Charles Drexler

My niece, Lori, reminded me that I haven't really written much about my father's family. My father's family hasn't been written about much in these BLOGs because, frankly, I don't know much about them.

Charles John Drexler was my grandfather. I never met him. He died before I was born, but only shortly before I was born.

Here's an interesting fact, though. I have a copy of my father's birth certificate and the name on that birth certificate was "Charles John Drexler" -- same as his father's. But he was always called Carl and when he was married, his marriage certificate has the name "Carl John Drexler" on it. I don't know when the name change came about, and I have no paperwork on whether my father every legally changed his name to Carl, or whether his parents did, or whether he just went by that name because having two people with the same name in the family is confusing.

Anyway, back to Dad's family.

My grandfather Drexler's family came from Germany way back in the early 1800s and they settled in the Reading, Pennsylvania area. If I had the bucks to subscribe to Ancestry.com, I might be able to find out more about them. Last summer I was going to search through the records in Utah (which would have been free), but Alan got sick and we skipped Utah altogether. I digress again.

My father didn't talk much about his family. His mother, Bertha Mae Casper died during the influenza epidemic in 1918 -- and she was with child at the time. No one else in the family succumbed to that disease.

Dad's mother (Bertha Mae) and father (Charles) were married in 1906. I have the wedding certificate. Dad was born in 1908.

While we have many pictures of dad's family, we really know very, very little about any of them. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, those words are scant on information about my father's family.

As I think of things about his family, I'll post them on the BLOG.