Aaron and Charlotte Sarah Bloch

Aaron Bloch – born in Germany 1823 – date of death unknown

Charlotte Sarah Bloch (Alberti) born in Saint Louis 1867 died in Kansas City 1916



The past three weeks have been spent waiting for a competent AT&T technician to fix our broadband connection, and piecing together what information I have on my great-grandfather, Aaron Bloch, and his daughter, Charlotte Sarah Bloch.

If you’ve not read previous blogs, I should mention that Charlotte Sarah Bloch was the wife of Albert Anatole Alberti., who sues him later in life for his philandering ways. Charlotte was sixteen when Albert Anatole Alberti rented a room in her family’s boarding house in Saint Louis. Albert was visiting Saint Louis on a short vacation, but some things, once started, take months to play out. Charlotte became pregnant, and Albert, to his credit, extends his stay in Saint Louis until his first son, Wilford, is born. I can’t find a marriage certificate, and there are no clues as to whether the marriage was blessed by Aaron Bloch, and his wife, Mary.   Maybe Aaron and Mary were relieved to marry off one of their daughters to such a promising young man. Charlotte was one of two daughters by a previous marriage, and Aaron and Mary had eleven other children of their own.

Scandal seemed to follow Albert around in his storied life, but whether this was a union blessed by the parents, or something in between, I have no information. At some point Albert does the honorable thing and weds Charlotte.

After two other sons are born in New Mexico, Albert takes the family back to Saint Louis for a visit. Listening in on a life insurance pitch being given to Aaron Bloch from a Metropolitan agent, he becomes interested. This was the catalyst for his long career with Metropolitan Life.

The boarding house appears to be a two story brick building that is still standing today. It is one of a few buildings scattered about in a desolate, forgotten landscape of vacant flat land devoid of vegetation. It was once teeming with activity, conveniently close to the steamboats unloading immigrants at the Mississippi landings. Today, the area is either part of some urban renewal plan, or just the disintegrating remnants of a once thriving neighborhood.

Sadly, there are no pictures in “the box” my sisters left with me of Charlotte Bloch, or her father, Aaron Bloch. I have found some information from separate notes my mother has written down. Much of the additional information comes from the leg work of Lynn Cox, my brother-in-law, who spent untold hours putting together the ancestry of the Sherman family. He provided two census reports on the Bloch family, taken in 1870 and 1880, the Kansas City Star article where Charlotte sues Albert for divorce and maintenance, Charlotte’s death certificate, and a lead on Aaron’s first wife, who may have been the mother of Charlotte Sarah Bloch.

My mothers’ notes say Charlotte Bloch had brown hair, warm brown eyes, and loving ways. She adds that she was kind, and better to Mary Trulucia (my mother’s mother), than Mary’s own mother. Mary’s mother was Sarah (Sadie) Robertson. I described her, probably maligned her, in a previous blog, pointing out her numerous character flaws.

Charlotte Sarah Bloch shows up on the two census reports in 1870 and 1880. The two oldest daughters listed are Charlotte and Ida, who are daughters from a previous marriage. Lynn Cox found a marriage certificate for a Kezia Stevens and Aaron Bloch in Allen County, Indiana. Allen County is over 300 miles from Saint Louis. Maybe Aaron proposed to her when she was on an excursion to the city, and she insisted on a ceremony back home that included her family. Maybe. The Stevens family were well established in Allen County with farms and businesses. The dates match up closely with the ages of Charlotte and Ida, but whether Kezia was Charlotte’s real mother is unproven. If Kezia was her mother, the marriage would have lasted about twelve years, at which time she either died, or less likely, divorced Aaron.

According to my mother, Aaron Bloch was a Jewish Rabbi, who owned a jewelry store in Saint Louis. She notes that he had thirteen children. On the census report I count eleven. The two missing children had either left the nest already, or may have succumbed to childhood diseases.

My mother’s only contact with the large brood of her grandmother was Esther, a step-sister to Charlotte Bloch. Esther showed up for my mother’s graduation from Chrisman High School in Independence, Missouri, and gave her a ruby encrusted diamond ring. I can’t help but speculate that it was made by Aaron Bloch. My mother gave it to her mother, Mary Trulucia White. When Mary Trulucia died from breast cancer, her husband Wilford, gave it to his second wife, Edna. Should it have gone back to my mother? You’ll have to ask one of those etiquette columnists, like Heloise or Dear Abby.

The 1880 St Louis Census is inaccurate. The sixteen people living at 2327 Warren Street are counted twice. A second census taker showed up the day after the first one and took information from one of the boarders. In the 1870 census, there were three boarders staying in the Bloch home: John Hett, a tailor from Germany (Prussia); Robert Lyles, a bookkeeper from Scotland; and Dan Curley, a mail carrier from Ireland. There seemed to be a little confusion in the census taker’s mind on the difference between Prussia and Russia. Aaron emigrated from Prussia, not Russia. Prussia was a prominent German State at that time.

Aaron Bloch probably immigrated to America late in the 1830’s, when he was a young man. It is possible he was brought in by his parents, but there are no records to support it. There was no concentrated settlement of Germans until the 1830’s. Before that, Saint Louis was not much more than a French Village where rafts and barges unloaded furs and lumber.

Saint Louis became a prime destination for Germans in the thirties due to a wealthy German named Dr.Gottfried Duden. He had lived in Saint Louis and the surrounding area for three years starting in 1827. The Bloch family was probably influenced by his writings. On returning to Germany, he wrote a book extolling in glowing terms the opportunities in Missouri, and the favorable environment. Additionally, he wrote of the political and economic freedom there. Germany, at the time, had neither. The book was wildly popular, and went through numerous editions. Dr. Duden likened the climate to the Rheinland, calling it the garden spot of the West.

Some Germans were not so impressed after arriving. One publicist printed in his Saint Louis German newspaper, that if Duden ever returned to Saint Louis, he should be hung in the nearest tree. Duden never did return, but he was the primary reason thousands of Germans ended up living in Saint Louis.

Many Irish, and I love ‘em, also came to Saint Louis, but they were unskilled farmers, who came because of the Irish potato famine. It was the influential German doctors, lawyers, bankers, brewers, and skilled craftsmen like Aaron Bloch, who made a lasting impact. Their influence still gives Saint Louis its German zest. Prost! Raise a glass of Anheuser Busch, to wash down that bratwurst, or hot dog. We have visited the famous Busch Gardens, and marveled at the Clydesdale horses that pull that famous beer wagon. There were many other breweries started by early German immigrants, but Anheuser, and his son-in-law Busch, were the most successful.

In 1834, Paul Follenius, a freedom loving lawyer, and his friend, Friedrich Muench, a philosopher, brought 500 Germans into Saint Louis in a single day. Their intent was to establish a German State. Interestingly, to me at least, Arkansas was their first choice. Unfavorable reports from an advance scouting party caused them to change their minds. Their plans for a new Germany came to naught because they were already divided into two groups by the time they arrived.

In the three years following the German Revolution in 1848, 35,000 Germans arrived in Saint Louis.  Many neighborhoods were predominantly German. Even in 1838, when the first public school opened, there were so many Germans that they convinced the school system to adopt German as a second language. By 1880 there were 54 schools in Saint Louis offering German as a second language. One famous legend in Germany, or fake news if you prefer, was that a Congressional Committee missed by a single vote of making German the official language of the United States.

Aaron Bloch would have been 23 years of age in 1846, just before the massive immigration following the German Revolution. I know next to nothing about that part of German history, but along with the embedded prejudice against Jews in Germany, it may have been the impetus for boarding a steamship to America.

Although my mother notes that he was a rabbi, his second marriage to Mary Ellicock took place in a Protestant Episcopal Church in Saint Louis, and the christening of their son, Paul Bloch, took place in a Presbyterian church in Saint Louis. If Aaron celebrated any Jewish holiday, or attended a synagogue, there is no mention of it. He seemed to embrace the primary protestant religions of the non-Jewish immigrants in Saint Louis.

About the time Aaron Bloch was impregnating wife #2 with clock-like German proficiency, Alson Alexander White, was busy making a living in the burgeoning lumber business just over a hundred miles downstream from Saint Louis, in Hannibal, Missouri. (Alson is the subject of the first blog back in August).

There is little documentation of what Charlotte Bloch’s marriage to Albert Anatole Alberti was like before the scandal and divorce, but she died in 1916, in Kansas City, the same year that Albert retired from Metropolitan Life. The “certificate of death” lists the cause as “chronic interstitial nephritis.” A secondary cause was staphylococcus infection of the kidney. My mother said she died of a broken heart. My money is on the pair of scissors an incompetent surgeon left in her following a previous surgery. She was only 49 years old. She and Albert had two sons that survived, and the oldest, Wilford Alberti, becomes my grandfather on my mother’s side.

Albert Anatole Alberti--part 8

Albert was plagued with stomach troubles for sixty odd years.  It was possibly some pathogen picked up from contaminated water on the French steamship when he was in his early twenties. Its engines gave out in the middle of the Atlantic on a return trip from Brazil.  When Albert came to America, he always sought out towns with natural springs, with reputations for their therapeutic qualities. This is what led him in 1930, at the age of seventy five, to the curious little town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

            It is said the Eureka Springs was founded on sacred Indian grounds.  There’s a local story of a Sioux princess who had her eyesight restored by bathing her eyes in the waters from Basin Spring.  Considered a sacred site, legend has it that warring tribes treated it as such, and would not fight at the springs.

            Later, the waters were used at “Dr. Jackson’s Cave Hospital,” to care for combatants during the Civil War.  Following the war, Jackson set up a brisk business selling “Dr. Jackson’s Eye Water.”  Judge Saunders, a friend of Dr. Jackson, was cured of a crippling disease by a visit to Basin Spring, and the news of the healing water spread far and wide.

 In the 1800’s, photos show small crowds gathered at the springs filling jugs, tin cups, and ladles.  I don’t know how legitimate the claims were for the water’s healing quality, but the story took root and was spread across the country.

            Modern day mystics, who may include a lovely lady I wed in 1966, believe that Eureka Springs is an Earth “Vortex,” a rare planetary center, where body, mind and spirit are aligned.  I acted as chauffeur some few years back, escorting my bride and her life long friend Nancy, on an “other-worldly” trip to Eureka Springs, where there was much conversation about crystal fields beneath the surface of Eureka Springs, accounting for the “Vortex.”  Skeptical by nature, I check, and find that Arkansas has the largest singular deposit of crystal quartz on the planet.  The crystal strata below the surface extends nearly 200 miles across the state. Arkansas quartz is said to be the finest in the world, containing rare electro-magnetic properties found no other place on earth.  Check mate on my skepticism!

            This quaint little Arkansas town is studded with cedar and has an alpine character. Steep winding streets are lined with Victorian cottages, and other unusual dwellings of all makes. Many of the buildings are constructed with local stone, and lie along streets that curve around the hills, and rise and fall with the topography.  Many of the buildings have street-level entrances on more than one floor. Numerous homes, inns, and retails shops are constructed on the sides of cliffs, with stilts as support.  The unscripted development of the city, with its lax building codes, has enabled the building of unique and odd shaped homes, with pronounced angles and inclusions of found and hand crafted materials. It reminds one a little of Dr. Seuss’s “Who-ville.”

 Some folks, like Albert, were drawn to the city by the spring water and the spa, some by the magnetic pull of the quartz field, and others because it’s just a fun place where anything goes.  My parents chose it as their honey moon destination in 1936.  “The box” reveals how untrue anecdotal stories can be. The story I’ve always heard is that Leonard and Charlotte, (my parents) borrowed Plinnie’s Model-T for the honeymoon trip to Eureka Springs. Plinnie was my grandfather, father of Leonard. The story goes that Plinnie, or Plem, as we called him, accompanied Leonard and Charlotte on the trip to Eureka Springs because he didn’t trust Leonard to drive his newish Model-T.  I always pictured my mom and dad in the back seat with Plinnie actins as their chauffeur.  The story got a little creepy, where at some point Plinnie is sitting at the foot of their bed.  Was he giving the newlyweds advice, or was he unable to afford his own room?

            This story, told and re-told, was wrong I’m happy to report.  Plinnie did loan Leonard his car, but did not accompany them to Eureka. The honeymooners were at the Basin Street Hotel on Spring Street, not the Crescent, which had fallen on hard times and was closed in 1936.

 Albert Anatole, my mother’s grandfather, was the one who visited the newlyweds, and sat at the foot of their bed in their hotel room.  Albert lived within a short trolley ride of the Basin Hotel, and may have popped in to say hello, and pick up the tab for the room.  Did they have the comforter pulled up around their necks?  Was this an economy room with no extra chair to sit in?

The year after the honeymoon, the Crescent Hotel was purchased by the infamous Norman Baker.  He was a flamboyant, self proclaimed champion of the common man, who pitted himself against the medical establishment.  Always dressed in a white suit and a lavender shirt, he owned a radio station in Muscatine, Iowa with the call letters KTNT, which stood for “Know the Naked Truth.”  He preached the gospel of alternative medicine, and promoted Norman’s Magic Elixir, a useless mix of watermelon seed, brown corn silk, alcohol, and carbolic acid.  He made millions promoting and selling this on his radio show.

With this money, he purchased and transformed the Crescent Hotel into the Baker Cancer Hospital.  According to one U.S. Postal Inspector, Norman was raking in $500,000.00 a year between 1937 and 1939, until federal authorities closed him down.

The Crescent Hotel sits 2000 feet above sea level, and overlooks the town nestled below.  Albert’s home was a modest one story with five sides, an odd little 45 degree porch extending from one corner.  The house sat even higher than the Crescent Hotel.  It would have been a short down hill walk between the house and the Hospital.

I can’t help but wonder if some of Baker’s profits came from my great-grandfather.  He was always searching for that elusive cure to his stomach ailments.  He died in Eureka at the age of 85, and his certificate of death lists the cause as “cancer of the liver.” Without an autopsy, the only source for this conclusion would have been information given to the coroner by Laura, Albert’s second wife.  If he had been diagnosed before the Baker Hospital was established, he would almost certainly have been a patient there, at least an out-patient. 

"Doctor" Norma Baker holds the head of a patient
undergoing hypnotic therapy.

            Laura was always secretive with details on their lives, so I don’t know where in Eureka Springs Albert actually died, or if there was even a funeral service for Albert.  I originally thought it was within the realm of possibility, and even probability, that Albert ended up on the autopsy table at the Crescent, under the knife of Norman Baker.  In the basement of the hotel there’s a large walk-in cooler where Baker stored cadavers and body parts he removed from patients, in an effort to stumble onto an actual cure.  Was Albert’s cancerous liver stored in that cooler? 

 No, it would have been a disturbing epitaph, but Albert died in mid September of 1940, and federal authorities had already closed in on Norman in the latter part of 1939.
            There are colorful characters like Albert, who live out- sized lives, and somehow resist passing peacefully into the annals of history. Albert certainly would have been a welcome addition to the ghosts that now inhabit the haunted Crescent Hotel.  There’s Michael, the Irish stonemason who fell to his death while building the hotel in 1885, the cancer patient of the Baker hospital days who seems to need help finding her room, Norman Baker himself, in his white suit and lavender shirt, and many remember Morris, the cat.

The morgue in the basement of the hotel, where the "Doctor"
performed autopsies. 

 Then there’s the mystery patient, in a white hospital gown, who appears in the luxury suites, at the foot of your bed. Could that mystery ghost be my great-grandfather Albert Anatole?  The Crescent Hotel is a short one hour drive from our home, so I plan check out this mystery guest. Sharon refused my offer to stay at the haunted hotel last week, but if I book a luxury suite, and re-package the offer as a second honeymoon, she may reconsider.  Who knows who may end up sitting at the foot of our bed?

Post-script – two great nieces plan to visit Florence, Italy in February of next year.  They are eager to solve the mystery of Albert’s genealogy.