Very amateur fiddle player here, but I have a 200yr old violin (a very humble one likely made by an amateur) and got a little obsessed with this stuff. Here’s what I see in your photos, with the caveat that I could be very wrong (and you might be an awesome fiddler who already knows all this!)
Best guess is it’s a German trade violin. Those were made in that era in the Markneukirchen area of Germany for export to America. Lots of them got sold for $2-5 in the Sears catalogue. Which matches up with how Oscar Schmidt was doing business in the 1920s. Likely the original owner was rural, and these were humble but serviceable instruments, made of far better tonewood than their equivalents today.
The possibly bad news is your violin looks like it may have a soundpost crack (what looks like a big crack running vertically down from the edge of the right side f-hole in the photos). Those are very bad. Soundposts are a small, moveable dowel of wood that runs from the back to the top of the violin, close to the treble foot of the bridge. It handles loads of pressure, and it’s really hard to effectively repair a crack that runs through where the soundpost lives. It doesn’t work to just cleat it like a regular crack (and even that involves taking the top off, ie expensive repair). It involves carving a very big new patch - a new chunk of violin top, basically, and inlaying it in the old top and hoping it plays nicely in terms of sound. Highly expert, very time intensive work. If I’m right about that being a crack, and about it being a German trade violin, a luthier would likely tell you it’s unfixable/not worth fixing.
![Frown :( :(](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
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But honestly if you bought two old instruments like this and one of them is super cool and playable, I think you did great!
I’m sad about the violin, though. I love German trade fiddles. Some of them sound wonderful.