The Freund-Rudiger Family of London and New York

I offer below a little diagram so that everyone can be very clear about the story from here on. The previous three posts devoted themselves to establishing our one certified Jewish ancestor, Dr. Freund.

But what is equally, if not more fascinating, is what has been uncovered about his wife, Amelia Lousia Rudiger who was born in Prussia, possibly in Leipzig, but that is only a guess.

The narrative for Amelia Rudiger follows after the chart.

The Freund-Rudiger Family:

Jonas C. H. Freund, MD                              Amelia Louisa Rüdiger

Born Prague, c. 1808                             Born Prussia, c. 1824

Died London, 29 Dec 1879                          Died NYC?, 17 March c. 1885

(Raised by her grand-uncle, Johann Christian Hüttner in London)

Married London, 18 March 1846

They had at least 8 children, 3 of whom are known:

John Christian Freund, b. London, 22 Nov. 1848; d. NYC, 1924

Herbert P.E. Freund, birth and death unknown; “A lunatic.”

Gertrude, b. London June 1857; d. Penn. 1932

Gertrude Freund married Arthur A. Eyles 1n 1882 in London.

They had three children:

Arthur Henry, b. London

Charles, b. Chicago

Helen Esther, b. Chicago

(who married William J. Heydrick in 1917

in Bridesburg, Philadelphia, PA)

*****

         How did you two meet?  It is such a natural question to ask and the answers to this question make some of the best stories that we tell about ourselves and our lives.

     How did your parents meet?  Do you know?

         My mom and dad met at the Y in downtown Philadelphia.  My father had finished an intensive course in modern Greek at the Army Language School in Monterey, California.  He was on his way to be a counter-intelligence agent in Greece which was then engaged in a civil war and was the raison d’etre for the Truman Doctrine about containing Communism.

Anyway, back to the Y. . .

         My mom was a very good amateur pianist and had a gig playing the piano for the guys at the Y. This was after the war had ended and I don’t know why there were still so many servicemen hanging around.  You see?  I never asked about that part of the story.  My point exactly.

         Do you know the story behind your own parents meeting?  What about your grandparents?  Earlier than that?  No, I didn’t think so.

         It’s been fun to try to place the puzzle pieces as I’ve learned about all of my ancestors.  With Amelia Rüdiger and Jonas Freund I think I have a few answers as to how they MIGHT have met.

Amelia Louisa Rüdiger was born in Prussia but was orphaned as a young teen—perhaps earlier than that—but at any rate she ended up moving to London to live with her grand-uncle Johann Christian Hüttner.  I will tell the story of Johann Hüttner separately, for it is  a VERY good story (I was amazed at what I found out!), but for the time being let it suffice that Johann Hüttner was extremely well connected and did know all the prominent Germans in London.  It is mentioned that he knew the Prussian Ambassador.  This would be the same Prussian Ambassador who was a patron of the German Hospital in Dalston that was founded and directed by a young, talented Dr. Jonas Freund.

         It does not take a giant leap of imagination to envision how the well-known Johann Hüttner, through his friendship with the Prussian Ambassador could have introduced his ward to the charming Dr. Freund.

         Either Freund or Hüttner, or both had enough status that “The Economist” published a short announcement of the Freund-Rüdiger nuptials in 1846: 

“JCH Freund, Esq. MD , directing physician of the German Hospital. Dalston, to Louisa A. Rüdiger, niece of JC Hüttner, Esq. Foreign office.”

Note that they got her name wrong—but still.  (This announcement found online,—google The Economist 1846 and ‘Freund’—you’ll find it)

The Freund family then settled down at 7 West St., Finsbury Circus and there they stayed until Dr. Freund’s death in 1879.

I have found nothing at all about their 8 children save three.  The eldest son was named for Amelia’s uncle—John Christian Freund.  He became quite well known in New York in the field of music journalism and will have his own entry here in due time.

Gertrude’s story is a lot thinner than her brother’s but I’ll fill that in too, eventually.

The third sibling is known only through this tid-bit:

From the Medical Times and Gazette, (London)  Vol. 1, 1883  (accessed via Google eBooks)

“It is said that the Herbert P. E. Freund charged with being disorderly in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, and sent to prison for a month, was formerly a student at your Hospital, and a son of the late Dr. Freund, physician to, and founder of, the German Hospital. The unfortunate man had escaped, as the Alderman said, from a lunatic asylum.”

So there we have it—the lunatic in the closet.  Despite searching every which way I can not find anything else about Herbert P.E. Freund.  No clue.  Not one.

Amelia Freund first appears on the scene in the 1870’s.  One must presume
that until that time she was occupied with have and raising babies.  We know that her husband declared bankruptcy in the 1850’s and therefore it must have been hard on the family.

Oh, for the record, I’ve now concluded that Amelia Louisa Rudiger was not Jewish—and therefore none of her progeny are Jewish.  Her uncle, Johann Christian Huttner, besides having the middle name Christian (!)  was described as a devout German Lutheran.  I think it is a stretch to conclude without any other evidence that Amelia could have had Jewish parents.  So I’m closing the book on this question.

She has an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and a friend from my church who is a research librarian at Dartmouth College helped me out a lot by getting a copy of it for me.

© Oxford University Press 2004–9

James Gregory, ‘Freund , Amelia Louisa [Amelia Lewis] (b. 1824/5, d. in or after 1881)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/74780, accessed 8 Dec 2009]

 I’ve also uncovered at least a couple of academics whose research involves the early British feminists and Amelia Lewis (Amelia Freund’s pen-name) is occasionally cited. [Note:  I find it really interesting that she chose a very English sounding pen-name., obviously modifying her middle name from ‘Louisa’ into ‘Lewis’; I’m tempted to infer from this that she was not exempt from the shadow of anti-Semitism.]

Since J.C.H. Freund was known for being an advocate for the poor and worked to better their condition, it is not surprising that his wife followed suit.  Amelia Lewis lectured and wrote widely on the topics of better nutrition and better means of cookery for the working classes.  She was quite devoted to demonstrating how homemakers could prepare more nutritious meals on very modest budgets.  Indeed, after joining her son in New York City she gave demonstrations to single female office workers on how they could prepare their own meals for just pennies.  Two such demonstrations were reported in the New York Times. Amelia Freund gave dinners in December 1880 and early January 1881, to members of the American Institute Farmers' Club and to women working at a department store. These dinners were held in her office, 704 Broadway, New York.

A paragraph from her biography provides a good sense of her interests and ambitions:

“Freund involved herself in social questions and educational reform. She attended the International Prison Congress, supported the Metropolitan Shopkeepers' Assistants' Association, and addressed the Social Science Congress in 1872. She planned a girls' school on ‘Prussian’ lines and was invited to lecture in Germany on the women's question. She lectured on the art of teaching at Exeter Hall, London. Her interest in food reform began at a dinner in London celebrating the Newsvendors' Benevolent and Provident Institution's anniversary in April 1872. Later she wrote that ‘I am tired of writing fine things [when] I am seeing more and more that we are at fault with our plain home arrangements, and that Food and Cooking are especially neglected’ (Food and Health Leaves, 3 Oct 1879, 165–6). Her next venture, from January to April 1874, was Women's Opinion, a journal (initially a weekly) that she edited, published, and printed, representing the ‘social, domestic and educational interests of women’. It supported women's suffrage, covered female labour, and like Woman had sections on music, fine arts, and the theatre.”

Amelia Freund was also an inventor and was granted a patent for a new type of stove:

“FREUND, Amelia Louisa, trading under the name of Amelia Lewis, of Southampton Street, in the county of Middlesex, authoress and editor and publisher of " Woman's Opinion."—" An improved system " or method of domestic cooking, and improved apparatus and utensils to be employed therein."

This invention relates to an improved system or method of domestic cooking, and to improved apparatus and utensils to be employed in carrying the same into practice, the object of the invention being to prepare food for human consumption, so that the human stomach may be able to digest the same or assimilate the substances contained therein to the requirements of the body more easily than if the food were prepared or cooked according to the systems or methods hitherto in use.

The improved system consists in cooking or preparing the food by the circulation round or about it of dry heat radiated from the fire or of moist heat or steam generated thereby from water contained within the same utensil, whilst the said food is enclosed from contact with atmospheric air.

In order to carry this system into practice I have found it necessary, firstly, to devise a more effective heating apparatus or cooking stove, one of such a character as to be specially adapted to the economical consumption of peat or peat coal, and in which the fire is completely under control; and secondly, to devise improved cooking utensils separately adapted to their special requirements.

The object I have sought to accomplish in carrying my ideas into practical effect have been to make the fire as small as possible and to retain the heat developed therefrom as long as possible in order that it may disperse itself more completely among all the cooking utensils in use, and not be allowed to escape wastefully up the chimney or flue immediately it is developed as in ordinary open fire places.”

[from British Patent applications pg 132   CHRONOLOGICÁL AND DESCRIPTIVE INDEX OF PATENTS APPLIED FOR AND PATENTS GRANTED, CONTAINING THE ABRIDGMENTS OF PROVISIONAL AND COMPLETE SPECIFICATIONS For the Year 1874. ]

Oh, gee.  Look what I just found.  Literally just this minute while looking for the url for the patent application above I stumbled upon this little gem:

http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/24280/pages/6700/page.pdf (accessed 22 March 2012.)

THE LONDON GAZETTE, DECEMBER 31, 1875.

The Bankruptcy Act, 1869.

In the London Bankruptcy Court.

In tbe Matter of Proceedings for Liquidation by Arrangement

or Composition with Creditors, instituted by Amelia Lewis Freund, otherwise Amelia Lewis, of 420 Strand, in the county of Middlesex, Authoress, Editor and Stove Manufacturer, a married woman trading apart from her husband.

N OTICE is hereby given, that a First General Meeting of the creditors of the above-named person has been •summoned to be hold at tbe offices of Messrs. Gamble and Harvey. No. 1, Gresbara-buildings, Basinghall-street. in the •city of London, Accountants, on the 12th day of January,

1876, at twelve o'clock at noon precisely.—Dated this 21stday of December, 1875.

CRONIN Hiid KIVOLTA, 22, Southampton-street,

Bloomsbury, Solicitors for the said Debtor.

This family certainly was creative, energetic, community-minded and educated—what they were not was fiscally adept.  Dr. Freund declared bankruptcy, his wife declared bankruptcy and according to his son’s biography, he too declared bankruptcy and fled to America ahead of his creditors.  I also now see something off:  Dr. Freund was still living at 7 West St. Finsbury Circus when he died in 1879, but in this 1875 bankruptcy filing, Amelia Freund gives 420 Strand as her address.  Hmmmm, I wonder what that signifies!!  We’ll never know.

Amelia Freund did move to New York after her husband died and I think that within 5 or 6 years she, too died.  I can’t find a New York obituary for her, but my mother gave me the copied text of a newspaper clipping with the notation "Article from daily paper."  It was probably passed on from Gertrude Freund Eyles to her daughter, Helen Eyles Heydrick.

"I have to announce the death of Mrs. Amelia Louisa Freund, a writer on musical subjects well-known in this country and in the United States.  Mrs. Freund, who died March 17, was sixty-one years of age.  She was brought up in London by her great uncle Charles Hufner, then one of the translators to the Foreign Office, a department who also employed the Lady, herself a most accomplished linguist.  She married the well-known London physician, Dr. J.C.H. Freund, a German, who in the Crimea was Deputy Inspector-General of Hospitals.  Dr. Freund, who was one of the founders of the German Hospital, London, died in 1879.  Besides her contributions to musical journalism, Mrs. Amelia Freund was a fluent speaker, the authoress of several works on Political Economy, and one of the first founders of a School of Cookery in London.  The lady went to America in 1880, and has since supported herself almost entirely by writing on musical subjects."

I have some additional research on Amelia Freund and if anyone is so interested I can pass it along.  I have found for sale a few copies of two of her pamphlets, “How to Live in Summer” and the companion “How to Live in Winter.”  The last one was from a London bookseller and the price was 300 pounds.

So there we have it—another remarkable and accomplished ancestor.  If only we know her whole story.