Week #1 - FRESH START

In 1901, My grandmother, Flora Sarah Wenzel, at age 19, escaped the drunken rages of her father, Peter Nicholas Wenzel, in Poughkeepsie, New York, and fled to Jersey City, New Jersey with William C. (nee Dickhaut) Lieberknecht.

Flora, (now Florence), assumed she was getting a FRESH START. Within a year or two, she was a new mother of a daughter, Dorothy, and by 1908 a daughter Ottilie, Dorothy having died in infancy.  By 1910 the family of three was in Detroit, Michigan, and in 1911 another daughter, Barbara, was born in Santa Barbara, California. Was this the FRESH START Florence had envisioned?

There was a lot of moving around the country going on, as in 1912 the family was living in El Paso, Texas after a short stint in Oxnard, California. In 1918 they were back in Oxnard living in the rooming house of Florence's mother, Annie Taylor Wenzel, now Annie Adams, and her new husband, Thomas W. Adams as shown in the 1920 US Census.

The 1920 US Census also shows William C. and Florence Lieberknecht living on West Ortega Street in Santa Barbara, CA but without the two daughters. They must have been in the process of settling in Santa Barbara and had moved into the apartment house there. That's why they were counted twice in the 1920 US Census. By 1922, William had left the family in Santa Barbara and had gone to Los Angeles was working at the Los Angeles Times. He was a linotype mechanic having registered a patent for a linotype setting machine in New York City in 1904. His step-father, George Lieberknecht, had been a printer in Omaha, Nebraska where William took up the trade and most likely learned the linotype. William eventually married a woman in 1929 in Oakland, CA, and moved to San Jose, CA where he retired from the San Jose Mercury News and died in 1945.

Meanwhile, Florence, looking for a new FRESH START, met and married in 1926 a neighbor, David McLean, a Scotsman fresh from Argyll, Scotland via British Columbia and San Diego. David was a boatbuilder and craftsman, and eventually, he became an ice delivery man for the Santa Barbara Ice Company.

David step-fathered the two girls, Ottilie and Barbara until they left home for marriage and careers.  Florence and David remained married until David's death in 1955. Florence then lived with her daughter, Barbara, until Florence's death in 1967. This had been Florence's last FRESH START and it lasted with David for 29 years.