Margret Hartmann Robarge. Circled. With her father, mother and 10 siblings. Our grandfather George is standing, second from the right next to his mother Clara.
(click here) Margaret Hartmann Memories
This is Margaret Hartmann Robage (circled in photo) memories of her childhood. Dictated to her daughter Leatrice in August and September 1966.
The one reason why I thought it was NOT a dream was because I distinctly remember being so excited at this situation that I just had to put my arm around my father. While the photo was being taken, I swirled my head in total ecstasy as to who I was with. I remember turning my head. That wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t deja vu either. It happened.
I’ve kept a watchful eye on my sugar intake. There are some very serious diabetes in our family, I want you all to know.you should really check your glucose level when you can. One of the major culprits in our sister Beverly’s death was diabetes. Our great grandfather had his left leg amputated due to diabetes. Our grandfather also had his left leg amputated and he passed away from diabetes and gangrene triggered by peripheral neuropathy.
Since we all reluctantly visit death in our imagination, we sometimes wonder how we will go. In the movie Big Fish, several children visit a haunted house where a witch with a glass eye lives. and she offers a view into her eye so that you can see how you will die. If you were offered a glance into that glass eye would you be brave enough to look?
It was on the bottom of a box. The box was underneath a pile of other boxes. Like twenty boxes. They were all filled with stuff from Whitman street. Most of it was old toys from Christmas’ long ago. A lot of papers and old letters. What I was looking and hoping for were photos. I don’t even know how I got here. It’s feeling like a dream. Maybe it is and I’ll wake up. Because Whitman street seems dead. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t even live anywhere close to this god-forsaken town. Up these crazy stairs. Doesn’t look like our old house. I don’t get it. Here is the room filled with boxes. The first bedroom on the right. By the upstairs bathroom.
Do you remember this Whitman bathroom? Once our dad spent all day assembling beautiful glass sliding doors on the bathtub so that we could take showers in a sort of luxurious way. He was pretty handy with a drill and hammer. I remember we hounded him all day as he worked on these sliding doors. Mom was excited because they were really nice looking. So when he is finally done, we all take a step back and look at this magnificent work of art. It has probably doubled the worth of our home, I’m thinking. We were the first family on our block with color TV and now we own the richest looking bathroom in Carteret. So we check it out, open and close the glass doors slowly. Yeah, everything works fine. Beautiful. Then someone, I don’t remember who, (probably Glenn did it) slammed the brand new door shut and the room exploded with a million pieces of glass.
What I remember most about that tragedy was my father who typically has a very short fuse, just shook his head, mumbled “It just wasn’t meant to be” and began cleaning the mess. Nobody got yelled at. Nobody got punished. The glass was removed but the frames that he spent hours putting into the wall remained. They were there for years. And for many years after he died. I always looked at them and felt them whenever I took a bath or shower. Touched the screws inside the track holding them to the wall and I thought of my father and his patience. His eerie silence cleaning up afterwards.
Einstein showed that mass and energy are the same thing. Based on this theory, time travel seems possible. If not now, then in the future. Parallel universes, or alternative universes or mirror universes have had a long run of popularity in science fiction and science fantasy, in both print and visual formats. One need only look at an “Alice in Wonderland” or look no further than the “Star Trek” universe (our Universe in less than obvious disguise) to view the near endless plot variations that such parallel / alternative / mirror universes provide our heroes and heroines. While there are some serious reasons to suspect that parallel universes do exist. Time travel is the name of the game!
So, in this dream, (which I thought was a dream) I went up the Whitman street stairs, opened a door to the first bedroom and found a bunch of boxes and began digging into them. In one window I could hear birds chirping and the sun was blasting through. When I opened the curtains and looked down it was the side of our house. When I looked up at the Summer sky, it was a cloud forest. There were a few of us playing whiffel ball and Toker was aimlessly walking around. I could hear Schnauzer barking in the backyard. Schnauzer was never allowed to wander around aimlessly. The window on the other side of the room was gray and I could hear the wind whistling through the cracks. I pushed the curtain aside and it was a blizzard outside. I could see Gitters house across the street and it was buried. Mr. Gitter was desperately shoveling the walk leading up to the door and Peanuts was barking like crazy behind him. So here I am in a room from the past split into two different seasons.
Downstairs I heard our whole family screaming. People were yelling Glenn’s name and I went to the door and opened it. At that exact moment Danny Braza was racing down the stairs to save Glenn’s life. A chicken bone stuck in his throat. This was the first use of our brother Glenn’s 16 lives.
I shut the door and realized I was way back in time. It seemed like I knew what I was looking for. Went back to the boxes and there on the bottom of a box filled with receipts and papers from Westfield Sewing Center was this photo. |Click HERE for a better view|
Two years ago I found our very distant cousin Caleb from Canada. Caleb has spent a lot of hard work and time constructing this on-line family tree. I am very grateful for our cousin for this tree goes back centuries in time. On first click the Family Tree seems trivial but CLICK AROUND – you will be amazed at your absolutely incredible heritage! There is a row of links across the top. They say Index | Descendancy | Register | Pedigree etc. I would suggest clicking on these.
-HARTMANN ONLINE FAMILY TREE- Click here to discover!
Some notes from Caleb: “Any mistakes in the gedcom online can be fixed and updated later. I do not post info on living people on there to protect peoples identity.
My mom was Leatrice Robarge, she was the daughter of Frank Robarge and Margaret Hartman, they are on the online gedcom too. Tillies line is the one the Vanduzers are from. The Vanduzer’s and my mom put the Hartmann Book together with info they had on the family and stories from my grandmother Margaret, back in the 1980’s. I was given my copy as a child. I have held onto it ever since. It covers a lot of Margarets siblings and what life was like back then in New Jersey and New York. In the book it describes Poppa (Charles Richard Hartmann or Dick) passing away, and Momma (Clara). It describes the other hartmans too and the siblings of Poppa helping with the printing and music business.”
In this dream I am painting a huge steel bridge by myself. There is a date etched in one of the concrete supports that says; “1960” It is very hard work with scaffolds and ladders in all kinds of weather. Sometimes I feel as if the heavy winds are gonna knock me into the raging river underneath.
It takes thirty-seven months and almost sixteen days to complete the job. By the time I am finished, the paint is beginning to peel on the other side and I have to start all over again.
In my unending quest for (to) manhood, I have tried everything.: Carrying a hammer around with me at all times. Talking deeper. Walking heavier. Checking out woman’s butts whenever possible. Measuring my penis. Driving irregular and fast. Hanging up landlines loudly. Cursing. Watching controllrd violence on TV. The final signature to being a man is to be human. It may take a long time or you may have the capacity to get it almost right away: Just BE YOURSELF. Don’t ever give a crap what anybody else says. Take your time. Have fun. And ride a roller coaster whenever you can.
In my on and off extensive search for our heritage I have found out some very cool and very important information. Only because of our sister Barbs brave dig into our great aunts sisterhood on Menham NJ, (a letter mailed about 4 years ago) was I able to obtain the complete list of our Grandpa’s 12 brothers and sisters. With this information, I may have contact with someone who has access to even more information and even more exciting some photos of our great grandparents and their 12 children.
We already knew there were 13 children and that one had died in infancy but now it has been uncovered that two had indeed very sadly passed away before their first birthday. (this was actually a pretty common thing back then and the life span of most adults back then rarely went past 50)
So here it is, In order of their births:
1. Gertrude b:1888 d:1973 (In 1913 became an nun “Sister Clarella.”)
2. Fred b:1889 m:1920 (Married Lydia Marklein) d:1941
3. Clara Mathilde b:1890 m:1914 (Married J.Van Duzer) d:1932 (Relatives
located on this side of family.)
4. Emmy b:1892 d:1892 died as infant
5. Frieda b:1894 d:1973 became a nun “Sister Richardis”
6. Charles Richard b:1895 d:1895 died as infant
7. Katherine b:1896 m:1918 (Married Henry Jager) d:1969
8. George Joseph b:1898 m:1917 (Married Florence Swaine) m: 2nd time in 1929 (Alice Anderson) d:1970
9. Margaret Helen b:1899 m:1919 (Married Frank Robarge) d:1971
10. Clara b:1901 m:1927 (Married Henry Ulrich) d:1962
11. Rose Anna b:1903 m:1925 (Married William Ross) d:1974
12. Alfred b:1906 m: 1933 d: unknown?
13. Marie Elizabeth b:1909 (never married) d: unknown ?
#8 – George Joseph is our Grandfather . Also very new information is that he was married twice and his second wife – Alice Anderson our Grandmother, was the mother of our father George Charles. It is important to note here that in the 1950’s which was shortly after World War II and the holocaust, our Grandfather knocked off a ‘N’ on our last name. I remember our mother telling me it was a business decision based on the name Hartman (one ‘N’ Jewish) and Hartmann (2 ‘N’s’ being German). Since most salesmen in America in the 1950’s were Jewish, it was said that they merely avoided any contacts with German people.
I am trying very hard to get in touch with the woman that posted this information on the web. Her Grandmother was our Grandfather’s sister; Clara Mathilde. I have emailed her twice so far with no return. Of corse I will never stop trying.
Somewhere out there are photos of this family and I think she may have them. It would be amazing to look into the faces of a one-hundred year old family of fifteen and to see, perhaps, our own likeness’. You must understand that DNA and generation to generation chemistry is carried on and passed. We are what they were and although every individual that has ever visited this planet is entirely unique, but that families are in some spiritual and chemical way… are tied together for all eternity.
-more info to come-
a letter written in 1918, tells me where the Hartmann's lived!
A letter received several years ago from Mendam NJ after an inquiry by our sister Barb about our two great aunts on our fathers side. Our grandfather came from a family of 12. Really, 13 but “he” died early in life. Health was a fragile thing in the beginning of the twentieth century. All you really need to do is walk through an old cemetery to see the short life spans and large number of young children.
SO this first large family of Hartmanns in the United States of America lived in Jersey City. When I first saw that address, I knew that one day, I had to go there.
"Rosy" my navigator will guide me with sweet robot voice
SO here we go, over the river and thru the woods. I was pretty excited, almost like I felt as if the entire family of 15 was waiting for my arrival.
In our great aunt Gertrude’s original letter she stated that she was born in NYC on June 6 1888.
– Between 1820 and 1880, thousands of German and Irish immigrants arrived in New York City as men, women and children left their homeland to escape civil unrest, persecution and the repeated failure of the potato crop. Initially, many of the Germans settled in what became known as Little Germany, a section of the city east of the Bowery and extending from Houston Street to 12th Street. She also states that her mother’s name was:
Clara M. Flanger and her fathers name was:
Charles R. Hartmann
The first American Hartmann family had FIFTEEN children!! One sister and one brother died early so there were 13. Of these 13 I only know the name three of them. My grandfather George Joseph and his two sisters Gertrude and Frieda who both became nuns and therefore our sister Barb has attained their records by writing a letter to their home sisterhood.
The church mentioned in Gertrud’s letter “Church of St Joseph Yorkville” at 408 East 87th Street still stands. It is there where I am going to attempt to get Baptismal records that may give me the remaining names, birthdates of the NINE girls and FOUR boys. I might also be able to discover exactly when they moved to 15 Cambridge Ave in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Gertrude also mentions that her father Charles was a printer…as am I!
The Journey
I don’t know the name of that bridge but I it got me into Jersey City.
It was a weird day. I felt very alone and tired. Wishing someone was here with me on this journey.
Before the bridge, passing the city of Newark. To me: a very depressing city with an even more depressing name. The only ties our family have there are that my aunt Carol and her husband Fred (Rebel) Dooley met there and married. Strange how a country boy from Alabama ended up as a parking lot attendant. I remember they owned a red VW punch-bug and me and my sister Barb rode in the back with the top down to go to their apartment that was on the top of a very large building there.
The "Red Light" beggar
Old time Jersey City New Jersey. Turn of the century. No cars. No cell phones. Blue crisp sky day. Buried in time.
“Rosy” my navigator was taking me through the streets of Jersey City 2011, where one hundred years earlier my great grandfather, mother and his kids played, shopped and worked. She took me down the very long main street, full of shops, cars and a melting pot of race, creed and color. Some things never change.
I was almost there now, according to “Rosy” 15 Cambridge. “Make the next left to arrive at destination.”
I’m not quite sure what I was expecting but of corse I wasn’t expecting this.
When I turned the corner onto Emerson Street…I was expecting everything to maybe turn black and white. I was looking for Charles R. Hartmann’s kids to be playing on the street. I was looking for a sepia sky, trolly cars, horse carriages. I was looking for maybe Clara Hartmann to be coming down the steps pregnant.
These were the streets of my heritage. That in this space a family of 15 lived, struggled, had dinner together, celebrated holidays and never once thought that one century later the fathers son of one of their own would come here looking for them.
Of corse I was disappointed. It was obviously not the same house, it was not the same street and certainly wasn’t the same city. Everything had changed. There were no survivors. Nobody remembers “The Hartmann’s” … that big German family with the printer father. Everything was buried deeply in time. And in another hundred years, another hundred families will have been born and raised on these streets. That time and technology are interlocked into a giant machine that consumes the human spirit. All the laughter, tears, hopes and dreams of 15 Cambridge Street are gone. Not too long ago, they were the most important things in the world to the Hartmann’s. I just had to get out of the car and breath the air, walk the street, where once horse carriages trampled by. I looked around… and the wind blew some old newspapers down the street……….
15 Cambridge, Jersey City, New Jersey.