The Not-So Prodigal Son: Edmund Thomas Sommer

Mother told me that her Uncle Edmund asked for his portion of his father’s estate shortly after Henry Sommer’s death on January 11, 1910. As the story went, Edmund promptly left his family and his hometown of Quakertown, Pennsylvania for good, providing no forwarding address. Poignantly, Mother’s grandmother, Mary Sommer, kept a light burning in the front window to show her son he would be welcomed back.  She died in 1919, never having seen, or apparently heard from, him again. In 1952, Edmund’s brother, Ferdinand Sommer, was called by the Philadelphia police to verify the identity of a dead man; a Masonic ring found on the body was traced to Edmund T. Sommer.  

Factory workers pose in front of the main H. Sommer Co. factory building, about 1907

The impression Mother gave me was that my great uncle had taken his "portion" of his father's estate so he could go off to live a life of sin and dissipation in some notorious place like [gasp!] New York City. I imagined Edmund living high until his money ran out and he ended up on Skid Row where his body was found. I imagined my great uncle Ferd, taking a train to New York City, going to the morgue where he scrutinized the feature of the pathetic dead man's face, sadly confirming the body to be that of his reprobate brother.

Edmund Sommer was a mystery, even to those who knew and, presumably, loved him. According to Mother, until Ferd was called to identify and claim the body, no one in the family knew what had become of Edmund. So why had Edmund left his family? And where had he been for 42 years? To a family historian, he was frustratingly elusive and maddeningly enticing.

Edmund Thomas Sommer, youngest son of Henry Joseph Sommer and Mary Catherine Rühl, was born in Quakertown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania on October 6, 1873. He was the fourth of Henry's and Mary's five children. Other than the fact that Edmund (enumerated in the 1880 U.S. census as "Edward") attended school, nothing is known about his childhood. Edmund's parents were immigrants. Mary (Maria Katherina) was from the Kingdom of Bavaria; Henry (Heinrich Josef) was from the Duchy of Baden, where he graduated from what we would today call a business school. Within ten years of arriving in American, Henry was a highly successful cigar manufacturer, operating five factories in Quakertown and two in nearby towns. This made him wealthy enough to provide a large, pleasant home for his family, and to employ two live-in servants--a cook and a maid. We can assume that Edmund and his siblings enjoyed comfortable, privileged childhoods.

Sales letter signed by Edmund Sommer

After being counted in the 1880 census, Edmund doesn't appear in the records until November 20, 1892 (a little more than a month after his nineteenth birthday) when he was baptized at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Quakertown. On that same date, he was also confirmed as an Episcopalian. The confirmation record show that Edmund, not surprisingly, had been brought up a Lutheran, and undoubtedly grew up attending St. John Lutheran Church. (St. John's records contain the names of various family members.) Although Henry was a Lutheran, he stood as Edmund's baptism sponsor, which suggests he supported his youngest son's decision to embrace another denomination. The baptism and confirmation records give Edmund's full name as "Edmund Thomas Ochs Sommer". These are the only known records to include the name "Ochs". Edmund might have added the name to honor the Ochs family who attended St. John's, and who must have been close with Edmund and/or the Sommer family.

Edmund's next appearance in the records is the 1900 U.S. census. He was 25 years old, single, and living with his parents and his oldest sibling, Mary. His occupation, like his father, was "cigar manfr". Henry's main factory was just a few steps away from the family home. I picture father and son walking over to their office each morning, perhaps with Henry's eldest son, Ferdinand, whose home was also just a few steps away from the family business. Although the 1905 Quakertown directory lists Henry, Ferdinand and Edmund as cigar manufacturers, only Ferd's and Edmund's names appear on the "H. Sommer Company" letterhead of a business letter signed by Edmund on August 18, 1905. There is circumstantial evidence the Henry was in poor health, and possibly he retired that year. Edmund's name appears with Ferd's on the letterheads of two 1909 company invoices.

On April 18, 1910, four months after his father's death, Edmund was enumerated in the 1910 U.S. census of South Bensalem, Northampton County, Pennsylvania. He was residing at Laufer's Hotel on Wyandotte Street, and his occupation was cigar factory superintendent. Today, the area is known as Catasauqua, and Spinnerstown, the site of Sommer cigar factory, federal number 1622, is nearby. It's likely that was the facility Edmund was overseeing.

Eighteen months after his father's death, on June 7, 1911, Edmund, then living in Philadelphia, deeded his share of "cigar factory buildings" and two lots in the same block as the factory buildings (at Juniper and 10th Streets, Quakertown) to his brother Ferdinand. In doing so, Edmund apparently relinquished his role in the company business. By November 2, 1912, the letterhead on a company invoice says only "Ferdinand Sommer, Owner".

Edmund's WWI draft registration card

Edmund registered for the military draft on September 12, 1918. At that time, he was living on Prospect Street in Lakewood, Ocean County, New Jersey. Although his mother and his four siblings were alive at this time, Edmund named Frank W. Todd, a local real estate agent, as his nearest relative, although there was no family connection. He gave his occupation as a "poultry plant" owner-operator at the Prospect Street address. Edmund Thomas Sommer, cigar manufacturer, hadn't taken his "portion" so he could spend lavishly on food, drink, and entertainment in the big, bad city. He used the money to invest in a rural property where he could live and work quietly among chickens. His family, however, didn't know this: Letters of Administration for his mother's estate, dated February 20, 1919, list Edmund's address as "unknown".

Edmund was enumerated in the 1920 and 1930 U.S. censuses of Lakewood; he and the chickens still lived on Prospect Street. He was the only person in his household in 1920. In 1930, a man named Fred Rose lived in the household, but beyond being a white male born in "United States", no other information about Mr. Rose was recorded. In both censuses, Edmund's occupation is "chicken farmer".

What drove Edmund from his family? That question will never be answered. Mother said that Edmund and his sister, Martha Washington Sommer, had some "eccentricities", a word that could mean many things. However, Mother's only illustration of their eccentricity was a story of Edmund and Martha having their parents' home remodeled (which included removing a wall) while Henry and Mary took the curative waters at Baden-Baden. This was done without the parents' knowledge, so upon their return, Henry and Mary probably experienced quite a surprise, if not outright annoyance, with their two youngest children.

For years, before I uncovered the records of Edmund's life, I assumed his parents, especially his ambitious German father, had driven him away. However, twenty-five year old Edmund was still living with his parents in 1900, and probably was living with them at the time of Henry's death. As a co-owner of the family business, he could have afforded his own home, if his relationship with his parents were strained. And although it might seem a small matter, Henry's sponsorship of his almost-adult son's baptism and confirmation in another church denomination strikes me as an act of loving support.

The change in the family dynamic appears to have occurred soon after Henry's death. Although Edmund had worked side-by-side with his brother Ferdinand while Henry was alive, very shortly after Henry's death, Edmund took over a Sommer cigar factory several miles from the Quakertown factory, and left the home in which he'd lived all his life.

Had there been a falling-out between the brothers regarding how the business was to be run? Did Edmund want more say and more responsibility than he might have had working with his older brother? Did the family, especially Edmund's and Ferdinand's mother, side with the first-born son over the youngest son in some matter of business--or in some other matter?

In box 7 of Edmund's death certificate, "never married"
is crossed out and "widowed" written instead.

To my knowledge, Edmund Sommer never married. I can't help but wonder if this fact points to why he left his family. Was Edmund an invert?* If he were, did Ferdinand, who became head of both the family and the family business after Henry's death, make impossible demands on Edmund to change his "wicked" ways? Again, we can never know, but there's something interesting about Edmund's death certificate that led me to this idea.

There two versions of Edmund's death certificate, apparently owing to the fact the cause of death was determined by the coroner's office. Edmund was delivered D.O.A. to St. Joseph's Hospital in Philadelphia, and without identification (except for that Masonic ring). Ferdinand Sommer signed as the informant on both death certificates, so he would have been the person to make a significant change on both certificates. One certificate gave Edmund's marital status as "single", the other as "never married". Both were crossed out and "widower" written over them. Of course, it's possible that Edmund married after 1930 and lost his wife before 1952, but if he had been estranged from his family all those years, how would Ferd have known of a marriage and subsequent bereavement? A plausible explanation for the changes is that Ferdinand felt that some shame was associated with Edmund's "never married" status, and sought to mitigate it with a fictional marriage. If Ferd knew--or at least suspected--his brother was homosexual, he would have considered it his duty to hide that from the public record.

Whatever the cause of the estrangement, Ferdinand brought Edmund's body back to Quakertown and had him interred in the Sommer plot in Union Cemetery. Ferd undoubtedly felt it would be good to reunite Edmund with the family he'd left decades earlier, but I wonder how Edmund felt about it.


*The late 19th-early 20th century term for homosexual