ROSA'S KIDS: PART 2 -- EMMA

The second child of John William and Rosa (Ritterhouse) Schlereth was a girl who arrived about 17 months after her older brother, John, on July 7, 1881.  They named her Emma.  Her full name may have been Rosa Emma Schlereth or Emma Lese Schlereth.  I've seen it both ways.  On her gravestone (pictured below) it is engraved as "Emma L." which lends credence to the latter version.  (Rosa had a younger half sister named Emma who was only about a year and a half old at the time of this Emma's birth, but I doubt if she named her daughter after her, so I'm not sure who she is named after.)  John and Rosa were still living in Tazewell County, Illinois, so Emma was born in Pekin, Illinois.  She completed the 8th grade (according to the 1940 census).

Emma journeyed with her extended family to Kansas and by 1900 she was living in Seneca, Kansas and working as a servant, at the age of 18.  About five years later, she married Colonel L. Bradley who was born in Kansas around 1880.  I'm guessing she met him in Nemaha County, Kansas, and that they moved to Nebraska after marrying.  About two years later (1907), they started their family with a baby girl who they named Emma, keeping the name going in the family line.  The next year, another child arrived on December 16, 1908.  This time it was a son whom they named Howard V.

In 1910, Emma and her family were living in Humboldt, Nebraska, which is about 30 miles north of Seneca, Kansas and only a few miles from Falls City, where her mother and brothers were living.  In a few years, they relocated to Douglas, Nebraska, about 65 miles northwest of Humboldt and just a little southeast of Lincoln.  It was there, on April 12, 1918, they sadly lost their young son, Harold, at the age of 9 1/2.  He is buried in Rosehill Cemetery in Douglas (which is the same cemetery his grandma Rosa would be buried in twenty-some years in the future and in which his mother and father would eventually be buried).

Colonel and Emma Bradley were still living in Douglas in 1920.  Both were working for the telephone company; Emma as a switchboard operator and Colonel as a superintendent/lineman.  They continued to work in these jobs for the next 20 years (although Colonel had apparently retired by 1940).  Although they primarily lived in Douglas, in 1930 they were living in Hendricks which is a suburb of Lincoln.  By 1935 they were back in Douglas. 

In 1940, the U.S. Census showed Colonel, Emma and Emma's mother, Rosa, living in Douglas.  That census also showed Rosa living in Falls City with Emma's brothers, John and Edward.  Rosa was 79 and less than a year away from her death, so she was probably being taken care of by her children in shifts.

Emma lost her husband in 1957.  She followed about seven years later, dying in July 1964.  They are buried side by side in Rosehill Cemetery in Douglas, Nebraska.