I remember my father speaking about his cousins, Joe and Bud Scholz, Emma’s two children. I surely had also met them at family reunions back in the 1960s but I would have been too interested in the pickup softball game or in finding some appropriate sticks to roast marshmallows over the grill. I did not know much about their family situation though until I started researching the family tree. Today, I see that things were a little more complicated than I expected and they led to an unusual story.
At 19 years old, Emma married a Virginian in the local parish church in Baltimore. Walter August Scholz (1890 – 1960) was the eldest son of a German immigrant so he should have been a good fit with Emma whose grandfather had also emigrated from Germany only 40 years before she was born.
Emma was also half Irish and a good Catholic so there was no surprise when nine and a half months after the wedding, Joseph Walter Scholz (1915 – 1971) was born to start the new branch of the family. Exactly three years later, the second child was born. Amazingly, both Joseph and Louis August “Bud” Scholz (1918 – 2011) were born on the same date, May 10th. For some reason, Joe always wrote that his birthday was on 9 May instead of the date on his birth certificate. Perhaps he just wanted his own birthday. Who knows? That is not, however, the reason for this story.
All was not well in the family though. Emma & Walter divorced around the time of Bud’s birth. By the end of 1919, Walter was living in a boarding house in Terre Haute, Indiana and recorded as a macaroni salesman on the January 1920 census. He went on to marry a woman named Yetta Huney in Missouri, in December 1922. They must have tolerated each other enough to stay married but I note that when Walter passed away in 1960, his gravestone also had Yetta’s name already engraved on it as well as the dates “1887 – 19___”. Yetta said “the heck with that” and when she passed away in 1986, she was buried alone in New Mexico. Again though, that has little to do with the story.
After Walter left town, Emma met Joseph Edward Griffith (1895 – 1963) and married him around 1925. By all accounts, Joe was a good husband to Emma and a good step-father to young Joe and Bud. They were a typical American family living in west Baltimore. When Walter passed away, Emma was still a very young 69 years old. It must have been hard on her, once again on her own after so long. Like many widows, she probably kept an eye out for eligible bachelors but I am sure her friends were fixing her up with potential husbands in a pre-eHarmony world. By the way, I’m almost to the story – don’t worry.
Emma did find love! I only discovered this though when I saw her son, Joe’s, 1971 obituary. That obit mentioned that he was survived by, among other people, his mother, “Emma Fuentable” [sic]! Huh? I had already seen her 1990 death notice and that said that her name was “Emma S. Griffith, the wife of the late Joseph E Griffith”. Who was this “Fuentalba”?
It took some digging because of the spelling error but I eventually found Manuel Lagos Fuentealbe (1892 – 1980). Manuel was an immigrant from Chile who came to the United Sates in 1916. In those pre-Trump Wall days, he married a German immigrant and started raising a family of three children before bothering to apply for citizenship in 1927. They too seemed to be the typical first-generation American family and everything was good until Manuel’s wife died in 1961. Somehow, somewhere, Manuel met Emma. Cupid smiled and on Thursday, 26 November 1964 (Thanksgiving Day!), Manuel and Emma were married. My Granddad was probably a witness to the wedding of these two lovebirds, only 72 and 70 years-old. But that’s not yet the story.
Something happened between 1964 and 1973. Not all was well in the Fuentealba home. Manuel and Emma obviously divorced during that period but why? I can only guess but I think I know. There was apparently a third wheel on the bike in the form of a wanton trollop, a gold-digger, a marriage wrecking-ball, a 73 year-old licentious, promiscuous slut.
On 21 May 1973, Manuel married a “lady” named Carrie Emma Frohn. Then again, she may have given him one of her several other names. Who knows? To make a long story short, let me summarize some of Carrie’s exploits:
16 February 1915 – married Walter William Lanahan (1896 – ?), a 19 year old Baltimore boy getting ready to go to fight in the Great War. On Walter’s 1917 military registration card, he mentioned that he was the sole provider for his young wife. Maybe he was pleading to the army: “don’t take me”.
29 November 1917 – married Virgil W. Hiller (1890 – 1924), a Wisconsin infantry man who trained to fight in the Great War in Maryland. During a pre-deployment furlough in Annapolis, he married the love of his life, Carrie Emma Frohn. She obviously never mentioned the name Lanahan because she was still married to her first husband. During their brief courtship, Virgil had to divorce from his first wife, Marie Pavey, whom he married in 1909. She was left back on the cheese farm alone in Wisconsin.
25 November 1918 – convicted on bigamy and fraud and sentenced to 18 months in the penitentiary. During the war, the US government paid part of the soldier’s salary to the soldier but also paid a part directly to their parents or, if they were married, to their spouse. Young Carrie was double dipping.
22 June 1920 – just after Carrie’s release from prison, the final divorce decree was granted to Walter Lanahan. He left her on 17 May 1918, the day he bailed her out of jail and took her to a relative's house to stay. It is not known when Carrie’s marriage to Virgil Hiller was annulled but that would have taken much less time.
About 1925 – married Samuel Gelrud (1890 – ?), a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant stationed on bases in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Carrie had her military pay once again. It appears that she married this New Jersey native just after he divorced his Dominican wife and left her with the two children. Did Carrie precipitate that? It also appears that she continued to live in Baltimore while her newest husband continued to serve in Puerto Rico. That didn’t last long though. By the time of the 1930 census, Carrie was back living with her parents and she reported as being divorced. Trying to live on one soldier’s salary isn’t fun when you are used to twice that amount.
About 1939 – (I am being generous here with the estimated date) – married Thomas Frost (1881 – 1963), a manual laborer who was himself a serial groom. He managed three previous marriages, spacing them about 10 years apart. Thomas had two children from his 1907 marriage to Marie Amelia Miller. After a divorce, Thomas married Rose Marylee Herold in In May, 1917. I don’t know if Rose died or divorced him but Thomas married Anna E. Brown (after her own divorce) in about 1925. I see no evidence of a divorce so I will be generous and assume that it was Anna’s 1938 death that allowed our old friend, Carrie Frohn, to slip into a comfortable pension-earning marriage. Carrie & Thomas were married by the time of the April 1940 census. Despite the series of modest homes in the Clifton Park area of Baltimore, Carrie (now Frost) hosted all the family funerals for her parents and siblings. Interestingly, I note that Carrie was living about a block away from Thomas before they married. Maybe they both hung out at the neighborhood bar or they met while walking their dogs. Who know? It’s of interest though.
10 August 1963 – Carrie’s most recent meal ticket passed away and she was on the hunt once again. After 24 years of somewhat normal marital existence, Carrie was looking for husband #5 (and maybe lining up #6 too) and she would have had a four month head start over Great-aunt Emma. Emma was obviously quicker, more beautiful (due to excellent familial genes) and a better catch as about a year after Joe Griffith died, Emma married Manuel on 26 November 1964.
12 June 1973 – that was the fateful day that Manuel Fuentealba married Carrie Emma Frohn Lanahan Hiller Gelrud Frost, a shameless hussy. What could have happened? Why did Emma and Manuel divorce?
10 April 1971 – Emma’s son’s obituary mentioned his mother last name as Fuentealba so Emma and Manuel were likely still married then. Sometime between this date and June 1973, they divorced. I note that when Manuel’s first wife died in 1961, he was living in a modest Baltimore rowhouse at 2849 Chesterfield Avenue, facing Herring Run Park. He still owned the house when he married Emma. A block down the alley, at 2734 Pelham Avenue, was the home of the recently widowed Carrie. I am guessing that Great-aunt Emma had a new neighbor who may have been borrowing more than a cup of sugar.
Finally, I note that after Carrie and Manuel married in 1973, they continued to live in the Herring Park neighborhood. After Manuel died in 1980 at 88 years-old, I see that his 83 year-old widow finally moved out of a Baltimore rowhouse for the first time in her life (excluding the 18 months she was in prison). Somehow, with no children of her own to support her, with apparently never working herself, she took a bold step for an octogenarian and bought a lovely sprawling 3 bedroom, 2 ½ bath rancher on an acre of land out in the exclusive Baldwin neighborhood of Baltimore County. Impressive. She had hit the lottery.
http://unknownmisandry.blogspot.com/2013/11/carrie-lanahan-first-fake-war-bride-to.html
