Elise poses for a photo, taken about 1880. Click to enlarge. We note that she wears a ring on her left ring finger...could this be an engagement portrait?
Elise's grave marker at the Jatho plot in Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, South Carolina. Click the photo for an enlargement.
Elise Clara Margaretha Jatho was born September 22, 1862 in Charleston, the sixth child of Georg Wilhelm Jatho and Elise Schuchmann. She was their second daughter, Pauline being the elder, and Elise was the baby of the family for four years until the last Jatho child, Carl Julius, came along.
Elise was born in the middle of the Civil War, probably at the Jatho home on Cannon Street. Her education was likely home schooling like her sister's. By 1870 the Jatho family was living in Greenwood Township, Abbeville County, about 250 miles west of Charleston. The 1870 census shows that the family had an African-American servant called Emma Bettie to help take care of the brood.
Later that year in early autumn G.W. Jatho died and was buried in Greenwood. Elise, just eight years old, along with her mother and siblings returned to Charleston, probably to be near her maternal grandparents Louis and Marie Schuckmann, as well as her uncle Philip and his wife Susan. The senior Schuckmanns had a successful dry-goods business on King Street and could probably help out their widowed daughter and grandchildren.
In 1873 the family joined St. Matthew's German Lutheran Church on King Street, and although all the children had presumably been baptised when they were born, a ceremony was held for the whole clan in April. Click on the baptism record at left for details. Elise's mother (Elise Senior) taught German to help make ends meet, and by 1880 the older Jathos (Philip and George, now in their twenties) began their own careers to help the family. Elise remained at home; older sister Pauline had recently married a lawyer, Marcellus Foster, and had moved away. But the home played host to Elise's cousin George Dressel, who had recently emigrated from Hesse-Darmstadt to establish a career in Charleston.
In 1881 Charleston was hit by a typhoid fever epidemic, and Elise fell victim to it. She died on July 15 and was the first of the Jatho family to be buried at Magnolia Cemetery.
The family arranged for an elaborate grave marker for her, a column decorated with roses and lilies of the valley, and a poem from the collection by Byron called "The Hebrew Melodies". You can still trace the carvings of the verse: "Bright be the place of thy soul!/ No lovelier spirit than thine/E'er burst from its mortal control/In the orbs of the blessed to shine." You can read the whole poem here. Clearly, the Jathos felt her loss deeply.
Thanks very much to Louis and Gyongyi Quin for the photo of Elise!