Paul Sr. (1854-1921)
Paul Kortsch Sr. was Ferdinand’s middle son and Mom’s grandfather. (He can be seen, just barely, in the window in the third picture below.)
He turned his hand to a number of occupations starting in 1870 when he was sixteen–cigar maker apprentice, presumably to his father, clerk, milkman, laborer, mason, foreman–before starting a part time trunk delivery service from the Milwaukee train station in the 1880s while working full time at his father’s cigar manufacturing concern. It quickly became a successful business, named Paul’s Express Line & Storage, a package and merchandise delivery service, around 1890 and then the larger Paul Kortsch Moving and Storage Company in 1912.
Paul Jr., Mom’s father, never went into the family business as his two brothers did, perhaps because he wasn’t interested or his cardiac problems prevented him from engaging in a strenuous occupation.
The second picture below refers to son Michael Kortsch as the proprietor and so probably the 1920s.
Paul Sr. and Dora
In 1878 Paul Sr. married Dorothea (‘Dora’) Landgraf. A picture of Dora a few years before her death appears below (second from the left). She was born in Bavaria in 1851 and immigrated by herself in 1873. On the ship’s manifest she claimed to be four years older than she was.
They had nine children:
Wisconsin Ave. Bridge (1880s)
Mary Kortsch
1879-1953
“Marie” on her birth certificate
Frank Kortsch
1880-1929
Died suddenly in his sleep. Cause unknown
See more
Claire Ida Kortsch
1882-1905
She went by ‘Ida’
Upon the death of Paul Sr. in 1921 the business was taken over by William, who became president of the company, and Michael, secretary-treasurer, with their mother Dorothea as vice-president.
A Quarreling Family
Family businesses are rich seedbeds of conflict and long-lived grudges, and the Kortsch Moving Company was not an exception. Ferdinand’s second wife, Eugenie Bissing, who brought her two children to the Kortsch house, appears to have quarreled so bitterly with her Kortsch stepchildren that she cut them out of her will.
She even left Milwaukee, partly to be with her daughter, it’s true, but probably also to avoid continued immersion in a disagreeable situation. More details on Eugenie and this unhappy turn of events can be read in Ferdinand’s biography.
Eugenie seems to have understood perfectly what effect her will would have on the family. She waited until 1911 to write an official one, a year after she had left Milwaukee and living 400 miles away in Hannibal, Missouri, with her daughter, Alwine. In her will, besides leaving her entire estate to her two biological children, Eugenie pointedly ignored the existence of the three Kortsch brothers entirely.
Whether the Kortsches formally disputed the will isn’t known. The speed with which it was validated by the Hannibal Probate Court in 1917 suggests not.
This unfortunate quarrelsomeness continued into the next generation. Despite having watched their father and uncles feud with their grandmother, Michael and William clashed over the running of the business even with their mother, Dora, who had been appointed vice president of the firm, acting as intermediary. The disagreements reached the point in the middle 1930s that the brothers decided after just fourteen or fifteen years of joint ownership to sell the concern to an interested third party.
Later, just when is uncertain, another, younger member of the Kortsch family bought it back and today it is still in business, still owned by a Kortsch, and still at 2403 N. Maryland Avenue 140 years after it was started.
After the sale, Michael and his wife Hazel moved to Los Angeles, probably also wanting to remove themselves from a disagreeable situation. In a sign of just how rancorous the split between the brothers had become, Michael and Hazel left even though they were also leaving behind their two young-adult children, who decided to stay and continue their lives in Milwaukee.
(A picture of Michael and several of Hazel.)
Michael and Hazel remained in Los Angeles for the rest of their lives. Dorothy Claire and Ross remained in Milwaukee and are buried there.