Detail: Byrne Family
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The following is an expansion of the Byrne
family background. Reverse family tree
from Armenia (Byrne) Skroch is shown here:
Armenia (Byrne) Skroch - married Alphonse Skroch
John Patrick
Byrne - father
John Byrne -
grandfather
Mary (Browne) Byrne - grandmother
Villa (Schwarzhoff) Byrne - mother
Joseph
Theodore Schwarzhoff - grandfather
Katherine (Eck) Schwarzhoff - grandmother
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Picture of the Schwartzoff, family
taken circa 1902, courtesy of Joe Byrne.
Link to Byrne Family is fromVila.
Joe Byrne wrote: "Vila is the mother of Maude,
Armenia, Eddie, Vincint, Veronica, Rosela, Joe,
and Elizaeth. [see picture above] Joseph
Tehodore Schwartzoff and Katherine (Eck)
Schwarzhoff were Vila's parents. Josephine
(Schwarzhoff) Schaller was Joseph's sister; she
married Herman Schaller. Phene (Schwartzhoff)
Criag married Henry Craig."
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Image courtesy Joe Byrne
who wrote, "John & Mary Byrne, married 19
Oct 1865. This portrait taken circa 1880
in Galesville, WI. John Patrick is
Armenia's father."
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From: JOE BYRNE
Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 2:51 PM
To: Byrne Alberta, Byrne Jeff, Davis Paula,
Byrne Steve, Gagnon Becky, Feeney Mary Kay,
Skroch Don
Subject: Margaret Byrne Photo
Happy almost new year:
Our second cousin, Peggy (Poss) Beirne, sent me
this photo of our
grand aunt Maggie Byrne. She was an older
sister of our grandfather,
John Patrick Byrne, and of Peggy's grandfather,
William Hugh Byrne.
Barbara thought she was rather elegantly
dressed. She never
married and died in 1928.
I figure the picture was taken around
1905. (She was born in 1868
and I think she looks around age 37. Does
the hat look vintage 1905?)
Does anyone have any ideas about when the photo
was taken? Her
apparent age? Does anyone know where she
is buried?
Love, JOE
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Wedding portait taken in 1908 of Vila
(Schwartzoff) Byrne and John Patrick Byrne,
parents of Armenia (Byrne) Skroch.
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Here is a
revised version of a bioigraphical
sketch. Thanks particularly go to my dad
and to Marian Byrne. Corrections and
additions would be greatly appreciated.
Joe Jr , 8 Feb 2004
Kathrine (Eck)
Schwarzhoff was born in Waterloo Township,
Allamakee County, Iowa in 1863. The 1870
U.S. census shows her living with her parents,
Benedict (Barney) and Mary. In the
1880 census for Waterloo, Katherine was not
listed with her parents and younger
siblings. She was already eighteen and
living with a neighboring family, the Teodor
Roerkou family. She was listed with this
family as a laborer. Since this family had
three small children, her main job was probably
helping Mrs Roerkou keep house and raise the
children. By 1883, she was married to
Joseph Schwarzhoff (Jr), and living with him in
Codington County, South Dakota. By 1894,
six of her nine children were born and they were
living in the Amsterdam area of northern
LaCrosse County, Wisconsin. (see Joseph
Theodor Schwarzhoff Jr.)
Sometime after 1900
Kathrine and Joseph Theodore Schwarzhoff Jr.
settled on a farm in Crystal Valley north of
Galesville and probably lived in the valley
until 1942 when Joseph died. After WWII,
Kathrine lived with her daughter, Vila, in
Holmen, where Vila owned and ran a small
hotel/restaurant/bar. When Kathrine died
in 1947, she was buried in a famliy plot that
Vila had previously purchased in Pine Cliff
Cemetery in Galesville.
Marion Byrne (a
granddaughter) described her grandmother as a
large woman who made good, large, white
cookies. She was a hard worker and had a
big garden from which she got the fruit and
vegetables for her annual, massive canning
projects. In addition, she made terriffic
bread which was always in good supply at her
house. No matter how busy she was with
baking and canning, she was alway ready to grab
her coat and go with you wherever you were going
on a visit. She also frequently visited
family and friends in South Dakota.
Kathrine loved to play double pinnocle.
Marion reports she was taught at a young age to
play the game in order to assure that there was
always a fourth person around to play.
Marion also says she still has Kathrine’s old
sewing machine in her basement.
Uncle Hermie was grandma’s
son. He was a large man and visited her
often.
Uncle Alex was another of
grandma’s sons. He lived with grandma and
grandpa. He drank a lot and was a very
good carpenter. If anyone wanted a barn
built he was one of the best. He had a car
but drank too much to drive safely.
Marian’s dad used to say, “There goes Alex, he’s
been drinking again.” Alex always held his
head high like looking at the sky. He had
a son, Harold, who lived with grandma.
Alex tried real hard to play the banjo, but was
never any good.
Joe Byrne (Sr) says the same
thing about Alex -- he was an excellent
carpenter and could plan a structure in his head
and build it perfectly. The people who
hired him, however, learned that they should
never pay him in advance, otherwise he would be
off drinking and the construction would be
significantly delayed. Alex and Harold
lived with “grandma” because Alex’ wife died
shortly after Harold was born. Kathrine
did most of young Harold’s parenting.
According to Marian, most of
grandma’s children (my mother, Vila, George,
Anna, Marie, Alex and Josephine) all lived in or
near Galesville. On Sunday we visited a
lot. When we went to Dick’s (Marie’s), we
always made ice cream which was quite a
treat. They lived in Silver Creek, which
was just before Galesville on the way in from
Crystal Valley. Anna later lived near
Ettrick. Roseanne, Anna’s daughter, and I
spent a lot of time at each other’s house.
Marian remembers a lot of house parties -
everyone came. Lots of food. “We
could always jump on beds then, nobody heard
us.” (Too much talking.) Families
were close - always helping one another.
They let everyone borrow things, clothes,
dishes, machinery, horses. Everyone was
always busy, but had time for entertaining
friends and relatives. Crystal Valley
School was full of Schwarzhoffs. We had
community club on Friday once a month.
Different people on the committee were in charge
of food, program and entertainment. We
would pile up the desks and have a small band
and everyone danced. Bill Dick played
violin, Agnes’ daughter played piano. The
Scorset Boys from Decorah Prarie would come with
banjo and accordion and play. We had good
times.
(interview with Joe
Byrne, Sr.)
Grandson Joseph Byrne
remembers his Grandma Schwarzhoff being a very
determined lady. She was a good German
Catholic, but had decided that the rigid
meatless Friday law was just not practical for a
farm family like hers. She therefore
“ruled” that liver did not qualify as meat and
served it on Fridays along with eggs, fish,
etc. Joe was too young to remember how the
Irish Catholic Byrnes (Vila’s in-laws) reacted
to this idea. Nor is it known how the St.
Mary’s pastor in Galesville reacted.
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Here
is an updated biographical sketch of
Joseph. The "socks" story comes from
Marian Byrne. Any corrections and
additions will be appreciated. Joe Jr , 8 Feb 2004
Joseph Theodore Schwarzhoff
Jr. was born 2 Sept 1863 in Dorchester,
Iowa. He died 13 Dec 1942, in either
Galesville or Whitehall, WI. Anna
Schwarzhoff’s record book says Joseph was born
in Highlandville, Minnesota. There
actually is little disagreement about his
birthplce since Dorchester, Highlandville, and
Bergen Bee, another place his father lived, are
all near each other, straddling the
Iowa-Minnesota border just west of the
Mississippi River.
Joseph was the son of Joseph
Schwarzhoff (Sr) and Elizabeth Pieper, who had
only one other child, a younger duaghter named
Josephine. The 1870 U.S. census shows the
family living in Hightown Township in Winnishiek
County, Iowa. Joseph was six and Josephine
was one. By 1880, when Joseph was
sixteen, the family had moved to a farm in
Codington County, S.D., Township 117.
Joseph’s paternal
uncles,Theodor and Christopher, still farmed in
Allamakee County Iowa and close family contacts
must have been maintained because he married the
daughter of Benedict and Mary Eck, longtime
neighbors of the Schwarzhoffs in Waterloo
Township. Holy Rosary Church records in
Kranzburg, S.D. show that he and Katherine Eck
were married on 1 May 1883. Anna’s record
book says that they were married on 15 August
1882. Either way, they were both about
nineteen or twenty when married. Maude
Byrne said he was in a seminary for a short time
studying for the priesthood. If so, it
would have been a “minor seminary” (e.g. a high
school).
Anna’s record book shows
that the four oldest children of Joseph and
Kathrine were born in Codington County.
Presumably, they lived with his parents and his
sister. The next two children, Vila and
George, were born in 1890 and 1892,
respectively, and were born in Webster, Day
County, South Dakota. The last three
children (Maria, Herman, and Anna) were born in
Wisconsin.
It seems that Joseph, Kathrine and children (and
perhaps his parents and sister also) tried for a
living in Webster County for a few of years,
from around 1889 to around 1893, and then
decided to move to Wisconsin.
Census records for 1900 show
that Joseph’s father, Joseph Sr., was living
back in Allamakee County. Family accounts
indicate that Josephine, Joseph’s sister, also
moved to Wisconsin with Joseph and his
family. It seems safe to conclude that the
whole family, Joseph, his father, and his
sister, all decided to leave South Dakota
sometime around 1893.
The family’s first few years
in Wisconsin (c1893 - 1896) were spent in
Amsterdam, Jackson County accourding to the
birth locations for Marie and Herman given in
Anna’s record book. Anna, herself, was
born in 1898 in Burr Oak, also in northern
LaCrosse County. At present there is no
census record for the family in 1900. They
are found on the 1910 census records for Crystal
Valley. According to Joe Byrne (Sr) their
first home in Crystal Valley was at the far East
end of the valley, but later they bought
and lived on another farm across the road
(south) from one that son George was to later
buy Sometime after 1920, they traded
farms/houses with daughter Vila Byrne.
Vila had married John Byrne whose family owned
the farm immediately to the west of the
Schwarzhoff farm. Vila needed the larger
house for her family. Since the last of Joseph’s
and Kathrine’s children, Anna, left home when
she married in 1922, the swap made a lot of
sense. This smaller house/farm was later owned
by Pat Schwarzhoff Knepper and her husband.
Kathrine and Joseph probably
lived in Crystal Valley until 1942 when Joseph
died. However, grandson Joe Byrne says
that towards the end of his life (early/middle
1942), Joseph had to be sent to a sanitarium in
Whitehall because the family could not take care
of him. Joseph was buried in Pine Cliff
Cemetery.
According to Maude,
“grandpa” tended to drink too much in his later
years if allowed to. Kathrine therefore
gave him a daily ration of about two shots in a
little ceramic jug with a small cork
stopper. Presumably, he carried this
little jug around with him in a pocket and
carefully nursed it throughout the day.
Grandpa’s problem was apparently
hereditary. His son, Alex, was also known
for his alcohol consumption capacity.
Marian Byrne writes that
Grandpa was of German stock. “He used to
talk to Mrs. Alseth up the valley who only spoke
Norweigan.” Evidentally the two languages
are similar. He did a lot of walking and
never drove a car. He used to sit by an
old stove and never talked much, and never did
much. “They had a barn below their house,
but it burned in 1936 when I was in grade
school." He used to wear his socks so the
heel was on top. That way the heels
wouldn’t wear out so fast. He slept
upstairs in his own small room.
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