I like to run across ordinary people who found their way into the publications of the era. Oftentimes there is biographical information that can be gleamed for genealogy purposes. And too many times this information is totally lost to the family lines involved. So as I run across them I shall add them for historical interest.
Today’s subject is Julius B. Bruenn. I ran across this “sketch” of him in the Home Furnishing Review {1899} –
“THE subject of this sketch and illustration, J. B. Bruenn, was born in Austro-Hungary twenty-five years ago, and at the age of nine he came to this country in 1883, with his parents, who settled in New York, where young Bruenn, after a short term in the public schools entered the employ of D. H. McIlvain, at 686 Sixth Avenue, where he remained until his fifteenth year learning the rudiments of the house furnishing goods business, and enough general knowledge besides to fit him for the position offered him of assistant to Jacob Hartman then buyer for Ludwig Bauman and Co., at Eighth Avenue and Thirty-sixth Street. After two years in this place he went to Denholm, McKay and Co., of the Syndicate Trading Company, at Worcester, Mass., as assistant to Ernest H. Wade, where he spent another term of two years, and started in as buyer and manager for the E. P. Fuller House Furnishing Company, at Mount Vernon, N. Y. Mr. Bruenn gave up this position to engage in business for himself at Mount Vernon, but he sold out at the end of a year, and went as buyer for the department of John J. Gorman, Brooklyn, where he remained only a short time, and on April 10 last he accepted the management of the new department of Elwers and Sternberg, Grand Street and Driggs Avenue, Brooklyn, which he opened with a fine stock of house furnishing goods, china, glass, lamps, trunks, bags, toys, etc. Mr. Bruenn’s experience and ability are shown in the arrangement and management of his department, which promises to vie with the best in the Greater New York.”
Upon a quick search I did find him in Manhattan New York in 1900 according to the census records. He was born around Feb 1875 in Austria. He came to America when he was nine in 1883 as has already been indicated and married a woman named Dora C. {b. Mar. 1878 NY} in 1898. In 1900 they had living with them a daughter named Anna R who was born October of 1898. They also had one servant living with them, a Mary Olson who was only 17 at the time and had been born in Sweden. She had just moved to America apparently since her immigration year is listed as 1899.
The 1910 census shows the Bruenn to have had several more children including sons Ernest M, Ralph E, Lummie P, Frederick C and daughters Anna R, Johannah and Bertha. Julius’ older brother Louis S. {b. abt 1872} was also living with the family in Westchester County, NY at the time of the census in 1910.