Thursday, December 31, 2015

How Arthur & Edyth First Met

I don't think any of us ever heard the story of how Arthur and Edyth first met. They'd maintained a simmering feud for as long as anyone could remember, and we had all heard grandma's stories of Arthur's various failings as a husband and father, and a few of us had even heard rumors of infidelity on Edyth's part. So no one thought of asking either of them how they fell in love. It was my father's conviction that they were still fond of one another but, to keep up appearances, they kept their softer sentiments hidden from the family.

Edyth was probably introduced to Arthur through his younger sister, Esther, with whom Edyth had been sharing an apartment in Janesville where they both were grade school teachers. The 1919 City Directory shows them living at 121 Court Street. Edyth is teaching first and second grade at Jackson School, and Esther is teaching second grade at Adams.

1919 Janesville City Directory showing Edyth teaching at Jackson and Esther at Adams School. Elsewhere in the directory we find that they share an apartment at 121 Court Street.
There's a picture of Edyth taken about this time and standing beside a woman I want to believe is Esther. They're both looking very stylish in their hats and furs and have the proud appearance of professional acquaintances rather than close friends or sisters.

Edyth on right, with (possibly) Esther Friedrich, taken around 1920.
Meanwhile, Arthur was in officer's training with the Naval Auxiliary Reserve in Pelham Bay, New York. I imagine Esther inviting Edyth to spend a weekend at the farm when, purely by coincidence, her older brother was home on leave. Could our grandmother have ever been so silly as to fall for a man in uniform? I have no doubt she could, and am confident she did.

Arthur, home on leave from officer's training with the Naval Auxiliary Reserve, about 1918.
Still, it was another three years before they married. Arthur needed to finish his undergraduate studies at Lawrence College and complete a Master's program at Northwestern University in addition to completing his service with the Naval Reserve. Fortunately Armistice was declared just one week into Arthur's officer's training program, so, after graduating, he bravely served his country by performing clerical tasks at the Municipal Ferry Terminal in New York City. He was relieved from active duty on March 8, 1919 and finally discharged (honorably, of course) on May 9, 1922.

They were married in De Pere on June 27th, 1923. Arthur's brother, Elmer, and Edyth's sister, Elma, were witnesses.

Arthur and Edyth's marriage certificate, June 27, 1923, De Pere, Wisconsin.

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

A Picture of August & Lena Friedrich

Update, Summer 2018:
A cousin in Wisconsin recently sent me a portrait of our great grandparents. I no longer think that the man in my original post is John August Friedrich who would've died before, or very shortly after the photo was taken. The man I mistook for him may be the current owner of John August's old farm, or just a family friend who was kind enough to humor the grandchildren who were visiting—perhaps for John August's funeral—from their home in Tacoma, Washington. I'm still pretty certain, however, that the older woman behind the cow is our great grandmother, Lena Holtz Friedrich.
John August and Lena (Hotlz) Friedrich, about 1920
Original post from 2015:

We only have one picture of our great grandparents, John August & Lena Holtz Friedrich. It must have been taken in the summer of 1932, just six months or so before they both died.
Edyth and the boys with John August and Lena on their farm in Beaver Dam, abt 1932.
That's John August on the left [No, it isn't. See update above]. Dave is on the cow's back. Walker's in front, and Lena is just visible behind him. Beside Lena is Edyth, and Richard is the boy who's taken refuge beside his mother. The man resting his head on the cow's rump might be Arthur's cousin, William Albert Friedrich, the only Friedrich descendant who, in 1932, would have still been working in the farming business. John August had sold the family farm around 1920, and his father's farm had long since passed into the hands of Fred Zarwell, who's daughter Mary was William's mother. William may have still been working the Friedrich/Zarwell properties, though in 1932 he was living in the city of Beaver Dam and employed as hay baler. William's wife, incidentally, was Maude Taylor. She, like her brother Charles who married Arthur's sister Clara, were first cousins (eleven times removed) of William Shakespeare.

Arthur is probably behind the camera, and no doubt amused by Edyth's and the boys' enjoyment of the farm's novelties. As we came to know them, it's easy to forget that Arthur (in his three piece suit) was the farm boy and Edyth (in her bib overalls) was the city girl. But Edyth grew up in the relatively urban De Pere, Wisconsin. Her father worked for the Nicolet Paper Company and played violin for a small orchestra. From their back yard she could see the observatory tower of St Norbert College, a respectable liberal arts college on the Fox River. Arthur, meanwhile, was a farmhand, and probably spent more time than he cared to remember with the family cow.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Fred Holtz

My research into the Holtz line (Arthur's mother Lena Holtz's ancestry) began with a family tree prepared by Myrtle Schoenwetter, the youngest daughter of Lena's oldest sister, Sophia Mary. She began with her mother's grandfather, Joachim Heinrich Holtz, who was born in Mecklenberg-Schwerin in 1797 and died in Wisconsin in 1856. I recently found his headstone in a small cemetery outside of Madison, along with his wife's, Elizabeth Radelof, who died in 1877.
Headstone of Joachim "George" Holtz (1797-1857). Okeag Cemetery in Elba township, Dodge WI
Headstone of Elisabeth Radelof Holtz (1804-1877). Okeag Cemetery in Elba township, Dodge WI
In her family tree, Myrtle lists George and Elizabeth's six children who survived into adulthood. She provides details for each, their dates and places of birth and death, who they married, when and where, and all of their descendants. The one exception is Fred Holtz, who's listed at the bottom, with only the following information:

Fred (a cripple)
Died

I assumed Fred had died in infancy, and was surprised when I found him listed along with the others on the passenger manifest when the family arrived in New York on May 22 1854. His name appears as "Fritz Holz" and his age is 27. Not only is he alive and well, but he's the oldest sibling. The purser has written something in the column used for his occupation. I can't make it out. If anyone else can decipher it, please let me know.
From the passenger manifest of the George Canning, arriving NY May 22 1854, showing, from the top: our great x3 granddfather, Johan Holtz (55); our great x2 grandparents, Anna (25) and Johann Holtz (25); our great x3 grandmother Elise Holtz (46); their other children: Fritz (27), Sophie (19), Elisabeth (12), Joachim (12) and Maria (22) who married Christopher Greutzmacher (29).
Fred appears in only one census, in 1870. He's living with our great x2 grandparents, John and Anna Holtz, who now have a sizable estate valued at nearly $5000. Fred is 42 and apparently not working. Our great grandmother, Lena Holtz, is nine years old, and her sister Rieka, who'll die in another eight years, is seven. Reika and Fred's deaths might very well be related. I found Reika buried in the cemetery beside the Elba German Methodist Church, along with her sister Sophia Wendt and a few nieces and nephews. I expected to find Fred there as well. But he's neither there nor in any of the other cemeteries his siblings were found in.

But beside the recently discovered headstones of his parents, I found this one, which is nearly as illegible as his "occupation" on the passenger manifest.
Headstone for Fred Holtz
The headstone reads: F. Holtz, died Jan 13, 187?, aged 47 yrs & 6 mos. German baptismal records put Fred's christening on July 11, 1826. If he died forty seven and a half years later, then Jan 13, 1874 is close enough. I'm confident I've found Fred, and hopefully given him a little more dignity than Myrtle's summation of his life provided. And I'd like to learn more about the "cripple who died".

Sunday, December 13, 2015

William Frederick Koehler

I found William Frederick Koehler by way of his daughter, Mary, who entered our family by marrying William Schettler, the son of Wilhelmina Hensler. Wilhemina, alert readers will recall, is a sister of Dorothea Hensler-Friedrich, our great x2 grandmother. William's father, Christian Schettler, may have been the son of a landed aristocrat, a Junker, like his brother-in-law, Johann Friedrich. That would make all three of the Hensler sisters disappointed baronesses. But I haven't located any immigration records that might prove my hunch. I know from the 1900 U.S. Census that Wilhelmina and family arrived in America in 1874, six years after her sisters, possibly staying behind to attend to matters with the parents' estate.

Mary's mother was Louise Bartel. She died when Mary was only two years old. Mary had an older sister, Minnie, and a younger brother, Fred. Minnie would've been about three when her mother died. Fred's date of birth is ambiguous but probably coincides with his mother's death, which, according to her headstone, was in March of 1861. The date has historical significance: Abraham Lincoln delivered his first inaugural address on March 4th, 1861.

Louise Bartel Koehler, about 1860, and her three children: Fred, Mary and Minnie, about 1862
William Koehler was 28 when his wife died. He and his family were the tenants of a bachelor farmer for whom he was working as a hired hand. Neither the bachelor nor the widower were in a position to raise two young daughters and an infant son. The insurrection in the South was perfectly timed, and the president's decision to raise an army must have been a irresistible opportunity for William Koehler. The war gave him permission to leave his children with accommodating neighbors and, at the same time, gain the respect afforded a soldier. In the absence of a war to fight, he might rather have earned only approbation for failing to provide for his family.

He enlisted in Company C, 1st Cavalry Regiment Wisconsin at Beaver Dam on August 15, 1862 and was mustered in at Madison, WI, on August 23, 1862. His enlistment was for 3 years. The 1st Cavalry gained some recognition for its part in the capture of Jefferson Davis. This excerpt is from the collection of Historical Notes and Reports of The Union Army, Vol 4, page 74:

        On May 6 [1865] a detachment of the regiment under Lieut.-Col. Harnden set out to search for Jefferson Davis. At midnight of the 7th a negro gave a minute account of the whereabouts of Davis and at early dawn of the 8th Harnden set out, traveling 45 miles that day. Early on the 9th the detachment resumed the march and at Abbeville met Col. Pritchard of the 4th Mich. cavalry, who had been ordered to camp there, guard the ferry and patrol the river. At 3 o'clock next morning Harnden went forward, believing Davis to be near.
        The advance guard came upon armed men, who ordered them to halt, and opened fire. Harnden advanced with a large force and the firing became general until a prisoner captured by Sergt. Howe stated that the supposed enemy were Michigan troops under Col. Pritchard, who had selected his best mounted men after Harnden had frankly told him his mission and where Davis was supposed to be, and had proceeded at full speed to that point and surrounded the camp which held Davis, though the latter was not captured until after the regiments had fired upon each other. Many will ever believe the 1st Wis. cavalry entitled to at least equal credit for the capture.

William is mustered out as a Private on July 19, 1865 in Edgefield, Tennessee, now part of Nashville. The public record picks up again in the U.S. Federal Census of 1870, in which Minnie, now 12, is listed as a domestic servant in the household of George and Elizabeth Adams, farmers in Clyman township. Mary, 11, is now Mary Lange, the adopted daughter of Adreas and Antoinette Lange of Beaver Dam. Only Fred is back with his father, who's remarried and raising a new family on a small farm in Iowa.

U.S. Civil War service record of William Frederick Koehler (Keller)
William Koehler with his second wife, Charlotte Henrietta Finke, about 1870
Some light is shed on the years between 1865 and 1870 when, in 1908, William Koehler's second wife, Charlotte Henrietta Fink, applies for his war pension. On October 30, 1908, Mary appeared before the Special Examiner of the Bureau of Pensions. The following is a record of her testimony, in which she refers to her father as "the soldier":

        I am 49 years of age. Residence as above. I am the wife of William Schettler and daughter of the soldier by his first wife, Louise Bartle. I do not know where they were married. I suppose she was the first wife. I have always been told that I was 1-1/2 years old when she died. I think she was buried in the Lowell Cemetery but I was out there some time ago and tried to find out something about it but could not. There was no record there and I did not find any one who knew. I was raised by a family named Lange I remember the soldier when he came back from the war. He came here with claimant. She did not come in. She was out in the wagon. I had seen her the summer before that and I never saw either of them after they left here.
        He took my brother with him. There were but three of us. Mr Lange's people lived here in Beaver Dam. My brother was about 6 months old when my mother died. Mrs Piesche told me about it and she [was a] neighbor to them when my mother died. She is dead.
        I have no interest in the case. I have heard the foregoing statement [...] it is correct. [...] I have understood your questions and my answers are correctly recorded.
        signed Mary Schettler.

William had eight additional children by Charlotte and died in 1896. In his last will and testament he bequeaths his estate, valued at $5450.00, to his wife and her heirs, but with the following exception:

"There are three (children) from my first wife, whom I bequeath as follows: To my daughters Minnie and Mary $100.00 each. To my son, Fred Keller, $5."

Fred was living in Nebraska, married, with three children when his father died. He was to die a short while later of typhoid fever but probably had time to spend his five dollar inheritance. The girls, too, were married and raising families. Minnie married Carl Friedrich Sette who had a sizable farm in Barton County, Kansas. Mary, we know, married our cousin (3x removed), William Schettler, a Beaver Dam wagon master, and lived to be 89.

Carl Friedrich Sette and Wilhelmine Koehler Sette, about 1930

Mary Koehler Lange and William Fredrick Schettler, about 1880
I said earlier that William Schettler's father may have been a landed aristocrat from Zorndorf, the home town of the Friedrichs and a short distance from where the Grohndorfs originated. Both his wife's sisters had married Junkers, and they all settled in Beaver Dam. Curiously, the soldier's -- William Koehler's -- second wife, Charlotte Henrietta Finke, was the daughter of a Zorndorf bricklayer who settled near Beaver Dam more than a decade before Johann Friedrich arrived. Carl Sette, Wilhelmine Koehler's husband, also originated in Zorndorf. His father is listed as a "colonist" in the Brandenburg emigration records when he emigrates in 1856. Carl's mother may even be a Hensler. Her birth name is given as "Henkel / Henhil", while our great x2 grandmother's name, as well as her sister Marie's, was given as "Henhiler".

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Radical Henslers

It's been frustrating doing research on our great x2 grandmother, Dorothea Hensler. Both she and her sister, Marie, who came over on the same boat in 1858, are thoroughly documented, along with their husbands and children, in the Brandenburg, Prussia Emigration Records, the Hamburg Passenger Lists, and in the U.S. Customs Manifests in New York. Maybe I should be satisfied with that and let it go. After all, that's as far as I got with Johann. But Dorothea is different.

Clara Friedrich-Taylor (Dorothea's daughter and our great aunt) said her grandmother, the mother of Dorothea and Maria, was "Maria Marge" and that she died in Beaver Dam on "February 15th, 1885". You'd think that with that amount of specificity, it would be an easy task to find her. I always assumed that the other Henslers were sent for after Dorothea's and Marie's husbands had accumulated enough to pay their passage. But census data for all the other Henslers in Dodge County has them mostly arriving earlier, with that first wave of German refugees from the revolutions of 1848. And what's more, they all seem to have emigrated from other parts of Germany, those parts most affected by the revolutions and far from the rather placid East Brandenburg where our ancestors originated.

So now I'm thinking that the Friedrichs and the Henslers were on opposite sides of the revolution, and that Dorothea and Maria fled to East Brandenburg with their (titled and upperclass) husbands while their (untitled and lower class) family members fled to America. This makes sense; Clara believed the Friedrichs were of the Prussian nobility (likely the Junker class, a less auspicious class of small landowners) and that there was French blood in the family. Clara also tells us that Johann emigrated when his father remarried and left him out of the inheritance. Marie's husband, Christian Reichert, was probably in a similar situation, and both were faced with the only two options open to the younger sons of nobles: a civil service position, or a post in the military. They took the third option, and I'm grateful to them. The Junker class of eastern Prussia was notoriously militant. They fought on the wrong side (and the very wrong side) of two world wars. And, when it was all over, the Russians came in, sent them off to internment camps and plundered their estates.

Maybe the reason I can't connect the other Henslers in Dodge County to Dorothea and Marie is because, as far as the family was concerned, those connections had long been severed.

Sunday, December 6, 2015

John & Louise Friedrich

Los Angeles in 1880 was "a sleepy semi-Mexican pueblo". At least that's how it was described by its boosters a little more than ten years later when they published The Land of Sunshine, Southern California. "Its houses," they said, "were mostly of adobe, or sun-dried brick; its streets were unpaved and few even graded; its chief commerce was confined to wool and hides." Its population had since increased more than five-fold, from about 11,000 to more than 50,000, thanks in part to promoters like themselves who touted the climate's curative powers to a nation of consumptives and asthmatics. Among them was the pamphlet's chief author, Charles Willard, who went on to found it as a monthly publication. He'd arrived in 1885, and found the city pretty much as he described it above.
A pamphlet from 1893 promoting the virtues of Southern California to "the homeseeker, tourist and invalid."
Two years earlier, in 1883, among the first waves of immigrants seeking the clean ocean air and perpetual sunshine of Los Angeles were our great grandfather's younger siblings, John Henry Friedrich and Louisa Friedrich-Schmidt. Neither would live to see the twentieth century. Lousia would die of tuberculosis in 1890, and John Henry would follow, dying of tubercular meningitis in 1896. Louisa was only 30 when she died, and John Henry, the youngest of the Friedrich siblings, was 34.

John Henry Friedrich had been working for the last several years as a clerk in his older brother Charles's dry goods and millinery shop in Madison, a brick storefront on the stylish Pinckney Street, just across the Wisconsin State Capital. John Henry's and Charles's sister, Louisa, had been married four years to Carl Schmidt, a Beaver Dam wagon maker, recently arrived from Prussia, and had one child, Gilbert Charles. On February 7th, 1883, their father, Johann Friedrich, died, and our great grandfather, John August, took over the farm.

Carl Schmidt was probably the instigator of the journey west. It appears he had relatives already living in Los Angeles (I'm working to verify that) and work as a wagon builder and carpenter would have been more profitable there than in Beaver Dam. His and Louisa's decision to move was probably not made for health reasons. It's more likely that John Henry was the sibling in need of the cure, and so was offered the chance to accompany them. He'd been living with his brother in Madison and had never had a place of his own. After the move, he lived with his sister's family in Los Angeles, and continued to live with them after she died. Taking care of himself was apparently difficult, and chronic fatigue from tuberculosis would be a likely cause.

In 1883, the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF) was offering direct bookings between Atchison, Kansas and Los Angeles. The Union Pacific had track from from Kansas City to San Francisco. The Southern Pacific connected San Francisco with Los Angeles and was running trains between New Orleans and the west coast. But I like to think that when the Northern Pacific completed the third transcontinental railroad, between Chicago and Seattle, on August 22, 1883, John Henry, Louisa & Carl were determined to follow it. Its route over the Rocky Mountains to the frontier of the Pacific Northwest is naturally appealing to me as a Northwest native. I imagine them strolling the streets of early Seattle while they waited for the next steamer south, perhaps talking real estate with Arthur Denny or discussing Seattle's need for carpenters and wagon builders with Doc Maynard. They would have dined in Henry Yesler's saloon and rubbed shoulders with the city's destitute Indians, its rough mill workers, itinerant lumberjacks, and the women who lived south of Skid Road. But they, like most of the other Midwestern transplants, probably entered California by rail via Santa Fe and across the Mojave Desert. It would have been a discouraging introduction to their new life.

John Henry first shows up in the Los Angeles City Directory in 1884, living at 122 Wall. Louisa and Carl Schmidt are living at the same address, and both John Henry and Carl are listed as "carpenters". Perhaps John grows homesick, or finds the climate less beneficial to his health than he'd hoped. Or perhaps he believes himself cured. Because, in 1885, he's back in Madison, and the city directory lists him working at his old job, as a clerk in Charles's shop. He lives at 315 N Hamilton, along with Edward Nebel, a printer for The Journal.

In December 1885, Louisa's second child, Oscar Clarence is born. And in 1886, John Henry is back in Los Angeles. He's again living with Louisa and Carl but is now a proprietor of a haberdashery and gent's furnishings shop, "Shieck & Friedrich" on Spring Street. Perhaps his brother Charles put up the capital and sent him back to LA with some inventory and a business plan. In the same household, Frederick Schmidt -- possibly a brother of Carl's -- is listed as a "dealer in hats and gents furnishing goods". Frederick is likely the "Shiek" in Shiek & Friedrich. The following year, 1887, the establishment is listed as 'Schreck' & Friedrich. Someone, apparently, was having difficulty deciding how to spell, or how to brand, the establishment.
Ad for John Henry Friedrich's and Frederick Schmidt's shop, from The Los Angeles Herald, March 18, 1886
Carl and John Henry, as well as their businesses, are missing from the 1887 edition of the Los Angeles City Directory, and neither appear again until 1891. What happened during those four years? Just as John Henry's star was rising, Louisa's, it appears, was falling. In 1888, Louisa's third child, Richard, dies in infancy. On February 4th, 1890, shortly after her fourth child, Esther, is born, Louisa dies. Esther will die just two years later.

Louisa was probably diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1887, and I'm guessing that both Carl and John Henry abandoned their businesses to devote themselves full time to her care. Perhaps not coincidentally, in that same year, Dr. Sarah I. Shuey, opened The Sierra Madre Sanatorium in the hills above Pasadena. It was an earnest attempt to treat tuberculosis in an environment then thought to be hostile to the bacterium that caused the disease. The region, and the sanatorium itself, were praised (and advertised) in The Southern California Practitioner, a sort of medical journal and home remedy guide that Carl, Louisa and John Henry would surely have purchased or borrowed. Advertisements for the sanatorium were also appearing in the newspapers and would have been hard to miss, especially by anyone desperate for a cure.
Ad from The Southern Californa Practitioner, published in Los Angeles in 1887
In her 1933 history and personal memoir, More Than Gold in California, Dr Mary Bennett Ritter had this to say about the Dr. Sarah I. Shuey and her sanatorium:

    Before my year of interneship was over, Dr. Brown told me that Dr. Sarah I. Shuey of Berkeley was planning to remove to Sierra Madre, above Pasadena, where she intended to build a private hospital and run it with the aid of her friend, May Treat, now Mrs. Alexander Morrison. Dr. Shuey wished to dispose of her practice and Dr. Brown considered me the most suitable person to succeed her. Satisfactory arrangements were made. To my regret this necessitated my leaving the hospital before my year of internship expired, but the opportunity was too good to be lost.

    Sarah Shuey and May Treat had been classmates in the University of California in the class of 1876 and formed a deep and lasting friendship. After graduation in Toland Medical College, now the Medical Department of the University of California, Dr. Shuey established herself as the first woman physician in Berkeley. She was remarkably successful and soon built up an enviable reputation and practice.
    Unfortunately the hospital venture was not a financial success. After two or three years, Dr. Shuey returned, having lost all of her invested capital and with a heavy indebtedness which burdened her remaining years. She settled in Oakland with Dr. C. Annette Buckel, and soon established another good practice. Fittingly, she died in the harness, expiring suddenly when on duty at a maternity case.

Louisa and John Henry were very likely among the first -- and the last -- of the patients that Dr. Shuey treated at the short-lived Sierra Madre Sanitorium.
The medical examiners' record of Louisa's death, by tuberculosis, February 5, 1890
A year after Louisa's death, the 1891 city directory shows John Henry and the widower, Carl living at 728 Elmore. John Henry is working as a salesman for I. L. Lowman and Carl is listed as a "boiler maker", which is probably a typesetting error. More likely he's still building wagons or doing light carpentry. In 1892, Esther dies. Sometime in the same year, Carl Schmidt marries Mary "Anna Maria" Holman, the daughter of a Bakersfield farmer, and will have two more children by her: Viola (1894) and Melinda (1899). They'll all live respectably long lives in the Los Angeles Area. In the 1893 city directory, Carl is working for Pacific Carriage Works and living with his new wife at the same address, 728 Elmore.

There is no listing for John Henry in the 1893 city directory, but recorded with the county of Los Angeles is evidence of his marriage to Emma C. Rattay on February 9th. Charles William, John's older brother, travels all the way from Madison to act as the witness. In 1894, they have a daughter, Eunice Ruth Friedrich, who, incidentally, is born the same year as our grandfather, Arthur Lester Friederich. The happy family is living at 239 Newton and John is working for Lowman & Co. In 1895, they're living at 353 S. Broadway and John is a salesman for The Mullen & Bluett Clothing Company, which had started business in 1890 and had a long and successful run in downtown Los Angeles. An intriguing coincidence is that Mullen & Bluett's first shop was established on the NW corner of Spring and First. A few years earlier, Schieck & Friedrich, were located at 17 N Spring. Could it be the same address?
Entry for Mullen, Bluett & Co from the 1891 Los Angeles City Directory
Tuberculosis is one of those diseases that can deceive a patient into thinking they've won the battle, only to resurface years later with symptoms as bad or worse than before. It's probably what happened to John Henry. After recovering from the loss of his sister, he marries, has a child, and finds work with one of the city's preeminent clothing stores. Life is good. But less than a year later, on August 22, 1896, he succumbs to tubercular meningitis.

His body is shipped to Bakersfield, perhaps to be buried beside his sister. His wife, Emma, remarries the following year, and his daughter, Eunice Ruth, just two years old and unlikely to remember her father, is given the name of her stepfather, Richard Arenz, a Los Angeles building contractor.