Kudos again to the excellent research being done by my 3rd cousin, Dave. Yesterday, he sent me these articles about the death of my great-great grandfather, John Ulrich Mahler. Oddly enough, yesterday was also the 122nd anniversary of his death.
My great-grandfather, John Ulrich Mahler, was killed on March 1, 1988 by a shifting train engine. The inquest indicated that he wasn’t paying attention. My great grandfather was only 7 or so when this happened.
What I find particularly interesting is the misspelling of the name in the inquest article. Growing up, we didn’t have much contact with my dad’s side of the family, so I do’n’t know how they pronounce our last name. My immediate family has always pronounced our last name, so that it sounds like it was spelled Mailer, as opposed to pronouncing it like the name of the composer, Gustav.
I always wondered whether someone might have changed the pronunciation or the spelling. However, in the 1880 census that Dave had sent me, the name is definitely spelled with an H, as we do today. (And the article about the train crash also spells it that way.)
But the article about the inquest consistently spells his name Maler (no H), which suggests, but doesn’t prove, that maybe the reporter heard it pronounced as we do today, and spelled it without the H.
So, I am guessing that the non-standard pronunciation might go back to John Ulrich Mahler.
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