German Royal blood?

[vaneramos]

That photo of my great grandmother reminds me of an interesting bit of family folklore. Her parents were both German immigrants, and this story is about her father, Freddie Fredericks.

My grandmother says Freddie's mother was a servant to the German royal family. Freddie, born in 1860, was a bastard son to Crown Prince Friedrich. His mother emigrated alone with Freddie to Detroit in the 1870s. Dommy was tight-lipped about her family history, so I don't know how my grandmother pieced this story together.

Historically, Kaiser Friedrich reigned for 98 days in 1888 before dying of throat cancer. His son, Kaiser Wilhelm, was the last German monarch. He abdicated in 1918 and died in Holland in 1941.

Here is a photograph of Freddie Fredericks with his wife, Anna (Kruger). Beside it is a photo of Kaiser Wilhelm, who would have been his half brother, and was one year older.

I'm interested to hear what other people see in these photographs.






The story would make Kaiser Friedrich my great great great grandfather. What do you think?

[Poll #231363]

Comments

[melanie.livejournal.com]

i just love those old military uniforms.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, very attractive isn't it!

[artricia.livejournal.com]

There seems to be a family resemblence, especially around the nose and mouth. It's hard to tell with the different angles or their faces, but even the bone structure and eyes look like they might be similar.

What really gets me, though, is the way they are both holding their hands.

I did a little genealogical research a few years ago, and found that way way back, I'm related to the Plantagenet family. I wonder how accurate many family trees are; there must be a great deal of innaccuracy because of children born from affairs and the like. And I suspect that the royal wild oats were sown far and wide, because that seems to be the way priveledge works.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

It doesn't show up as well in my scan, but it's clear in the original photo: Freddie and Kaiser Wilhelm have exactly the same chin cleft. If you look at the photo of my great grandmother in the previous post, you might notice they have the same bone structure in their chins and cheeks, too. It's amazing to think the granddaughter of the Kaiser might have lived in the little house across from my public school where I would go once a week and she would serve me homemade cookies and cold, cold milk.

The hands are interesting indeed. Apparently Kaiser Wilhelm had one withered hand, and that was how he hid it. I wonder if my great great grandfather chose this pose deliberately. My great grandmother had extremely large hands. That is the main thing I remember from the last time I saw her in the nursing home. The rest of her body had shrunken and twisted with arthritis, but she could still feed herself with her big, strong hands. You can see one of them in her photo.

I have a lot of genealogical information on many of the lines in my family. What's remarkable is how long most of my ancestors lived in Ontario. Freddie and Anna were the most recent immigrants. But there were plenty of interesting people.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

You left out "All of the above".