Haderle Family, The Beginning Overview

The author: Don Haderle, Sr. born 1944. This is the first in a series of photo journals about the Haderle family with roots from Johann Haderle. Where do I fit? Johann born in 1837 begot John (Dr. John) born in 1878 begot John (John1909) born in 1909 begot Don (DonSR) born in 1944). 

Haderle family genealogy 

by Don Haderle, Sr. August 2018

My father John, was born in 1909; I refer to him as John1909. His father, John, was born in 1878; I refer to him as Dr. John. His father, Johann, was born in Germany in 1837; I refer to him as Johann.

This is the only family pic I have of Johann with his wife and kids. He died in 1899. They are on the left in the pic. Dr. John is 4th from the left on the top. I don't know the family on the right.

Johann

Johann was born in Eschenbach, Württemberg, Germany May 26, 1837 and died in San Francisco June 15,1899. (conflict: his obit said he was 64, which would imply that he was born in 1835). In 1860 he was listed in the census in Diamond Springs, Ca. as a miner. In 1880, he was listed  in the census under the name Hedderly in Gold Hill, Nevada (where Dr. John was born) as a miner. In all cases he's listed as being from Württemberg.

To be precise, in the census and other documents, Johann lists his place of origin as Wurttemberg or Baden-Württemberg; in one place he calls out the municipality of Eschenbach (there are multiple towns in Germany with this name) in Wurttemberg. Baden-Württemberg is a state in Germany (like California) and Stuttgart is the capital of that state. 

So, it's safe to say that the Haderle bloodline comes from the Stuttgart region at least for 500 hundred years. Beyond that we all come from Africa or thereabouts.

Johann was married to Ellen (aka Helen) Roche who hailed from Ireland. They had the following kids:

• Jim Martin Conlin (adopted) ... last known address was Berkeley. He was a mining foreman. We don't know how/why he was adopted, but here’s a conjecture. Ireland was in a constant famine. It was common for Irish settlers to reach back and get relatives/friends over to the US. Unfortunately many of the ones who were sponsored were exploited - houseboys, indentured servants. Since Ellen Roche was Irish, I’m guessing that Jim Conlin was an Irish kid who she reached back and got.
• Joseph born 1873 died 1957 in SF - a derelict (dr. john signed the death certificate)
• Ellen (aka Helen, Nellie) born 1875 died 1956 in Berkeley. She married Duncan McDonell. They had a couple of kids. Their grandson lives in their house in Berkeley (2018).
• Kathryn (aka Kate) born 1871. She lived with Bell. I believe she died in the 1930s from car accident. Dr. John signed the death certificate. She was married to Fred Snook; no kids.
• Isabel (aka Bell) born 1877. She lived in Redwood City. She had one daughter, Ellen, who never married. 
• Dr. John born 1878 in Gold Hill, Nevada, which is next door to Virginia City. Dr. John married Kathleen Blake, who hails from Cork, Ireland. They had 2 sons: John 1909 and Vincent who was younger. Vincent married Helen Bourke and they had 2 children, Suzanne & Robert, who both died of brain tumors in their early teens. Dr. John created a fund at UC San Francisco for the study of brain tumors: the Suzanne Marie Haderle and Robert Vincent Haderle Endowed Chair.

Johann/Ellen had a child (Edward) who died shortly after birth (1881) who is buried in an unmarked grave in Virginia City.

Dad (John1909) often told us that Germany was involved in a war in the 1850s and conscripting young men. Johann's uncle paid to keep Johann out of the war, but they ran out of young men, so they came looking for him. Johann's uncle told Johann to get outta here. Johann and a friend came to California via the Isthmus of Panama (remember the canal wasn't built until 1914). They trudged across the Isthmus and headed to California in search of gold. Johann's companion died in the trek across Panama. End of story. A variation of the story was that his companion was his brother, but that was not a consistent part of the story. 

Johann is not listed in any of the ship logs on the east coast (new york, carolinas, riker's island, etc.), so that adds credence to the story.

Johann’s wife, Ellen, died in San Francisco around 1914, when John1909 was about 5.

I have a paternal tree done by Mormon heritage (my next door neighbor volunteers in the heritage group and did it) which lists the parents of Dr. John, and the parents of Dr. John's father, and the parents of that father, etc. going back to about 1540.

Dr. John's father (Johann) was born in Eschenbach in the district of Göppingen in Baden-Württemberg, which is part of the Stuttgart region. Eschenbach is about 30 miles from the city of Stuttgart. 

There are lots of Haederles in the area. John1909 talked about Esslingen, as if that's where Johann migrated from, though there is no physical evidence. I've visited Esslingen and Eschenbach - there's a bunch of Haderles in both. 

The Haderle name is immediately recognized by native Germans as being from the Stuttgart region. 

And there's a large splattering of Haderles on the east coast of the US. We've never connected and I'm not sure how we're related. 

I've been to Eschenbach. Today (or in 1990s when I went) it's a small residential community sitting in farmlands. Back in the 1800s it was farmlands - not a residential community. It has a city hall and small splattering of stores. But I'd think in the 1800s it had the city hall and grange center for the farms.

My father's story (meme) of his grandfather (Johann) raises the questions: why was Johann told to get outta town by his uncle? Where was his father? Genealogy says his father was born in Eschenbach and died in 1868 when Johann was 29, so he was still alive when Johann left (Johann showed up in the 1860 US census). 

Johann's Migration to California Story

John1909 told us (his kids) the story of his grandfather (Johann) a few times and wrote snippets on scrap paper later in life. Here's one snippet. I'll write it out, since it's hard to decipher:

John Haderle I 18xx - 19xx

Wurthemberg
sister & brother - mother & father died - children lived with unk
opposed to Bismark & paid for military training for another in place of John so John could learn trade - learnt baking - came to America - to Carolinas - 2 companions & self at outbreak of Civil War. Came around Isthmus of Panama and companions caught malaria. One died. John and the other came to S.F. Then John went to Palomar - met partner

Pure conjecture: Johann was shipped off to his uncle as a teenager to learn a trade in Esslingen. Eschenbach is/was farmland whereas Esslingen is/was city. There’s lots of Haderles in Esslingen, so likely the uncle lived and worked there. Farmers of that era didn't easily give up their male children, because they needed them to work the farm. But, there had to be a reason why the uncle had control of Johann in this story, so my conjecture is that Johann was sent off to the uncle to learn a trade.

Background: Wurtemberg was a separate kingdom through the 1800s. Germany wasn't unified until around WWI (1910ish). Until then the kingdoms formed federations with each other, unified in commerce, etc. but ruled independently. If memory serves me it was the Napoleanic wars in the late 1800s that unified them to fight the French. My German history is a wee bit weak, but suffice to say that in the 1850s when Johann was a teen, Wurtemberg was a kingdom within the German Federation. I'm not sure in dad’s (John1909) meme what war placed demands on Johann1837, since the Napoleanic wars didn't start until 1870s (long after Johann's departure) and the Prussian wars were going on in the north (Hamburg+Denmark), well out of the Wurtemberg Kingdom. But this motivation was a consistent part of dad's story.

That's the best story I have to sort of make sense out of dad's oft-told meme and the small splattering of records (birth/death, census). Given the advent of the internet, more material is available today than yesterday. All of the newspaper articles of the early 1900s have been digitized. When I scan today, there's gobs of articles mentioning John1878 (Dr. John) and his mother and ... that were not available a decade ago. They require license (subscription) to get the stuff ... and I'm not that much interested, so I'm passing the baton.

Kathleen Blake Haderle

Nobody asks, but dad's mom (Kathleen) was born in Ireland (Leitrim in County Cork) and dad's (John1878) mother, Ellen, was born in Ireland. Kathleen had the following siblings:

• MayRose - married "Spike" Slattery - a well known San Francisco newspaper sports writer, given to carousing.
• Ida - never married
• Alice - a nun, Sister Josepha
• Paul (female) - married Frank Martell who begot Audrey who married Mr. Webber
• Ernest - married Genevieve
• Will - never married
• John (Jack) - don't know about him

Kathleen was slight of build with red hair, fun loving, and a socialite of her era. She had a strong personality, and, despite Dr. John's commanding position, she was not to be messed with. She was grandma to me. After Dr. John died in 1960 when I was 16 years old. I had a job in downtown San Francisco and I'd pop in and visit grandma in the evening on occasion. She would be in the library next to the master bedroom, smoking her Taryeton cigarette with a glass of muscatel on the table, listening to police calls on the radio.

Sudie Fay Stephenson Haderle

On my mother's side (Sudie Fay), my mother's maiden name was Stephenson and her family was from Southeast Texas (Lufkin) by way of Tennessee. We've never done a heritage search on them (and I don't intend to), but the name is Northern England. Sudie was born in 1916. She had one brother, Walter, who was older. Walter was a timber cruiser in Northern California. He had a child in Brasil where he was stationed in the 1950s. We don’t know if he was wed. He returned to California in the 1950s without family. The poor sap decided to go back to Brazil 20 years later to renew his relationship with purported wife and child. He died from food poisoning days after he arrived in Brasil. 

John1878 (Dr. John)

My grandfather (John1878) was shipped off to San Francisco from Gold Hill, Nevada when he was a teenager (age 14, 15) to study pharmacy (he lived with a German pharmacist in SF). His parents also moved to SF sometime after, though I don't know when, why, how they made a living in SF, etc.

Dad (John1909) told us that Dr. John (John1878) was sent to SF from Gold Hill, Nevada to finish high school and work at a pharmacy learning the trade. This was common in that era. The pharmacist was German. He also told us that John1878 went to UC Berkeley when he was 16 and that he lied, telling the school that he graduated from high school in SF. The story was that the high school burned down and there were no records. None of this was validated - only word of mouth. What is certain is that he graduated from UCBerkeley in pharmacology in 1897. Hence he was 19 years old at graduation. Rick or Jack has the diploma.

Aside: the admissions requirements for attending a university were way less stringent than today on the academic side.

John1878 went to Med School and graduated in 1904 (age 26) as a physician and surgeon. Dad said that he was too young to be admitted for medical school at the age of 19 - so he worked in a pharmacy for a while. The med school was Cooper College in SF where Dr. John got his degree. Cooper was acquired by Stanford in 1908 after Dr. John got his degree. Dr. Joh was considered to be a graduate of UCBerkeley and Stanford. At the Big Game between Cal and Stanford he would sit on one side 1/2 the game and the other side the second half. Rick  has the Cooper college diploma.