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| Original Funeral Card owned by Lorine McGinnis Schulze |
His Funeral Card reads:
Died at Collingwood on Monday June 21st, 1886, Louis Burmister, aged 22 years and 9 months.
Funeral will leave the family residence, Cedar Street on Thursday June 24th at 1:30 p.m for the Dunkerd Cemetery.
After rescuing this card from a flea market I wanted to give Louis a voice. I began my search at Ancestry. 9 year old Lewis (sic) is found in the 1871 census for Puslinch Township Wellington County Ontario with his rather large family of parents Ludwig (54) and Fredericka (33) and his 5 siblings ages 2 to 13.Anyone interested in having this Funeral Card can contact me by leaving a comment on this blog post. Be sure to provide your email address.
3 comments:
I wonder if funeral cards were affordable for the average family? Some of my rural families seemed to have little extra income for anything besides the basics.
I can't say for sure of course but having a funeral card or notice was dictated by the current social norms. I suspect the money was found somehow for some kind of notice or funeral card except by the poorest of the poor.
Louis was actually the son of William Burmister and Sophia Rentner, and was born and raised near Collingwood, Ontario. His parents left Hamburg, Germany on 13 Apr 1863 and Louis and his twin brother William Henry were born 27 September 1864. Interestingly, the age on this card is off by 1 year, but both boys have the same ages in the Census records. Due to their accents, Census records are rather challenging to track. In 1871 the family is living in Collingwood just a few doors down from Sophia's brothers Louis and Frederic. Their last name is recorded as Bohlmeister. His father William appears as Burmaster in Lovell's Canadian Dominion Directory for 1871 as a labourer living in Collingwood. William dies in 1875. In 1881, they appear as the Bowmunster family living in Collingwood. My connection to Louis is through his mother, Sophia. Her brother Frederick was my great-great-grandfather.
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