Julius Carl Frederick Hintz
Headstone GPS Coordinates:
Birth: 14 Mar 1857, Danzig, Germany.
Death: 23 Jan 1928, Seabeck, Kitsap, Washington
Relatives in Seabeck Cemetery: Ida Hintz Bolan, (née Lippert)
American Revolutionary War Patriots*: None
Disclaimer: These lines have not been officially proven by NSDAR standards.
Julius Carl Frederick Hintz was born on March 14, 1857, in Danzig, Germany. The names of his German parents are not currently known, but stories about Julius’s life before immigrating to America have been passed down through generations of Hintz descendants.
Kyle Peterson, Julius Hintz’s great-grandson, shared the following family story:
“Great Grandpa Hintz was born to a wealthy family in the area of the port city known as Danzig in Germany (Prussia) on March 15, 1857. He often mentioned that his father was a Burgomeister—similar to a city councilman—and owned a large cattle farm. He also spoke of hunting hirsch, a special type of deer, for which hunting rights were very expensive. Great Grandpa knew how to butcher, flay, and tan animal hides.
We know that the name Hintz is a contraction of his full name, but none of the elders would tell the children what it was, and I have not been able to locate it on Ancestry.com.
Family lore holds that during the rise of the Prussian state, Great Grandpa was forced into the German Army when he turned 18, or thereabouts (circa 1875). Because he was the son of a wealthy landowner and a member of the local government hierarchy, he was assigned to an ‘elite’ unit of the Kaiser’s Guard. Anyone who has read All Quiet on the Western Front has some idea how brutal that initiation could be.
Julius Carl deserted and went aboard a masted sailing ship, on which he spent several years. My mother, Doris Hintz-Peterson, told me several times that he went around the world three times, including sailing past the Cape of Good Hope off southern Africa—a perilous journey on a wooden sailing ship.
He told his children that he once returned to Danzig and attempted to leave his ship to visit his parents, but that ‘they grabbed me as soon as I got off the gangplank’ and forcibly returned him to the army. It wasn’t long before he ran away again and found another ship to escape Prussia. There is also a story that Great Grandpa left one ship on the eastern side of Panama and made his way through the jungle across the isthmus, long before the Panama Canal was built (1903–1914).”
According to Julius’s naturalization record, he left Germany for good on October 15, 1884, at the age of twenty-eight. He arrived in Astoria, Oregon, by December 1885 and came to Washington on March 1, 1887.
Around 1889, Julius met Ida Lippert Michel, a German widow with two children.
Ida Lippert was born on April 21, 1860, in Comerung, Germany, to William Lippert and Johanna Rassell (or Reiser). Around 1883, she married Henry Mikal (also recorded as Michel). Their daughter, Ida Edith, was born on July 1, 1884. Less than a year later, the family sailed from Bremen, Germany, and arrived in New York City on March 28, 1885. Ida’s brother, Rudolf Lippert, traveled with them.
By May 1885, the family had settled in St. Paul, Ramsey County, Minnesota, where they lived next door to Henry’s brother, August Michel, and his family, who had immigrated to the United States the year before. In September 1885, Ida and Henry welcomed a son, William Frederick.
Sometime between 1885 and 1888, Ida’s husband Henry died. Family lore states that he died in a prison in Minnesota.
Around 1889, Ida moved to Seattle with her two young children and lived in a house in Ballard. She likely traveled with her sister Olga, Olga’s husband Arthur, and their children. At some point, Ida met Julius Hintz, and the couple had a son, Rudolph, born on September 2, 1889. Julius and Ida were officially married in Ida’s Ballard home on May 6, 1890. Ida may have been pregnant at the time of their marriage—or became pregnant shortly afterward—as their daughter Selma was born on December 13, 1890.
Julius and Ida went on to have several more children: Adelheide “Lyda” (1892), Amil (1893), Paul (1895), Herman (1896), Marie (1899), and Fred (1901). All of the Hintz children were born in Ballard.
Julius worked as a painter for the railroad, painting identifying numbers and letters on train cars. Around 1901, the family left Seattle for the Kitsap Peninsula. According to family stories, Ida wanted to move out of the city to distance Julius from the many bars. He was a heavy drinker, and the move did little to curb his habit, as Kyle Peterson explained:
“He was a terrible drunk with a hair-trigger temper. Grandpa [Amil] Hintz told me they could see him driving his horse and buggy home some nights and would wait to see if he had been drinking. If he had, he and Great Grandma would get into a terrible row, and sometimes Great Grandpa would ‘put his fist through every window in the house.’ Great Grandma would then wrap his bleeding hands in a linen towel.
He had suffered terribly in his life—forced to leave his family and losing everything of his birthright, including the cattle farm. No doubt he endured long periods of fear, homesickness, and brutality as an apprentice sailor. But he persevered, was able to take care of his family, and achieved a great deal in his life.”
When the Hintz family moved to the Crosby area, Peterson explained:
“They led their team of horses with a wagon loaded with all their possessions onto the Peninsula until they found a house abandoned during the Gold Rush years of the late 1800s and established their homestead in what became known as Hintzville. They raised a garden with chickens, horses, and cows.
They found an abandoned boat about 30 feet long. Great Grandpa cut down trees, dried and shaped the lumber by hand to replace the hull, shaped another tree for the mast and one for the boom, and sewed a large canvas sail. He and Uncle Rudy would load the boat with barrels of pickled eggs, baskets of berries, and whatever else they could grow or make, and sail from Seabeck across Puget Sound to sell their goods at Pike Place Market in Seattle.
They also wove a fishing net, anchoring one end to shore and taking the boat in a wide circle through the Sound, playing the net out before turning back to haul it in—catching smelt, salmon fingerlings, the occasional crab or sole—for eating, smoking, or bait.”
Despite his struggles with alcohol, Julius was known to be intelligent and deeply involved in his community. He served on the Crosby School District board and was president of the Crosby Valley Club. He spoke several languages, including German, Polish, English, and some Salish. He made the family’s furniture, crafted shoes and clothing from animal hides, and even mixed his own paints to create artwork.
In the 1920s, the family home burned down. A mention of their rebuilt house appeared in the Kitsap County Herald on Friday, August 21, 1925:
“Many residents of Crosby met at the new home of Mr. and Mrs. Julius Hintz recently. The new home stands on the ashes of the old home, which was burned to the ground with all its contents. This did not discourage this old couple, but they built a better and more up-to-date home.”
The Hintz children were raised in Crosby, where they married and raised families of their own. Several built homes near the original homestead, which became known as “Hintzville,” as noted in the Kitsap County Herald on Friday, April 16, 1926:
Here & There.
“I also called on Julius Hintz. He was really busy on his new house but took time for a very short but very interesting visit. Mr. Hintz has the majority of his children living all around him, and therefore it is now called Hintzville.”
Julius spent his remaining years in Hintzville and passed away there on January 23, 1928 from heart failure. His obituary, written by Rev. Samuel Bassett (also known as Brutus), was published in the Kitsap County Herald. While Bassett included some incorrect information regarding children born out of wedlock, records from the SCRP confirm that only one of the Hintz children was born before Julius and Ida married.
Kitsap County Herald:
“Mr. Julius Hintz was born in Danzig, a province of Germany. He came to America a young man in the year 1882, and in the year 1886 he came to Seattle, where he met the one that is now his widow. Out of this wedlock were born five boys and three daughters. Mrs. Hintz also has one son and one daughter from her first husband, who died when they were little ones.
Mr. Hintz was one of the old pioneers and a conspicuous figure in the public life of the community. He served many terms on the board of school directors and as president and secretary of the Crosby Valley Club. He was a painter by trade. Brutus will miss him as long as he continues to preach here. He was never absent from meetings and was not associated with any particular church or creed. Many times we discussed religion at his home, and these visits made me very attached to him. He had a fine memory and was a good entertainer when in the right mood.”
Due to declining health, Ida moved out of her home in Hintzville and offered it for sale or rent in 1929. In 1930, she was living in Seattle in the household of Louis Jockel and Paula Bradshaw, working as a servant.
On September 8, 1934, at the age of 74, Ida married her third husband, John Bolan, in Olympia. The marriage record lists them as residents of Port Ludlow.
Ida died on January 1, 1938, at the age of 77, in her son Rudy Hintz’s home in Bremerton, from heart failure. Her obituary was published in the Bremerton Sun. She was buried in Seabeck Cemetery beside Julius, beneath a large granite headstone.