Ethel Tintle Kochka and her husband, George, on their wedding day at St. Joseph Church, Echo Lake, in the late 1920s or early 1930s. Her sisters serving as the bride’s attendants are Irene, standing; Cecelia, seated; and Marie, by a basket of flowers. (Photo provided)
When 50 families came to the United States to work in the iron mines of Ringwood and Charlotteburg, John Peter Tintle Jr. of Hesse, Germany, was among them.
John Peter Tintle and Ann Bogardus (1741-65) were his parents. He married Elizabeth Sehulster in Charlotteburg after he served in the Continental Army, led by Gen. George Washington. Elizabeth was just 15 years old when she became a bride.
Tintle Jr.’s parents had two additional sons, George and Charles.
He enlisted in the Continental Army on Oct. 14, 1782, and briefly served in Col. Moses Hazen’s New York Regiment toward the end of the war. Family history reports say Washington signed his discharge papers.
Pat Thomas of Wallingford, Conn., reported that her mother was Grace Tintle and like some other branches of the family, she descended from George and Catherine Sanders Tintle through their son Gilbert, who married Lynda Reynolds.
Their son Clarence Gilbert Tintle (1875-1933) was Thomas’s mother’s father. She said the name George was given to some male children born after the Revolutionary War in honor of Washington.
An online report says that in 1840, the largest number of Tintle families in the country were living in New Jersey. Another report mentioned Archibald Tintle (1854-1922) of Bloomingdale, son of Harry Tintle and Frances D. Lambert. He married E. Mathews.
That report says Archibald Tintle’s maternal grandfather was Charles Tintle (1824-1902) and his great-grandparents were John Tintle (1810-60) and Sarah Sally Johnson (born in 1810).
Archibold Peter Tintle was born in 1886 in Pennsylvania and died in 1911 in Butler.
Another Tintle connection is Alice Catherine Trafflet (1904-79). She was the daughter of Francis Isador Tintle and his wife, Margaret Elizabeth. She married Fred Trafflet, and they lived in Butler in the 1950s.
Leo Vincent Tintle (1866-1936) married Jennie Francis Mackey (1874-1928). Their children were Pauline Alice Tintle (1895), Leo Edward Tintle (1896-1916), Celestine J. Tintle (1896-1916), Ethel Margaret Tintle (1899-1997), Paul W. Tintle (1905), Hubert George Tintle (1906-13), Cecelia Catherine Tintle (1908-97). Irene Frances Tintle (1909-73) and Marie J. Tintle (1911-2003).
Kochkas and St. Joseph
The connection of Ethel Tintle Kochka; her husband, George; and their children, Mary and Robert “Bob,” with St. Joseph Church, Echo Lake, was deep.
In the morning before services, they stoked the fire in the church to make sure the building was warm for parishioners. They helped with fundraisers and cleaned up the area near the graveyard.
When the church caught fire in the early 1900s, Ethel recalled that her mother was severely burned while trying to save artifacts from the blazing building.
Bob gave history lessons with his cemetery tours. Before digging machines were available, he dug graves by hand in the cemetery from 1948 to 1977.
Bob and his wife, Mary Gobosack, who had family ties to the Crum family, were among the first volunteers appointed to serve on the West Milford Preservation Committee.
Like his mother, Ethel, Bob attended Echo Lake School, next to St. Joseph Church.
When Ethel went there, the building had only one room. A second classroom had been added by the time her children were students there. Bob often spoke of happy days that he remembered when Verina Mathews, a classmate and lifelong friend of his mother, was his teacher.
Plays were performed often and, Bob, in costume, usually had a lead acting role. Throughout his life, he recalled his days in the rural schoolhouse as cherished memories.
Bob and his wife, Mary, wore costumes and portrayed historic personalities at various township events throughout their adult lives. At Long Pond Ironworks, they portrayed Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln.
A highlight of the annual Christmas season was the afternoons they spent at the West Milford Museum greeting small children who were delighted to have a personal visit with Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus.
Ethel enjoyed working with children and in the 1930s and ’40s taught them Bible history as part of St. Joseph’s Sunday School classes.
When Karen Lilienkamp introduced the Adopted Grandparents program in the West Milford schools, Ethel was one of the volunteers.
In 2014, Bob Kochka presented a cemetery tour as part of the 250th St. Joseph Parish Jubilee. He concentrated on the original area and his son Robert Jr. joined him in another section to tell people about the then-new columbarium that had been added.
After the tour, Ethel’s daughter Mary Kochka Smith and other family members displayed historic items, and light refreshments were served at Father Koch hall.
Civil War veteran
Some of the oldest headstones include information about the Struble, Marion, Sehulster, Weaver, Mabey, Shenise, Hennion, Gormley, Mathews and other founding families.
Among the graves is that of Dominick Sanders, a Civil War veteran with descendants still living in the area. Family documents show that he was a blacksmith in Battery B First Regiment of the New Jersey Light Artillery at Morristown in 1864.
His widow, Hannah Mabey Sanders, 48, applied to the Army quartermaster general for a headstone in 1889 after Sanders died. The headstone was shipped to the Butler Railroad Station, where the family was notified to pick it up. This monument marking Sanders’ grave is in the cemetery off the original driveway.
A newer cemetery section is dedicated to St. Clare of Assisi with a statue of the saint. It was given in memory of Frances Hoffer, a devoted parish member who died May 31, 2005, at age 95.
Hoffer and her husband lived on Starlight Road overlooking Nosenzo Pond. A professional dancer in New York in her youth, she was performed in the famous Ziegfield Follies.
There is an area of remembrance for Father Mychal Judge in the cemetery. A church pastor for five years, he was killed administering last rites after terrorists struck the World Trade Center in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001.
The families in the rural secluded communities in West Milford were “families” in every sense of the word in the 1920s, and they depended on one another in ways that families do.
The Tintle and Mathews girls, for example, were best friends and usually spent their leisure time together. Years later when they talked about their years growing up, the neighboring families were in their stories.
For example, old photos show Echo Lake teenagers and young adults on Sunday afternoon picnics and hikes out to the Apshawa point, where they looked at New York City in the distance.
They also attended dances in church halls and firehouses. These times are recorded in treasured photos and stories passed down to new generations.