Michael Lawrence
Michael Lawrence was born in Philadelphia on 19 February 1797, according to a family account. The same account says he was baptized Johann Michael Lawrentz at St. Michael's Lutheran Church, the German Lutheran congregation of the city, and was the fourth of nine children of Christian Lawrence and Anna Maria Hotz. He was named for his mother's father, Johann Michael Hotz.
His father died in 1811, when Michael was fourteen. A family account says he then learned the butcher's trade from one of his three Hotz uncles, probably the youngest, Daniel Hotz.
He married Catharine Sweitzer, a Pennsylvania girl about four years younger. They had eleven children between about 1820 and 1849, and all but two lived to grow up. Samuel died at three in 1823 and Hiram at seven in 1836.
In 1850 Michael, 53, lived in the 1st Ward of Spring Garden, then a separate district on the northern edge of Philadelphia. Catharine was 48. At home were Albert, 25, a Catharine of 24, Mary Jane, 17, Eliza, 13, George, 12, Hiram, 11, Emma, 6, and two small children, Theodore, 3, and Lavinia, 1.
A family account gives the rest of his working life. He was a butcher by trade, but from at least 1844 to 1855 he also kept a porter house, a beer saloon, at 37 Ridge Road. He served for a time as a captain of the watch, the city's night police before Philadelphia had a uniformed force. He was a Democrat. In 1850 and 1851 he ran for county commissioner, and the papers called him "the old fashioned butcher." In the autumn of 1851 his name stood on the Democratic ticket for the October election, under the candidates for governor and the state supreme court.
He was a Freemason, a member of Industry Lodge No. 131. He died suddenly on 6 July 1856, at his house at 253 Twenty-fourth Street, above Coates. His notice in the Public Ledger invited the members of his lodge and "the Order in general" to the funeral. Two and a half months later, on 21 September 1856, fire destroyed the roof of the saloon on Ridge Road. Catharine died the next year. He is buried at Lawnview Cemetery, Rockledge, in the Susquehanna section.
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Cite: Heirology, "Michael Lawrence (1797-1856)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/michael-lawrence-1797-1856-33301e.