Kopp, Frederick & Spiehler, Margaretha

Submitted by Ann Roberts

Last year I showed a picture of my grandfather (Thomas Henry Roberts) who came to this country from England with his father (David Charles Roberts) & mother (Ann Jane Buck Roberts) at the age of three. This year I showed a picture of his maternal grandfather and grandmother who were both born in Germany.

Frederick (Fritz) Kopp (my ggf) came to New Orleans with his father when he was six and his wife, Margaretha Spiehler was born in Bavaria, 8/24/1843; died in Louisiana (Milneburg) 5/2/1927. They were both Catholic and she was first married to a William Henry Smith who died at the reported age of 27. She spelled his name Schmitt but when I found his death certificate at the New Orleans Public Library (main branch), I noted it was Smith and that he was from New Jersey (family traces back to the American Revolution). They had two daughters (Mary Catherine, 10/4/1864 & Sara Louisa, 5/11/1867) and I was curious about why he died at such a young age. Turns out he was “run over by a steam car” out by Lake Pontchartrain in an area known as Milneburg. Fritz and Margaretha married in 1869 in Holy Trinity (Catholic) church in New Orleans. They lived in a fishing camp in Milneburg and he was cited in a Times Picayune article as the oldest resident of Milneburg before it was destroyed to make way for an amusement park out at the Lake. In a book entitled Lake Pontchartrain, by Catherine Campanella, chapter two is devoted to this famous area and features historic photos of clubs where jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet played in the 1920’s. The song “Milenberg Joys,” recorded in 1923 by the Rhythm Kings, including Jelly Roll Morton, celebrates this area.
Fritz and Margaretha had six children together, one of whom was my grandmother, Josephine Wilhemina Kopp (born 1/12/1878). She and my grandfather, Thomas H. Roberts, were married on January 28, 1897, by E.W. Hunter, Rector of St. Anna’s Church in New Orleans.

Fritz died in February 1939 and he and Margaretha are both buried in Firemen’s Cemetery in New Orleans at the end of Canal Street.