Mr. Mell was a co-partner in the Ettinger-Mell Company which was my mom's Ettinger family's plumbing, heating, tin and roofing business. Mr. Mell was only age 35 when he met a terrible end. Up on a scaffold above a third floor where he was attaching a cornice, he somehow lost his footing and fell, striking the scaffolding and then the pavement. At the time George got married in 1892, his mother was deceased, but his father was listed as Daniel. George was 24 and a tinsmith, while his fiancee was a dressmaker. Based on the 1870 census, it seems his mother was Mary, and he had an older brother William. While George had no children, he left behind his wife, Katie B. (nee Berk) Mell, daughter of Nathan and Mary Ann. More of his story is told on the memorial of my great grandpa Charles H. Ettinger. It is only because today, in June of 2014, that I found an obituary for him that names his place of rest, that I have added him so as to not forget him on site. The Allentown Leader mentions him as a singer, second bass, in the Arion Society in 1897. When Mr. Mell died, the society attended his funeral as a group and rendered the music at his service. The 1910 and 1920 censuses show us that Katie lives with her parents Nathan and Mary (nee Bauscher) Berk in Allentown as she had during her marriage. January 18, 1921, she would marry once more. Katie, age 46, wed Frank P. Mertz, age 53, a very successful contractor mentioned many times in the newspapers, son of Tilghman Mertz and Eliza Helfrich. Katie's second husband Franklin (who made it to age 100) rests at the same cemetery as her first. Like her second husband she lived to a grand age, in her case, just shy of 103.
Spouses
1Catharine (Katie) Meyer
Birth25 Mar 1875, PA
DeathFeb 1978, Allentown, PA
FatherOtto Moyer
MotherMarie Klinger
Last Modified 27 Nov 2017Created 7 May 2020 using Reunion for Macintosh