The Altz Family
Children of Sophia McGuire and J.William Altz
Sometime in the early 1900’s Sophia McGuire married J. William Altz. He lived in Croton, N.Y. He had been born in 1875 in Georgia (Macon, I think) and had come to New York to work on the Croton dam which was being built at that time. I think he was an engineer. His parents must have come with him because they are buried in St. Mary’s cemetery in Verplanck. His father was John Altz, born in 1842 and died in 1914 and his mother was Mary Murray, born in 1848 and died in 1910.
In 2004 I came across the following information in the 1880 census. It says that John Alts(sic) was born in New York but I think he was born in the German state of Prussia. As you can see it also says that the parents of the children were born in Prussia and Ireland respectively. The big surprise is the number of children (I only knew of William) but it also shows that the first child (Maggie) was born in New York and the rest were born in South Carolina, not in Georgia as I had been told previously.
(L to R) Mr. Harkins Sophia McGuire J. William Altz George Boyle
Sophia and William had three children, William (Willie), Margaret and Ruth between the years of 1907 and 1911. Then, in 1913, William died suddenly at the age of thirty-eight. Sophia was left a widow with three young children at the age of thirty-one.