My great-great grandfather was Adolph Zinser an immigrant from Frankfurt, Germany in the mid 19th Century. He ran a bakery in the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh and owned many rental properties. He had a very large family, among them was Wilhelm, father to my paternal grandmother, Louise Sophia (Arthur) and her siblings, Charles (father of one son), Mildred (Anderson) (mother of a son and daughter), Katherine (Schlott) (no children), and Gertrude (Adams) (no children). All of this generation lived around Pittsburgh their entire lives and summered at Conneaut Lake.

Since the once-large family is now very small - I am the lone surviving decesndent of my grandmother - I would enjoy hearing from any relatives.

"Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sun., Jan.18, 2004
Zinsser Charles W. Jr.
62, of Pleasant Hills, on Jan. 14, 2004. Beloved husband of Carolyn C. Charlie was a graduate of Grove City College & a retiree of the Ca. University of Pa....Please sign (view) the guest book at post-gazette.com" not my family

You posted five years ago, so I don't know if you are still interested or active. I have tried to find the parents of my husband's ggrandfather, Frederick Zinsser (with 2 s's)who was a baker and lived on Butler St PGH in 1880 with wife Lizzie and son Charles, 4. Lizzie died after giving birth to Adolph, born 1881,and Fred married Ernestine Williams (Wilhelm) and had 3 children: Wm Herman, 1885; Ernestine Louise, 1887; and Frederick Vincent, 1889.

For some reason, the couple moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico about 1890 and Fred died five years later at the age of 40.
His widow remarried a man named Baca and moved back to Pittsburgh. Adolph, Charles, and Fred Vincent moved back with her and we never heard from them again. Their son, Wm Herman (called Herman) stayed in Santa Fe, married, and in 1915 moved to Denver. He is my husband's grandfather.

I would like to know more about the Zinsser's relationship to the bakery business in Pittsburgh because so many of them were bakers. A Louis Zinsser is found as owning a bakery in Allegeny co. history. Article states Adoph Zinsser owned bakery too.

I have been in contact with a member of Dr. Harry Zinsser's family. The family names are so similar, my ggf is probably related somewhere in this tree, but don't know where.

Do you know why some spell it with one "S" and some spell it with two?

This is relevant to my family.. and yours.

I mis-typed the spelling of the Zinsser when I first made this entry, but this is my family.

My great-great grandfather was Adolph Zinsser who was born in Germany. I have the complete lineage of his father's line back to the days of the Reformation and will post it here if you would like.

It is true that the family ran bakeries in Pittsburgh, they also owned a lot of land in that area of Pittsburgh as landlords. In Germany, the family had manufactured paint and dyes since the time of guilds and products made by their family such as paint, stain and primer are still sold in Europe and the US to this day under the brand name Zinsser. Shortly before WWI some of the family - I know Willie was among them - traveled to Germany to sign over any shares of this enterprise. During that trip they attended a large military review just a few months before the Archduke was assisinated and the world went to war.

My great grandfather was Wilheilm ("Willie") (died 1930) who had five children: Katherine (roughly 1890 to 1980);Charles an engineer with US Steel(whose son's obit appears on this string of notices) Louise Sophia (my grandmother 1897-1988)
Mildred and Gertrude. I knew all of these and can provide details of their lives. They were a great family.

When the Zinssers arrived in America (circa 1870) Adolph forbade his family from speaking German at home. He said they would be Americans now and would speak only English.

My limited resarch shows that the family tended to sick with the same names and used them over and over across the family and down generations. This will frustrate any research. I believe, from what I saw at the Zinsser plot in Allegheny Cemetary in Pittsburgh (where most of Zinsser clan and their spouses as well as my brother and sister are buried) that they may have actually named subsequent children the same name as some that previously died in childbirth. My siblings died of cystic fibrosis as infants and the family tree appears to have many indications of this occuring in previous generations as well.

My grandmother Louise Sophia Zinsser Arthur worked in her father's bakery which was on Butler Street in the part of Pittsburgh called Lawrenceville. This was an area filled with a lot of German, Irish and Polish immigrants. My grandmother graduated from Fifth Avenue High School - which would have been a trolly ride away - in 1915. Many of the houses the Zinsser's owned were in this general area.

Dr. Harry Zinsser was a Pittsburgh physician and was a cousin - I do not know how close a cousin - to my grandmother. He was practicing medicine into the 1960's. I never met him.

The Zinssers are related in some fashion to the author of the book "Rats, Lice and History" which discusses the impact of disease on the course of history.

Other Zinssers have been associated with Time Life magazine and some are there, I beleive, to this day - usually reporting on science. One Zinsser was a photograper and (I have been told) took the famous picture of Rita Hayworth that was on the cover and used as a WWII pinup.

My sources are my father and grandmother who gave me these stories firsthand.
RJ Arthur
Clemmons, NC

From: Charlet137@aol.com and Herman Charles Zinsser Grace in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

I don't know how to thank you for all this information. I have been researching my husband's grandfather's family now for over a year and haven't gotten very far in identifying his German family.

Grandpa Herman's birth name was William Herman Zinsser, born Dec. 15, 1885. His father was Frederick Zinsser, who died here in Santa Fe age 40 (he was born in about 1855) and emigrated from his birthplace in Prussia before 1874. He married Lizzie and they had two sons in Pittsburgh: Charles b. 1875 and Adolph, born 1881. Then, Lizzie died and he married Ernestine Williams (formerly Ernestine Wilhelm). He and Ernestine had three children: Wm Herman (my husband's grandfather), Ernestine Louise, died as a baby; and Frederick Vincent Zinsser. After Frederick died in 1895, his wife remarried Alex Baca and after 1903, they moved back to Pittsburgh.

Frederick Vincent, born Nov. 10 or 12th,1889,in PGH. He married Evelyn and they had 5 children: Elizabeth, Charles, Richard, Ester, and John. When Fred Vincent registered for the draft in 1917 in lived with his parents at 23 Union Alley, Etna. In 1930, he worked at a brewery.

His son, Richard, born 1920, registered for WWII draft in 1942. He died 2/25/1992.

It would be fantastic if my husband, Herman, could connect with the descendants of his Zinsser descendants, some of whom might still live in PA. Also, there were 1/2 brothers and sisters from the Baca marriage. Manuel Baca, born in PGH in 1902, is listed on the 1930 census as living in McKees Rocks, PA.

I wonder if Frederick Zinsser, born 1855, was a son of Adolph, your gg-grandfather? Our g-grandfather, Frederick, had a brother named Adolph William, born between 1862-1867, who also moved to New Mexico and then moved to Denver Coo. in 1900. His wife was also came from Germany. Her name was Anna Orlowsky.

I have a lot of facts from warranty deeds and the census. I have been in contact with Sue, who is a grandchild of the medical doctor, Dr. Harry F. Zinsser, but we just couldn't connect the dots to connect our Zinssers to hers.

I would like to send or email you the stories I wrote on the Zinssers. I wrote the Herman Charles Zinsser Grace Family Tree book on Ancestry.com, and I would like to find out who his great-grandfather's parents were before I finish it.

If you have any more information to share, I would be grateful.

I spoke with my father, Jay R. Arthur (b.1923) and got this clarifying information.

My great-great-grandfather was Adolph Zinsser. Adolph was born in Germany and came to the US shortly after the US Civil War. He had several children and his oldest son was also named Adolph (called "Dollie"). Wilhelm, my great-grandfather was born about 1875 in Pittsburgh. He had brothers, among them was Dr. Harry Zinsser. The earlier information I gave about Harry, who delivered my father,was incorrect. He had a son who was about my father's age and he practiced medicine until his early death shortly after returning from WWII. The elder Harry was in charge of one of Pittsburgh's largest hospitals for several years.

Wilhelm ran a bakery in Lawrencville section of Pittsburgh where Butler Street is located. My father did not know of any other family members who had a bakery, but said it was possible. "Willie's" family lived above the bakery in a large house. There was a piano there that had once been played by Rachmaninoff. That house, which the neighboring Catholic Church had wanted to buy for a long time, collapsed after the Zinsser's moved out (in the 30's) but ran as a rental property. That lot is now part of the church.

It may be possible that the bakery in the county history may have been in my grandmother's (Louise)name as she was, of the five children, the one favored by Adolph.

My dad will look to see if he has a record of the names of "Willie's" brothers and sisters. He may not know of Fredrick because he was out of the area when my dad was young. Also, the Zinssers appear to have been inclined towards family fueds - they seemed to quarrel and pick sides, often never referring to the "outcasts" on the other side of the quarrel.

The neighborhood also had a "pecking order". My grandmother's mother's family - the Millers - although German were "second rate" in the eyes of some of the Zinssers. My father said the Millers were "fun loving".

Anyway, the factors (bakery, relation to Harry, and the dedicated use of the family pool of names - Adolph-Fredrick-Charles-William) suggest that this is your husband's family.

I will be glad to send a file of the names, places and dates for Adolph's line back to the time of the Thirty Year War. (It is an excel file and cannot be sent via this webpage.) I understand that the family is related to Koch, the famous bacterologist.

Contact me at rjarthur@lycos.com I would very much enjoy reading anything you may have on the family.

Richard Arthur
Clemmons, NC