Though his name was spelled “Henrich” at birth, he went by the then-newer spelling of “Heinrich” as an adult (at a time when the German language was purposely modernized, during the flowering of culture in the early 1800s, the time of Goethe and other German poets and philosophers). In the early 1840s, Heinrich broke the 150-year line of Derns in Lang-Göns when he moved – seemingly for romance – several miles south to the Hessian village of NiederWiesel (today spelled “Nieder-Wiesel” and pronounced NEED-er-VAI-zel), located just southeast of today’s larger city of Butzbach, north of Bad Nauheim and Frankfurt am Main. In the 1843 birth record of his second engagement child, Heinrich’s occupation was listed as tailor. In NiederWiesel, his fiancée have birth to two engagement children – a not-uncommon occurrence in those days – before she and Heinrich were legally married on April 21, 1844.
His wife, Christina Loh, was born March 12, 1815 in NiederWiesel, the eldest surviving child and only surviving daughter of Christoph LOH [b. Sept. 22, 1784] and Anna Maria Kessler [1783 – Jan. 26, 1845], who had been married on March 31, 1807. In NiederWeisel, Christina bore six children, four of whom survived infancy. Two of these children emigrated to San Francisco, California by the mid-1870s, and by the late 1880s, father Heinrich found himself alone – his elder son died at age 37 in 1883; wife Christina died at age 69 on Dec. 11, 1884 (in NiederWiesel); and younger daughter (already widowed) died at age 40 in 1888.
Heinrich was 73 when he received permission to emigrate (as the German states then required) to the U.S. Traveling with his youngest son Johannes and his eldest grandson (whose father had died in 1883), he had arrived by the time of an August 24, 1890 “Bull’s Head Breakfast” (all-day barbeque) in Sausalito, where his attendance was noted in the local paper. “Henry” would attend several of the events over the next few years. In Sausalito, Marin County, California, the aging Heinrich helped out around the business of daughter Christina Dern SLINKEY’s husband’s hotel empire; his son’s business listing in 1891 was “John Dern & Co., Proprietors” of the Hotel Sausalito (Slinkey’s first hotel there), reflecting the newly arrived help. Heinrich was said to have been a woodcarver and toymaker (moving beyond his earlier trade of tailor) in California.
Following the economic slump after the 1893 Depression, the combined Dern-Slinkey household ended up back in San Francisco by late 1898, living at 809 Leavenworth Street (as per 1899 city directory). Heinrich was undoubtedly saddened by the suicide of his daughter in January 1899, though her long-time depression must have been obvious to those close to her. In the Federal census taken on June 2, 1900 census (p. 104A), he had anglicized his name to “Henry Dern” (age 83, born in Germany in “April 1816” – off by over a year) living in a rented house at 944 Sutter Street with son-in-law J.E. Slinkey, great-nephew Milton and son John Dern, plus the longtime family servant, Emma Evans, and another boarder. The enumerator confused Henry’s occupation (“capitalist”) with that of J.E. Slinkey; Henry’s immigration date listed (1889) was either off by one year, or indicates a slightly earlier departure from Germany than do the Hessian records above.
Henry stayed living with his bachelor son Johannes "John" Dern after widowed son-in-law "Colonel" Slinkey left for new business ventures in Seattle (c.1904) and then Goldfield, Nevada. The 88-year-old man suffered the shock of the Great Earthquake and Fire on April 18-21, 1906, which killed over 400 people and displaced thousands. The family’s house was destroyed by fire, and they lived in tent camps provided by the Army somewhere in the City. Henry caught pneumonia, and was eventually brought to the East Bay, where he (and perhaps other family members) found residence in Emeryville, at 952 61st Street (now 61st Street Place, 4 blocks east of San Pablo Avenue and 8 blocks from the Oakland border). There, he died at age 89 on Dec. 30, 1906 of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle, as per Alameda County death certificate under surname “Dorn”).
Henry’s then-impoverished family could not afford a proper gravesite & tombstone, so his body was buried (by McMasters & Briscoe’s mortuary services) under a numbered but otherwise unmarked, concrete slab – Grave 2671 in Plot 44 – in the pauper’s section of Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery (5000 Piedmont Avenue); see FindAGrave.com memorial #199783487. In March 1985, his 4th-great-grandson Randolph BAXTER rediscovered the site a few feet from an eroding embankment, in a patch of blackberries and (very contagious) poison oak, under thick eucalyptus canopy; the site is 500 feet south of – across Claremont Avenue on the north border of the cemetery – St. Teresa’s Catholic Church where Heinrich’s 4th-great-nephew John B. DERN and family attended in the 1980s. Henry’s son would later surpass his father’s age by a mere 6 weeks (89 yrs., 6 ½ mos. versus 89 yrs., 5 mos.), making the two of them the longest-lived male members of this branch of the Dern family to date (2019). Henry’s great-nephew William Loyd “Bill” DERN (1921 – 2008) missed the record by 3 years, though he had already beaten a three-generation mortality curse (on his direct line) by living to his 42nd birthday.
Heinrich/Henrich & Christina Loh DERN’s six children – four surviving infancy – were:
Katharina Dern (1841-43)
Christina/Christine Dern SLINKEY (1843-99)
Georg DERN (1844-45)
Johann Christoph “Christoph” DERN (1846-83)
Margarethe Dern DEIN (1848-88)
Johannes “John” DERN (1854-1944)
His wife, Christina Loh, was born March 12, 1815 in NiederWiesel, the eldest surviving child and only surviving daughter of Christoph LOH [b. Sept. 22, 1784] and Anna Maria Kessler [1783 – Jan. 26, 1845], who had been married on March 31, 1807. In NiederWeisel, Christina bore six children, four of whom survived infancy. Two of these children emigrated to San Francisco, California by the mid-1870s, and by the late 1880s, father Heinrich found himself alone – his elder son died at age 37 in 1883; wife Christina died at age 69 on Dec. 11, 1884 (in NiederWiesel); and younger daughter (already widowed) died at age 40 in 1888.
Heinrich was 73 when he received permission to emigrate (as the German states then required) to the U.S. Traveling with his youngest son Johannes and his eldest grandson (whose father had died in 1883), he had arrived by the time of an August 24, 1890 “Bull’s Head Breakfast” (all-day barbeque) in Sausalito, where his attendance was noted in the local paper. “Henry” would attend several of the events over the next few years. In Sausalito, Marin County, California, the aging Heinrich helped out around the business of daughter Christina Dern SLINKEY’s husband’s hotel empire; his son’s business listing in 1891 was “John Dern & Co., Proprietors” of the Hotel Sausalito (Slinkey’s first hotel there), reflecting the newly arrived help. Heinrich was said to have been a woodcarver and toymaker (moving beyond his earlier trade of tailor) in California.
Following the economic slump after the 1893 Depression, the combined Dern-Slinkey household ended up back in San Francisco by late 1898, living at 809 Leavenworth Street (as per 1899 city directory). Heinrich was undoubtedly saddened by the suicide of his daughter in January 1899, though her long-time depression must have been obvious to those close to her. In the Federal census taken on June 2, 1900 census (p. 104A), he had anglicized his name to “Henry Dern” (age 83, born in Germany in “April 1816” – off by over a year) living in a rented house at 944 Sutter Street with son-in-law J.E. Slinkey, great-nephew Milton and son John Dern, plus the longtime family servant, Emma Evans, and another boarder. The enumerator confused Henry’s occupation (“capitalist”) with that of J.E. Slinkey; Henry’s immigration date listed (1889) was either off by one year, or indicates a slightly earlier departure from Germany than do the Hessian records above.
Henry stayed living with his bachelor son Johannes "John" Dern after widowed son-in-law "Colonel" Slinkey left for new business ventures in Seattle (c.1904) and then Goldfield, Nevada. The 88-year-old man suffered the shock of the Great Earthquake and Fire on April 18-21, 1906, which killed over 400 people and displaced thousands. The family’s house was destroyed by fire, and they lived in tent camps provided by the Army somewhere in the City. Henry caught pneumonia, and was eventually brought to the East Bay, where he (and perhaps other family members) found residence in Emeryville, at 952 61st Street (now 61st Street Place, 4 blocks east of San Pablo Avenue and 8 blocks from the Oakland border). There, he died at age 89 on Dec. 30, 1906 of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle, as per Alameda County death certificate under surname “Dorn”).
Henry’s then-impoverished family could not afford a proper gravesite & tombstone, so his body was buried (by McMasters & Briscoe’s mortuary services) under a numbered but otherwise unmarked, concrete slab – Grave 2671 in Plot 44 – in the pauper’s section of Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery (5000 Piedmont Avenue); see FindAGrave.com memorial #199783487. In March 1985, his 4th-great-grandson Randolph BAXTER rediscovered the site a few feet from an eroding embankment, in a patch of blackberries and (very contagious) poison oak, under thick eucalyptus canopy; the site is 500 feet south of – across Claremont Avenue on the north border of the cemetery – St. Teresa’s Catholic Church where Heinrich’s 4th-great-nephew John B. DERN and family attended in the 1980s. Henry’s son would later surpass his father’s age by a mere 6 weeks (89 yrs., 6 ½ mos. versus 89 yrs., 5 mos.), making the two of them the longest-lived male members of this branch of the Dern family to date (2019). Henry’s great-nephew William Loyd “Bill” DERN (1921 – 2008) missed the record by 3 years, though he had already beaten a three-generation mortality curse (on his direct line) by living to his 42nd birthday.
Heinrich/Henrich & Christina Loh DERN’s six children – four surviving infancy – were:
Katharina Dern (1841-43)
Christina/Christine Dern SLINKEY (1843-99)
Georg DERN (1844-45)
Johann Christoph “Christoph” DERN (1846-83)
Margarethe Dern DEIN (1848-88)
Johannes “John” DERN (1854-1944)
Though his name was spelled “Henrich” at birth, he went by the then-newer spelling of “Heinrich” as an adult (at a time when the German language was purposely modernized, during the flowering of culture in the early 1800s, the time of Goethe and other German poets and philosophers). In the early 1840s, Heinrich broke the 150-year line of Derns in Lang-Göns when he moved – seemingly for romance – several miles south to the Hessian village of NiederWiesel (today spelled “Nieder-Wiesel” and pronounced NEED-er-VAI-zel), located just southeast of today’s larger city of Butzbach, north of Bad Nauheim and Frankfurt am Main. In the 1843 birth record of his second engagement child, Heinrich’s occupation was listed as tailor. In NiederWiesel, his fiancée have birth to two engagement children – a not-uncommon occurrence in those days – before she and Heinrich were legally married on April 21, 1844.
His wife, Christina Loh, was born March 12, 1815 in NiederWiesel, the eldest surviving child and only surviving daughter of Christoph LOH [b. Sept. 22, 1784] and Anna Maria Kessler [1783 – Jan. 26, 1845], who had been married on March 31, 1807. In NiederWeisel, Christina bore six children, four of whom survived infancy. Two of these children emigrated to San Francisco, California by the mid-1870s, and by the late 1880s, father Heinrich found himself alone – his elder son died at age 37 in 1883; wife Christina died at age 69 on Dec. 11, 1884 (in NiederWiesel); and younger daughter (already widowed) died at age 40 in 1888.
Heinrich was 73 when he received permission to emigrate (as the German states then required) to the U.S. Traveling with his youngest son Johannes and his eldest grandson (whose father had died in 1883), he had arrived by the time of an August 24, 1890 “Bull’s Head Breakfast” (all-day barbeque) in Sausalito, where his attendance was noted in the local paper. “Henry” would attend several of the events over the next few years. In Sausalito, Marin County, California, the aging Heinrich helped out around the business of daughter Christina Dern SLINKEY’s husband’s hotel empire; his son’s business listing in 1891 was “John Dern & Co., Proprietors” of the Hotel Sausalito (Slinkey’s first hotel there), reflecting the newly arrived help. Heinrich was said to have been a woodcarver and toymaker (moving beyond his earlier trade of tailor) in California.
Following the economic slump after the 1893 Depression, the combined Dern-Slinkey household ended up back in San Francisco by late 1898, living at 809 Leavenworth Street (as per 1899 city directory). Heinrich was undoubtedly saddened by the suicide of his daughter in January 1899, though her long-time depression must have been obvious to those close to her. In the Federal census taken on June 2, 1900 census (p. 104A), he had anglicized his name to “Henry Dern” (age 83, born in Germany in “April 1816” – off by over a year) living in a rented house at 944 Sutter Street with son-in-law J.E. Slinkey, great-nephew Milton and son John Dern, plus the longtime family servant, Emma Evans, and another boarder. The enumerator confused Henry’s occupation (“capitalist”) with that of J.E. Slinkey; Henry’s immigration date listed (1889) was either off by one year, or indicates a slightly earlier departure from Germany than do the Hessian records above.
Henry stayed living with his bachelor son Johannes "John" Dern after widowed son-in-law "Colonel" Slinkey left for new business ventures in Seattle (c.1904) and then Goldfield, Nevada. The 88-year-old man suffered the shock of the Great Earthquake and Fire on April 18-21, 1906, which killed over 400 people and displaced thousands. The family’s house was destroyed by fire, and they lived in tent camps provided by the Army somewhere in the City. Henry caught pneumonia, and was eventually brought to the East Bay, where he (and perhaps other family members) found residence in Emeryville, at 952 61st Street (now 61st Street Place, 4 blocks east of San Pablo Avenue and 8 blocks from the Oakland border). There, he died at age 89 on Dec. 30, 1906 of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle, as per Alameda County death certificate under surname “Dorn”).
Henry’s then-impoverished family could not afford a proper gravesite & tombstone, so his body was buried (by McMasters & Briscoe’s mortuary services) under a numbered but otherwise unmarked, concrete slab – Grave 2671 in Plot 44 – in the pauper’s section of Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery (5000 Piedmont Avenue); see FindAGrave.com memorial #199783487. In March 1985, his 4th-great-grandson Randolph BAXTER rediscovered the site a few feet from an eroding embankment, in a patch of blackberries and (very contagious) poison oak, under thick eucalyptus canopy; the site is 500 feet south of – across Claremont Avenue on the north border of the cemetery – St. Teresa’s Catholic Church where Heinrich’s 4th-great-nephew John B. DERN and family attended in the 1980s. Henry’s son would later surpass his father’s age by a mere 6 weeks (89 yrs., 6 ½ mos. versus 89 yrs., 5 mos.), making the two of them the longest-lived male members of this branch of the Dern family to date (2019). Henry’s great-nephew William Loyd “Bill” DERN (1921 – 2008) missed the record by 3 years, though he had already beaten a three-generation mortality curse (on his direct line) by living to his 42nd birthday.
Heinrich/Henrich & Christina Loh DERN’s six children – four surviving infancy – were:
Katharina Dern (1841-43)
Christina/Christine Dern SLINKEY (1843-99)
Georg DERN (1844-45)
Johann Christoph “Christoph” DERN (1846-83)
Margarethe Dern DEIN (1848-88)
Johannes “John” DERN (1854-1944)
His wife, Christina Loh, was born March 12, 1815 in NiederWiesel, the eldest surviving child and only surviving daughter of Christoph LOH [b. Sept. 22, 1784] and Anna Maria Kessler [1783 – Jan. 26, 1845], who had been married on March 31, 1807. In NiederWeisel, Christina bore six children, four of whom survived infancy. Two of these children emigrated to San Francisco, California by the mid-1870s, and by the late 1880s, father Heinrich found himself alone – his elder son died at age 37 in 1883; wife Christina died at age 69 on Dec. 11, 1884 (in NiederWiesel); and younger daughter (already widowed) died at age 40 in 1888.
Heinrich was 73 when he received permission to emigrate (as the German states then required) to the U.S. Traveling with his youngest son Johannes and his eldest grandson (whose father had died in 1883), he had arrived by the time of an August 24, 1890 “Bull’s Head Breakfast” (all-day barbeque) in Sausalito, where his attendance was noted in the local paper. “Henry” would attend several of the events over the next few years. In Sausalito, Marin County, California, the aging Heinrich helped out around the business of daughter Christina Dern SLINKEY’s husband’s hotel empire; his son’s business listing in 1891 was “John Dern & Co., Proprietors” of the Hotel Sausalito (Slinkey’s first hotel there), reflecting the newly arrived help. Heinrich was said to have been a woodcarver and toymaker (moving beyond his earlier trade of tailor) in California.
Following the economic slump after the 1893 Depression, the combined Dern-Slinkey household ended up back in San Francisco by late 1898, living at 809 Leavenworth Street (as per 1899 city directory). Heinrich was undoubtedly saddened by the suicide of his daughter in January 1899, though her long-time depression must have been obvious to those close to her. In the Federal census taken on June 2, 1900 census (p. 104A), he had anglicized his name to “Henry Dern” (age 83, born in Germany in “April 1816” – off by over a year) living in a rented house at 944 Sutter Street with son-in-law J.E. Slinkey, great-nephew Milton and son John Dern, plus the longtime family servant, Emma Evans, and another boarder. The enumerator confused Henry’s occupation (“capitalist”) with that of J.E. Slinkey; Henry’s immigration date listed (1889) was either off by one year, or indicates a slightly earlier departure from Germany than do the Hessian records above.
Henry stayed living with his bachelor son Johannes "John" Dern after widowed son-in-law "Colonel" Slinkey left for new business ventures in Seattle (c.1904) and then Goldfield, Nevada. The 88-year-old man suffered the shock of the Great Earthquake and Fire on April 18-21, 1906, which killed over 400 people and displaced thousands. The family’s house was destroyed by fire, and they lived in tent camps provided by the Army somewhere in the City. Henry caught pneumonia, and was eventually brought to the East Bay, where he (and perhaps other family members) found residence in Emeryville, at 952 61st Street (now 61st Street Place, 4 blocks east of San Pablo Avenue and 8 blocks from the Oakland border). There, he died at age 89 on Dec. 30, 1906 of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle, as per Alameda County death certificate under surname “Dorn”).
Henry’s then-impoverished family could not afford a proper gravesite & tombstone, so his body was buried (by McMasters & Briscoe’s mortuary services) under a numbered but otherwise unmarked, concrete slab – Grave 2671 in Plot 44 – in the pauper’s section of Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery (5000 Piedmont Avenue); see FindAGrave.com memorial #199783487. In March 1985, his 4th-great-grandson Randolph BAXTER rediscovered the site a few feet from an eroding embankment, in a patch of blackberries and (very contagious) poison oak, under thick eucalyptus canopy; the site is 500 feet south of – across Claremont Avenue on the north border of the cemetery – St. Teresa’s Catholic Church where Heinrich’s 4th-great-nephew John B. DERN and family attended in the 1980s. Henry’s son would later surpass his father’s age by a mere 6 weeks (89 yrs., 6 ½ mos. versus 89 yrs., 5 mos.), making the two of them the longest-lived male members of this branch of the Dern family to date (2019). Henry’s great-nephew William Loyd “Bill” DERN (1921 – 2008) missed the record by 3 years, though he had already beaten a three-generation mortality curse (on his direct line) by living to his 42nd birthday.
Heinrich/Henrich & Christina Loh DERN’s six children – four surviving infancy – were:
Katharina Dern (1841-43)
Christina/Christine Dern SLINKEY (1843-99)
Georg DERN (1844-45)
Johann Christoph “Christoph” DERN (1846-83)
Margarethe Dern DEIN (1848-88)
Johannes “John” DERN (1854-1944)
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