Pattillo Thornally Ancestors: Kate Vetter Cordes 1885 - 1953 My Grandaunt on My Father's Side

Kate Vetter as a young woman

Katherine “Kate” Vetter is one of those larger-than-live relatives. I don’t think I ever met her in person.
I might have met her but I would have been too young to remember her. I was three when Kate died. Everything I know about Kate is from stories my grandmother, her youngest sister, told me or from photographs I have of Kate. From what I’ve gleaned from researching Kate online it appears she led an interesting life. At least it appears that way from the variety of places she lived.

Kate, like all of her five sisters, was born in Chicago. She was the eldest born on July 16, 1885 when the family was living at 500 Halstead Street. It was just two years after her parents immigrated from Mainz, Germany and when her father George was working as a stonecutter in Cook County, Illinois. What an experience that must have been. They probably spoke German at home so for a time Kate and her younger sisters may have been somewhat multi-lingual. The family would have been struggling to adapt to life in a new, big American city.

Kate as a toddler

Kate was actually the second daughter born to George and his wife Katherine Neumeyer. Their first child a daughter named Augusta Elizabeth Vetter was born in Chicago on May 13, 1884 and died seven months later on December 16, 1884. Augusta is buried in St. Boniface Cemetery in Chicago.

Between 1888 and 1893 Kate’s four younger sisters were born. Mary in 1888, Elizabeth “Lizzie” in 1890, Emma in 1891 and my grandmother Anna in 1893. The entire family appeared on the 1900 census living in a rented house at 409 21^st Street in Chicago, Illinois. Of the 100 individuals listed on that census page 91 of them had both parents born in Germany. The parents of the remaining 9 individuals had parents who were born in England. No person on the page had American born parents. So, the Vetter family was immersed in a neighborhood of newly arrived immigrants strongly dominated by Germans.

Kate was fifteen when the 1900 census was taken and somewhat to my surprise she is listed as a “laborer” as was her father. Her sisters Mary, Emma and Lizzie were all attending school but Anna who was seven was not in school. In 1870 one out of every eight children was working. By 1900 the rate had increased to one in five children. Girls often worked in mills. Others worked at home making things like clothing.[1]

Photo of girls working in a mill from the Library of Congress site

Kate as a young woman, from
Chris Dixon

Four years later Kate’s mother Katherine died from heart disease. She was only 47, and Kate who was nineteen assumed responsibility for taking care of her younger sisters. Katherine is buried in Angeles Rosedell Cemetery in Los Angeles. The family continued to be listed in Chicago directories in 1901, 1902 and 1903, at the same address on 21^st Street, so they must have left Chicago in late 1903 or early 1904.

When Kate was twenty-three her sister Lizzie married Paul Wallace in June of 1909. Three months later Kate married Ernest Cordes on September 8, 1909. Earnest was the son of C.H. Cordes from Germany and Margaret Gender from Ohio. Ernest was born in Pennsylvania in 1879. Seven months after they married Kate and Earnest appeared on the 1910 census living in Rhyolite, Nevada where Ernest was working as a miner. Kate’s youngest sister Anna, my grandmother, was thirteen years old and was living with Kate and her husband in Rhyolite. You can read more about that adventure in the blog post about Anna that I posted on February 12, 2020.

Kate’s father remarried in 1910 followed by the marriages of her other three sisters – Anna in 1910, Emma in 1911 and Mary in 1912. Sadly, George’s second marriage didn’t last long because he died in 1913 before Kate’s daughter Irene Cordes was born on November 24, 1916. Irene married Norman Fritz Beuchel in 1939 – the same year that my parents were married, and lived in Venice, California where Norman worked at Lockheed Aircraft. Irene died on February 7, 2001 in Clark County, Nevada but she is buried in Whittier which is in Los Angeles County.

Kate and Ernest

When the 1920 census was taken Kate, Ernest and Irene were living at 2423 Washington Boulevard in Santa Monica – a posh place in Los Angeles County. They were at the same location ten years later as recorded on the 1930 census. Ernest was working as a police officer in Santa Monica. Two years later their daughter Margaret was born in Shasta County, California on August 12, 1921. Margaret married Frederick Bertandt Espe on June 25, 1938 in Santa Monica and they lived in Glendale. Fred also worked at Lockheed as a mechanic. In 1940, Fred and Margaret were living at 3340 Durango Avenue in Venice, California and they had a three-month-old daughter Beverly.

Earnest died when Kate was fifty – too young to be a widow. After his death Kate occasionally visited her sister Anna in Oakland but as my grandmother tells it, she and her sister Kate did not get along. Anna claimed to not get along with any of her sisters. I think my grandmother was a bit irascible though so I suspect she was the primary source of the problem. From reading my mother’s diaries I know that she and her mother-in-law conflicted with each other the entire time they knew each other.

Kate during one of her family visits

Kate made a trip to Honolulu, Hawaii on December 10, 1948. I know this because I found her listed on the S.S. Lurline ship’s passenger list which noted that the ship arrived on December 15^th. Kate was sixty-three at the time and appears to have traveled alone. I presume it was a vacation and not an extended stay. Kate died at 68 on December 26, 1953 and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica.

Sources for this Post: US censuses, marriage record, birth records, directory listings, voter registration, Ancestry.com, FamilySearch, death certificate, ship passenger list, Find-A-Grave website, and my Grandmother’s bible notes.

1 Michael Schuman, History of Child Labor in the United States Part 1: Little Children Working, Monthly Labor Review, Jan. 2017.