Family Research

Thude – Jilge – Moritz Family Research by Pat Zumwalt

This family report is from many years of Pat and Art’s effort to document our family line.  Art is the son of Ruth Thude who is the daughter of Frank (Moritz) Thude and Ruth (Carter) Thude.

Frank Thude – Bureau of Investigation

Today, the FBI is famously known throughout the world as the chief investigative unit of the United States government. It operates as a division of the Department of Justice to “protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats, to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and to provide leadership and criminal justice services to federal, state, municipal, and international agencies and partners.”

When it was first conceived in 1908, the department had no name. It was referred to as a “special agent force” or a “corps of special agents.” It was officially designated as the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) on March 16, 1909. Only later, in 1935, less than two years after the end of prohibition, did it become the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI.

The case files in Bureau of Investigation covered changes in interstate commerce and foreign affairs during the Progressive Era of President Theodore Roosevelt. When the United States entered World War I, agents investigated espionage, sabotage, and other threats to a nation in wartime. The 18th amendment instituted prohibition in 1920 and gangsterism and similar lawlessness occupied many of the Bureau’s resources. J. Edgar Hoover started working at the BOI in 1917, was named assistant director in 1921, and began his 48-year career as director of the BOI and FBI in 1924.

By far the largest group of files are investigative records relating to German aliens who were politically suspect before and during World War I, more specifically, in the period 1915-20 and comprise nearly 400,000 records.