On
the morning of March 2, 1932, the world awoke to the news that their baby – the
world’s baby – Charles Lindbergh Jr., had been kidnapped the previous
evening. A global search for the missing
toddler ensued. Reporters demanded
photographs and an accurate description of the Little Eaglet. They were told he had “yellow curls clustered
in thick mass over the little lost baby’s head…”[1]
The
description, however, was not quite accurate.
According to Laura Vitray, a reporter covering the story, “not until
several days later did an Englewood, New Jersey hairdresser assure a New York
newspaper woman she had clipped the Eaglet’s curls from his head herself, only
a couple of days before the kidnapping, in the presence of Anne Lindbergh. ‘The mother said she did not want her baby to
be a sissy’, the hairdresser is reported to have explained.”[2]
Who
was this mysterious “Englewood, New Jersey hairdresser”? She has never been named in any publication
about the Lindbergh Case nor is she mentioned in any of the police
investigation files. However, in the
Anne Morrow Lindbergh Papers at Yale University there is an envelope labeled by
Elizabeth Morrow, the toddler’s grandmother.
It reads: “The baby’s hair. Little
Charles’ hair. Cut in my room by Mrs.
Scholtz possibly February 23 1932.”
Erna
Genevieve Scholtz was born on June 7, 1900 in Munich, Germany. Standing just five-and-a-half feet tall with
blond hair and blue eyes, she married young, just seventeen years old. Her son, Eugen (later Americanized as Eugene)
came along a year later, on December 10, 1918, also in Munich, just one month
after the Armistice was signed. It is not
known what happened to her first husband, but in 1926, she married again, this
time to Werner Scholtz, the son of Konrad Scholtz of Poppenbuttel, a town near
Hamburg. Born in 1894, Werner stood at 5
feet 10 inches tall with a fair complexion, with blond hair and blue eyes. He was employed as a clerk.
With
the post-war German economy in shambles, Werner and Erna decided to try their
luck in America. On December 10, 1927,
they set sail from Bremen on the DRESDEN. When they arrived in New York ten days later,
their friend, Ella Weidlich, met them.
Werner
and Erna eventually made their way from New York to Englewood, New Jersey. They lived at 178 John Street with Erna’s son
Eugene who had immigrated to the United States in 1929 and whom Werner had
adopted as his stepson. By 1930, Werner
was working as a merchant in the food industry and Erna was a hairdresser in a
local beauty shop. They rented their
home for $50 a month from Thomas Dowd, who also lived at that address with his
wife, four children and their maid. By
1932, they had moved to 910 Grand Avenue, the southern extension of Engle
Street.
On
May 28, 1932, three months after his wife had cut the Lindbergh baby’s hair,
Werner went back to Germany, returning to the United States by way of
Liverpool, England on July 3rd.
It is not known why he went to back to Germany at this time, but he went
alone.
Three
years later, in 1935, Erna was still living in Englewood. But sometime between his return from Germany
and 1940, Werner died. The widowed Erna
moved to 28 North Broadway in Orangetown, Rockland County, New York. She rented her home, again for $50 per month,
but she was now the owner of her own beauty parlor, where she worked about 72
hours a week.
Erna
was living alone because Eugene, now 22, was living nearby at the Rockland
State Mental Hospital in Orangetown. He
was not a patient, but rather working 48 hours a week as a resident attendant,
a government job. Eugene had moved to
Rockland in 1935 when he was 17 dropping out of high school in his junior year.
Somehow,
Eugene ended up in Rolla, Missouri. It
may be that he attended the University of Missouri-Rolla (now Missouri
University of Science and Technology) because he is later listed in records as
Dr. Eugene R. Scholtz. Regardless of why
he was there, it was in Rolla where he married twenty-four-year-old Mary
Willard on July 12, 1947. Reverend O. V.
Jackson of the First Baptist Church in Rolla officiated.
~~~
Erna
retired from the beauty salon business and eventually made her way back home to
Germany. Although she was an American
Citizen, she was residing abroad at Wohnstift Augustinum, an “old
people’s home”, on Weitlstraße in Munich.
It was here that she died of heart failure, possibly after a heart
attack, in the early evening of September 24, 1974. She was cremated and her ashes buried in
Nordfriedhof Cemetery in Munich.
Meanwhile,
Eugene and Mary, who had been living in Pearl River, New York, moved to
Deerfield, Florida and later to Merritt Island, near Cape Canaveral. On Friday, October 20, 2000, both Eugene and
Mary died.
~~~
There
is a very interesting television show called “Who Do You Think You Are?”
It traces the family history of celebrities, showing their ancestors in the
context of history. Watching it, the
viewer may think that only the rich and famous have stories to tell. However, just about every genealogist and
family historian knows that everyone has a story and an interesting
tidbit that makes him or her unique. We
all touch – or are touched in some way by history and we all have a story to
tell. While the story may not have a
great impact on the world and it may not be something that will make us famous,
it is, nevertheless, a part of us and should be told.
This
young, soon-to-be-widowed German immigrant was chosen by fate to be the last
person to cut the hair of a particular child, a child who happened to be the
most famous baby in America and who would be the center of the world’s
attention when he was kidnapped just days later. Her brush with history, all but forgotten
save for the hastily written note jotted down by the baby’s grandmother.
SOURCES
1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line].
Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002. Year: 1930; Census
Place: Englewood, Bergen, New Jersey; Roll: 1312; Page: 17A; Enumeration
District: 0058; Image: 96.0; FHL
microfilm: 2341047.
1940 United States Federal Census [database on-line].
Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2012. Year: 1940; Census
Place: Orangetown, Rockland, New York; Roll: T627_2767; Page: 98A; Enumeration
District: 44-37.
Missouri Marriage Records, 1805-2002 [database
on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2007.
New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 [database
on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Year: 1927; Arrival: New
York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm
Roll: Roll 4133; Line: 28; Page Number: 86.
Reports of Deaths of American Citizens Abroad, 1835-1974
[database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. National Archives and Records Administration
(NARA); Washington, D.C.; General Records of the Department of
State; Record Group: RG59-Entry 5166; Box
Number: 135; Box Description: 1974 SA - SZ.
U.S. Public Records Index, Volume 1 [database
on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
U.S. Public Records Index, Volume 2 [database
on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
U.S. Public Records Index, Volume 2 [database
on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014
[database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2011.
U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014
[database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2011.
U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014
[database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2011. Number: 107-16-9402; Issue
State: New York; Issue Date: Before 1951.
Vitray, Laura. The
Great Lindbergh Hullabaloo: An Unorthodox Account. W. Faro, Inc., New York. 1932.
