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Requiem I always found him an efficient and gallant officer ready at any time to sacrifice himself to the good of his country. —Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter, February 8, 1868 A fter Julius Kroehl’s death from fever on September 9, 1857, the US consul in Panama, Thomas Kilby Smith, dispatched two consular officers to inventory Kroehl’s effects, which they did on the 10th.1 Consul Smith sent the inventory to Washington along with a letter on September 21, noting that “Mr. Kroehl made a will in December 1866, but it is not among his papers here nor do I know who his executors are or where the will is deposited.” Julius had completed the will in New York just days before setting out on the SS Henry Chauncey to join Sub Marine Explorer in Panama. Consul Smith went on to report to his superiors that Kroehl also had “a large interest in a submarine boat here amounting it is said to some $10,000, but this is in connection with the Pacific Pearl Co. of No. 38 Broad Street, New York. His wife Sophia R. Kroehl resides in Georgetown, D.C. I have written her by this mail.”2 Hopefully Sophia had learned of Julius’s death before his obituary appeared in the German American newspaper, the New Yorker Staats Zeitung, on September 26.3 Consul Smith wrote that he had “taken charge” of Kroehl’s personal effects and that he had notified the Pacific Pearl Company, who he hoped would notify Julius’s widow as well as his family in New York. The inventory lists a substantial amount of material, a leather trunk full of papers, another trunk full of books, a tin box of papers, drafting equipment, carpet bags, silver-plated T 7 Y 135 136 utensils, a teapot, coffee pot, sugar bowl and creamer, cigars, stamps, a $60 US gold piece and $4.30 in New Granadian money. In addition to his drafting tools, a steel rule, and a “surveying instrument,” the other links to Kroehl’s work would have been his books, papers. and a bottle of nitrate of silver for developing photographs.4 In his will, Julius had left his gold watch and chain to his nephew, Frederick Kroehl, as well as “all my drawing materials and scientific books” except for his sets of Coast Survey reports and an encyclopedia that he left to his cousin Otto Sackersdorff. Julius also left instructions that Sophia was to select from his possessions “a suitable keepsake” for each member of his family, and his in-laws, noting all by name, including “my brotherin -law Albert Rolle and his wife Helen M. Rolle . . . and my friend Samuel Hein of Georgetown, D.C.”5 No one knows whatever happened to all of these possessions. They vanished into history. Julius left half of his estate to Sophia, and the use of the second half for any children they might have, suggesting that perhaps when Julius left for Panama, there was a possibility in his mind that he was departing with an heir on the way. If there were no children when Sophia died, and there was an estate, then Julius wished for it to go to nephew Frederick and niece Agnes Kroehl. He also made provisions for a $25 per month payment for his mother and stepfather. Kroehl appointed his brother, Henry, and his friend Charles A. Morris (a shareholder in the Pacific Pearl Company) as his executors. The estate notwithstanding, Kroehl’s death left Sophia in difficult circumstances . Sophia, the oldest daughter, lived with her mother, Helen M. Lueber, when she married Julius in 1858 and remained in her mother’s home throughout Julius’s absences, as did her sister Helen, married to hydrographic survey officer Albert Rolle. With Julius’s death, Sophia stayed on permanently with her mother, as sister Helen would also do when Albert Rolle died. Unmarried brother Francis and sister Mary made up the rest of the family in a single house—a family that needed money to live.6 Sophia, widowed at age 35, needed to find employment. A logical place to turn was to the government. On December 28, 1867, Kroehl’s old commander, Admiral David D. Porter, now serving as the superintendent of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, wrote a letter of recommendation for Sophia: The friends of Mrs. Julius H. Kroehl have applied to me for letters to enable the widow of the deceased to obtain some employment...

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