My name is Albert Leroy Stemwedel, Jr. I have been working on my family tree seriously since 1996. My father's father, Charles Stemwedel, was born in Tessin, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Germany, in 1870 and is believed to have immigrated to the United States with his father Albert and his sister Marie about 1882 or 1883. I am still searching for the record of their ship's passage. The three Stemwedels came to Chicago where Albert remarried in 1886 (believed to be his third marriage). Albert was the brother of Fred (or "Fritz") Stemwedel of Dundee, Illinois, and Caroline Burger (or Buerger) of Chicago.. Fred is known to have arrived in New York on the Alemania on 22 Oct 1882, along with his wife Marie (nee Albrecht), and their children Henry, Fred, and Caroline. It is not known when Albert's sister Caroline married Henry Buerger, or what happened to Henry following her death in 1895.

Albert Stemwedel had three more sons by Annette Nelson - two died in infancy, but Albert Walter Stemwedel worked as an insurance solicitor and married Anna Larson before dying at age 33. Albert Stemwedel was naturalized in 1890 and died in 1906, but he lived long enough to enjoy three grandchildren. Marie Stemwedel had two (known) children by Joseph Dahl: Melvin Charles Dahl, born in Chicago in 1895, and Gladys Dahl, born there in 1899 and died after 3 months. And Charles Stemwedel married Katherine Gavin (pictured above) in 1903, who bore Albert Leroy Stemwedel in Chicago in 1904.

Marie Stemwedel Dahl subsequently married Charles Rohde and bore him three children, Charles, Dorothea Annette, and Donald Charles Rohde. The Rohdes lived in San Francisco, where Marie died in 1945. She lived long enough to enjoy the birth of her grandson, Donald Lee Berkenkamp in 1944.

It is not known whether Albert, Fred, and Caroline Stemwedel are related to the Stemwedels who came from Germany to Wisconsin about 1870 and subsequently settled in the Dakota Territory. It is possible that they are cousins to Christina Stemwedel who married Peter Scharf in Chicago in 1874, but this has not been proven to date.

Click on STEMWEDEL and related Families to see my database at Rootsweb's WorldConnect.

Click on Early Chicago Obituaries to see some of the obituaries I have collected.

All inquiries relating to the Stemwedel family are welcome. For email,

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© 2000 Albert. L. Stemwedel, Jr.