39 – Surprise

One of my first genealogy projects was to scan and transcribe scores of letters that my great uncle wrote home from his time as a soldier in World War I. In 2010 I put them into a biography mostly using the words he wrote, describing his 34 years of life on earth, focusing on his service in France and then Germany during the war. 

Compilation of WWI letters from Louis

The book ends with his last letter, from Hartenfels, Germany, on the 11th of April, 1919, in which he writes "We are scheduled to leave here, next week, for Brest, France." Louis had been stationed in Germany as part of the occupation force since late December 1918. 

On the 25th of April, 1919, Louis sailed from Brest on his way home to the States. On the 7th of May he sent a telegram from Paterson, New Jersey, "twenty five dollars please by western union all ok, louis," probably requesting some travel money to get home.  His discharge papers were signed on the 17th of May.

Louis returned to Fond du Lac where he resettled at the asylum his parents managed, taking up a position of engineer at the facility. He married Dorothy Neice and fathered two sons; on the 24th of November, 1924, he died from pneumonia. We have no further correspondence or writing of any kind by Louis during this remaining 5 1/2 years of his life after the war. And so the book ends.

Louis' letters had been in possession of his son Don Kenyon, a first cousin of my father, and a great family historian. He lived in Fond du Lac on Lake Winnebago, and my wife and I would visit him whenever we made it to Wisconsin. Don provided me with much of what I know about my Kenyon ancestry, and gave me the many photos and documents he had acquired from my grandmother. Don passed away in 2011 at the age of 89; his wife lived a few years longer. 

Don was a collector. As his daughter wrote me in 2016, "We have been working on emptying my Dad's garage for the last 5 years. My Dad saved everything! We found 3 bottles of used staples, shoeboxes full of spirals from notebooks, & >50 boxes of scrap paper." But one box had, at the bottom, some unexpected letters. We were all intrigued. 

There was a letter from Germany, dated 28 August 1938, typewritten, in fractured English, addressed to "Louis Kenjon, Box 95, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, U.S.A." Now my great-grandfather Louis A. Kenyon was still alive then, and his son Louis E. Kenyon's widow Dorothy was living with him along with her two sons Donald and Russell. But the letter makes it clear that it was addressed to Louis E. Kenyon:

Dear Sir, After several difficulties have I been able to come to your real address. If I surprise you with a letter from Germany, I suppose, you will be quite astonished for the first moment quite easy! In order to give you a small introduction of my doing, it is necessary to acknowledge myself to you and to tell you my name: Louis Brühl. 

Please, try to remember you being here at the time of the foreign military possession of Rheinland/Westerwald in 1919. Try to remember that little village Walmeroth and Miss Joan (Johanna) Brühl, my mother. I don't mean to recall those tragic days. Therefore shorterhand I will [tell] you about things, that might be perhaps unknown to you. I was born in Engers/Rhine on the 10th December, 1919. My mother, at that time being left alone, with the only wish of following you to America as soon as possibly, gave me later for education up to German parents and went on ship to America... 

Louis Brühl was looking to come to America, was interested in finding his mother, asked for some sponsorship but didn't want to disturb his biological father or ask for any money. Louis Kenyon had left Germany in mid-April, and Louis Brühl was born in mid-December, so Johanna Brühl had only been a month pregnant when her soldier left – he probably had not known she was pregnant; had he considered the affair serious enough to even leave a forwarding address? How Louis Brühl had tracked him down with just a phonetic pronunciation of "Kenyon" is a mystery. 

 

28 Aug 1938 letter from Louis Brühl to Louis Kenyon

The letter didn't make it to Louis E. Kenyon, of course; he had died 14 years earlier. But it must have been a big surprise to Dorothy, his widow, and her in-laws; that would mean Louis Sr. and Ida May Kenyon had a fifth grandson. We don't know how they reacted, except that they did not embrace this new relation and offer to help him emigrate.

A second letter, apparently after a response which we don't have, was sent 7 Dec 1938 to Dorothy Kenyon, Louis E. Kenyon's widow; Louis Brühl has learned of his father's 1924 death, he fills her in briefly about his origins, and makes only a simple request:

I therefore ask you to send me some photos or any other remembrances of my father, further to write me something about him, his life and his early death. This I do, be sure, not because I wish to approach you in a self-interest[ed] way, but because you know, one is compelled to know the real truth of one's father, whom one does not know.

Dorothy, or perhaps her father-in-law Louis A. Kenyon, passed the letter on to a "County Service Officer," Leo Promen, who responded for her, and a copy of that letter was kept. It says she "knew very little about her deceased husband prior to the time she married him," and extended "her regret ... that she does not have a photograph of Mr. Kenyon which she could send to you," basically cutting of communication. 

Germany had invaded Poland, and Britain and France had declared war on Germany at this point. The letters found their way to a storage box. Eventually they came into possession of Louis' son Don. We don't know what he thought of the letters, or if he had attempted to ever find his half-brother; in 2011 he took those mysteries to his grave.

I asked a German genealogy/travel contact to do some research, given the information Louis Brühl had provided about his birth date and location, and some time later she came back with the astounding news that Helmut, a son of Louis Brühl, had been located: for me a new second cousin. We exchanged information, and he sent me a photo of Louis Brühl in his uniform, probably about the age of 20. Louis Brühl's mother had died or disappeared (being a single mother of a child by an American soldier was not looked upon kindly), and he had been adopted, and eventually had taken on his adoptive parents surname and a Germanized given name, Ludwig. Ludwig had died in 2006 at the age of 86.

Louis Brühl left, Louis E. Kenyon right, at about the same age

In 2018 my sister and I made a trip with our spouses to France and Germany, retracing the footsteps of Louis Kenyon during WWI, 100 years after. That will be the subject of a future blog, but at the end we were able to visit Louis Brühl's grave, and pay our respects. We haven't been able to find out what happened to Louis Brühl's mother; perhaps we'll have another surprise in the future!