Leonard or Leonhard Beck was my great grandpa.
Born on 12 Oct 1866 in Lippertshofen, Germany to Sebastian and Walburga Beck. He died in Milwaukee, WI on 26 Apr 1955.
I don't know a lot about him, Grandpa John Beck, didn't speak a lot about him, this what I know:
Leonard is a common German masculine given name, with originates from the old High German (Leonhard) , containing the prefix levon or lion and the suffix hardu (brave or hardy).
From what I've learned through genealogy and talking to family members, he fell in love with Marie Obermeir, who at the time was shunned because she was born out of wedlock. That doesn't seem like a big thing now, but in the 1800's in Germany it was. It was bad enough that my great grandfather got into a fight, something bad happened. I've heard that he severely hurt the other person or struck an officer. Sabastian Beck, Leonard's father disinherited, him at this point. The German side doesn't talk about it and the Americans never heard what happened. Both he and Marie left Germany soon after this. They didn't marry until they got to Manhattan, New York and then headed to Wisconsin to start their new life. Leonard and Marie's sponsor, in Wisconsin, was a cousin Arch Bishop Michael Heiss.
When Leonard arrived in Milwaukee, he found work in the breweries as a laboror. This lead to a story that grandpa John used to tell us, that our family was part of the Beck Brewery in Germany, we later found out that this wasn't true. The truth is we are and were farmers in Germany. The farm is still active and is being worked by our cousin Franz Beck sr. Leonard and Marie were blessed with five children, all lived to adulthood and married. Their children were: Anna, John, Marie, Emily and George.
Leonard and Marie built a house at 154 W. Burleigh St. Milwaukee, WI around 1911- 1920. When they started building their home which was a two story duplex, Leonard went home to Germany, to mend fences and to ask his father for money to help with building their home. Sabastian would not even talk to his son. they went back to Wisconsin without any financial help and Leonard never tried to speak to his father again. During this trip Leonard's wife Marie become very sick and frail. Leonard and Marie managed to build the home without his father's help and lived there until Marie's death in 1926. He married his second wife, Barbara, the same year. According to my grandma Louise Beck, Barbara was Marie's nurse. I think there were hard feelings about this, because my grandpa John Beck never mentioned his step mother to me. My mother remember her grandfather Leonard fondly, she used to tell me a dtory about how she went to visit grandpa Leonard in the hospital before getting married.
Grandpa John, really only mentioned a couple of things about his father while talking to us grandkids. One was that when Grandpa John was a yong man, he kept telling his father to stop speaking German, that he was an American now and needed to speak English. The second was that Leonard told Grandpa John that his father Sebastian was a rich man, so rich that he had a barrel of money at his home that he would dip into it any time and buy what whatever he wanted.
