Siblings
Nori Muster - Tempe, Arizona. Writer/researcher, editor, counselor, real estate. See websites: Steamboats.com * Surrealist.org * NoriMuster.com * your writer in this ancestry.
Bill Muster - Phoenix, Arizona. Writer, General Manager of Consumer Products OmniMount Systems, Inc. See website: BeingtheBall.com * my brother.
Parents
Paula Hassler - Tempe, Arizona. Writer, former ad sales, etc. (our mother). Married to Don Hassler (1970 - present); working musician, retired businessman (see web pages - click here).
Bill Muster (6/18/1926 - 1/3/1989) Los Angeles, California. Our father was a writer, photographer, and businessman. Our parents were married 1950 - 1970.
Grandparents
Our mother's parents: This side of the family is already well documented elsewhere. To summarize: they were all Lutherans, including eighteen Lutheran ministers and school teachers going from the present back to the mid-1800s. For the most part, they came from Germany and Denmark; the Christiansen side traces back to the Vikings.
Our father's parents
Emma Moldenhauer (11/03/1886 - 10/10/1934)
Bill Muster (March 1868 - Jan. 1926) born in Morgan (Porter County) Indiana
This was the second marriage for both, Aug. 23, 1925 - Jan. 1926.
Emma Moldenhauer's first husband: Mr. Miller; son with first husband, Edward A. Miller (1/13/1914 - 5/11/2000), our "Uncle Ed."
Second husband: Bill Muster; his first wife: Etta, b. Dec. 1872, married 1891 (no known children from first marriage). Bill Muster was a constable, then worked for the U.S. Postal Service from 1910 until he died in 1926. He also raced surrey carts. Son with second husband: Bill Muster (our father). Bill Muster Sr. died six months before our father was born.
Great-Grandparents
Moldenhauer g-grandparents
Emma's parents were Ernest and Ottie Moldenhauer. Ernest b. 11/19/1857 Brumberg, Germany, d. 07/12/1930 Chicago, IL; Ottie aka Ottilie, Ottalie, nee Zogel/Zobel, b. 10/03/1860 Germany, d. 09/21/1934, Chicago, IL.
In 1929, Emma Moldenhauer (a widow) and her two sons, Ed Miller and Bill Muster, went to live with Ernest and Ottie in a South-side Chicago apartment. The 1930 Census shows our father living with his maternal grandparents, his mother and half brother, as well as an aunt and uncle and their daughter (William and Ella Moldenhauer, and daughter Elaine Schlismann). In total, eight people ages seventy-two down to age four (our father), lived in a small apartment in Chicago until Ottie and Emma died less than a month apart in fall of 1934 (Ernest died prior to that in late 1930). After leaving his grandparents' apartment, an orphan at age nine during the Great Depression, our father lived in various orphanages and foster homes until age eighteen. (See "Foster Famililes" below.*)
Muster g-grandparents
Barbara (Murtin) Muster - b. 7/27/1848 in Baden, France, sometimes Germany, when she was born it was the Kingdom of France, came to America in 1852 (at 4 years old), d. 10/10/1931 Valparasio, Indiana.
John Muster - b. 6/22/1830 in Switzerland, d. 10/16/1887 in Valparasio, Indiana
John Muster was a soldier in the Civil War who was taken prisoner by Confederate forces in 1861 on North Carolina's Outer Banks while serving with the 20th Indiana Volunteers. He was one of 73 men and boys who were captured in these engagements and spent time in several Confederate camps until May 1862.
John and Barbara were married in 1866 and had 11 children, including our grandfather Bill Muster.
Contemporaries
During my father's lifetime, he was interested in finding his relatives, but never saw any of them after age nine. The one relative who did stay in contact (especially toward the end), was Uncle Ed Miller. He and his wife Lois had three children (Jeanne, Vicki, and Bob). Ed's grandchildren are now in their twenties; I have been in contact with two of them, my cousin Christina (daughter of Vicki) and Sandy (daughter of Jeanne). Christina has a daughter born in 2005, so the family line continues.
While our mother and stepfather's families are all in contact with one another, we have never met anyone from our father's family except for Lois and Ed and their children/grandchildren. However, our father's mother was one of five siblings; his father was one of eleven siblings. There must be more Moldenhauer and Muster relatives out there.
Moldenhauer siblings:
Emma Moldenhauer (Miller, Muster) (our grandmother) 11/03/1886 - 10/10/1934
Anna Amelia Moldenhauer (Hillman) 05/14/1889 - 12/30/1966
William Moldenhauer d. Jan. 1974
Charles Moldenhauer aka Ernest d. 05/31/1942
Arthur J. Moldenhauer 11/30/1899 - 12/05/1943
Muster grandchildren (present at our great-grandmother Barbara Muster's funeral, 1931):
Bruce Stansell
Mason Muster
DeForest Muster
George Howser, Jr.
John Muster
Emmett Muster
Helen Fitzgerald
Leota Daniels
Florence Martin
Alberta Harding
Barbara Alice Muster
Margaret Muster
Nearly all of these people are from Chicago, Illinois, or Valparasio, Indiana. If you believe you could be related to Bill Muster of Los Angeles, please contact me, Nori (contact info. - click here). I have ancestry information and photos to share.
Bill Muster, c. 1976
Editor's note: In 2009, as a result of posting this information, the grandson of Elaine Schlismann (mentioned above) contacted me and told me of his genealogical research into the Moldenhauer family roots in Germany. Here is John Schlismann's letter to me, dated November 23, 2009.
From: John Schlismann
Subject: RE: follow-up re. Moldenhauer genealogy
Date: November 23, 2009 5:24:26 PM GMT-07:00
To: Nori Muster
Hi Nori,
Sorry I didn't get back to you before, your e-mail must have gotten lost in this mess of an inbox I have on here. I do have some information for you about the Moldenhauer family, actually a lot more that I had back in May so hopefully it'll be of some help to you.
Elaine Moldenhauer Schlismann was born Dec. 13, 1917. In the 1930 Census in which she was 13 she lived with her parents William and Ella Moldenhauer as well as her grandparents Ernest and Oteila Moldenhauer. Her father my great grandfather William was a milkman working for Western Dairy; he actually drove a horse drawn milk cart (which I learned from my father, Elaine's son, Paul Schlismann), before that he worked at a Ford plant painting cars (as of 1917 WWI Draft Registration). According to the 1930 Census there were 8 people living in that property (6218 South Lincoln). On William's WWII draft card he lived at 6218 South Wolcott, which is the house my dad remembers his grandparents living in. This place is still standing, but the neighborhood has changed drastically, unfortunately it's probably not as nice of a neighborhood as it was in the early 1900s. It's interesting that William lived at both 6218 South Lincoln and 6218 South Wolcott but I checked both original documents and it appears that's the case.
On May 24, 1949 Elaine got married to Carl Schlismann, I'm not sure how long they were married for but I would say until around 1970. Elaine and Carl Schlismann had five sons: Paul (my father), Norman, Carl, Charles, David. She never got remarried, lived in Park Forest, IL until her death on January 31, 2000.
Here are some vital stats on the Moldenhauer family:
William Henry Moldenhauer born September, 21 1890 in IL. Am able to track in 1900 census, 1910 census, and 1930 census. He died in January 1974 in Park Forest, IL at the age of 83.
married to:
Ella Moldenhauer born Febuary 25, 1890, died october 1972 in Chicago at the age of 82. The tree stops here for Ella.
Ernest Moldenhauer born Nov 19, 1857 in Bromberg Stadt, Posen, Preussen (Prussia which was once Germany and is now a part of Poland). He was Christened December 6th, 1857 also in Bromberg Stadt, Posen, Preussen. He Departed from Hamburg Germany at the age of 28 April 9, 1886. He stopped in Liverpool, London on the way. He arrived in Baltimore, Maryland April 29, 1886, than traveled immediately to Chicago. He came over here on a ship called Huddersfield. According to Census records he worked as a laborer in building construction. His son was William Moldenhauer.
married to:
Otiliea Moldenhauer who was born around 1861 also in Bromberg Stadt, Posen, Preussen. She came over here with Ernest when she was 25. They both had a lot of kids one of them being Emma (your grandmother) which I have names for but not much else other than William's history. Otiliea's tree stops here.
David Moldenhauer who was born September 1821 in Bromberg Stadt, Posen, Preussen. He was married in 1849 at the age of 28 to Eva Weber. They had a son Ernest. David died young at 41 on February 28, 1863. This is as far as I've gotten on the Moldenhauer family. I have no more information on Eva or David Moldenhauer.
I hope this information was helpful to you, I can send you copies of some of the original documents if your interested. Some of the originals I don't have are from the International Genealogy Index. Are you still researching the Moldenhauer side of the family?
Sincerely,
John Schlismann
Foster Families
Our father Bill Muster became an orphan at age nine and after a short stay in an abusive orphanage, Ed Miller (our father's older half-brother) put him into a foster home agency based in Chicago. I estimate that from age ten to eighteen, our father lived with several different foster families. All of these are unknown to us, except for the last one, where he lived for several years with the Molitor family in Chicago [age fourteen to eighteen]. Our father stayed in contact with the Elsie and Charles Molitor, and Bill Tanzer, one of the other children who lived with the family. The Molitors were generous people who wanted to stay in contact with the children they raised side-by-side with their own children.
I recently discussed this history with Bill and Anita Tazer and have also been in contact with Carole Preacher, granddaughter of the Molitors. She remembers our father as Uncle Bob, and provided photographs that her Uncle Bob took of her and her family in the 1940s. She recently sent the photos, which she has kept all these years. The photos show Carole and her little sister Joyce, Carole with her mother and the Molitors in front of the Mozart Street apartment that was the foster home, a portrait of Carole, and Carole with her grandfather.
Notice in the last photo that the banner in the window shows two stars, meaning that two sons in the family were serving in World War II (Bill Tanzer and Bill Muster).
Our father Bill Muster (1926-1989) also remembered staying with a foster family that took him to Lake of the Woods, Canada. Although our father stayed in contact with this family and took my brother to visit them in Canada, and our mother also remembers meeting them, I am not in contact with the family, but would appreciate hearing from them. My brother and mother remember them, but cannot remember their names. Since he was between the ages of eleven and fourteen, it would have been sometime between 1937-1940.