Everyone in the Sharmer family who has a page on this site, from Jochim Scharmer of Elmshorn to his great-great-granddaughters, and below them the relatives who appear in the letters. Click a photo to open that person’s page. Dates come from the documents on this site, family recollection, and cemetery and county records; living members of the family are shown without dates.
Family Tree
See the whole family on one page, generation by generation, from Holstein and Ireland in the early 1800s to today. Open the Family Tree →
The family, generation by generation
Holstein, the West and Sidney, Nebraska
Planada, California
Their children
Joseph III married Hannelore Ahrens; Jay married Nancy Karr.
Grandsons
Great-granddaughters
Relatives in the letters
Joe’s letters to Ruby are full of family: his sisters, their husbands and children, his aunt in Chicago. Here is who they were, with links to every letter and story each one appears in. Joe’s boss, the brokers and the other people he wrote about are in Who’s Who in the Letters.
Jump to: Joe and Ruby · Joe’s parents and sisters · Dodie’s family · Ruby’s parents
People: Joseph I · Katie · Laura / Aunt Larry · Aunt Kathryn · Dodie · Aunt Lizzie · Clair Van Slyke · Gretchen · Jim Welsh · Jacy · James and Nettie Wilson · the little granddaughter
Joe and Ruby
Joseph “Joe” Sharmer (1897–1954), who wrote the letters, and Ruby E. Wilson Sharmer (1909–1981), who received them, each have a page of their own with their life story, timeline, photos and papers. Their daughter Laurel’s recollections run all through this site.
The little granddaughter. Joe and Ruby’s first child, a girl, was stillborn at the end of September 1939, about fourteen months after their wedding. Merced Cemetery records a “Baby Sharmer” who died on September 27, 1939, buried in Babyland (Masonic section, Lot 9, plot #146), very likely her. Ruby’s mother wrote that Joe was “so heartbroken.”
Stories & documents: The Little Granddaughter
Joe’s parents and sisters
Joseph Sharmer (Joseph I) (May 25, 1829 – June 14, 1898). Born Jochim Scharmer in Elmshorn, in the Duchy of Holstein, the son of Johann Scharmer and Anna Peters; his father, a sailor, very likely drowned in a shipwreck at the mouth of the Elbe in 1847 (his story). He came to America that year and followed the sea for several years as a ship’s carpenter, “sailing to many ports in different parts of the world.” In 1853 he went to California, where he mined and raised stock in the last years of the Gold Rush, then raised stock in Nevada until 1871 and in Brookville, Kansas, until the spring of 1874, when he brought his cattle to Sidney, Nebraska, and started a ranch. In February 1881 he and James Sutherland opened the Sidney Exchange Bank, with Joseph as president. The two also ran a large wholesale and retail grocery, J. Sutherland & Co., with a warehouse on the north side of the Union Pacific tracks that handled nearly all the freight for the Black Hills, and Joseph owned a great deal of real estate in town (Andreas’ History of the State of Nebraska, 1882). He died of stomach cancer at his home on Second Street, “surrounded by wife and four children,” and was buried after a Requiem Mass at the Catholic church, which was filled to overflowing. The Sidney Telegraph called him “one of Sidney’s oldest and most respected citizens”: “‘Uncle Joe,’ as he was intimately known, was a man whom to know was to admire for his bluff and hearty manner” (read his obituaries).
Letters: A Dead Ringer for Mama
Stories & documents: His full story: From Elmshorn to Sidney · Uncle Joe and Katie: The Sidney Obituaries
Catherine “Katie” O’Connor Sharmer (November 20, 1863 – April 11, 1907). Born in Quincy, Massachusetts, the daughter of Peter Conner (or Connor) and Catherine “Kate” Caldwell; the Quincy birth register gives 20 November 1863; her gravestone says 26 November 1865. Katie came to Sidney with her mother in the early 1880s and went to school there. On November 10, 1884, she married Joseph Sharmer, with her sister Lizzie and Joseph’s best friend Jacob Heintz as witnesses. They had four children: Laura, Kathryn, Josephine and Joseph. After three girls they named one daughter Josephine, sure they would never have a son; Joe arrived in November 1897, seven months before his father died. Left a widow “with four children, with scant supply of this world’s goods,” Katie was a devout member of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church and a leading officer of the Ladies of the Maccabees. When she died, Kathryn was a pupil at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Omaha and was brought home by two of the sisters; Josephine was in the 10th grade and Joe in the 3rd. Their school wrote that the children “are now left without father or mother.” Joseph and Katie are buried together in Greenwood Cemetery, Sidney, Block A, Lot 10 (read her obituary). Read her full story.
Letters: A Dead Ringer for Mama
Stories & documents: Dodie and Her Little Brother · Uncle Joe and Katie: The Sidney Obituaries
Dodie (Josephine A. Sharmer Van Slyke). Joe’s older sister, named after their father; as a baby he couldn’t say “Josephine.” Very small, like her son Jacy. Born in Sidney on November 22, 1889 (her Social Security record); she was in the 10th grade when their mother died in April 1907. The 1899 on her Find a Grave memorial is wrong. Married Clair Van Slyke in Denver on October 4, 1910 (Fort Collins Weekly Courier, October 20, 1910); they lived first in Fort Collins, Colorado, where Kathryn often visited them and their daughter Gretchen was born in 1912, and later in Washington, D.C., where Joe visited her in December 1937. She died there on March 10, 1943 and is buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery, Suitland, Maryland. Her story.
Letters: A Dead Ringer for Mama · Beautiful as the Morning · Snow, Sleet, Smoke and Coal Dust · You Are My Pal · Still a Baby in Their Eyes · Burn Them Up · Your Special, Mailed New Year’s Eve
Stories & documents: Gretchen and the Mail Boy · Jacy · Dodie and Her Little Brother · Uncle Joe and Katie: The Sidney Obituaries · A Christmas Card from the Welshes · From the Broad Street Station · Report on New Year Eve · Here I Am in the Big City
Aunt Kathryn (Kathryn M. Sharmer Kratz) (September 26, 1887 – October 28, 1969). Joe’s sister, remembered as very tall. Married Earl Kratz in San Francisco in July 1918. Earl (1885–1948) ran the Kratz Abstract Co. in Sidney and practiced law there from 1925. After her mother’s death she went west too: by October 1911 she was living in Reedley, California, with Laura and Myron Sager, and she was Reedley’s town librarian from October 1913 until she resigned in November 1917 (Reedley Exponent), with long visits to Dodie in Fort Collins (Fort Collins Weekly Courier, 1911–12). After her marriage she made her home in Sidney, Nebraska, where she is buried in Greenwood Cemetery with her parents. She is the “Mrs. Catherine Kratz” of the 1954 Assembly resolution.
Letters: A Dead Ringer for Mama
Stories & documents: House Resolution No. 22 · Dodie and Her Little Brother · Uncle Joe and Katie: The Sidney Obituaries · My RUBY · Every Click of the Wheels
Aunt Lizzie (Lizzie O’Connor Heintz). Katie’s half-sister, born in Braintree, Massachusetts, on 7 December 1865, the daughter of Peter Conner and his second wife Ellen Sheedy, and so Joe’s aunt on his mother’s side (Katie’s family). She married Jacob Heintz, an attorney for the railroad and Joseph I’s best friend; the two of them were the witnesses at Joseph and Katie’s wedding in Sidney, Nebraska. They later moved to Chicago and raised a large family. Joe met her and her children for the first time there in December 1937: “She is 72 and a dead ringer for Mama” (A Dead Ringer for Mama).
Letters: A Dead Ringer for Mama
Laura Sharmer Sager (“Aunt Larry”) (born December 1885). The eldest of the four children. She married Myron O. Sager, and in 1910 they were living in Denver with their daughter Catherine (born 1910, later Catherine Briscoe of San Francisco); her twelve-year-old brother Joe was living with them, three years after their mother’s death (1910 census). She is the “Mrs. Myron Sager” named as Joe’s sister in the 1954 resolution, and the family’s Aunt Larry (below).
Aunt Larry. Lived at 3355 Octavia Street, San Francisco. Joe used her address as his return address, and she is probably the “Larry” who packed his muffler. Very tall, like Aunt Kathryn. Buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Colma, with her daughter Catherine, where Joe is buried too. She was Joe’s eldest sister, Laura Sharmer Sager (above); the daughter Catherine buried with her is the Catherine Sager of the 1910 census, later Catherine Briscoe. She gave Jay Sharmer the family’s Midwinter Fair pitcher. The last visit.
Letters: A Dead Ringer for Mama · Five Degrees Above in Cincinnati · Your Special, Mailed New Year’s Eve
Stories & documents: House Resolution No. 22 · Dodie and Her Little Brother · A Visit to Aunt Larry · Uncle Joe and Katie: The Sidney Obituaries · Desert and Sage Brush · My RUBY
Dodie’s family
Clair Van Slyke. Dodie’s husband, father of Gretchen and Jacy.
Letters: Beautiful as the Morning · Still a Baby in Their Eyes
Stories & documents: Gretchen and the Mail Boy · Jacy · Dodie and Her Little Brother
Gretchen Charline Van Slyke Welsh (April 24, 1912 – November 16, 1998). Born in Colorado. A home economist at McCormick & Company in Baltimore, she married Jim Welsh in 1937, the year Joe went “back to Balto with Gretchen.” Later a Baltimore philanthropist; buried in New Cathedral Cemetery, Baltimore. Her story. A Christmas card from the Welshes.
Letters: Snow, Sleet, Smoke and Coal Dust · Still a Baby in Their Eyes · Burn Them Up · Your Special, Mailed New Year’s Eve
Stories & documents: Gretchen and the Mail Boy · Jacy · Dodie and Her Little Brother · A Christmas Card from the Welshes · Report on New Year Eve
Jim (James Francis) Welsh (1907–1995). Gretchen’s husband. He started at McCormick as the mail boy and became its Executive Vice President. He and Gretchen had a son, Michael, who appears with them on their family Christmas card.
Letters: Snow, Sleet, Smoke and Coal Dust · Still a Baby in Their Eyes · Your Special, Mailed New Year’s Eve
Stories & documents: Gretchen and the Mail Boy · A Christmas Card from the Welshes
Jacy (Cpl. Joseph C. Van Slyke) (January 17, 1921 – January 25, 1945). Born in Washington, D.C. Gunner with the 866th Bomb Squadron, 494th Bomb Group, killed in action in the Philippines. Buried in the Manila American Cemetery. His story.
Letters: Snow, Sleet, Smoke and Coal Dust
Stories & documents: Jacy · Dodie and Her Little Brother · From the Broad Street Station · Here I Am in the Big City
Ruby’s parents
James William Wilson (November 14, 1882 – April 2, 1944) and Nettie A. Holt Wilson (February 14, 1890 – September 5, 1956). Both born in Texas; both died in Merced and are buried in Merced Cemetery. James was the eldest of the ten children of Samuel and Olive (Anderson) Wilson (Laurel Sharmer, 2026). It was Nettie who wrote of Joe’s grief in 1939 (“The Little Granddaughter”).
Stories & documents: The Little Granddaughter · The Postmaster of Planada
