Zanzig and Schultz in Milwaukee and beyond

The Zanzigs

Both my great-great-grandparents, Johann Friedrich Ludwig Zanzich (Fred or Fritz) and Johanna Sophia Henriette Zanzich (Henriette) were born Zanzig, so their descendants are double Zanzigs. They emigrated with Henriette's whole family in 1856, just after the birth of their first son.

Fred had a half-brother and -sister and two brothers. His older brother, Christoph had nine children, three of whom emigrated to Chicago and then to Nebraska. Christoph's descendants are a large, well-documented branch.

Henriette's father was also Christoph--Adolph Christoph Zanzig. He was a tailor and musician. (I picture him in one of Milwaukee's German oom-pah bands.) He and Christina Mohr, his wife, had seven daughters and two sons.

Christina's brother Carl Mohr emigrated in 1852. In 1856, Christoph and Christina bundled up three daughters and two sons, Fred and Henriette tucked newly-born Wilhelm in, and they followed Carl to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Henriette's sister Rieke's future husband Johann Sievert was on the same ship; sister Sophia followed the next year with her husband and their first three children. They lived in a group of houses back to back on two streets in Milwaukee for many years.

Fred and Henriette didn't fare well in the New World. Fred died in 1861, five years after emigrating. Henriette remarried in 1862, had a daughter, and was dead before 1869. Fred and Henriette's two boys were on their own in 1870. I didn't know my grandfather Zanzig, so my curiosity has always been high.

This site repeats the parts of the Zanzig one-name study that are relevant to my own ancestry, but also continues the female lines and explores my great-grandmother's Schultz family in Iowa and Spokane.

The Schultzs

Sophia Schultz was one of four children. She must have met Charles F. Zanzig when he was in Iowa, and married him and moved to Milwaukee, living on 2nd Street with the Zanzig families. Her brother Albert took a farm near McGregor, Iowa. In 1894, after his first wife died, their parents took Albert's oldest daughter and moved to Spokane, Washington (the wild west!), along with Sophie's other two siblings, Lizzie and her husband Lou Kratzer, and Louis Schultz. I borrow from the lovely Schultz history produced by his granddaughter to connect some of the dots.