Great-Grandma Alter's Secret: She wasn't an orphan.

My great-grandmother, Helene (Herline) Alter, claimed to be an orphan—but that wasn't exactly true!

Helene was born in 1886 in Hoboken, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from New York City. Her roots were deeply planted in a proud German-American lineage. Her grandfather, Edward Herline Sr., was one of the “Forty-Eighters”—a group of intellectuals and reformers who fled the German states following the failed revolutions of 1848. A Bavarian artist by training, he established a thriving lithography business in the United States.

Helene’s father, Edward Otto Herline, initially followed in his father’s artistic footsteps but found his skills less in demand as printing technology advanced. He pivoted to sign painting, a trade that took him throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes regions.

Edward Otto Herline

But in June 1887, the family's story took a dramatic turn. According to the Pittsburgh Post, Edward fled the city with his wife and infant daughter, leaving behind a trail of unpaid debts. He owed his business partner $500 and his landlady $120 and had passed several worthless checks on his account at Duquesne Bank. The family soon resurfaced in Toronto, Canada—safely beyond the reach of U.S. authorities—where Edward was listed as a sign painter in 1889. But by 1890, Edward's name had vanished from the city directory. After that, the trail goes cold.

In subsequent years, there are scattered sighting of a similarly named man turning up in major cities like Cincinnati and Fort Wayne, but none can be definitively tied to Helene’s father. In 1918, Edward’s sister, Helen Lach, filed a legal claim against his property in New Jersey, summoning him via newspaper notice to appear in Hudson County Court. The implication was clear: Edward Otto Herline was either dead, missing, or in hiding.

But what of Helene and her mother?

By 1900, Helene’s mother—Elma Etta Ross—had remarried a man named Henry Truex and relocated west to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where Henry worked as a bartender at a local tavern. Helene, once a well-to-do city girl, was now a teenager in a rural town—and she wasn’t happy about it. At 16, she married a young man named John Kissel and moved to Denver, Colorado. Whether she ever saw her mother again remains unknown.

Elma Etta (Ross)
Herline Truex Becker

Tragedy struck in 1905 when John died at just 21. Helene was then taken in by John’s sister and her husband—a couple she always referred to as her Aunt Margaret and Uncle Dan. In 1909, she married my great-grandfather, Dr. Charles Alter, a dentist who would go on to run a thriving practice in Southern California. Together, they raised two daughters—my grandmother and great-aunt—neither of whom ever knew their mother had been married before. They also never knew that “Uncle Dan and Aunt Margaret” were not truly family.

Most remarkably, their mother never shared a word about her own parents. Helene claimed she was an orphan, and that was that. It was a story the family accepted without question for generations.

It wasn’t until I began my own genealogical sleuthing that the truth began to emerge. Elma’s marriage to Henry Truex seems to have lasted only a few years. By 1904, while Helene was living in Colorado, Elma had moved to Southern California with her aging parents, Hiram and Sabra Ross. Hiram, a Civil War veteran suffering from serious health issues, sought out the ocean air and nearby veterans’ services in Santa Monica.

Later that year, Hiram died, and Elma witnessed her mother’s application for a widow’s pension - signing her name as “Elma Becker” of Santa Monica. She was only 35 at the time and theoretically could have lived for decades more. But like Edward before her, after signing her name, she simply vanished from the records. We don’t know who Mr. Becker was, or whether Elma stayed in California. And we don’t know when—or where—she died.

Helene Herline, not an orphan!

We do know that Helene’s grandmother, Sabra Ross, remained in Santa Monica until her own death in 1917. At the time, Helene’s daughters—my grandmother and great-aunt Ruth—were just three and six years old, living in the city of Pomona, a mere 40 miles away. Yet they never knew their grandmother even existed.

So, what was behind Helene's attempts to erase her entire family from memory? What secret was she carrying that caused her to bury her past so completely that even her own daughters were convinced that she was an orphan. Was my great-grandfather aware of the truth? Was he complicit in the lies?

We may never know the entire truth – but it’s a mystery I will continue trying to solve.

[[David Randall > Mary Edna Alter > Helene Herline > Edward and Elma (Ross) Herline]]