New information has turned up, information that leaves me more confused than EVER BEFORE. I don't want to offend anyone by saying too much before I know everything; unfortunately without asking questions I'm stuck in the "not knowing" place!! No matter how you look at it, this will seem scandalous to someone. You see, Edward's wife and daughter have turned up on the 1900 census in Minneapolis/St. Paul Minnesota. No Edward though. Both ladies are working as domestic help; Catherine is a housekeeper. And, by 1910, Catherine, the wife, is married to someone else. I don't find record of Edward dying, nor do I find evidence of a divorce. I'm not saying that the marriage wasn't legal or whatever - Just because I haven't found the documents, doesn't mean it's not there, just that I haven't found it. Desendants from that line say that Catherine claimed to have run away in the middle of the night with young Mary because of something terribly cruel that Edward had done, leaving the family to believe he was a very abusive person. Then, in Millerville Township, there are two babies buried in two separate cemeteries within a couple of weeks of one another... one in the Catholic cemetery, one in the Lutheran cemetery, and BOTH are registered as children of Edward Uhde. The one in the Lutheran cemetery lists wife Catherine as the mother... I'm still trying to find out who the mother of the other baby is. If they were twins, one delivered earlier than the other, why would they not be buried in the same cemetery? And why the big secret? Then, there's the two very different stories... Catherine, who I can confirm did go to the Twin cities and get married to someone else, who claimed Edward had done something to her to make her run away; and the other story about Edward having descendants in the Eugene Oregon area as late as the 1970s... The only thing that makes sense to me is this: I am wondering if perhaps Edward might have had a fling with someone else, and Catherine ran away with their daughter because he cheated, and she left him. Then, maybe Edward was in love with the other girl, and went with the mother of his other child to Oregon, to escape the scandal. The only problem is that there is no PROOF at this point, only a bunch of clues that point that direction. The only thing that is 100% a fact is that for some reason suddenly they are not living together as a married couple anymore. I don't know. Its so confusing.
My Uhde group came from Braunschweig, from a town called Bornhausen. I know there are records of them listed in the records repository in Wolfenbuttel, which is also in Braunschweig, I believe.
Common names for our branch also include Gustav, Christian, William (Wilhelm), Friedrich and Heinrich.
One of our big problems is that we do not know Edward's whole name. It seems to have been traditional to have at least three names, and use only the one closest to the surname. Like if a modern person had two names plus the surname, but only used their middle name. Its possible that Edward moved west and then used a different name. I just don't know. I'm going to start looking around, to see if anyone knows the names of any of the descendants from Eugene who were in contact with the Uhdes in Minnesota. (I did, she has no idea who those people were, and the one who was interviewed and mentioned this has passed away.) I've got one more person to touch base with, and if they don't know anything, well, I don't know where to turn.
Its just too bad that your Dad didn't stop the stranger in the street, and ask for his name. Of course there are always things like this we regret in our life, things we would like to go back and do over, but can't.