Surname Sunday: Philip Kern and Augusta Marie Koehl

Philip Kern
b. 7 Aug 1878, Germany
& Augusta Marie “Gussie” Koehl
b. Aug 1879, New York
m. 25 Apr 1905
|--Helen P. Kern
|----b. 1908, New York
|--Ruth A. Kern
|----b. 1916, New York

This is the family of Philip Kern and Augusta Marie “Gussie” Koehl, the sister of my husband’s great-grandfather Henry “Harry” Koehl and the daughter of Julius Koehl and Josephine Lochner. I believe that Philip was the brother of John Kern, who married Augusta’s sister Julia Koehl. Some time between 1920 and 1930 the family moved from Brooklyn, New York to Bergen County, New Jersey.

I would love to share information with anyone related to/researching this family; you can contact me at my e-mail address, which can be found by going to my profile page (there is a link to that page in the About Me section to the left).

Julius Koehl Address Study

Below is a list of addresses given for Julius Koehl in Brooklyn, New York from 1870, when I was first able to find any mention of him (on the 1870 census), to 1907, when he died. I have also listed his place of birth for all instances when it was mentioned. Early reports are very general, but Julius’ death certificate cites Meisenheim as his place of birth (the informant was probably his oldest daughter Josephine Koehl Glashoff), and that location was also given by daughter Magdalena Koehl Tonjes on the 1920 census as her father’s place of birth. The addresses are consistent; from 1870 to 1880 it was 12 Union Street, and from 1892 to 1907 it was 125 15th Street. The street view image from Google Maps shows the building currently located at a nearby address for 125 15th Street.

The next set of images show the locations of the residences of Julius Koehl’s eight surviving children at the time of his death in 1907. The first image shows the list of children with addresses from the probate papers; the second and third are the map and list I created for “My Places” on Google Maps. It looks very much like there are only six place markers, but in the Borough Park area (where my husband grew up) two markers are obscured by a third one: oldest sibling Josephine Glashoff, my husband’s great-grandfather Harry Koehl, and Magdalena Tonjes all lived within a block or two from one another. The northernmost two addresses belong to Julia and Augusta Kern, who probably married brothers.