As posted previously, Charles and Joyce Schulz claimed a false date of marriage, in order to maintain the appearance that Meredith is his biological daughter. The document at that link shows 1949 as the wedding date, when in fact it was 1951.
Another date deception had been carried out by Charles Schulz’s mother Dena, except she moved a date forward. Dena always gave her year of birth as 1895, when in fact it was 1893.
As my buddy D.F. Rogers likes to say, “let’s look at the record!” And he has provided that record in the form of the 1930 census from Needles, California. Dena’s age is falsely listed as 32, the same as her husband Carl, when in fact even her claimed birth year of 1895 would have made her 34 years old at the time of the census. Curious.
Other interesting items in the census are that the Schulz family did not live on a farm, they paid $28/month in rent, and Carl came to the United States from Germany in 1897, the year he was born. Click the picture and see for yourself, but beware — it’s a B-I-G image.
Hi, Monte. Thanks again for posting on my humble little blog (that I’m proud to say gets up to 100,000 hits per month from 5,000 unique addresses).
Thanks very much for the clarification on the various family members. I guess I’m likewise guilty of relating my own family experiences to yours!
I felt Suzan’s comments over on Cartoonbrew said much more about her than they did about anything else. HA! Reminds me of what you said about the book being more enlightening about the author, than his subject.
I was just thinking about the whole controversy surrounding Walt Disney some years ago, and all of the bad traits he supposedly had. The book was called “The Dark Prince” or something like that. That’s a book I didn’t read.
I’ve read numerous Disney biographies, but when the one about his “dark side” came out I avoided it. In part because I felt I already knew so much about Disney that I could safely ignore the bogus claims made against him. Which raises the question of why I was looking forward to reading the Michaelis book. I guess because I felt that Rheta Grimsley’s book wasn’t quite the whole story. And, as it turns out, it isn’t a complete telling. So I felt another biography was needed, and I thought “Schulz and Peanuts” would be it.
Actually, what I wanted to comment on was your post over at Cartoonbrew in that note to Suzan. And thanks for saying most of what I wanted to but would’ve gotten involved in something not worth pursuing. You bailed me out there, and I thank you. I should clarify something else, though, that you mentioned, which was why you’ve heard more from me and my sister Amy than my other siblings, Jill (who did, of course, post once), Craig and Meredith (neither of whom have posted at all). You suggested there might be internal family disagreements going on, but actually it’s simpler than that. Meredith has her own life out in the Colorado and isn’t really involved in family affairs to the extent we are, and therefore has no interest in commenting (nor does my mother, and Meredith often follows her lead in these things), and Craig just simply doesn’t care all that much about the book. He thought the entire thing was overly inspired by David’s obsession with Dad’s appreciation of Citizen Kane, and that’s that. No squabble, no difference of opinion. I could’ve asked him to post here or on Cartoonbrew, and maybe he would have, but more likely he’d just say why bother. It’s all a dead issue to him.