I made one of my regular antique store stops this afternoon and was surprised to find open boxes on the floor, scattered throughout store. The boxes were full of household items from an estate that the antique shop owner had sorted through to find the collectible pieces. The items that were of little or no commercial value were to be re-boxed and likely discarded. There wasn't much of interest in these boxes from a genealogical standpoint either, with the exception of this one postcard.
The gravestone is marked "Joseph Reichelt, 1859-1918." From scrounging through the estate boxes, I had seen a few bills and envelopes with a Saskatchewan address. I thought it was likely this grave was located in Saskatchewan.
In the 1916 Canada Census, I found a Joseph Reichelt, born 1859 in Austria, living in Kulawa, Saskatchewan with his wife, Bertha (45), and children: Joseph (22), Bertha (20), Barbara (19), Fred (15), Gus (12), and twins Walter and Herman (8). All of the children were born in Austria, with the exception of the twins, who were born in Saskatchewan.
According to the census, Joseph Reichelt came to Canada in 1905. I confirmed this by finding his passenger record on Ancestry. He and his family arrived in Quebec on the 10th of May 1905 on the ship "Montrose" from Antwerp, Belgium.
The Kulawa district is just outside the Village of Raymore, SK. A look at the local history book, "From Prairie Wool to Golden Grain: Raymore & District, 1904-1979" provided a wealth of information on this family, and confirmed that this Joseph Reichelt died in 1918. It also tells us that Joseph (Josef) and Bertha had two older children who did not show up in the 1916 census at home: Edward, born 1888; and Katherine, born 1891.
Joseph's wife, Bertha Baumel Reichelt died in 1943, so this postcard probably dates prior to 1943, as her name and dates have not been added to the marker. This gravestone can be found in the Raymore Cemetery.
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