| Notes |
- I want to find information about the family of
Nicholas M. Scherer & Elizabeth Maledon (Detroit, MI, circa 1870-85)
These are my great-grandparents.
My family lore tells me this much:
Nicholas was born with a different surname, probably in a
Prussian-controlled area of the Rhineland in Germany. He was disowned by
his family for refusing to be conscripted into the Prussian army and
changed his name (perhaps to his mother's maiden name) when he emigrated
to America. He was a musician and church (Roman Catholic) organist in
Detroit. Some time after arriving in America, he married Elizabeth
Maledon, the daughter of German immigrants (Elizabeth was presumably born
in America). Nicholas and Elizabeth had thirteen live births, but many
died in infancy. Of the surviving children, my family knows only five
names: George, Nick, John, Ella, and Regina (Jennie). Nicholas died
around 1885, and Elizabeth moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas with Regina
(Jennie), her youngest (and my grandmother); the rest of the children
stayed in Detroit. I know that Ella married a Gus Bauer in Detroit.
One interesting family history footnote is that Elizabeth moved to Ft.
Smith because her brother George Maledon had found her an older German
immigrant widower (a man by the name of Weindel) to marry. George Maledon
was the rather famous hangman serving Judge Isaac Parker ("the hanging
judge") at his Federal court in Ft. Smith.
I have a photo from circa 1910 taken when my great-grandfather James C.
Williams and Regina (Jennie) - now his daughter-in-law - visited George
Scherer and Ella Bauer and their spouses in Detroit. I know there were
descendants in the Detroit families, but contacts between the branches
were lost decades ago as people died (my grandmother died in the early
1970's after a long period in a nursing home and left no useful documents
or correspondence among her papers).
Ray C. Williams
r...@sei.cmu.edu
Software Engineering Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
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1837 - 1885 (48 years)