My Relative Was Erratic

My latest Ebay purchase has arrived. But I'm not going to post an image from it due to potential copyright violations.

It's an issue of Sports Illustrated from 1956 which mentions my double cousin, Gloria Fecht. Author Betty Hicks (a golfer herself) doesn't have much to say about Fecht other than Fecht was a "former professional ice skater, [and] is a good driver but is erratic."

I'm not exactly certain Sports Illustrated is going to be concerned about a black and white picture of a golfer from 1956, but we're going to err on the side of caution and not include it in the post. Unfortunately Fecht's picture in the article is dark, her face is not easy to see, and the image is not in color as are some of the pictures. But it's not often I find a relatively close relative mentioned in a national magazine so the item was a nice one to locate.

The obvious genealogy lesson is that one never knows what one will find on  Ebay. Other thoughts include that your relative may have made a career change as Fecht did from professional ice skater to professional golfer. Never assume your relative stayed one one and only one career path.

Source: Hicks, Betty, "Golf and the Women," Sports Illustrated, July 23 1956, p. 31.

1948 Voter's Registration Lists for the Henry Fecht Family

Voters' registrations lists are a wonderful source, particularly after women were given the right to vote.

If didn't already know of the connection between Henry, Catherine, Gloria, and James H.Fecht, this 1948 voter's registration list from Los Angeles, California, would have hinted at it. The four Fecht are all living at 11005 Hesby Street at the time of their registration. The roster does not indicate their relationship, but Henry and Catherine are husband and wife and Gloria and James are their children. The "R" after their names indicates that they are registered Republicans.

Los Angeles Precinct 2672 Register of Voters for 1948; digital image,   Ancestry.com, 20 January 2013

This 1948 register did indicate that the Fechts moved to California in time to register and appear on the 1948  Register of Voters. I'm not certain of just when they would have had to have registered in order to appear on that roster. In my case, pinpoining their migration that precisely is not necessary--so I'm not overly concerned about it. What was crucial was to know that the parents moved to California in addition to the children. These voter lists could be combined with city directories to provide a more detailed picture of the family as the directories would give ocupations.

In this case, it is easy to see that these individuals were living at the same address. In the cases of more common names, go through all the entries for a specific surname to determine if there are others living at the same address.

Henry, Catherine, and Gloria are living at 1944 East 70th Street in Chicago, Illinois, at the time of the 1940 Census. Son James is not enumerated with them--possibly due to his enlistment in the military. As we've seen in other posts, the Fechts were in Chicago for at least part of the duration of World War II.

Stay tuned...

Gloria Fecht-1948 Ice Follies

It took some searching, but The Billboard, 29 Dec 1947 (page 4) contains an article on the "Ice Follies of 1948."

The article was obtained digitally on http://books.google.com.

We've been discussing Gloria Fecht here and this is the first article I have been able to locate that specifically mentioned her Ice Follies experience. The entire issue can be viewed in the window below:



We'll have updates as more information is located. I'm not certain we'll have a Casefile Clues article on Gloria as there hasn't been any really "difficult" research or analysis in order to find her. I did have to be careful as her one first cousin (a Fecht man) married a woman named Gloria and so there were two contemporaries with the same fairly unusual name of Gloria Fecht.

Newspaper Photo of Gloria Fecht from 1951

It's taken a little while, but I've located one of the better pictures of Gloria Fecht using digital images of newspapers on GenealogyBank.com. This picture was taken at a tournament in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the National Women's Amateur tournament in August of 1951. There were several pictures in various newspapers on GenealogyBank.com, but this one was one of the better ones. It is important to remember the technology of the time and the fact that the digital versions of these newspapers were created from the microfilm. 

I'd never heard of Gloria until I did genealogy, but in looking at the picture of these two women, if I had to guess which one of them was Gloria (who was a member of the Habben-Fecht clan), I'd go with the one on the left as there's a clear resemblance to other members of that family. Gloria Fecht was a granddaughter of Hancock County, Illinois, residents George H. (1868-1938) and Anna (Huls) Fecht (1869-1934). George H. Fecht is a sibling to my great-great-grandmother, Anke Fecht and Anna Huls is the niece of my great-great-grandfather, Jann Habben. 

The larger image shows the picture somewhat better. All in all, a really nice picture from the Seattle Daily Times of 22 August 1951, obtained digitally on GenealogyBank.com.

A Refugee From the Ice Follies

I'll be honest, I really didn't believe my grandmother when she said her relative Gloria Fecht was a famous ice-skater. I guess I was wrong. The clipping above comes from The Oregonian  on 22 August 1951 and was obtained digitally on GenealogyBank.com.


As mentioned in an earlier post, there are two Gloria Fechts in  in the Social Security Death Index, one born in 1930 and one born in 1926. The age of the Gloria in this post is consistent with the 1926 birth. 


The 1930 Gloria from the Social Security Death Index, for reasons we'll see in a later post, is not the one who was the skater and golfer (turns out these two Gloria Fechts are probably sisters-in-law). This article clearly connects the skater and the golfer and there were other articles in newspapers on GenealogyBank.com that also connected the skater with the golfer, but they will not all be posted here. This one provided an age consistent with a 1926 year of birth. It will be a while before I get through all the references to Gloria Fecht--if I ever do.


It also isn't often you see someone referred to as a "refugee from the ice follies." 

Gloria Fecht-Ice Skating Star--It She A Relative?

One would think that a name like Gloria Fecht would be uncommon enough. Despite how uncommon the name appears one cannot be too careful. I've started preliminary research on a Gloria Fecht, born in Illinois

A reference to Fecht appears in a newspaper which was located in digital form on GenealogyBank.com.

The 27 July 1959 issue of the Oregonian contains this mention of Gloria Fecht, of Southern Pines, North Carolina. It also indicates she was a former ice skating star. My grandmother Ufkes (who did have a cousin Gloria Fecht--the one I'm researching) indicated that her cousin Gloria Fecht was a famous ice skater. However, that's not proof that I have the right person. I've learned that one has to be careful with uncommon names.

One would think that the name Gloria Fecht would not be all that common. However, there are two references in the Social Security Death Index for a Gloria Fecht:

FECHT, GLORIA	27 Sep 1930	15 Jan 1998 (V)	67	29617 (Greenville, Greenville, SC)	(none specified)	Florida
FECHT, GLORIA	23 Feb 1926	Jun 1980	54	(not specified)	92264 (Palm Springs, Riverside, CA)	Illinois

The dates of birth are close enough that it would be easy to confuse the two--so I'll have to be careful in the research. The Gloria Fecht I am researching was born around 1926 according to the 1930 census on Ancestry.com.

At the risk of being short, I know this Gloria Fecht in the census is the one I want Henry and Catherine Fecht is the "right" couple (Henry is my great-grandfather's first cousin). The Gloria in their 1930 census entry is the "right" age to be the Gloria born in 1926 in the Social Security Death Index.

I've got more work to do, and in a future post we'll discuss an update. Hopefully there are discoveries to be made in the newspapers at GenealogyBank.com and Ancestry.com.

The key will be making certain I have the "right" Gloria Fecht. The Gloria Fecht in the newspaper article lives in North Carolina at the time of the article and the "other" Gloria in the Social Security Death Index dies in South Carolina--making me wonder if I really do have the right person and which Gloria was which.

Henry Fecht (from the 1930 Census entry above) was born in Hancock County, Illinois, the son of George and Anna (Huls) Fecht.

Stay tuned.

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1930 Census:

Source Citation: Year: 1930; Census Place: Chicago, Cook, Illinois; Roll: 418; Page: 6B; Enumeration District: 82