Wolf

Notes on the Wolf Family

by Ethel Wolf, transcribed by Chuck Soergel

I have had this letter (from Clara Wolf in Germany to Gustav, her brother, in Pittsburgh) in my possession since the death of my father-in-law, Louis G. Wolf, in 1935, and have never been able to find anyone who could read the old German until last year (1977) when my daughter Ruth and her husband Charles Soergel went to Germany to visit the Sörgel family in Henfenfeld near Munich. He had been compiling a history of the Soergel family. Rudolf Sörgel, his ninth cousin, was able to read the old German and translate it into modern German. I have always wanted to know something of my husband’s people and what became of his grandfather Gustav. What I do know from notes of my father-in-law was that his father’s name was Gustav Wolf and he had a daughter Emma from a previous marriage and he had two brothers, G.L. Wolf and Rudolf Wolf and one sister Clara Wolf. Gustav, according to these notes, was from Magdeburg, his last address. Gustav Wolf and Louisa Haupt were married in York, Pennsylvania about the year 1862. Gustav, a German immigrant, was well liked and well educated. (His father was a teacher in the schools of Magdeburg, Germany). Louisa’s father, Louis G. Haupt, was born in Kassel, Germany, of wealthy parents whose property was confiscated by the German government leaving them nothing. He was well educated by private tutors. He came to this country to seek his fortune as did many others at this time. Louis married Maria Siebert of Mustinhagen, Germany, and two children were born of this marriage; Louisa and Louis Haupt. Louis the father was a man of excellent appearance, tall and good-looking. During the Civil War period when times were rough, he joined the Union army and Maria took a job in a whip factory. At the time they were living in York, Pennsylvania. The son was married some years later and moved to Michigan to a farm. He was the father of Mary Hawkins and this is how she entered the relationship to Grandpa (Louis G. Wolf). Louisa (born March 12th, 1843) the daughter, met Gustav Wolf during the Civil War when she was about sixteen. He was old enough to be her father. Her parents opposed the match but she married him anyway. There were two children; Fannie, who died in infancy, and Louis G., who was born August 20, 1867 and died June 4 1935. The marriage only lasted about five or six years. He left her when Louis (Grandpa) was a child in a highchair and no trace of him was ever found. Louisa married again in 1869, this time to a widower with one son, Charles Altenhof. He lived in Donora and was Grandpa’s half-brother. We were at their greenhouse many times with Grandpa. Two other children were born, Caroline (Ruth Beck’s mother) and Minnie. Louisa was considered a very unprincipled person, hard to get along with. When Charles Altenhof also left Louisa, Grandpa supported this family until the girls married and his mother Louisa died. She had been living with Grandpa and his family, but Grandpa’s wife, Mary, couldn’t take her so she lived with Caroline her last years. She is buried in Mount Lebanon cemetery. Louis G. Wolf (Grandpa) learned the trade of carpentry and eventually had his own business as a contractor building and repairing homes. He was a very kind and honest man. His mother Louisa had married again and on the death of her second husband, he supported her until her death in 1918, when his own wife Mary died in the flu epidemic here. Two children were born to Louis and Mary; Margaret and Herman (my husband). Both were deceased in 1972.