Updated! The photo has been reunited with its family!
My wonderful community has solved another mystery photo! This photo from Reading, Pennsylvania, is labelled with the name of the man, but the writing in pencil is so poorly visible that I couldn’t make out the surname. I could only read “John J. … and Wife”, so I once again turned to my Instagram and Facecook community for their take on the surname. And again they came through!
The writing on the back of this photo reads “John J. Dribelbis and Wife”.
I would date this photo to late 1910s. The wife’s dress is simpler, the hem shorter and she was probably not wearing a corset, a typical trend of the mid- to late-1910s.
With those clues in mind, I am pretty sure I’ve found the couple in the records. These were John Joseph Dribelbis (also Dreibelbis) and his wife Anna Ella Reger (also Rieger or Reiger in the records) who married on July 18, 1913 in Berks County, Pennsylvania.
John was the youngest child of five children of farmer Cleophas S. and Martha Dreibelbis. John was born on June 24, 1889 in Shoemakersville, Pa. In 1900, he and his parents and his three older siblings lived in Perry, Berks County. The second oldest sibling Israel had passed away as a toddler in 1884, so before John was born.
While his older brothers became a miller and a superindendent, John chose another path and became a public school teacher in Ontelaunee, Berks County.
Anna Ella Rieger was the same age as John, she was also born in 1892. Anna’s father John Rieger was an inspector with the Reading Water Board. Anna’s name comes up often in the local Reading Times in connection with a Sewing Club, as a chairman of the cake competition at the icecream festival, or as a dancer in a Suffragette Play. She seems to have been an active member of the community. She must have been about the age in the second photo I found on the FindAGrave page dedicated to her:
Soon after John and Anna got married, they welcomed their only son, John Stuart (also Stewart) Dreibelbis on February 15, 1914. Life was idyllic, if only there had been no war raging in Europe and the USA were sucked into the turmoil. John was drafted in 1917.
According to his WWI draft card, John was short and slender with dark brown hair and brown eyes. Sounds like our man!
John survived the world war, but sadly not what came after – the Spanish flu. The influenza or la grippe hit Pennsylvania hard and John was among the thousands who perished from Reading the surrounding areas. John died on October 20, 1918, of pneumonia as a result of the influenza.
Source: newspapers.com
I don’t know if John contracted the virus in the troops or from school. The US troops were heavily affected by the disease, tens of thousands of soldiers died. The public school stayed open under strict regulations, so if John had been released from military service, he was teaching in Ontelaunee at the time.
Reading this, I had a bit of a deja-vu with our own situation from not so long ago as Covid took toll on the lives and health of so many. The articles in the local newspapers in 1918 urged people to take necessary measures, some institutions closed whereas others decided to keep the doors open, people with symptoms were urged to isolate. Doctors, many of them involved in serving in the troops, were hardly available to attend to the sick who were left to self-medicate if possible. Remember, there was no luxury of mobile phones or TVs, not many had a landline so early in the day either. So the sick were cut off from the rest of the world. That must have been truly hard for the sick as well as the families...
Source: newspapers.com
John was not even 30 when the mysterious virus took him. His widow Anna and their 3-year-old son moved in with Anna’s parents John and Ella Rieger where I find them in the 1920 Census. Anna remarried in April 1922 in Reading. Her husband, Nathan William Miller, was a glass cutter and glazier by profession. John Stuart remained Anna’s only child. The couple lived in Reading where Nathan operated a shop at 231 Chruch Street for more than 30 years. Anna was widowed for the second time in September 1951 at just 59 years of age. Anna didn’t marry a third time. She lived her remaining years in Berks County where she died at the age of 90 and was buried at the Good Shepherd Cemetery in Muhlenberg Township.
John and Anna's son John Stuart looked so much like mum Anna, don’t you agree! A 1932 Reading High School yearbook photo shows John Stuart at about 16-17 years of age. Such a friendly warm smile!
John Stuart lived a long life of 84 years and passed away in January 1999. I will leave his obituary here for you to read about his life.
Source: FindaGrave.com
John never got to see his son John Stuart grow up, never knew him as a schoolchild, a teenager, a young soldier, a grown man, a husband and a father, but I’m sure John would have been so proud of John “Stew” Stuart. I hope to find John and Anna's great-grandchildren and return this photo to them. I've added the photo of the couple to FamilySearch and FindaGrave.
Comments