CIZMAR / CHISMAR / CHESMER
Chesmer / Chismar / Cizmar



Michael Joseph Chesmer (1898 - 1973)                                     My grandfather
(also known as Michael Joseph Chismar)

Michael Joseph Chismar was born on April 12, 1898, in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and was the youngest child of George and Mary Chismar.  He and his family moved to Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, some time between 1900 and 1905.  Both of Michael's parents died when he was a young child.

At some point in Michael's life, he changed his surname to "Chesmer," and married Edith Miriam Grove. They had six children:  Tom, Beulah, June, and three others.

Michael Chesmer worked as an engineer for the Union Railroad, and at some point, he and his wife and children moved to East Eugene Avenue in Munhall, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.  (Click on "Munhall" to see a photograph of their home taken many, many years ago.)

Michael Chesmer died on June 6, 1973, at the age of 75, and is buried in Jefferson Cemetery with his wife, Edith.
 
 

This is a 1958 photograph of Michael Joseph Chesmer, with his pipe, in his home in Munhall.



George Chismar (1856? - 1905)                                         My great-grandfather
(also known as Georg Cizmar)
 

According to the 1900 census, George Chismar was born in "Austria" in May 1866, but his tombstone suggests that he may have been born in 1856. (The reference in the census to "Austria" does not mean he was from Austria.  At that time, a large portion of Europe was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.)

According to the 1900 census, George Chismar married his wife, Mary, in 1880, and immigrated to the United States in 1881, two years before his wife.

In the 1900 census, George Chismar and his family were living in a rented house on Fisher Avenue in Middletown, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.  The census record states that George and Mary had six children living with them, but only five are listed.  All children listed as living with them were born in Pennsylvania.  Those children were:  Mary, Sue, Lizzie, John, and Michael.  At this time, George Chismar was working as a laborer in a pipe mill.  The census record states that neither George nor Mary could speak English.

The 1900 census is not only inconsistent with George Chismar's tombstone, but is also internally inconsistent.  It suggests that George may have been 14 years old when he married 12-year-old Mary, since it indicates that George was born in 1866 and that Mary was 32 years old in 1900.  This struck me as odd that my great-grandparents would have been 14 and 12 when they married.  But it also suggests a more disturbing scenario, where a 24-year-old George married a 12-year-old Mary. (This is because the 1900 census states that George was 44 years old in 1900 - consistent with his tombstone - and lists Mary's age as 32 in 1900).  Hopefully, with more research, I will find that Mary, like other women in my family, lied about her age for the 1900 census, and Mary was not, in fact, a child-bride.

At some point after the 1900 census, George Chismar and his family moved to the Homestead area of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

George Chismar died on January 4, 1905, at the age of 48 and is buried in St. Mary's Cemetery (a Catholic cemetery), Homestead, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.  His tombstone reads:

tu spociva

georg
cizmar
48 roky
star
zom
4 jan 1905

cizmar


The words on George's tombstone are Slovak.  George Chismar shares his tombstone with Anna Stasik, who died at the age of 26, on September 18 or 19, 1905.  Anna Stasik's relationship to George Chismar has not yet been determined.


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