Mr. Ed

I exhanged e-mails over the holidays with a third cousin once removed, a granddaughter of my great grandfather's sister. My cousin verified that she lived in the same house with her grandmother for a number of years up until her grandmother's death at age 77 in 1935, when she was twelve years old. She said that her grandmother's brother from Kewaskum came across the state of Wisconsin and stayed with her family in Chippewa county for a few days during the funeral. She didn't recall the name of her grandmother's brother, but that doesn't matter because I already know who it was that visited, but until now I couldn't prove it. It had to have been my great grandfather's step-brother, Ed or Edward Lubach.

My middle name is Edward. It is also my father's middle name and before that it was my grandfather's middle name. My grandfather, in fact, was known by his middle name and not by his first name. I can't prove it, but I have no doubt that my grandfather, my father and I all have the same namesake. We all got our middle initial from my great grandfather's brother, Ed, who at age 72 attended the funeral of my cousin's grandmother in 1935. I'm fairly certain that Ed was a brother by marriage and not by blood.

When my great great grandfather died in the Civil War in 1865 he left behind a widow and three children. His widow remarried in 1867. Her new husband's youngest son, Edward, was then four years old. By 1880 all three of her children, Charles, William and Louise, had married and moved away. Edward and his parents, his father and his stepmother, remained in Sheboygan county, a few miles north of the town of Kewaskum, for the rest of their lives. Edward adopted the surname of his stepmother's first husband who had died in the war.

When I put together my family history webpage a year and a half ago I had a vague hunch that this could be the case. I viewed it as an interesting possiblilty, one worth exploring, but now I have no doubt whatsoever.