April 25,1995
Frederick Haas Family
Search Results
Fred Haas was the first born of the Peter Haas and Fredericka Thieken marriage of 1862. He was born in Wheelersburg, Ohio and christened in the St.Peter's Catholic Church on July 12, 1863 as Peter Frederick George. He married Anna Elizabeth Songer on May 6, 1888 in Scioto County, Ohio.
My research indicates that Fred and Anna immediately moved to Alabama where their first child, Clifford George, was born on April 20, 1899 in a town called Pell City. I believe that this couple was following the Songer family to Alabama as the Songers were also there according to Songer family research done by Stanley Champer of Ashland, Kentucky. I believe that these newly weds were looking for work and did not want to work in the iron ore mines and furnaces in the southern Ohio area where their families worked.
The next child, Ruth Elizabeth, was born on September 27, 1892 in Tallapoosa, Georgia. I have very little information about Ruth except that she married George James Graham and died July 13, 1935 in Akron, Ohio and is buried at Mount Peace Cemetery in Akron. Howard, the third child, was born on June 13, 1907 also in Tallapoosa, Georgia.
The family moved to Akron, Ohio sometime before 1920 as I found Fred, Anna and Howard in the 1920 census of Akron. The other children were not found in this census and were probably elsewhere at that time. Howard married Dorothy Virginia Delnay 1928 in Stark County, Ohio (Canton). Howard died at Lake Isabelle, Kern County, California on February 19, 1978 where Dorothy resides at this time.
Clifford married Lillie A. Crays on May 27, 1911 at Swedesboro, New Jersey. He died January 14, 1955 and is buried in Akron, Ohio at the Ellet Memorial Cemetery there. He was a glass blower and worked in this industry most of his life traveling from place to place where ever work was available.
Fred and Anna`s descendants are shown in the Haas Family of Southern Ohio document generated by Clifford's grandson Raymond Howard (Pete) Haas dated April 17, 1994 and later documents.
Research Background
I left the Fred and Anna Haas family alone until I completed research on the rest of Peter's family. Since Fred did not stay in the southern Ohio area there was very little information there. When I began research on him it took me several months to find a satisfactory starting point. Since I had no idea of the geography to research I selected the Cleveland, Ohio area as my Aunt Dee Olive Goodman Haas told me that she had heard from her husband Robert that Fred had gone there. I suspect that this word came in later years after Fred moved to Akron, Ohio. No mention was made by the family of Fred's move to Alabama and Georgia.
I used the Census of 1920 of Ohio (recently released-1990) and found them in Akron. The next step was to locate Fred's death certificate. I guessed at his date of death and asked the Ohio State Historical Society to do a computer search. They found his death to be 1937 and sent me the death certificate. With this I was able to get a copy of his obituary from the Akron newspaper. These two items provided enough information to tell me that Anna was still alive at this time.
With Anna's death record and obituary I found that Howard had made her funeral arrangements with a local funeral home. I called the funeral home hoping to obtain Howard's address. The owner of the funeral home was very helpful and told me that according to his file on Anna (she died 1958) Howard came from his home in California to attend the funeral. Well, Howard was the youngest and I hoped that he was still alive. He would be about 85 years old. I wrote many letters to Haas families in California without much luck. However, I did receive a phone call from one Haas who remembered Howard operating a electric appliance shop in his neighborhood. He said that he also remembered a son Howard running the shop at a later date but this shop was no longer in existence.
At this point I came to a screeching stop in my research. I spent many hours trying to find a thread which would get me started on the way to locating members of the family living today. I knew that there had to be many descendants ..but where to start?.
I remembered at this point that my mother gave me a HAAS genealogy book about 15 years ago which listed all the Haas names by zip code in the US. In this book I found a Raymond H. Haas at 1642 Wildon Ave along with several other Haas names in other Akron locations. At this point I decided to visit the Minneapolis main library to get a list of Haas names from the Akron phone book. While perusing this list of names I saw a L. Haas at 1642 Wildon ave. Since this address was the same as the one found earlier in my "Haas" book under the name of Raymond H. Haas I decided to telephone this address. BINGO!!!
I talked with Jill Haas who lives there. She told me that some of my information seemed correct but to get a better reading on her family she gave me Raymond H. Haas`s phone number in California. Ray was interested in genealogy as it turns out and verified all the family names that I had to this point.
Well, the rest is history as Ray or "Pete" as he is called, worked with me to identify most, if not all, of our family. Pete has published a complete listing of the "Haas Family."
I am very happy that I could bring this branch of our family into the overall picture. I found while talking with Pete, Marlin, and his son Robert, that they had no idea where their family came from. They each knew several Haas individuals over the years but could not connect with any of them.
It is too bad that Fred did not talk about his family very much. When he died his family gave personal information for the death certificate and did not know his mother's name. His father, Peter, was shown on the record but not much more. I also was very glad to help Marlin Haas to be in touch with his long lost Songer cousins as he was able to talk with some of them by phone after about 50 years.