Who Is Sadie Firman and What Happened to Maggie?

Margaret Selgrath, a daughter of Nicholas Selgrath and Margaretha Hartung, was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania on Leap Day, 29 February 1856. Her father died when she was only 14, and her mother continued to provide a home for her, her 16-year-old brother Jacob, her 9-year-old brother Charles and her 3-year-old brother John.

When the siblings grew up, Margaret, Charles, and John moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, between about 1885 and 1895. They did not apparently join the Mormon church, as Margaret’s obituary tells of her many years of active service in the Catholic Church. Margaret married Fred David Breining from Ohio, a locomotive fireman for the railroad. Her brothers Charles and John also worked on the railroads.

The 1900 Census finds Margaret and Fred living in West Jordan, Salt Lake County, with two children, Fred and Sarah, born in October 1895 and January 1897, respectively. The record states that Fred and Margaret have been married for 5 years and that Margaret has borne only the two children.

There are a number of discrepancies between this record and other known facts. The birthplaces are off. Instead of Ohio, Fred is said to have been born in New Jersey to New Jersey parents. His parents were actually both born in German states. Margaret’s and her father’s birthplaces are correct, but her mother is said to have been born in Norway; actually she was born in the German state of Hesse.

Margaret’s birth date is said to be February 1854, but we know that it was actually 1856, so she has added two years to her age for some unknown reason. Her husband’s birth date is said to be January 1850, but it was actually January 1860, so he has been given 10 extra years. Maybe Margaret was sensitive about being four years older than her husband—she made herself four years younger in this census report.

West Jordan at that time was rural. The neighbors’ professions are either farmer, farm laborer, or sheep raiser mostly, with one blacksmith, one carpenter, and curiously one “capitalist” from Denmark—a 67-year-old woman. Fred’s profession is not named. I wonder if Maggie didn’t want to talk to the census taker—it might explain those discrepancies in the record. The record states that they own their home, and that it is not a farm.

They are not found in 1910, nor is the son, Fred G Breining, listed anywhere that I can find in the World War I draft registration database, which surely was a major oversight, or a major problem of some kind. The 1920 Census lists the family renting a home in Salt Lake City on 600 South Street. Fred Sr. is still a railroad fireman, and Fred Jr. is now an accountant for a mining company. (Considering that the largest open-pit mine in the world was underway in Bingham Canyon twenty miles southeast, he could have been working for the Kennecott Copper Corporation in their downtown offices.)

Maggie and Sadie Margaret are also listed with the family. Again the discrepancies are there, but there are fewer than before. The young people’s ages and birthplaces are correct, as are their father’s age and paternal grandparents’ birthplaces.

Maggie’s and her mother’s birthplaces are correct, but the particulars of her father’s birthplace are off, if understandable. His birthplace is listed as France, which would have been correct had he been born a couple years sooner, but that territory had been handed over to Bavaria to rule just before Nicholas Selgrath had been born. However, in January 1920 the World War had just been ended by a treaty that gave the territory back to France and to the United Kingdom to rule for a number of years.

A bigger discrepancy is in Maggie’s birth date. It is written as 40 and overwritten as 50, but of course it should have been 64.

The mystery appears when Fred Jr. married Marguerite Shea in November 1920. He listed his mother’s name as “Sadie Firman” on his marriage license. What? Who is Sadie Firman and where did she come in?

Maggie died the next year, 2 July 1921. The obituary simply says she was Mrs. Fred Breining and mentions her Catholic church service work. Could her full name have been Margaret Sarah or Sarah Margaret, and her nickname Sadie, the same as her daughter’s?

As an aside, Maggie must have enjoyed living downtown where she could attend mass at the Cathedral of the Madeleine, completed in 1909. It is a magnificent building, Romanesque on the outside and Gothic in the interior, on South Temple Street, then known as Brigham Street. I cannot resist putting in a few pictures, from the Cathedral’s web page.

The Cathedral under construction

The original nave

Brigham Street with the Cathedral facade on the right

The mystery about Margaret deepens when daughter Sadie Margaret Breining married John Albert McCormick in 1925. Sadie also listed her mother’s name as “Sadie Firman” on her marriage license! Where is this Sadie Firman coming from?

Both death records for the two children list their mother’s name as “Sadie Firman.” All right. Apparently somehow Margaret Selgrath morphed into Sadie Firman in the records created by the children. This is definitely weird.

But it isn’t such a mystery after all. Prepare for an alarmingly anti-climactic ending!

A check of records for a possible Sadie Firman turns up a marriage record for a definite Sadie Firman, born in 1872 in Salt Lake City; she married Fred David Breining on Christmas day 1894. She died in January 1897—thus the two children are hers, as she died apparently in giving birth to Sarah Margaret, nicknamed Sadie. Her grave marker is in the big Salt Lake City Cemetery, and Findagrave shows it is next to her husband’s.

Where our Maggie came in is in the role of second wife and stepmother. The 1900 census taker probably assumed the children were hers. The confusion with dates didn’t help. Despite the five-year marriage recorded in that census, it could have been only about two years and a little more, if that. Despite the census taker recording that she had borne two children and they were both living, those numbers actually belonged to the father, Fred David Breining.

Considering the answers to the census taker’s questions, there is a strong possibility that Fred David himself was answering the questions, and the date of his first marriage had been five years before, so that fits. His first wife had had just the two children. Perhaps Fred David cut off the interview before things could have been cleared up because he had to get to work or something. Who knows. That doesn’t explain why his birthplace, which is known to be Sandusky, Ohio, was changed into New Jersey. Maybe he came on the scene after that question had been answered by Maggie.

In any case, what I wrote a few days ago about William Francis Selgrath and his sister Margaret, nephew and niece of our Maggie Selgrath here, still appears to be true: they were the last of their generation in the progeny of Nicholas Selgrath.