Bruce Morton Garver, the creator & manager of this Memorial, has written the following "bio" of his great-great aunt Katherine "Kate" (Lotz) Burkhardt (1843-1927) who is one of the five sisters of Bruce's maternal great-grandfather Henry Lotz (1835-1906)..
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Katherine "Kate" Lotz (Burkhardt) was born on August 26, 1843, at Aßlar, Kreis Wetzlar, in the Kingdom of Prussia (today's Aßlar, Lahn-Dill-Kreis, Hessen, Germany). Kate was the seventh-born of the six daughters and three sons of German immigrants Wilhelm Lotz (1807-1878) and Magdalena "Maggie" (Lotz) Lotz (1806-1890) from the small industrial town of Aßlar, Kreis Wetzlar, in the Kingdom of Prussia (today's Aßlar, Lahn-Dill-Kreis, Hessen, Germany). A photograph of the birthplace of Katherine ("Kate") Lotz (Burkhardt, 1843-1927) and her eight siblings has been posted to this Memorial along with a postcard featuring four views of Aßlar at the turn of the nineteenth to the early 20th century. Parents Wilhelm Lotz and Maggie Lotz were distant cousins as well as man and wife, though the exact distance of their kinship within the Lotz family has not yet been ascertained. The whole family -- including parents, nine children, one son-in-law and one grandchild -- immigrated to the United States during the mid-1850s in two groups, each aboard a trans-Atlantic steamship from the port of Hamburg bound for the port of New York. All settled in Butler County, Ohio, though the eldest daughter, Helene Wilhelmina (Mina) Lotz Schneider, and her husband, Phillip William Schneider (1829-1906), and their first-born daughter, Louisa Christina Schneider (Shuler, 1856-1938), resided briefly in Pennsylvania, where a second daughter, Mary G. Schneider, was born in 1858, before they moved within a year to join the rest of the family in Butler County, Ohio. Bruce Garver, who created this Memorial, is one of the many great-grandchildren of Henry Lotz, Sr. (1835-1906), the eldest of the three brothers of Katherine "Kate" (Lotz) Burkhardt.
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On October 28, 1863, in Butler County, Ohio, Katherine "Kate" Lotz wed Mathias Burkhardt, Jr., who had been born at Unterhausen, Landsberg am Lech, in the Kingdom of Bavaria, within the German Confederation (1814-1871). Together Kate and Mathias Burkhardt raised four daughters and six sons: Anna M. Burkhardt (1867-1872), Louise F. (Burkhardt) Protzman (1873-1967), Katherine M. (Burkhardt) Phillip (1875-1968), Amelia (Burkhardt) Heinzelman (1887-1987), August William Burkhardt (1865-1940), Christian Burkhardt (1869-1942), Edward Carl Burkhardt (1871-1919), Ernest Henry Burkhardt (1878-1936), John Frederick Burkhardt (1880-1955), and Jacob M. Burkhardt (1883-1950). All ten siblings were born in Butler County, Ohio, and are interred there at Hamilton's Greenwood Cemetery. The Memorials of Mathias Burkhardt, Jr., and Katherine ("Kate") Lotz Burkhardt have been linked below to those of their ten children.
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A general history of the extended Lotz family in the context of Hessian, Prussian, and American history may be viewed on the Memorial to Henry (Heinrich) Lotz, Sr., the eldest of the three brothers of Katherine ("Kate") (Lotz Burkhardt and also the great-grandfather of Bruce Garver, who manages the Memorials of eight of the nine Lotz siblings.
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The Greenwood Cemetery Association reports that Katherine ("Kate") (Lotz) Burkhardt died at the age of eighty-three on February 10, 1927, in St. Clair Township, Butler County, Ohio, a township wholly within the city limits of Hamilton, Ohio. There on February 15, 1927, Katherine ("Kate") (Lotz) Burkhardt was interred at Greenwood Cemetery in Section A, Lot 47, Grave 06, originally owned by "Matthias Burkhardt, Sr." According the records of the Greenwood Cemetery Association, Katherine ("Kate") (Lotz) Burkhardt is the spouse of "Matthias Burkhardt". At Greenwood Cemetery, he is correctly identified on their joint grave monument as "Mathias Burkhardt, Jr.", an apparent Anglicization of the German-language "Matthias" (Matthew).
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Below appear descriptions of the FiVE PHOTOGRAPHS posted to this Memorial. These photos are numbered "1" through "5", that is to say from top to bottom on the "Memorial" and from left to right in the "photos" category.
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CAPTION TO THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPH: : This photograph made in Hamilton, Ohio, circa 1916, depicts, at center, Anna Maria (Mary) Donges Teitz Burckey (1835-1920), who was born at Erda, Kreis Wetzlar, Prussia, in the German Confederation. She sits between two other elderly ladies who are the two longest-lived of the six sisters of Henry (Heinrich) Lotz, Sr. (September 13, 1835, to June 8, 1906) who married Elizabeth Catherine Donges (September 27, 1838, to January 16, 1916), a younger sister of Anna Maria Donges Teitz Burckey. The lady on the left is Katherine "Kate" (Lotz) Burkhardt (Mrs. Mathias Burkhardt, Jr.) who was born in Aßlar, Kreis Wetzlar, in the Kingdom of Prussia on August 26, 1843, and died at Hamilton, Ohio, during February 1927. Her great-nieces Ruth E. Morton (Garver, 1907-2004) and Edith E. Morton (Bippus, 1905-1988) always addressed her as "Aunt Burkhardt". On the right is Anna Maria (Lotz) Schieke (Mrs. Julius C. Schieke, July 13, 1847, to November 22, 1928), known to Ruth and Edith as "Aunt Schieke". The lady in the center is Anna Maria "Mary" (Donges) Teist Burckey, who has refined facial features and dark brown hair resembling those of her younger sister, Elizabeth Catherine (Donges) Lotz (1838-1916). But Anna Maria has styled her hair differently from the "parted-in-the-middle" hairstyle consistently preferred by Elizabeth Catherine (Donges) Lotz in all of the many surviving photos in which she is depicted.
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CAPTION TO THE SECOND PHOTOGRAPH: On July 5, 1953, in Aßlar, Kries Wetzlar, West Germany (BRD), John Daniel Lotz, hat in hand, stands amidst the tenants living at the house owned until circa 1855 by his grandparents Wilhelm Lotz (1807-1878) and Magdalena "Maggie" (Lotz) Lotz (1806-1890). This house was the birthplace of John D. Lotz's father, Henry "Heinrich" Lotz (1835-1906) and Henry's eight siblings, including Katherine "Kate" (Lotz) Burkhardt (1843-1927). In this photograph, the couple standing at John's right hand are German refugees from the western and northern borderlands of Czechoslovakia. With American, British, French and Soviet approval, the Czechoslovak government from late 1945 through early 1946 expelled from Czechoslovakia all Czechoslovak citizens of German ethnicity who had chosen to accept Third Reich German citizenship in 1939. Moreover, most of these so-called "Sudenten Germans" enthusiastically supported Nazi Germany throughout World War II. After the war, the more fortunate of these Germans settled in what would become West Germany (BRD) in 1948. Those less fortunate settled in the Soviet Zone of occupation which became the German Democratic Republic (DDR) from 1949 to 1989.
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CAPTION TO THE THIRD PHOTOGRAPH: This photo, made at Aßlar, Kreis Wetzlar, Prussia, Second German Empire, in 1892, by John Daniel Lotz (1872-1959), depicts the birthplace -- in the building on the right -- of Katherine "Kate" Lotz (Burkhardt, 1843-1927) and her five sisters and three brothers including Henry Lotz (1835-1906), father of John Daniel Lotz (1872-1959) and his eight siblings. Until circa 1855, this building was the home of John's grandparents, Wilhelm Lotz (1807-1878) Magdalena "Maggie" (Lotz) Lotz (1806-1890).
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CAPTION TO THE FOURTH PHOTOGRAPH: This postcard features four views of the small industrial town of Aßlar on the River Dill in Kreis Wetzlar, Kingdom of Prussia, Second German Empire, at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. The Evangelical & Reformed Church is depicted in the upper left hand corner of the postcard. The small Hessian town of Aßlar was the home of Wilhelm Lotz (1807-1878) Magdalena "Maggie" (Lotz) Lotz (1806-1890) and the birthplace of their nine children ,all of whom, including Katherine "Kate" Lotz (Burkhardt), immigrated to Butler County, Ohio, during the mid-1850s. Bruce Garver's fourth cousins, Gisela Lotz-Schnürer and Wilhelm Wolfgang Lotz, were born in Aßlar during the 1940s and still reside in Germany with their families.
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CAPTION TO THE FIFTH PHOTOGRAPH: In Section A, Lot/Row 47, Graves 06 & 07, at Greenwood Cemetery on November 3, 2017, Bruce Garver made this photograph of the gravestone of his great-great aunt Katherine "Kate" (Lotz) Burkhardt (1843-1927) and his great-great uncle Mathias Burkhardt, Jr. (1838-1933).