|Sylvester the Cat, courtesy of Wikipedia.org|
After finishing my last blog post, I started reviewing a newspaper article that I thought might contain a reference to John Adolph Leistiko, a German immigrant from eastern Europe and first husband of my great-great-grandaunt Christine/Justine "Tina" Joseph, but wasn't sure if the Adolph Leistiko it mentioned was him. The article (more like a paragraph in the "Society Notes of the Week" section) was about a fraternity I'd never heard of called the Sons of Hermann, celebrating something called "Sylvester abend". The only Sylvester I know is a cat who says "thufferin' thuccotash." After a little internet research, I found that Sylvester is the German name for New Year's Eve, because that's the night of the feast of Saint Sylvester, a Catholic Pope who died on December 31, 335. Abend turned out to be German for 'evening', so Sylvester abend would be New Year's Eve night. That made sense, as the issue of the paper was dated 5 January 1902. So a German New Year's celebration sounded like a pretty good connection for Adolph Leistiko.
|Tina Joseph and Adolph Leistiko |
on their wedding day
|Tina and Adolph Leistiko, |
with their son Alfred