The story of all of us
DAVID WASSEL explores the winding history of his family, a history that could be familiar to countless others
Christina (Diehl) Toth died on Feb. 2, 1965, 55 years ago today, of bronchopneumonia, at the age of 54. That, in and of itself, wouldn’t have been particularly noteworthy, except that she was my father’s grandmother, a person whom he never knew, and about whom he knew even less.
He had long wanted to find her grave, but had little information other than her name and the fact that she had been a patient at the long-closed Woodville State Hospital in Collier. That is, until I happened upon an article by Joe Smydo in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (July 17, 2014, “As State Mental Institutions Close, the Final Resting Places for Many Patients Are Forgotten”). The piece brought to light the problem of dilapidated cemeteries at these state hospitals.
This article provided me the name and address of the Rev. George DeVille, the retired chaplain at Woodville. He led me to the state archives in Harrisburg, where I learned that the Check Funeral Home in McKeesport handled Christina’s remains. That information put her death certificate in my hands. Finally, this directed me to the Restland-Lincoln Memorial Park in Monroeville, where she was laid to rest those many decades ago. Mission accomplished. Or so I thought.
During my search, I learned that Christina was born in Meyersdale, in Somerset County, and that her parents were named Friedrich and Margaret (Mahr) Diehl. A few years later, while doing work in Meyersdale, I contacted the Pennsylvania Room at the public library. Archivist Jennifer Hurl and researcher Carolyn McKinney provided me with a wealth of information on Fried, Margaret and Christina, as well as her 10 siblings.
With this start in hand, I further uncovered their histories, both before they came to Somerset County, as well as what became of them after they departed. Surprisingly, both their beginning and end journeys were intertwined with McKeesport, a mere few miles from where I reside and on the streets upon which I still walk.
With access to the extraordinary resources, and the able assistance and counsel of Gail Waite, at the McKeesport History and Heritage Center, and documentation provided by the Rev. Glen Irvin of the Evangelical Congregational Church of McKeesport, I was able to fathom out the following on this, the 55th anniversary, of Christina’s death.
Coming to America
In October 1865, not long after the end of the Civil War, John Peter Mahr, a stone mason, and Dorothy (Willemann) Mahr, both age 25, arrived at Castle Garden, N.Y. Born in the then-independent Kingdom of Bavaria, they had left Altheim, located in Hesse, and traveled from Hamburg aboard the S.S. Borussia.
Census records show that they initially settled in Robinson, raising a family of three sons — John Peter Jr., George and Adam — and three daughters — Mary (Sawe), Margaret (Diehl) and Elizabeth (Carey). Sometime after 1880, they moved to McKeesport, where John Peter worked as a laborer and soon died of consumption in 1885, at the young age of 45. He was buried in the McKeesport-Versailles Cemetery.
The family largely remained together in McKeesport, with Dorothy’s sons often residing together in a home built on property owned by her, or nearby, until long after her death. Nonetheless, with a large family and no husband and faced, no doubt, with the necessity of making ends meet, for over two decades Dorothy was employed as a live-in domestic servant in a grand, old Victorian-style mansion on Shaw Avenue in McKeesport, a mere three doors down from the very funeral home that, over 50 years later, handled the remains of her granddaughter, Christina. This home was owned, incidentally, by the then-city councilman and soon to be long-time mayor of the city, George Lysle.
Dorothy, the matriarch of the family, died in 1912, at the age of 71, at the nearby home of her son, Adam. She is buried in the German Section of the McKeesport-Versailles Cemetery. She left behind 39 grandchildren and two greatgrandchildren. A few short years after her own death, Dorothy was joined by one young grandson, Henry, who died of appendicitis in 1915, at the age of 12. He is buried just one row behind her. Previous to that, however, Dorothy consented, one by one, to the marriages of her young daughters, all under the age of 21 at the time. Enter Friedrich Diehl.
Fried was also from Germany. His record of arrival indicates that he was a coal miner there, as he was here, digging his American dream out of the walls of bituminous mines in Western Pennsylvania for the rest of his life. Accompanied by his mother, Margaret (Schmit) Diehl, he arrived at Castle Garden on board the S.S. Rhynland, out of Rotterdam, in August 1881, at the age of 26. His older brother Jacob, also a miner, arrived a year or so later. They initially settled in Greenock, just outside of McKeesport. Fried became a naturalized citizen in 1888 and married Margaret Mahr in 1890.
Sometime within the next decade they relocated to Elk Lick, outside of Meyersdale, where Fried mined coal for C. K. Bowman & Co., and started a family that, over two decades’ time, included five sons — Fried Jr., William, John, Jacob and Henry — and six daughters — Margaret (Whitacre), Dorothy (May),
Emma (Conner), Elizabeth (Streets), Christina (Toth) and Martha (Feightner).
Setting roots
Over the years, there were a few local interest stories involving Fried published in the local newspaper, The Meyersdale Republican. These include a story of a work injury that he sustained to his hand, keeping him out of the mines for a period; a story about the family of Margaret’s brother, George, paying a visit from Johnstown; and a story about his oldest son, Fried Jr., who later worked at Kennywood, recounting his side of a story about walking out on a scheduled boxing match against a larger fellow because his purse was reduced from $50 to $15.
Sometime around 1921, Fried moved to West Newton in
Westmoreland County, where he worked for the Pittsburgh Coal Co. Soon after that, he died of black lung disease in 1923, at the age of 68. He is buried in the Olive Branch Cemetery in nearby Smithton. His brother Jacob, who followed him from Greenock to mine coal in Elk Lick, eventually retired to White in Indiana County. He died there in 1934 at the home of his youngest son and namesake, at the ripe old age of 82 and is buried in the Coulter Cemetery near Greenock, from where the two brothers began their journey more than five decades before.
Relatively soon after that, Margaret and the entire family, including her married adult children and their spouses, moved back to McKeesport, presumably to be near her family, the Mahrs. Over the ensuing decades they all resided in proximity to each other on Walnut, Market, Jenny Lind, Butler and Tube Alley streets. Indeed, at one time or another, four of the five Diehl brothers (Jacob, Fried Jr., William and Henry) each resided in the home of their sister, Margaret (Diehl) Whitacre.
As had the Mahrs, most of the Diehls stayed local for the remainder of their lives. Of Margaret’s 11 children, 10 would continue to reside in, or in communities adjacent to, McKeesport for the remainder of their lives. As did Margaret herself, in 1938, at the age of 66, many would later die in McKeesport Hospital and eventually be laid to rest in the McKeesport-Versailles Cemetery, in the company of each other and members of other generations.
Sacrificing for a better life
John Peter and Dorothy (Willemann) Mahr, and Fried, Jacob and Margaret (Schmit) Diehl all certainly lived through tumultuous times. Born a mere one or two generations removed from the time of Napoleon, they bore witness to the immense change in Germany, including the failed revolutions of 1848, the Austro-Prussian War in 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, culminating in national unification and the birth of the German Empire.
Likewise, they, along with their American-born families, also lived to see the equally dramatic changes and societal transformations that accompanied the rapid industrialization of their adopted homeland, the United States.
But just what made them take those monumental and life-changing decisions, throwing all caution to the wind and abandoning their native land? Did it involve longing for greater economic opportunity, flight from political persecution, desire for religious freedom, fear of military conscription, lack of available land or, simply, a wish for a fresh start?
Their motives and dreams are lost to history, and we will never know. Their stories are, nonetheless, as unique and fascinating as is the land which they came to call home, where their remains were laid to rest and where their descendants live on to this very day.
Perhaps it should suffice to say that, whatever were their reasons, while certainly the narrative of an individual family, it amounts to far, far more than just that. While not at all flashy, it is also a tale that was undoubtedly familiar to millions of others who, both willingly and unwillingly, left behind all that was safe and comfortable to undertake that hazardous and perilous journey to a new and strangely unknown land from which they would never return.
It remains equally so for those myriad others who, as did those who came before them, are currently fleeing violence, poverty and persecution, and are continuing, down to this very day, to both defy and overcome natural and man-made barriers, striving to carve out a new and better life here for themselves and their families. They continually energize us as a nation and make us a better people merely for their having come and contributed.
In the end, and after everything else is said and done, it is really the story of all of us — an American story.
What made them take those monumental and life-changing decisions, throwing all caution to the wind and abandoning their native land?