SCHWARTZ, Wilbur and John

WILBUR C. SCHWARTZ and his
brother JOHN H. SCHWARTZ

Identification on photo: (see photo of back)
Photo taken: Rundle Studio, Edwardsville, ILL, circa 1898
Purchased: Feb 2018 Bulldogger's Antiques, Lake Worth, FL

Back of the photo reads:
Grandpa (on left) Wilbur Charles Schwartz, mother's father, Aug 2, 1890-Feb 21, 1969. Younger brother on right. John H. Schwartz, born Sep 26, 1892, died Oct 22, 1918. Cause of death pneumonia brought on by Spanish Influenza.

1910 Census > Illinois > Madison County > Edwardsville
SCHWARTZ, William H., head, 44, married 22y, born in ILL of German parents, farmer
SCHWARTZ, Mary, wife, 43, born in ILL of German parents
SCHWARTZ, Wilbur, son, 20, born in Illinois
SCHWARTZ, John, son, 17, born in Illinois
DRUM, David, farm hand, 57, born  in Illinois

Father William H. Schwartz (1865-1949) is the son of  German immigrants Friedrich Schwartz (b. 1829) and Wilhelmine Brockmeier (1832-1906).

Mother Mary Feldman (1866-1936) is a daughter of German immigrants Carl and Mary Feldman. According to her obituary (Edwardsville Intelligencer, Edwardsville, Madison County, Illinois, Monday, August 24, 1936, page 1), She died of a heart attack in her home in Edwardsville Aug 22, 1936.

US Social Security Death Index shows the birthdate for Wilbur as August 2, 1889 and death is Feb 1969.

The 1920 Census for St. Louis MO, shows Wilbur Schwartz in a Lawyer in that city.

Wilbur's WWI Draft registration (June 1917) shows he is married and living in St. Louis Missouri. Wilbur married Adele Olive Byerly (1892-1969), and they had a daughter Ruth Mary Schwartz (1927-1983) who married John McKendrick Vaughn and had a son,  John McKendrick Vaughn III, born in 1964 and died in 2016.

I see no evidence of any other grandchildren, so it was this grandson who wrote the information on the back of this photo. He lived in Boca Raton Florida, and his fairly recent death in 2016 explains why this photo showed up in an antique shop in a neighboring community.

Ruth Mary Schwartz (photo at right), from the St. Louis Dispatch May 1955, on the occassion of her engagement to a man named Murphy. I don't know how long that marriage lasted, or if it even actually happened, but in Mar 1963 she married Vaughn. The newspaper article in 1963 refers to her as "Miss Ruth Mary Schwartz" with no mention of a previous marriage.

Ruth passed away 30 Nov 1983 in Boca Raton, Florida, which is where I will begin looking for Wilbur Schwartz's descendants.

Wilbur's younger brother John Henry Schwartz died in 1918 of influenza while a member of the Chemical Warfare Service in Cleveland OH during WWI.

Upon his death, to cancer, at age 79 in 1969, Wilbur Charles Schwartz's estate was valued at more than a million dollars.