I start today by showing the 1930 Altenburg census listing the family of Leo and Maria Lottes.

Leo and Maria, according to this census, have no children of their own, but they have three children living with them who are part of their extended family.  If we backtrack ten years to the 1920 census, we find the following:

We see Leo and Maria living with two of Maria’s cousins, one who is ten years old, and the other who is seven.  The seven year old, J.G. (Weinhold) Bundenthal is still living with them in 1930.  When we backtrack another ten years to the 1910 census, we find this:

Here we see that Leo’s younger brother, Edward, was living with this young couple.  Edward was The Dreaded Doc Lottes we wrote about in an earlier post.  He was the dentist in Altenburg for many years.  Actually, earlier than this census, Leo had been a dentist in Altenburg for a short time also.  He graduated from the dentistry school at Washington University in St. Louis.  Here is a photo of Leo behind the dentist chair in Altenburg.

This photo was reportedly taken in 1905.  The “patient” in the chair is Maria Estel.  She would marry Leo in 1906. She is the birthday girl today.  She was born on March 16, 1885.

Maria was the sister of Dr. Theodore Estel, who was a medical doctor in Altenburg for many years.  Leo was a dentist in Altenburg from 1905-1910.  Then he switched professions and became a banker at the Bank of Altenburg, which had a new building in 1910.

It was about this time also that Leo’s brother, Edward, came to Altenburg, moved into his brother’s house, and took over the dentist’s practice.

Several days ago, I wrote a post about Leo’s older half-brother, John E. Lottes.  In that article was an image of the 1900 census which showed Leo as a 16 year-old bartender in his father’s saloon.

Now back to the 1920 census.  Cornelia Bundenthal and her younger brother, Joseph George (J.G.) Weinhold Bundenthal were living in the Lottes home.  They were the children of Rev. Theodore and Concordia (Weinhold) Bundenthal.  A previous blog was written about this couple called Concordia Student Meets Concordia?.  Pastor Bundenthal died in 1915.  Concordia was still living, but for some reason, two of her children went to live in Altenburg with Leo and Maria Lottes.  Since Concordia was Maria’s mother’s sister, these two children would therefore have been Maria’s cousins.

In the 1930 census, we see Naoma and George Bock living with the Lottes couple.   These two were children of Ernst and Franziska Martha (Estel) Bock.  The mother of these children died in 1927, when George was less than one year old.  Even though their father was still living, Naoma and George were sent to live with the Lotteses.  Since Franziska was Maria Lottes’s sister, that made Naoma and George their niece and nephew.

The Lottes home was very ample for housing extra people.  Here we see the Leo Lottes house.

This house was razed a few years ago to make room for the new gymnasium which was built at the Altenburg Public School.  It was sad to see it come down, but the rumor floating around town was that there was evidence of termites in it, and the house would probably not have lasted long.

Leo died in 1938, the same year as the tornado that we wrote about yesterday.  He died of Hodgkin’s disease while he was at Lutheran Hospital in St. Louis.

Two years later, in the 1940 census, we see Maria as a widow with George Bock still living with her.  Maria continued to raise George as if he were her own child.

Maria died in St. Louis in 1952 and is buried in Concordia Cemetery in that city.

Based on some photographs that we have, there is one other characteristic about Leo that is interesting.  He apparently was a “car guy”.  Here are some photos of Leo with his cars.