Caroline Knodler: Young Woman finds Trouble in Paradise

The exact circumstances of Caroline Knodler's early life are clouded by the family's long reluctance to discuss the scandals involving her marriage to and later divorce from Sam J. Mulholland, and the birth before the marriage of her son, William (Bill) Mulholland, all very improper in the nineteenth century.

Carolyn (Carrie) Knödler Mulholland

Caroline (Carrie) Knödler was born in 1865. She grew up in Cottenweiler, Württemberg, Germany in the region where her ancestors had been since at least the sixteenth century. She followed her brother Gottlieb (George) Knodler to New York, then settled in Michigan. 

Exactly when she arrived in the U.S. is uncertain as she gave multiple dates ranging from arriving with her brother who immigrated around 1880, to coming when she was 12 in 1877. In 1894, she claimed in the state census to have been in Michigan for 11 years, after arriving in the U.S. the year before that which would have been 1882. According to one family story, Carrie left Germany when her father remarried after her mother's death, and she did not get along with her new step-mother, a marriage known from records to be in 1884.

While many immigrants reported inconsistent arrival dates in various documents, Carrie's changing story is at least in part related to the birth of her son born from an unknown father in 1886, four years before her official marriage to Samuel Mulholland in 1890. For years, she claimed she and Sam were married in 1885 before William (Willy or Bill) Mulholland's birth to protect the family from public scandal. Bill was consistently claimed to be Sam's son, at least in all social settings. Even Carrie's obituary in the Ann Arbor newspapers used the incorrect date of 1885 for her marriage to maintain this fiction. But the state holds a marriage record for the couple documenting the 1890 date.

First America, then the Poor House

In Carrie's story as reported years later by her youngest daughter Ada, after arriving in the U.S., Carrie decided not to return to Germany. Ada wrote:

As [Carrie] liked this country, she decided to stay and earn her own way through life. Many were the times when the pangs of homesickness overtook her, but she would not recross the treacherous seas. For a few months she kept house for her brother, who soon married. Then she worked in a summer resort on a mountain near by.

Brother Gottlieb (George) and second
wife Nellie (back); Carrie and
George's daughter Helen (front)

According to the next stage in the story as reported by daughter Ada, while working at the mountain resort after George married, her brother and wife invited Carrie to join them on a visit to an aunt in Michigan. Carrie liked the area better than New York so she did not go back with her brother. Michigan at the time had many families from Württemberg, was more rural than the busy city of New York, and shared a similar climate to their German home. George, by contrast, liked the big city and did return to New York.

Somewhere in there may be the story, but the dates don't work. In fact, marriage records for Gottlieb and his first wife, Frieda indicate they married in 1889. And Carrie was already in Michigan by early 1886 living at the Washtenaw county poor house where her first son was born.

Poor House from Evert & Steward, 1874 Combination Map Atlas of Washtenaw County

Hiding the Stigma of an Illegitimate Child

What we now know from official documents is that Carrie had a child out of wedlock, and all of the shifting stories and dates were intended to obscure it. Based on Willy's birth record, he was born in February 1886 while Carrie was living in the Washtenaw County Poor House and Insane Asylum, with the infant listed as illegitimate and father unknown. According to records from the Poor House, Carrie was sent there from January 26 to March 3, 1886, leaving a month after her son's birth. 

Carrie and son Bill Mulholland, 1940s

There are more hints about her son's parentage in the 1894 Michigan census after Carrie's 1890 marriage to Sam. Willy is correctly reported to have been born in Michigan with a father and mother born in Württemberg, Germany. By contrast both of the children born after Carrie's marriage to Sam, Minnie and Everett, have a father born in Michigan and mother in Württemberg as would be expected. More confusion is added when Carrie indicated she had only two children not the three listed. Later confirmation of the birth before marriage can be found in the divorce papers from 1905, as Willy is absent from the list of children shared by Samuel and Carrie.

Neither the official records, nor Carrie's multiple versions of her own story provide explanations for her early history and the circumstances surrounding William's birth and her eventual change from the poor house to Sam's wife. In all family records, Willy shares the Mulholland name which he used throughout his life.

Whatever had happened to put her in the county poor house must have been tragic. It is hard to believe her brother George who was doing well in New York would not have helped her out but maybe she was too embarrassed to tell him. There were the usual rumors later of an affair with a wandering carnival worker who fathered her son Bill, but no real information is known about Bill's father or how Carrie ended up pregnant and penniless in Washtenaw County, Michigan.

Just seeing these records of her hard life made me want to cry for her and all the women back then who were treated so poorly if they were single mothers. I don't think we will ever know the whole story, and even more interesting how she went from being a resident in the poor house to getting married to Sam four years later. While the sanctioned family story claimed she was a recent arrival to Michigan when she met Sam, the birth certificate shows she had already been in the state for several years.

Carrie and Sam Mulholland, about 1890,
possibly a wedding picture

From Poor House to Sam's Wife

According to the story Carrie told in later years, she met her future husband, Sam Mulholland (the third of that name), while living with her aunt in Michigan. Carrie at 25 was an unwed mother who needed a husband. If family or friends helped make the arrangement possible, we do not know.

On the other side of the marriage equation, the much older Sam probably looked like a good catch, having inherited a sizable farm in Superior Township in 1888 when his father died. While the Mulholland family was relatively respected, Sam was the black sheep because of his alcoholism and unsettled ways. Locals likely knew of his problems, making finding a spouse difficult. Supposedly the Mulholland family decided to get rid of their problem by marrying the 37-year-old Sam to the much younger Carrie, still in her mid-20's. 

The couple married in July 1890 and had three children on the farm near Dixboro that Sam had been given by his father. In 1896, Sam and Carrie moved into Ann Arbor where the last three of their daughters were born. After living north of the city (in what was then called North Ann Arbor but today is part of the city) with Sam’s sister, Sarah Mulholland, they lived briefly in a house at Main and Felch in Ann Arbor, then moved in 1900 to a rental house at 204 Chapin Street. 

Carrie on the back steps at the Chapin
house, about 1909

The Not-to-be-Mentioned Divorce

It is not clear that the arranged marriage was ever a happy one, and it ended in an official divorce in 1905, a socially unacceptable practice in the early 20th century. Sam was an alcoholic and periodically absented himself from the family, leaving Caroline to raise the family and earn their keep. 

While the community believed that Sam was a cordial drunk, the testimony his wife filed in the divorce papers indicated that he was verbally abusive and failed to support his family. In the two years before the divorce complaint, Sam had been jailed for drunkenness multiple times, to the "disgrace" of his wife and children. 

Carrie filed her complaint requesting the divorce after a particularly threatening event in June 1905, when 

he came home intoxicated, he rolled up his sleeves and said he would kill his [wife] and the whole damn family and paint the house with blood. (from the complaint filed with the court requesting the divorce, 27 June 1905) 

Carrie, about 1915

While Sam denied the part of the complaint describing his drunken rages and non-support, the divorce order indicated the court found the charges "satisfactorily" true and Sam Mulholland "guilty of several acts of extreme cruelty." The court not only granted the divorce and gave Carrie custody of the children in late 1905, but also issued an injunction against Sam coming to her Chapin Street house. 

From the Mulholland family point of view, Carrie was beneath them socially when she first married Sam as well as tainted by her illegitimate child. With the divorce official, many of that family distanced themselves from her. Bill's daughter Mae Mulholland claimed that only the Parkers, cousins on the Mulholland side, were friendly to Carrie in later years and no other Mulholland relatives attended Carrie's funeral. 

Despite Carrie's careful attempts to hide the truth of the divorce, according to Dorothy Williams Burpo who grew up in town and was a niece of Minnie's by marriage, everyone in Ann Arbor knew something of this story even though the family refused to acknowledge it. With city directories showing Sam often living only blocks away from the Chapin Street house, Carrie's claim to be his widow in the same directories was probably recognized as less than accurate but a social nicety given the attitudes of the time.

Carrie, about 1919

While Carrie's children hinted that something was funny in later years, they refused to acknowledge Willy's too-early birth or the divorce, and records kept by the family preserve the sanitized version. It was still so unacceptable that even when family genealogist Phyllis Hoffman tried to talk about this seventy years later and after Carrie's death, with evidence in hand as part of her genealogical research, the now aging children simply wouldn't hear of it or discuss what they may have known. 

In a letter to Phyllis, Willy's daughter Mae wrote: 

I would have to be an idiot not to know something was wrong about Caroline and Sam's wedding. Before Ada died I had come up with three different dates when they were supposed to have been married. I knew something was wrong when Ada let me look at the bible and I saw the date had been changed in Edna's handwriting. We started to talk about it but when I saw Ada starting to cry I told her to forget it. It was over years ago and nothing could change it at this late date. She made me promise I would keep my mouth shut and do nothing to hurt Caroline's memory.

New Directions and Long Life

Carrie and her daughters brought
in extra income by taking in laundry

After her divorce, Carrie purchased the house on Chapin Street in Ann Arbor in 1906 with a legacy she received when her father died in Germany. There Caroline took in washing to make money and also sold milk and eggs. In their pre-teen years, each of the children went to work to help support the family. Only the youngest, Ada, finished high school.

Not all their life was a hardship. The children reported regularly playing across the street from the Chapin St. house at West Park, and spending time in the summers at the lake as well as visiting the Parkers on their farm north of town. 

Carrie and grandson Erwin, about 1914

If there were "skeletons in the closet" at Carrie's house on Chapin, they stayed in the attic and Carrie was adamant that no one could ever go up there (it wasn't really an attic but an unfinished storage space over the kitchen). At one time when young Stan Hoffman was visiting, Carrie and the daughters were mentioning that they would like to be able to plug in the electric iron in the kitchen. Like many old houses, the wiring was added long after it was built and there were few sockets. There was no electrical wiring in the kitchen except for one overhead light bulb. Daughter Minnie's husband, Fred Hoffman told Carrie that he could fix the light fixture so it would have the light and an outlet to plug in the iron. Carrie's immediate response was that he most certainly couldn't go into the attic. Fred assured her he could fix it without going upstairs over the kitchen.  

Carrie with her Hoffman grandsons,
Jerry, Erwin, and Stan. At West Park about 1927

Grandson Jerry Hoffman remembered that he and his brothers spent most time with their Mulholland relatives when they went to visit in Ann Arbor from their home in Detroit. Carrie's kitchen had a pantry attached to it, more of a long cupboard, that was the first stop during a visit because it always had cookies for the grandsons. Another popular stop was West Park across the street. At the farther end of the park was a pond with pollywogs that were captured and taken home to watch them become frogs. The boys carefully carried the young frogs down to the nearby Detroit River to hopefully spend a happy froggy life.

Carrie remained in the Chapin house until her death at 82 in 1947, living with her two unmarried daughters, Edna and Margaret. 

In her obituary, Carrie was noted as being a member of the first Baptist Church and was a charter member of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Graf O’Hara Post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. She was also reported to be active in the German social clubs that brought together the many immigrants from Germany who settled in the Ann Arbor area. Carrie is buried in the family plot at Bethlehem Cemetery with her children, and in death, next to her ex-husband Sam.

She was a tough woman who survived scandal and raised a large family alone successfully. In a letter to daughter Edna Mulholland in 1943, Rhubena Mulholland Schaal, a niece through Sam Mulholland, wrote of Carrie:

 I could wish that your mother's blood flowed in my veins—she is indeed a grand lady.

Carrie Knodler Mulholland, 1946 (location unknown)