My Trip to St. John’s Cemetery
Queens, New York
As any researcher knows, some things are harder to figure out than others. In the case of genealogical research, some branches of your tree will provide you with a rushing flood of information without any issues while others are simply a giant brick wall.
In the case of the Repp side of my family, I had to do some heavy lifting in order to break through the proverbial brick wall of my family tree.
When I first started researching my family tree, I had never even heard of the name Repp.
In fact, the only thing I knew about my great-great grandmother was that her name was Lillian Burns, though sometimes she was referred to as Mary, according to my grandmother, by her husband Henry Edward Burns.
So, what was Lillian’s maiden name? Well, when I asked my grandmother she didn’t know, not because she didn’t know the name, but rather she had heard of two names – Lillian Cortland and Lillian Holland. According to my grandmother, her grandmother Lillian was not very open about her life and she spoke very sparingly about her family. From what my grandmother has told me, Lillian stated that she was raised by her grandmother and an Uncle Chris and was not close with either of her parents. My grandmother also stated that she had heard that Lillian’s mother was an opera singer or some other type of performer that kept her constantly on the road and her father was not active in her life.
Now, although this was good information to start searching to build my tree further, it didn’t produce a lot of leads. For example, Lillian lived with her grandmother and an Uncle. But were they Cortlands? Were they Hollands? Were they her paternal relatives? Were they her maternal relatives with a completely different last name? Did Lillian take on her father’s name or perhaps a stepfather’s name at birth? All questions I didn’t know the answers to.
It turns out, her name at birth was Lillie Mary Repp.
You might be asking yourself how I could have managed to find this certificate. Well, after giving up on running countless searches of both Cortlands and Hollands with Lillian’s birth year, I came across a website called Fulton History, a newspaper search engine that contains many of New York’s historical newspapers.
One of the first things I found was a notification of Lillian’s marriage to Henry in 1913.

As you can see, she appears here as Lillian Cortland. But it was this next document that opened up the floodgates.

On January 28, 1929, Lillian’s mother Margaret Holland passed away. As you can see from the obituary, she is survived by her daughter, and her brothers Christopher and Joseph Repp. I had found Uncle Chris and apparently Uncle Joe too.
This document was really the key to breaking through that brick wall. From there, I found more and more records and I was able to figure out the entire make-up of Lillian’s family (with the exception of her father). As you will notice, it is more than evident that Lillian was right when she said she was raised by her grandmother Catherine Repp and her Uncle Chris.



Again using the Locate A Loved One search engine, I was able to find the exact gravesite of where Catherine Repp and Margaret Holland were buried. Catherine’s son and Margaret’s brother, Joseph A. Repp, is also buried with them. Here is their headstone.
Unfortunately, it appears as if Catherine’s name was the only one that got inscribed.
“In Loving Memory of Our Beloved Mother”
I hope to one day add the rest of their names.
Catherine Elizabeth Repp (nee Bochmann)
1841-1918
Section: 19 | Row: E | Grave: 66
Margaret Philomena Holland (nee Repp)
1866-1929
Section: 19 | Row: E | Grave: 66
Joseph A. Repp
1873-1938
Section: 19 | Row: E | Grave: 66
There’s certainly more Repps out there. I look forward to finding them!