Paul Edward Rensch, 1857-1911

Headstone GPS Coordinates: 

Birth: 12 April 1857, Spandau, Berlin, Germany

Death: 06 July 1911, Seattle, King County, Washington

Relatives in Seabeck Cemetery: Frank Rensch

American Revolutionary War Patriots*: None

Disclaimer: These lines have not been officially proven by NSDAR standards.

Paul Edward Rensch was born on April 12, 1857 in Spandau, Berlin, Germany to his parents Andreas Friedrich Eduard Rensch and Marie Elizabeth Caroline Borgman.He was baptized at St. Nikolai Lutheran Church in Spandau. Paul was the fourth child of his parents. He had three older brothers named Friedrick Andreas Eduard (1850), Eduard Demetrius Traugott (1852), and Carl Friedrick Otto (1853). He then had a younger brother born in 1859 named Eduard Franz who became known as Frank Edward Rensch. 

Unfortunately, two of Paul and Frank’s older brothers, Friedrick and Carl, both died young. Eduard grew up and had a family in Hamburg, Germany where they all stayed.

Paul first arrived in the U.S.A around 1890 in San Francisco, California. 

Between 1889 and 1895, several passenger lists out of Hamburg, Germany record Paul travelling to Central and South America on his way to San Francisco or Seattle. He worked as a cook and a merchant at different times. Around 1895, he travelled back to Europe to stay for awhile.

In July 1899 when he was forty-two years old, Paul married a twenty-eight year old German woman named Martha Hermina Kleebery in July 1899 in Grimsby, Lincolnshire County, England. Ten years later in 1909, Paul traveled back alone to Seattle. In the 1910 census, Paul was recorded as living in a boarding house off Madison Street in Seattle, and worked as a janitor. The 1910 Seattle directory listed him working as a porter. 

On July 6, 1911 at the age of fifty-four, Paul suddenly died in Seattle from “apoplexy” or a stroke. His brother Frank filled out his death certificate stating that Paul was married and worked as a bookkeeper. Paul’s wife was still in England at the time of his death working as a domestic servant. No records have been found to indicate they had any children.

Paul’s body was brought to Seabeck to be buried in the cemetery under a concrete grave slab and small bronze marker. Somehow, his marker was inscribed with his birth year being “1847,” which is ten years off from his actual birth year listed in all the paper records.