So, today on Facebook a memory came up from six years ago - a photo of my Great-Grandfather, Henry Athing. When I'd posted it we had just figured out who it was of by comparing it to other records. I knew very little about him. In that six years I have learned SO MUCH about him, his family, and his life. I've even been able to meet cousins in that branch that I didn't know about and grow my family. More recently, records from Germany have become available online that have allowed me to push his history back to the old country and learn even more. I have also learned a lot about the process of genealogical research, continued to get better at it, and realized just how little I still know. But it's always about the journey, right? There is no being "done" with your family tree.
Henry Athing was born Heinrich Karl August Athing in Oldenburg, Lower Saxony, Germany November 30, 1880. His father, Friedrich, was a baker. In a few years his family would move to the United States and settle in Brooklyn, NY. They actually came over twice - in about 1887, then again in 1892. Not sure yet why they returned to Germany during that time.
The Athing family would become part of the social elite in Brooklyn, with Friedrich (now Fred) and wife Louise being a part of a Baker's Association as well as political associations. Their parties, weddings, and other events are well documented in the social columns of the Brooklyn newspapers of the time. Henry did not immediately follow in his father's footsteps of being a baker with his own business, and worked as a clerk as a young man. In abt 1900 he was arrested for collaborating with others to rob the insurance agency he worked for. He was sent to a juvenile detention center for three months in Elmira, NY. His case even made the NY TImes!
Eventually he would open his own cafe and saloon, though still not really being a baker, he was known as Bakes. The stories include that he and his wife continued to run their saloon through prohibition.
He married Theresa Fox in 1910. She was the daughter of Irish immigrants who grew up at the other end of the social spectrum in the Irish tenements. She was an orphan by the time she married Henry and she kept her siblings very close to her. Together with Henry, Theresa became a social and political force in Brooklyn, remaining as such until she died in 1964.
Henry died in 1945. He left his wife and two children - my grandmother, Doris, and a son Wilbert (he hated that name and went by Wilbur - who can blame him?). Theresa, l think, loved him very much, despite her hard outer persona. She would put 'In Memoirams' in the newspaper every year after he died. Doris named her eldest son after him.
I still don't know exactly why Henry's parents came to America. But they did, and now I'm here, so I'm glad of it. I do, however, feel really bad that I am so terrible at baking since it looks like my family has a long history of it. I have recently found that Henry's grandfather - Heinrich - was also a baker by trade. I have also added another sibling to the list I already knew, and older sister, and a number of siblings for his father. There are records of other Athings in Germany through the 1920s and 30s that I think are related to Friedrich through his siblings or aunts and uncles, and I hope to track that line down a little more.
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