Good news more good news and another mystery

Ok, so yesterday I headed out to one of the Cook County, IL court offices hoping to get a copy of Julius Bolda's death certificate. The satellite offices of the county can be a great way to avoid the long turnaround time that can happen when ordering vital records through snail mail. The problem though is that not all offices have access to all the records so your success can be hit or miss.

So last time I was at the office in Rolling Meadows I was able to get 3 out of the 4 records I was hoping for. This time I only got 1 out 3, but the one I got was the one I wanted. Julius' record was available and here it is



If we do a quick rundown of the info, we can see the Ward St address that matches both the census records and the naturalization card, and also, as predicted, Mary, his wife, is the informant. So we can be assured that this is the right person. With that out of the way, we can take a look at the info provided. What I was really interested from this record was place of birth information and parentage. Unfortunately, this record isn't much help for the place of birth because Mary just put "Germany". So we'll have to wait for the naturalization paperwork from the county and hope that more details will included there.

Regarding the parentage information, this is where we get another bit of good news, as well as the mystery. Mary confirms that to her knowledge, Julius' mother was Veronica. This is consistent with the theory that the older couple who arrived with Julius in 1887 in Baltimore were his parents. But instead of seeing the name of the head of that family from the passenger list, Franz, here we see that Mary has given the name of Julius' father as Joseph. So there's the mystery. Was Mary just mistaken about Julius' father's name, or was Franz not his father afterall? If this was the case, then that would mean that Franz was Veronica's second husband, but then why would Julius' surname be the same as Franz and not his real father? Unless his real father was related or Franz legally adopted him....