco walk ends at the Bart Station entrance and in 30 minutes we will be back in Castro Valley.

A few years ago some cousins from Ireland came to visit us and they told us they wouldn’t mind going to an American baseball game. So we took them on our favorite San Francisco Walk. What an introduction to the sights and sounds of San Francisco! The Giants won that day, too.

My German Heritage, Part Four — The Second Elise

My great grandparents William H Theler and Emma Belduke were married in San Francisco in 1875 and by 1880 were living in a boarding house on O’Farrell Street in the Tenderloin. Their first daughter, Grace, was born on April 21, 1882 and their second, Mabel Elise, came along on September 2, 1883.

In 1895 when Mabel was 12 years old the family moved to Juri Street in the Mission, a tiny street a half-block long between Guerrero and San Jose and near 25th Street. Shortly after the turn of the century the family moved again all the way to 3625 25th Street. Actually, all they had to do was walk across the street to 8 Juri and then walk down the path to 25th street. The house right behind 8 Juri was 3625 25th Street!

Grace and Mabel grew up  a year apart and in the same household but seemed to live in completely different worlds. Grace looked like her German father — light-complected, blue eyes and blond hair. She proudly proclaimed her mother’s Catholic religion, however, and wore it on her sleeve for life. Mabel had dark hair, brown eyes and was dark-complected, just like her French Canadian mother. She also considered herself a good Catholic but she also loved life, was at ease in a crowd, and had a personality closer to her father’s who was a born salesman.

Mabel graduated from Cogswell’s Polytechnical College in 1901. Her class put on a graduation dance at Cotillion Hall and eleven member of the class, including Mabel, were on the commission in charge of the dance.

A month earlier Mabel participated in an Elocutionary Recital at Sherman & Clay Hall. She performed a sketch entitled “Aunt Sophronia Tabor at the uproar” with a Miss Lucille Otto and also a monologue of “The Window Curtain.” She also joined seven other women in acting out a pantomime called “The Angel of Buena Vista.”

A year later the Young Ladies Sodality of St. Brendan’s Church gave a vaudeville entertainment at their church on the corner of Fremont and Harrison Streets and Mabel appeared on the agenda with a recitation.

I have a hunch that Mabel and her friends in the St. James Sodality also attended one or two functions put on by Sacred Heart Parish where Company D of the League of the Cross Cadets, led by a handsome captain by the name of Ignatius Dwyer, performed their military drills.

Mabel Elise Theler -- The Second Elise -- circa 1905

Mabel and Nash were wed on November 15, 1905. Four months later they were rendered homeless by the Great Earthquake and Fire and they spent a couple of weeks living in tents in Golden Gate Park. They also lived with friends in Alameda for a few months and then moved back to San Francisco to a flat on Walter Street near Duboce Park and across the street from Nash’s sister Kate. They were also just two blocks from Nash’s mother and sisters Nora, Mary, Alice and Teen. Their first child was born on Walter Street on May 12, 1907 and Mabel named her Elise Maureen.

By 1910 Mabel and family had moved closer to her own family, a flat on 20th Street near Dolores Park. The Thelers lived eight blocks away. My Dad, Donald Joseph Dwyer, was born in this house on March 22, 1910.

The Dwyer Family circa 1914 -- Elise, Mabel, Don and Nash. I think that's Sally Drew, a family friend, on the right.

Mabel’s parents died in 1917 and 1918 and the Dwyers moved away in 1918 to a house on Westwood Drive in a new residential area of San Francisco called Westwood Park. The new parish of St. Emydius did not have a school, however, and so Mabel and Nash sent their kids back to their old neighborhood for their Catholic education. After attending St. James Grammar School Don decided to go to St. Ignatius High School. His sister Elise went to Notre Dame. After high school both children then attended Cal Berkeley, Elise graduating in 1930 and Don in 1932.

The Dwyer Family circa 1920

Mabel’s son Don married my Mom in 1936 and her daughter Elise wed Fran, the love of her life, two years later. Mabel lived long enough to see three of her nine grandchildren. She died of breast cancer at the age of 57 on November 20, 1940.

Grandpa and Grandma Dwyer with my sister Pat and me. This photo was taken on our front porch at 112 Westwood Drive just a couple of months before Mabel died on November 20, 1940.

So this wraps up my German Heritage. Mabel was half German. She married an Irishman and so her childen were only a quarter German. Both of her children also married Irish. And so my siblings, cousins and I are mostly Irish and only an eighth German. But that German heritage will still burn strong as long as our sons and daughters continue to give their daughters the name Elise!

We are also one sixteenth French Canadian, thanks to Wiliam Theler’s wife, Emma Belduke. I’ll write about our Beldukes in a future family history posting.

My German Heritage, Part Three — The First Elise

My youngest granddaughter’s middle name is Elise. She has a cousin in Hawaii named Elise and another in Oregon with a middle name of Elise. My two daughters also have two cousins (# 6 and # 7) with the middle name of Elise. In my own generation I have my cousin Maureen Elise (# 4) and my youngest sister (# 5) with the Elise middle monicker. Then there is Elise # 3, Elise Maureen Dwyer, my Dad’s sister. Elise # 2 is their mother and my grandmother, Mabel Elise Theler.  But who was the first Elise? Ah, in all my research over the years looking for bits of information on my great grandfather William H Theler and his parents I have managed to find lots of information on another family member, William’s sister Elise.

The First Elise, my great grandfather's sister

My Dad used to talk a lot about Aunt Elise and he told us that there was a large picture of her in the hallway of his grandparents’ house on 25th Street in San Francisco. For years I just assumed that this Aunt Elise was related to my great grandmother Emma Belduke, mainly because the name “Elise” sounds so much more French than German and Emma’s father’s family came from Quebec and spoke mostly French. Dad also had a photo of this Aunt Elise and in the back of the photo in my Dad’s handwriting are the words “Aunt Lizzie.” So she wasn’t always called Elise. Maybe she was born with another name.
Also on the back of the photo is a stamp that tells us that the picture was taken at a photo studio on Staten Island in New York City. So I decided to concentrate my research on Staten Island for awhile and there I found Elise Theler, William’s older sister.

Elise appears on three US Census reports. In 1870 she is listed as Elise Thailer and is living with her mother Agnes Thailer in a boarding house on West Street (along Manhattan’s Hudson shore opposite New Jersey) in New York City. But I also found an Eliza Theler living with a head of the household named Adra Theler in a boarding house in Middletown, NY in 1870. Are these two people really one and the same? Could be. My great great grandfather Joseph Belduke appears twice in the 1880 census, once living in a San Francisco boarding house and once across the Bay in an Oakland boarding house. And my great grandfather Tom Muckle was living with his family in Carson City on the 1880 census and also in a boarding house by himself in Bodie when the California census was taken a few weeks later. In 1900 Elize Theler is managing another boarding house (on Hyatt Street) in New Brighton, NY. My, I thought, she really got around the state of New York! Then a little more research revealed the fact that most of Middletown changed to Castleton and then most of Castleton became New Brighton. She spent most of her life in just one place, Staten Island, NY. Finally, in 1910 Elisa Theler is listed as an inmate at a home for old Mormons on Amsterdam Avenue in New Brighton.

I also found Elise’s obituary in the New York Tribune for June 12, 1914: “THELER – On Thursday, June 11, Elise, daughter of the late Frederick Theler, in her 71st year. Funeral services at the Chapel of the Home, 104th St. and Amsterdam Av., on Saturday, June 13, at 11 a.m.”  This obituary verifies that she is Frederick’s daughter but also points out that she was born three years before Frederick and Agnes were married. Was Frederick married twice? Or are Adra and Agnes the same person? Also, one of the census reports say she was born in New York, another says Germany and the third states Bremen, Germany, a city in northern Germany with access to the North Sea and a popular port in the 19th century for shipping lines between Germany and the US.

In 1886 Eliza Theler became a director with two other persons of The Straub Envelope Company. The three directors invested $10,000 in the company. According to Webb’s Consolidated Business Directory of Staten Island in 1886, Miss Eliza Theler was also running a boarding house at 352 Richmond Terrace, New Brighton. I also ran across an article in a NY newspaper in the 1880s where Miss Theler’s Boarding House on the lower terrace was mentioned.

So we now know more about Elise /Eliza than we do about her brother and either of her parents. It’s too bad that all of those census reports are after 1868 when William arrrived in San Francisco. Where did William and Elise live before that date?  Why don’t they appear in the 1850 or 1860 census? William claims he was born in New York but we can’t find a birth certificate.  And there are no death certificates anywhere for Frederick or Agnes. The only record I ever found for Frederick besides his marriage record is that he was living in a boarding house in New York City in 1850, according to Doggett’s New York City Directory for 1849-1850.

Someday I hope to find the record or records that will solve this mystery. This year we are going to spend a few days in northwest Germany visiting the area where most of the Thelers lived before migrating to the US. Perhaps something will turn up there. Maybe I’ll discover a definite link between my family and the Thelers of Ohio. And maybe I’ll find Elise’s birth record!

In the last six generations of my Dad’s side of the family we have ten people named Elise. And this is the story so far of the First Elise. Tomorrow I will write a bit about my grandmother, the second Elise.  My Dad told me she was a lovely lady. And doesn’t she have a lovely name?