Threading needles in a haystack: the genealogy journey

For Tim, on my little brother's birthday :)

2012-05-08T12:12:00.001-04:00

Some of the old school Frankel Avenue gang, circa 1985. I'm second from left and Tim is, well, the only boy in the picture.

Today is my brother Tim's birthday. This photo I'm posting is a typical summer scene from our childhood on Long Island - hanging out with the gaggle of kids who lived on our street, eating popsicles, a bunch of girls...and Tim. He was a good sport. Especially when we made him play house. :)

My grandfather, Elmer Gorry, had 17 grandkids and only two - my brothers - will carry on the Gorry name. For a very thin branch in which my grandfather and his brother were the first generation in at least three generations to have any branches, at all, and we're lucky to even be here, that's a lot of responsibility, genealogically speaking lol!

Tim lives in California now, and he's not quite as blond - he looks more like a surfer dude in this picture than he does now. He's still a good sport, though - not so much with the playing house, but in listening to all the family tree stuff that I discover. He's on the other side of the country and I won't actually get to spend his birthday with him, but I hope he knows his big sister wishes him a happy birthday anyway!

AncestryDNA is here

2012-05-03T11:34:00.001-04:00

I got an e-mail just now that Ancestry.com has finally announced that its new autosomal DNA testing is here. Unlike the traditional mtDNA and y-DNA tests, the autosomal tests are available to both males and females and more specifically gives you an idea of your ethnic make-up and what regions your ancestors came from. For someone like me who is pretty exclusively northwestern European, I'm excited to see if it can isolate any particular subgroups from those regions, but I'm not expecting to find much diversity. For someone like the boyfriend, who has northern European, southern European, black Carribean and Mayan roots, I am almost literally DYING to see what this test can tell him. The last tests I did and made my male relatives do were done only four years ago, but even in that span of time, there have been so many advances in this kind of technology that I'm really looking forward to seeing what kind of light, if any, this new test can shed on my family tree.

If you're an Ancestry subscriber, your invite should be coming. I imagine that it won't be long before the test becomes available to the public. I'm curious to hear from you - is this something you have already pursued or plan to pursue as part of your genealogy research?

Birthday surprise party for John Meinberg, November 13, 1915

2012-04-30T18:04:00.002-04:00

As you can see, I'm on a newspaper kick. These are my favorite - the noting of a normal, lifetime event, a moment of family gathering together, a hint that these people weren't just family - they enjoyed spending time together. And most importantly it's a reminder that these people weren't just names and dates - they threw surprise birthdays for each other, they had fun, they did impressions of famous actors, they lived lives, lives that we, as genealogists, believe are worth remembering. In this case, it's a surprise birthday for John Meinberg, my fourth-great uncle. I had hoped it was an article about his father, somebody I know absolutely nothing about - he had four children with my 4th great grandmother and then disappeared between 1873-1878, presumedly dead since she remarried. Still, this was a pretty neat find. Love the reference to Charlie Chaplin, back when he was actually a real live movie star!

The story comes from the Brooklyn Daily Star, November 1915: "A birthday surprise party was given John Meinberg of 1629 Decatur Street, Evergreen, on Saturday evening, November 13. Mr. Meinberg is one of Evergreen's oldest and most prominent residents. ... Dancing and merriment of all kinds were indulged in ... Fred Meinberg jr. gave an impersonation of Charlie Chaplin."

Among those present were my third great grandparents, Ed and Eva (Meinberg) Haase (Eva was John Meinberg's sister); my great great grandparents, Gus Haase and Meta (Ricklefs) Haase, John and Eva's sister and brother-in-law, Anthony and Elise/Elizabeth Smith, their brother and sister-in-law, Fred C. and Justine Meinberg, their half-sister Katherine and her husband, Henry Hennigan, John's son James W. Meinberg and his not-yet wife Edith Lorch, John's other son John Meinberg Jr., Fred's son Fred Meinberg Jr., August Lorch, who I assume to be Edith's brother, John Sr.'s wife, Emma, my fourth-great grandmother Katherine Hellman (maiden name Naeher, mother of the Meinberg children), her sister Elizabeth Riders, Elizabeth's daughter (and cousin to John, Eva, Elise & Fred Meinberg & Kate Hellmann) Kate Weigert, Elise's sons William, George, and John Smith, John Sr's daughters Dorothy and Deborah Meinberg; and Fred's daughters Elisabeth and Eva Meinberg.

There are a few people I have yet to identify, whether they be family friends or married names of daughters, but I'd like to look into that to see if they are important clues to this tree. But we have here three generations of a family - it just warms my heart to see this!

Whitehead Raynor's estate for sale, 1845

2012-04-25T09:19:00.000-04:00

I found this on one of my favorite websites, the newspaper archives at FultonHistory.com, and thought it was so interesting - it doesn't really add anything genealogically (although it does verify some known info) but the description of Whitehead's land helps me picture a little bit what his life might have been like living there. Whitehead Raynor, by the way, is my fifth great-grandfather.

From the Long Island Farmer, July 1845:

Salt Meadow at Auction

The subscribers, executors of Whitehead Raynor, deceased, will sell at Auction on Monday, the fourth day of August, next, at 1 o'clock, P.M., on the premises, the salt meadow, upland, hay house, and landing, formerly belonging to Whitehead and John Raynor, situated at the landing formerly known as John Raynor's, between Raynor South and Hick's Neck, in the town of Hempstead. This tract of meadow contains about 24 acres, and the most of it of a good quality and conveniently situated. It has recently been surveyed and and divided off into four pieces, containing from 5 to 7 acres each, and will be sold separately. The upland contains upwards of 2 acres and has a Hay House on it.

The terms of sale will be 10 percent on the day of sale, and the balance 1st of May, 1846, when the deed will be given. Title indisputable. For further particulars inquire of Joseph Smith, Merrick, where a Map of the Meadow can be seen.

Joseph Smith

Hiram Raynor

Samuel Raynor, Executors

Hempstead South, July 14, 1845

Should the weather be stormy on the day mentioned above, the sale will take place the first fair day.

Hiram and Samuel Raynor were Whitehead's sons. Joseph Smith was his son in law. Raynor South is now the village of Freeport and Hick's Neck is now the town of Baldwin, located right next to each other. In this second one, from the Long Island Farmer, December 1845, more of Whitehead's property is being sold. Parts read: "executors of the estate of the late Whitehead Raynor, offer the Farm recently owned and occupied by said deceased, situated in the town of Hempstead, on the road leading from Greenwich Point to Raynor South, and about 3 1/2 miles South of the village of Hempstead. Said farm is pleasantly situated, and contains about 50 acres of land, 4 acres which is excellent woodland and 3 acres of wood and swamp. The land is generally of a good quality, and with good fences. There is an orchard containing Apple, Pear, and Plum trees, with other fruit. A well of the very best water conveniently situated. The buildings consist of a two story House and Kitchen adjoining, a small new Dwelling House a few rods below. Also, Barn, Wagon-House, Hovels, and other outbuildings. ...Should the said Farm not be sold at private sale by the first of February next , it will be offered at Public Auction."

Again, Raynor South is present-day Freeport, and Greenwich Point appears to have been in the vicinity of present-day Roosevelt, which is to the town right north of Freeport (if you look at the old map from 1873 here, you can see Babylon Turnpike's northernmost end, which is in Roosevelt).

But I love the descriptions - fruit trees! A well! Woodland! All these buildings dotting the landscape! Can't you just picture what it looked like? I love it! :)

If you love dead people, you're either a serial killer or a genealogist

2012-04-24T18:19:00.000-04:00

So sayeth cousin April and I.

So, a few weeks ago already - Good Friday, I think it was, since we both had off - April and I drove up to Albany to take a look at some holdings at the New York State Archives. If you're an armchair genealogist, there's nothing wrong with that - you can find all sorts of perfectly reliable info at your fingertips on the Internet nowadays. Part of the fun for me, though, is the field trips. Even when the field trips are a bit fruitless.

April and I are each currently researching several branches of our own trees but the thing that brought us together and that we're determined to solve, is the mystery of Jacob Raynor's parents. Jacob and his wife Rebecca are our common ancestors - April is descended from their daughter Elizabeth and I am descended from their sons Joseph and James. The Raynor name is huge where we're from on Long Island because they were one of the founding families of the area, but strangely enough, we're connected to them through Rebecca (who, yes, was a Raynor before she married a Raynor - that's what happened in these colonial towns where everybody was related to everybody else!), but no one seems to know who Jacob's parents are. Two theories have been posited but no one can seem to tell me or April the basis for putting forth these possible parents - all we want is some proof of said theories. That was the purpose of our Albany trip.

An interesting but also frustrating thing about genealogy research is that while there are records that are overaching, for the most part, each locality also has its own types of records that you may not find in other places or in other years. In the course of some of her own research, April had stumbled upon something for the Town of Hempstead called the earmark register, in which people had to register the identifying marks on the ears of their cattle. What some of these entries indicate, and what can also be inferred by similarities in earmarks, is who the cattle came from - in many cases, they were inherited by sons or grandsons. If we could find Jacob as someone's son or grandson...well, that would be too easy. That would solve our whole mystery there!

Needless to say, that didn't happen. April and I sat in front of a microfilm machine for hours pouring over pages and pages of indecipherable handwriting and nowhere did we find "Jacob, son of." What we did find, however, were some possibly important clues as to who else to look at to get to the next step - sometimes you can't go back from a person, but you can go back from a sibling or another relative. We saw a lot of "James, son of Jacob"s, which could be my James, son of Jacob, though they were both common names, but two other names were starting to show a pattern - Micajah Raynor and Zebulon Smith.

Gotta love those crazy Old Testament names, huh?

Those two names kept coming up in connection to a Jacob Raynor. Micajah pinged on mine and April's radar because when we took a fruitless field trip up to Boston several months ago, April had brought an inventory of Jacob's estate from 1829 that was put together by a one Micajah Raynor. When we showed it to David Allen Lambert, a professional genealogist with the New England Historic Genealogical Society, his very first reaction, without hesitation, was that Micajah was of course Jacob's brother. Now is it possible he was just a good friend or neighbor? Of course. There were Raynors everywhere at that time. But Dave's gut was telling him something and I never, ever discredit my gut when it comes to following a lead.

Now, Zebulon Smith was NOT a name April or I had ever seen in connection to our Raynors before, but he, too, was turning up everywhere. One set of posited parents for Jacob was Joseph Raynor and Phebe Smith. Was Zebulon Smith Phebe's father? Was he Jacob's grandfather? In many unsubstantiated family trees floating around the Internet, Joseph and Phebe most often are not listed with a son Jacob. But they are listed with a son Micajah. And Zebulah (bastardized version of Zebulon Smith?)

So that's the direction April and I are heading in now. Zebulon and Micajah, unlike Jacob, seem to want to be found, very much so. Is it because they're family? Maybe. But we're thinking if we can somehow find death dates and then wills or property deeds or transactions for Zebulon and/or Micajah and/or Joseph and Phebe, maybe someone will make mention of "my brother/son/cousin/nephew/grandson Jacob...husband of Rebecca, not to be confused with the other Jacobs out there." It's extremely, extremely frustrating. But this is also the exact reason I love genealogy so much - if it wasn't as much of a mystery and a puzzle, it wouldn't be half as fun!

And just as a sidenote, if any of you out there reading this has some reliable research on Micajah Raynor, Zebulon Smith, or Joseph Raynor and Phebe Smith, hit a sister up, would ya? :)

Tombstone Tuesday: Ayn Rand, Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, NY

2012-04-10T08:53:00.002-04:00

Cousin April and I went on a genealogy field trip to the New York State Archives in Albany on Friday to try to chip away at the mystery of Jacob Raynor's parents. It was an interesting day, which I will write about in a later post. On the way back, she wanted to stop at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, where some newly discovered relatives were buried. Like many of us with poor relations, they did not have a headstone, but the many people who do have these huge, unique, sometimes beautiful, sometimes ostentatious headstones and mausoleums. The place is just absolutely gorgeous. Anyway, quite a few famous people also happen to be buried there. April and I visited two of them, and I submit this photo I took of Ayn Rand's grave for this week's Tombstone Tuesday post:

Ayn Rand headstone in Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, NY. Taken by Mary Ellen Gorry, 6 April 2012.

I'll be honest - I've never actually read any Ayn Rand novels but I am an avid reader and I know she's one of the great figures of modern literature. We also stopped to look at the grave of Lou Gehrig; I posted that photo in my sports blog here. In both cases I loved seeing how simple the headstones were of these two very famous people. I also liked seeing Ayn Rand buried with her husband, and Lou Gehrig surrounded by his family - I think sometimes we forget that even famous historical figures had families and were mothers, wives, and daughters.

Happy 97th birthday to my genealogy inspiration...

2012-04-05T09:28:00.003-04:00

Grandma, circa 1930, with her mother, Ellen Casey Cronin.

My grandmother, Mary Cronin Raynor, is 97 years old today and still kickin'. She started to learn genealogy as a hobby when her kids - my mother, my aunt, and my two uncles - were in school, way back when you still had to use books and write snail mail letters to distant relatives to ask them what information they know, and depend on church records and any old letters or photos or, if you were lucky, birth and death certificates that your parents or grandparents might have kept. My grandmother's family is 100 percent Irish - her dad, Timothy Ambrose Cronin, was born in Ireland, as were her maternal grandparents, Peter Casey and Mary Agnes Enright, and while Grandma did a great job of recording as much as she could find on her family from her grandparents down, what lay beyond that was always a brick wall for her - she even made a trip to Ireland to try to find her grandfather Denis Cronin's grave, but the cemetery was full of Denis Cronins, with no dates or other info on the headstones. I've had a bit more luck, finding Mary Enright's maternal grandparents, but not much more than that. My grandmother kept good notes though full of clues about cousins on her dad's side of the family, and she gave them to me, so at least I have something to work with.

My grandmother actually focused much of what she learned on my grandfather and her husband, Clifford Monroe Raynor's, side of the family. The Raynors have a lot of information out there. My grandmother recorded it all down, and she even researched his mother's side of the family, the Bergs. She wrote down who she got the information from and little anecdotes they told her as well.

After my parents got married, Grandma even went so far as to find information on my *dad's* side of the family tree - the first thing I know about my paternal grandmother, Helen Stutzmann's, side of the family is from my maternal grandmother. How cool is that?

But I got my first taste of genealogy from looking through the books of information my grandmother had put together. I was hooked even before I knew I was hooked. And as I got older and took it more seriously, I became someone she could share her research with, she loved hearing about all the new things I was discovering about the family, and genealogy became something we could always talk about.

So thank you Grandma, for inspiring me to always keep chipping away at those brick walls, and for instilling in me a passion for trying to learn who my family is and where I come from. Happy 97th birthday!

The two Marys and two genealogists.

Nancy Drew and the case of the 1940 U.S. census

2012-04-02T13:32:00.001-04:00

The detective work has become and the first results have already come in! The period between 1930-1940 saw a lot of deaths in my family and a lot of families moving around, which can make finding their enumeration districts difficult. Lucky for me, the Raynors have deep Freeport roots. They came in the 1650s and they never left, so I know exactly where to find them!

I neglected to put in my last post where to find the census - if you're an Ancestry member, they're uploading the census images as we speak. If you're not, you can go to 1940census.archives.gov, but be forewarned - EVERYBODY is using the site and pages are loading extremely slowly, if even at all. I searched for 3rd great-grandmother, Meta Tiedemann Ricklefs, where I last saw her, in Patchogue, Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. Her husband, John Ricklefs, had died in 1937, and I couldn't find her at first glance, so she's either in the next ED over or she has died by 1940 as well. Freeport is a fairly small place, and that's where the Raynors are entrenched, so that's where I went next. The good news is, once I FINALLY got to an ED, I found that they've been broken up into manageable chunks - you only have to go through about 24 pages, at least in the EDs I've checked so far. But Randy Seaver over at Genea-Musings gave some good advice here, suggesting how to find the ED if you don't already know, and that downloading all the ED file would be a better way to look over each page, which is what I did - it was taking too long for the images to appear on my screen, but they downloaded very quickly to my computer.

I already found my grandfather, Clifford Raynor, his father, Monroe Raynor, and HIS father, Joseph J. Raynor, living on South Main Street in Freeport - the handwriting isn't so great so it's a little difficult to read some of the info, and since these are ancestors I know pretty well, there aren't too many surprises so far, but I have already found mistakes - great-great grandpa J.J.'s daughter Eliza is listed as his wife, and his daughter-in-law, Alice, is listed as a daughter and his *granddaughter* is listed as a daughter. There's supposed to be an "x" next to the name of the person who provided the information, but I haven't seen one so far. Still, I'm excited to see what else I find, but I know now that I'm going to have to perfect the art of patience over the next few weeks. Maybe I should start meditating...

1940 has arrived!

2012-04-02T08:54:00.003-04:00

Starting today, you can look for family in the 1940 U.S. Census.

If all you've ever experienced was a nicely indexed census where all you have to do is type in the name of the person you're looking for and, voila, it appears out of thin air, then be forewarned.

This census, at least for the time being, is going to be a lot of tedious, frustrating work.

Indexing is in the works, and if you feel up to the task, volunteers are signing up every day to help with the process. I'm both excited about and dreading this day - I'm looking forward to finding out what happened to some of the individuals in my family who I last saw in 1930 - I know a lot about their early years but almost nothing about their later years. But I remember a time, not too long ago, when the 1920 census wasn't indexed, and I had to sit at my computer, for hours on end, Ancestry.com on one page, a street map of Brooklyn on the other, and try to find, based on my ancestors' addresses, the proper enumeration district, and THEN scroll through that district page by page by page by page....you get the idea. For now, that's what we're all in for. And while it's time-consuming work, in a way, I'm kind of looking forward to it, because it puts the detective aspect back into genealogy. This information is not going to be handed to you on a silver platter. You're going to have to earn it. It's going to be boring. It's going to make you want to tear your hair out. But when you find what you're looking for, boy, is it worth it!

Good luck everyone - happy hunting!

"Who Do You Think You Are?": Helen Hunt

2012-03-29T10:27:00.002-04:00

Some of my thoughts on last week's Helen Hunt-centric episode of WDYTYA:

Funny that just as I wrote a blog entry saying I wanted to see some Western genealogy, this episode did a little bit of tracing Helen's San Francisco-based family, who took advantage of the 1849 Gold Rush to expand their business.
I kinda dug that portion of the show because Helen's ancestor became a successful and wealthy businessman who ended up investing in a bank (the eventual Wells Fargo) that is still around today. I could totally identify with this, as my great-great grandfather Rudolph Stutzmann became a successful and wealthy businessman (as an undertaker) who ended up a founding member and first president of a bank (Ridgewood Savings Bank) that is still around today. Loved it.
I really wanted to see more emotion on Helen's part, at least for the first three-quarters of the episode. When she was talking to the woman who had written a book on her own San Francisco-based genealogy and it turned out that their ancestors had been friends and business partners, I just loved it, and yet Helen was all, "meh." She really didn't seem like she wanted to be there and she really, really didn't seem excited about anything she was finding out (except that her ancestors were rich, and that kind of bothered me, too). But I was getting more excited than her, and it wasn't even my family they were talking about!
I loved the last part of the episode, when Helen traveled to Maine to learn about her great-grandmother Augusta Hunt. That was where Helen seemed to finally emotionally connect to a specific person in her tree and to her ancestry in general. The irony of Helen's great-grandmother fighting alcohol abuse and her future daughter-in-law being killed by a drunk driver really seemed to resonate with her, as well as finding out her great-grandmother was instrumental in the fight for women's suffrage and that she lived to be able to register to vote and be the first woman to cast a ballot in Maine. That was really cool.
I loved that Helen was able to read the keynote speech her great-grandmother wrote and gave at one of the meetings. I've read newspaper articles where my great-great grandfather Rudolph has been quoted, and more than vital records and obits and census records, these things are an actual voice from the past - these are words your ancestor spoke, these are thoughts they actually had, reaching out over the years, the decades, the centuries, to us today, a tiny glimpse into their personality, their psyche, their lives. I just love that.

Overall, I would say that I really wanted to throttle Helen for the first part of this episode for not realizing how immensely cool this all is, but by the end of the episode, it was probably my favorite one so far this season...and of course, I was crying. Well played, show.

Next up this week (tomorrow): Rita Wilson explores her Bulgarian roots, answering another thing on my wishlist, seeing more Eastern European genealogy.

Tombstone Tuesday: Rodney Dangerfield

2012-03-20T09:48:00.004-04:00

Tombstone Tuesday always makes me think of my dad because a love of cemeteries and headstones is something we share. He said his dad also liked them, so that's right there is three generations of weirdos. I joke, but I really did not realize how strange my fascination with cemeteries was to other people until recently, because I could talk about them with my dad like it was normal. We'd even go on cemetery field trips together. Anyway, now Tombstone Tuesday always makes him think of me and he'll send me photos of some of his favorite headstones, some of them belonging to relatives, some of them not. Here's this week's offering: comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who died in 2004 and is buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. The inscription under his name always makes me laugh.

Most cemeteries could use a little humor. :)

May the road rise up to meet you...

2012-03-17T14:05:00.001-04:00

Today I'd like to take a moment to just remember my Irish family members, some of whom fled Ireland to escape the Great Hunger in the mid-1800s, many of whom emigrated years later, all of whom were well established in New York by the turn of the 20th century. St. Patrick's Day is an Irish holiday, but it's also a very New York-Irish holiday. I'm a bit of a mutt, but my biggest ancestry percentage, at 50 percent, is Irish - my paternal grandfather, Elmer Gorry, was 100 percent Irish, as is my maternal grandmother, Mary Cronin Raynor. Grandpa's great-great-great grandparents were both potato famine era Irish immigrants, settling in the Lower East Side of New York City: James Gorry from County Meath and Mary Corr, who came from County Cavan with her mother and two brothers. And Grandma's father, Timothy Cronin, came to Brooklyn from County Cork with his mom and brothers and sisters in th 1880s. When I was in third grade, we were talking in class about things that aren't real and one of my classmates mentioned leprechauns. I was hardly one to participate in class, but my hand immediately shot up so I could correct her - leprechauns ARE real, and I know for a fact, because my grandmother told me that her father told her he had seen one when he was a boy in Ireland.

To this day, I'm not sure he was joking...

And in between the Gorrys and Cronins, we had Tormeys and Horgans and Murphys and Prendergasts and Enrights who left Ireland for New York, and lets not forget all the Donnellys and Collins and Donoghues and Cullinanes who they also came from. I don't identify as much with my Irish side anymore, but I'm very proud to be of Irish descent. They are the hardest family for me to trace and I'll probably never be able to go back much further than my immigrant ancestors, but I always think of them anyway - whenever I think of me and my siblings with our Irish first names, or see my sister with her red hair, or when I misplace something and I know, I just know, that a leprechaun took it.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

"Who Do You Think You Are?": Jerome Bettis

2012-03-16T13:33:00.001-04:00

Like how I'm waiting a whole week to post about these episodes? Way to stay current...

I actually don't have that many thoughts about this episode of WDYTYA. Two things in particular struck me, one good and one bad: when Jerome Bettis discovered his great-grandfather had abandoned his wife and young children, and that's why his grandfather didn't know much about him or never really talked about him, it was a little heartbreaking. It started out like Kim Cattrall's search for her grandfather, which didn't have a happy ending. But then Bettis searched for his great-grandfather's early history and discovered that he had pressed charges against his (white) boss in the Jim Crow south and brought him to court and - poof! - like magic, the guy was no longer a scoundrel, he was a hero. That disturbed me a little, that Bettis so quickly and easily forgot or chose to ignore that this man, while yes, was brave in standing up for himself in his youth, grew up to be a man who completely abandoned his family. Bettis kept saying how proud he was of him and that kind of bothered me.

What didn't bother me was his great-grandfather's father's story of not only taking a giant railroad company to court for injuries he incurred on their property, but for the case going in his favor, despite the all-white jury. That was impressive - that he had the courage to embrace that David and Goliath fight, but also that he got a fair trial. Yes, there was a lot of racism and hate and segregation and ignorance and all that jazz, but people forget (like Bettis seemed to) that there were also a lot of people who believed in equality, and even if they didn't necessarily believe in equality, they believed in fairness and justice.

Anyway, this episode kind of made me realize that while the original series has been broadcasting in the UK for years, that after awhile, the episodes start to feel repetitive. Unless it's a celebrity you're particularly interested in or like, or there's a real unique angle, the nuts and bolts of everyone's family story are the same. Although I guess you don't really know what surprises or unique angles you're going to find until you already start looking.

I'd like to see some diversity in the storytelling - except for Sarah Jessica Parker, we haven't really seen anybody trace their family west of the Mississippi River; if I'm correct we haven't really seen any Eastern European genealogy except for Lisa Kudrow. What about all those Canadian and Australian actors out there? I'd love to see some Canadian and Australian genealogy. And I know this would be much more work for the researchers and possibly not fiscally feasible given the number of staff and time restrictions, but what about branching out from the white/black divide to our Central/South American and Asian brothers and sisters? These are the things I think about when I'm at work...

There's no new episode tonight, so don't sit there looking for it...go out and get a head start on celebrating St. Patrick's Day! I am half Irish by blood, but as I always say, we're all Irish on St. Patrick's Day! ;)

Enjoy your weekend, everyone!

"Who Do You Think You Are?": Reba McEntire

2012-03-06T09:52:00.001-05:00

Though I didn't love this episode - for some reason, it felt really light on the whole "going on a journey to solve a family mystery/make a discovery" thing - two things stood out for me in the Reba McEntire episode last Friday of WDYTYA.

The first was the realization that just as it must be devastating for African-Americans to come face-to-face with the reality that they have ancestors who were slaves, it must not be a picnic for white Americans to realize they had ancestors who were slaveholders. My family has been here for hundreds of years but because they were concentrated in New York/New England, that hasn't ever been an issue for me (although its entirely possible that even in the north I had family who owned slaves - I just haven't found any records of it yet). But Reba seemed absolutely heartbroken when she came across that record for George Brasfield. So while I imagine it has to be harder to know your ancestors were slaves, it was interesting angle to see that it can be a struggle on both sides of it to come to terms with this shameful part of our history.

I also always find it interesting to see which ancestor a person ends up identifying with and Reba, as a mother, really seemed to struggle with the fact that the other George Brasfield, the first on her side of the family to come to America, came here as a 10 year old indentured servant. Since she couldn't imagine ever sending her son on a dangerous voyage across the ocean, knowing she would never see him again, she really needed to find out why that happened. There are all sorts of reasons we identify with certain ancestors, whether its because we are in a similar situation in life or we have similar personalities, but I also appreciate anybody who after undertaking this journey, needs to know not just the who, what, when, and where, but also the why, because without the why, the rest is kind of meaningless. But I actually identified with Reba and George Brasfield the Senior in this episode because I have a similar ancestral story, in that my first Raynor in this country, Edward, was only 10 years old when he came here in 1634. He was an orphan, but he had the advantage that at least he didn't come alone - he traveled here with his uncle and his cousins. But I still always wonder what it must have been like to be uprooted from your life at 10 to undertake a dangerous sea voyage to a completely unknown wilderness. That has always fascinated me.

So looking back at what I wrote, I guess it turns out that even when these episodes don't really speak to me...they still kinda do!

"Who Do You Think You Are?": Marisa Tomei and Blair Underwood

2012-02-25T16:51:00.002-05:00

We're gonna talk about both episodes today, just cuz I'm feeling lazy. But both episodes sorta jumped out at me because of the use of newspapers and court records to flesh out the stories of certain ancestors of both Marisa and Blair - Marisa had questions about the murky circumstances and official records regarding her great-grandfather's death and Blair was intrigued by the fact his 3rd great grandfather ended up in a mental institution, and I think these episodes highlighted the importance of finding out the stories, not just the facts. Plus, I have that same kind of relative in my family - the brothers Ricklefs, John and Charles - where you find out one little factoid - in my case, that they were in jail - and it snowballs into a mountain of information that not only tells you they were criminals, but gives you this amazing insight into their character and personality and makes you think about their motivations and what influenced and drove them. So that also made me think again about the Martin Sheen episode, where I noted that it didn't really speak to me - but I think maybe I was a little harsh in not liking it, because we all have that particular story or that particular relative who speaks to us, who fuels our genealogical curiosity, and even though Martin's uncles didn't do it for me, they did it for him, and that's what matters.

In the Marisa Tomei episode, I liked that she was able to alleviate some of the stigma her mother had attached to their murdered predecessor, that he hadn't been a philanderer, that he didn't deliberately break up the family. Because that kind of legacy can weigh on a person. And I thought it was just wonderful that a relative and friend of Marisa's great-grandmother was found and wrote her a letter who was able to give her a firsthand account of what her great-grandmother was like in life, and how broken up she was by her husband's death, but how happy she became with her second husband. And it's true - if the great-grandfather hadn't died, his wife wouldn't have remarried to a fisherman, and her son maybe wouldn't have taken up the trade and emigrated to America. It's all the little things that come together to bring us to where we are today.

I thought Blair's story was interesting - I wasn't really into the whole cousin reunion thing but for African-Americans, I think it's definitely great to be able to find a country or tribe in Africa that you're probably descended from, since so many of them really hit an unbreakable brick wall before the Civil War. But a 10th-cousin is almost no relation at all - I don't know this offhand, but Cousin April and I are related somewhere way back when that's so far back that it almost doesn't even matter. We feel related because we have that common ancestor we're both chasing, but I'm probably just as closely related if not more closely related to half the people in my town, half of whom I've probably never even met.

But I did like, as I said before, all the story he was able to find on Sonny Early, and how he was actually able to get both sides of the story when it came to why Sonny was shot. But not everybody has that colorful character in their family tree, and someone like that is always a good hook to get people interested. But my absolute favorite part about the Blair Underwood episode was his discovery that he had free black ancestors living in this country as far back as 1790 - what an incredible find. There are so many African-Americans who are more American than so many white Americans, if their family came here as slaves in the 1600, 1700s, except they can't prove their ancestry back that far. But for a black American to be able to look at an 1840 census and see his relative's name, or original records from even earlier in the 19th century proving that his relatives were free more than half a century before slavery was officially abolished in the U.S. - well, I'm not black, but for many who are, they know deep down that someone, somewhere down the line, was enslaved, and that has to be a terrible realization, especially when these people start to become three-dimensional, real, and well, alive to you. So to be able to say your family was free - I would be proud. Relieved and proud.

Anyway, I enjoyed them both. I think I really enjoyed Blair Underwood's episode because Blair turned out to be so nice when I went to see him at the Paley Center. And if we're keeping count, I'm three for three with the tearing up this season. Closest to crying while watching Blair's episode. And that was in public, surrounded by 100 people in a tiny theater. Embarrassing...what can I say...when I see people blown away and emotionally affected by the genealogical discoveries they make, I'm a total sap.

Enjoy your weekend, everyone!

"Who Do You Think You Are?" panel at the Paley Center for Media

2012-02-23T09:42:00.000-05:00

I love anything that combines the things that I love, which is part of the appeal of "Who Do You Think You Are?" for me, since I am both a media buff and a genealogy geek, so when I saw on Facebook and on Ancestry.com that the Paley Center for Media (formerly the Museum of Television and Radio) in New York was having a WDYTYA panel discussion last night, I immediately bought a ticket ($20 for nonmembers, but $15 with the Ancestry promo code) - I mean, what is the point of living so close to the city if you don't jump at these opportunities, right?

The event started at 6:30 but I got there 45 minutes early, which netted me a seat right in the center of the second row. The auditorium was not huge by any means but I was literally 15 feet from where the panel members would be sitting. The audience was an interesting mix - many were genealogy enthusiasts who were either hobbyists for themselves or professionals for others; the guy sitting behind me had his own company that helped people scan all their photos, digitize all their home movies, and record interviews with family members. A lot of people were simply fans of the show and a handful, you could tell, were celebrity stalkers. I don't blame them for going to the event even if they don't watch the show - I would've shown up just to see Blair Underwood, too!

So, the panel consisted of moderator Maira Liriano, archivist for The New York Public Library, who did some work for the show; Alex Graham, the creator of the original British series; Josh Hanna from Ancestry.com; Lisa Kudrow, executive producer of the American series and featured during the season; Kim Cattrall, who was featured in the first season; and Blair Underwood, whose episode airs this Friday. Kim, who is a trustee for the Paley Center, gave some opening remarks, then Lisa introduced the Blair Underwood episode, which we got to watch and which, as per usual, made me tear up. I'll remark on that episode after it airs, as I still haven't talked about the Marisa Tomei episode, but we'll get to that in another post.

WDYTYA panel: Josh Hanna, Kim Cattrall, Blair Underwood, Lisa Kudrow, and Alex Graham

Then there was the panel discussion. It was actually quite interesting - Alex Graham talked about how he came up with the concept for the show and how hard it was to not only convince the network that it was worth putting on the air but also convincing celebrities initially to participate, although now the show is so popular, at least in England, that people approach him saying they want to be on the show. He was very entertaining, and his Scottish brogue was awesome. Lisa talked a little about the importance of knowing your family history and passing that on, as well as helping to bring genealogy to the mainstream. Lisa, Kim, and Blair all talked about their particular episodes and how some of what they discovered was painful but how they were all glad they did it. Blair and Lisa also talked a little about the process of the show, which I found very interesting - there's an initial meeting where the celebrity is asked if there's something in particular they're interested in finding out or if there's a family mystery they want to solve, and then the researchers do some digging to see if there's a story to be told. I had wondered what happens if there's not an interesting story to tell and Alex Graham noted that sometimes, they do have a celebrity interested in being on the show but there's just no story to tell in their family history.

Kim Cattrall, Blair Underwood, and Lisa Kudrow

So anyway, the researchers get cracking and they know where the story and episode is headed but the celebrity is kept in the dark so that the viewer really is seeing them make those family discoveries as they are making them. I also liked that Lisa, in response to an audience question, remarked that its an imperfect process, due to money and time constraints. They only have so many researchers on the show and only so much time to film and to air, so they can't trace every line and they can't always be as thorough and sometimes some lines that may be interesting have to be dropped in order to focus on another line. Which of course makes sense - we as genealogists know we spend YEARS researching our family trees and they're still not complete.

Kim and Blair

One thing I will say about the Blair Underwood episode right now, just because Lisa was giving so much acknowledgement to the people who do the actual research on the show, is that while other episodes have glossed over the work and time that goes into finding genealogical information and how its other people, and not the celebrities, who are doing a lot of the grunt work and leg work, this one kept mentioning it, which I liked.

WDYTYA panel discussion at the Paley Center for Media in New York.

And just as a side note, all three celebrities - Lisa, Kim, and Blair - seemed so nice and so down-to-earth, in their interactions with the moderator, with each other, and with the audience, and that was just so cool to see.

Blair Underwood and Lisa Kudrow talk about "Who Do You Think You Are?"

Also, Blair Underwood is as yummy in person as he is on television. I could just eat him up with a spoon.

Just sayin'. :)

Nancy Drew and the case of the possible re-marriage

2012-02-15T10:39:00.002-05:00

I have many women in my family tree who, unfortunately, were widowed quite young. The one who has been most well-known to me is my great-great grandmother, Mary Ellen Horgan Gorry, whose husband James died when she was only about 24 years old, leaving her with my 1-year-old great-grandfather, Elmer Anthony Gorry, Sr. Now, she never remarried, and so because of that, somewhere in my head, I never assume to look for a second husband when I'm dealing with other widowed women in my family. That blind spot has made it very difficult at times to find some of these ladies in census records or to find death certificates or obituaries.

The first woman I had that breakthrough with was my 4th great-grandmother, Catherine Naeher, whose first husband (my 4th great-grandfather), John Meinberg, died somewhere in the mid- to late 1870s (I would LOVE to finally solve that mystery, but I can't find a death record for him anywhere!) when she was only in her 30s. I knew very little about Catherine until I inadvertently stumbled across her obituary at Fultonhistory.com while looking for info on her daughter, Eva Meinberg Haase. That's how I discovered that after John's death, Catherine had remarried to Georg Hellmann and that Eva had several Meinberg siblings as well as a half-sister, Catherine Hellmann. Catherine's marriage certificate for her second marriage as well as her death certificate, which I could now find because I had a name and a date, gave me both of her parents names and opened up what had previously been a tightly locked door, revealing a wealth of information about her (and my) family roots in the towns of Hambach and Heppenheim in the Hesse region of Germany.

Now, this current mystery I kind of, again, stumbled onto, involves my great-great grandmother, Meta Johanna Ricklefs Haase. I actually know quite a lot about her life - she's the one who grew up in East New York, Brooklyn, whose two brothers, Charles and John, spent the better part of their lives in prison. She was married to Xavier Gustav Haase, better known as Gus, who died in Bellerose, New York, in 1928 at the age of 41. I don't have his death certificate yet, so I'm not sure why he died so young, but I have Meta in the 1930 census living with two of her three children, and I've just been waiting for the 1940 census to come out to see where she is 10 years later.

So, I was randomly plugging names in to the search engine at Fulton History because they recently added new newspaper pages and I came across a list of people who had recently applied for a marriage license from Jan. 10, 1931 and one of the couples was a George E. Roe, 42, of 14 Schermerhorn Street in Brooklyn, and Meta J. Haas, 40, of 40-44 Seventy-third Street in Jackson Heights in Queens County. My Meta would have been a "Meta J. Haas" in 1931, and while I have her as being born around August 1889, I don't have a birth certificate for her, so it's possible she was 40 in 1931 (it's also possible the listing got her age wrong). Could this be my Meta?

Here's the other reason this listing pinged my genealogy-radar. In the past, I've come across and dismissed an article from Dec. 30, 1931 in which deputy tax commissioner George Roe and his wife, Elizabeth, celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. The Roes had four children, including a son, George R. Roe, and at their small anniversary party for "relatives and close friends," in addition to the immediate family present are Mr. and Mrs. Fred Stutzman (my great-grandparents, Fred Stutzman and Helen Haase, who is Meta's daughter), Edwin and Millicent Haase, who are Meta's two other children, and Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon Butt, who are Meta's sister and brother-in-law. I didn't know any Roes, I didn't have any on my tree, and so I always skipped over this story, but if only relatives and close friends were invited to this party, are my relatives there because the Roes' son, George, is the second husband of my great-great grandmother, Meta? I'm ignoring the difference in George's middle initial - newspapers always get those wrong. But these two articles together are making my gut believe that Meta did in fact remarry after her first husband Gus died. What I need to do is find George Roe and Meta Haas's marriage certificate, which would possibly say whether this was the first or second marriage for Meta and probably list her parents, which, since I know her parents are John Ricklefs and Meta Tiedemann, would help me either verify this possible second marriage or rule it out.

If this is in fact my Meta, will it open up any locked doors for me? Not really. But it will help me find her in the 1940 census, and it would give me a better picture of what the later part of her life was like. My curiosity is piqued!

EDITED TO ADD: Ancestry.com is allowing free access to the 1930 U.S. census through Feb. 20. I just checked where Meta was living that year - 3737 88th Street in Queens County...which is smack dab in the middle of Jackson Heights, the area where the Meta J. Haas of said marriage license listing was living less than a year later...my gut is telling me this is my gal, and when it comes to genealogy, my gut is never wrong! So exciting!

Fifty days until the 1940 U.S. census is released to the public...

2012-02-12T19:27:00.000-05:00

...and this is why I'm looking forward to it:

the new information asked of household members, including occupation, where they were living in 1935, and maybe most importantly, who provided the info to the census-taker (which will give you an idea of how reliable that info is)...
kinda excited to see my paternal grandmother in her first census
I have several ancestors, including my great-great grandmother, Meta Ricklefs Haase, and her mother, Meta Tiedemann Ricklefs, who I have no idea when they died, and this census will narrow the window either way, depending on whether they are in it or not.
My two uncles (of the multiple greats-degree) Charles Ricklefs and John Ricklefs were in and out of prison and over the course of the first half of the 20th century and I'm curious to see where they both were in 1940.
This will be the last census several of my ancestors are listed in - including my great-grandfather Timothy Cronin (died 1948), and great-great grandparents Rudolph Stutzmann (1946), Augusta Lindemann Stutzmann (1945), J.J. Raynor (1944), and Theodore Berg (1944).

While the census will be released April 1, be aware that it won't immediately be indexed, so unless you know where your ancestors were living in that year, you may have to go page by page looking for your family until an index comes out. Note - you can volunteer to index! Look at FamilySearch's website for details!!

The wonders of using modern technology to look at old records

2012-02-09T20:23:00.002-05:00

Leave it to the boyfriend to suggest, when I complain to him, "I can't read this record!!," referring to the old German kirchenbuch entries I've been using to research my Stutzmann line, that perhaps it would help to use Photoshop to lighten and sharpen. It's amazing how much more clearly the written words show up when they're darker and the background is whiter.

In any case, looking at several of these records, I've determined that Rudolph Schlick's occupation was "ackersmann," which in German means "husbandman," which translated from English to actual English means a kind of farmer. So that's cool. I find my ancestors' occupations extremely interesting. I love that I'm descended from so many bar owners, ha ha...and a shoemaker. And a hatmaker. But I think that gives you a little insight into the person, into the time, and into the place. Which is part of what genealogy is all about. I will now be using this so-obvious-I-needed-someone-else-to-point-it-out-to-me technique to look at my other German records and to see what else I can discover about my Stutzmanns - watch out, German ancestry! I'm comin' for ya!! :)

Who Do You Think You Are?: Martin Sheen

2012-02-09T14:29:00.001-05:00

I just realized I never wrote about this episode. And tomorrow is already the next one - oh well, only a week late!

Those of you who have followed these WDYTYA posts in the past know that my goal is to eventually get through one of these episodes without crying. So far the tally is: crying, every episode; not crying, zip. On that note, I didn't really connect with Martin Sheen's third season premiere episode as much as I thought I would, but I did cry at the previews for the whole season, so that's going to count.

I'm not sure exactly what left me so bleh about much of this episode - I was watching it with the boyfriend, who has never seen the show before, so I had someone to explain a lot of things to and he was able to give me a little bit of a novice's opinion about what he was seeing. As I explained to him, each celebrity usually has a goal they want to achieve or a question they want to answer, and they usually find one person *they* really connect with and want to find out more about. I think maybe it's the fact that most of the episode was spent on Sheen looking into two of his uncles, and nothing further back, that I found kind of boring. He really could've done all that stuff on his own, without the help of Ancestry.com or the show. But in his defense, he really did identify with and admire these two men, and he found in them traits and characteristics that had been passed along to him, and no one should miss out on that. That's part of the fun of genealogy.

The part I did enjoy was when they were talking about his fourth (I think) great-grandfather, the don. First, looking at the Spanish records, I explained to the boyfriend how when I was researching my best friend's Dominican family history, their birth records are very telling - a child will be described as "legitimate" or as "natural," and one means the parents were married, and one means they were not. And I told this all to him before the guy on the show explained it to Martin Sheen, so that made me feel a little cool.

The don, meanwhile, turned out to be a person Sheen didn't particularly care for, a ruthless judge who had an entire illegitimate family, but I think part of genealogy is realizing we're not going to always like the people we're descended from.

But then the cool part, of course, was when it turns out that a girl who the judge had pursued for getting pregnant out of wedlock and seeking an abortion, was another something-great grandparent of Sheens, that generations down the line, her descendant and the don's descendant were married. The boyfriend noted that the reveal of that sent chills down his spine and I agree that it's a pretty interesting story. It's also further proof that it's SOOOO important to know more than just names and dates, that we should try to get at least some rounder picture of these people's lives - in the case of Sheen, if he hadn't known the backstory of these two people, the fact that he was descended from both of them wouldn't have meant anything at all.

Anyway, tomorrow night is Marisa Tomei. The promo made the episode sound beyond melodramatic - murder or cover up? - but I think it sounds interesting, and though I won't get to watch it until the weekend, I'm excited about it.

Working our way backward: Ottilia Elisabetha D'Huy

2012-02-08T09:05:00.002-05:00

This is the title page of the kirchenbuch I've been using to research my Stutzmann ancestors of Grossbockenheim. I thought it looked kinda cool:

Kleinbockenheim and Grossbockenheim kirchenbuch, 1751

Okay, so we've determined that immigrant ancestor, great great Grandpa Friedrich Stutzmann, was born in 1845 to (Johann) Peter Stutzmann and (Luise) Charlotte Schlick in Grossbockenheim in the Rheinfpalz region of Germany. Peter's parents were (Johann) Michael Stutzmann and Jacobina Blasius. We think we can find Michael's parents by exploring the records from nearby Asselheim and we still have to track down the records on Jacobina's parents. On the other side, we know Charlotte's parents are (Johann) Rudolph Schlick of Kleinbockenheim and Ottilia Elisabetha D'Huy, my fourth great grandparents. We know very little at this point about Rudolph's parentage but right now let's talk about Ottilia, also known as Ottilie.

The records, as you can see, are very difficult to read. This is Ottilia's baptismal record. The year is definitely 1779, and it looks like the date is March 31. She is born Ottilia Elisabetha D'Huy to Johannes D'huy of Grossbockenheim and his wife Maria Catharina. I can't tell a maiden name for her. There are a whole bunch of other names listed which I assume are her godparents, since it seems it's tradition for German children to have more than 2 godparents.

We don't have a marriage record for Ottilia and Rudolph at all, but later on, on Dec. 17, 1863, we have a death record for Ottilia, which, again, is very hard to read. Damn you, Germans, with your meticulous records but atrocious handwriting!

But this is basically what I can tell from this record - Ottilia died in Kleinbockenheim on Dec. 14, 1863 at the age of 84 (putting her birth year at about 1779, which again jives with what I know) and she was buried 3 days later. Again, we find the name Johann Rudolph Schlick of Kleinbockenheim, who was her husband, as well as Johannes Dhuy and Maria Katherina, her parents. There is a date in there I'd like to take a closer look at as well as some other words. I don't know if I'll be able to determine what letters are there, though sometimes trial and error helps...that's what I'll be working on today!

A call for help: Rudolph Schlick and Ottilia Dhuy in the Amts- und Intelligenzblatt des Königlich Bayerischen Rheinkreises

2012-02-07T10:54:00.000-05:00

So recently I was Googling some family names and places, just to see what turns up, because you never know what information is available out there on the Internet. When I looked up the names "Schlick" and "Kleinbockenheim," I came across this page in the 1834 version of the book "Amts- und Intelligenzblatt des Königlich Bayerischen Rheinkreises," or "Official Journal of the Royal Bavarian intelligence and the Rhine district." It is, of course, in German, but I was able to read that my 4th great-grandparents, Rudolph Schlick and Ottilia Dhuy, are mentioned in this book (in that first big paragraph in the righthand column). As far as I can tell from the horrible translation provided by Google Translate, this has something to do with a foreclosure or property sale - I would be very curious if anybody with a better understanding of German could help me get a clearer picture of the context in which they are mentioned. But I'm also, in a sense, more curious about what these books were for - they seem to have come out every year for a few years there and I didn't really come across anything on the Internet that was able to explain to me what they were, so if anyone is more familiar with these books than I am and could tell me what they are for, I would greatly appreciate it!

In honor of Super Bowl Sunday: Tim Gorry makes a defensive touchdown

2012-02-05T16:24:00.001-05:00

My dad loves football. He played football in high school for Chaminade High School in Mineola and in college for St. John's University. He's an avid Jets fan and passed that love of his team down to my brother, Denis. I'm more of a Giants fan, but I think I've started to inherit that love of the sport and I know that when we're watching a team together, I can always depend on my dad to explain things to me and answer all my questions. This is a newspaper article from 1970, I think, my dad's senior year of high school, in which he made a defensive touchdown. Go, Dad! And go Giants! :)

Plainview Family History Center: Fun discoveries with Charlotte Schlick

2012-02-03T19:29:00.001-05:00

Charlotte Schlick was always a murky, shadowy name on my family tree, and that was it. I knew a lot about the Stutzmanns, but all I knew about Charlotte was that she died in Germany before her husband, Peter Stutzmann, joined his children in New York.

Charlotte was one of my German holdouts for a long time, but now, as it turns out, the Stutzmanns have clammed up and it's Charlotte's line that I'm able to trace further back. Thanks to her marriage record, I know that her parents were Rudolph Schlick and Ottilie Elisabetha Dhuy of Kleinbockenheim, Germany. I didn't order the microfilm that has her death record on it, but its possible I could find it - according to Schlegel's, she died about 1885. FamilySearch gave me the info on her parents and I verified it upon my Plainview Family History Center trip by checking the kirchenbuch for Grossbockenheim and Kleinbockenheim. But I'm very proud of myself, because I managed to find a piece of Charlotte all on my own.

According to Schlegel's, Peter Stutzmann and his son, Friedrich, both were confirmed in the Lutheran church at the age of 14. So I thought to myself, maybe there's a record for the females, too. I'm still working on finding a baptismal record for Peter and I couldn't find a confirmation record, but according to Charlotte's marriage record, she was born in 1819, so as I was scrolling through the kirchenbuch microfilm and I ran across confirmation records amongst the baptismal, marriage, and burial records I was actually focusing on, I thought, why not? Charlotte would have been 14 in 1833, so I scanned to that year. Boy, was that section of the microfilm a nightmare. Anyone NOT knowing what they were looking for would have an actual hell of a time trying to find the records they needed. But I knew Charlotte and I knew her parents, Rudolph and Ottilie, so while it was still a nightmare to read and I still haven't examined them that closely, their names almost literally jumped out at me.

I told you. Once they feel comfortable with you, they want to let you in.

So, here we have it, the one discovery I made on my own so far on my Family History Center excursions, Charlotte Schlick's confirmation record:

FHL #193802 - confirmations in Grossbockenheim, 1833

Charlotte is #5 - what I can read is Charlotte Schlick,, daughter of Rudolph Schlick and Ottilia, born DeHuy.

Every record you find that backs up the info you have is a good thing...(it's also okay if records don't match up, that's how we weed out the bad info) ... but it's so much cooler when they do! Rudolph and Ottilie/Ottilia, here I come!

Learning German - the fun of researching records written in another language

2012-02-03T09:07:00.003-05:00

At some point or other, if we're lucky, we end up depending on records in a language other than our own when we do our family history research. Even records from English-speaking countries can end up being in Latin. I mentioned in another post how I was helping my friend, who is Dominican, with some of her family history, so the records I was looking at were in Spanish. But I speak and read Spanish. I took it in school for five years, and I've spent more than 20 years surrounded by her Spanish-speaking family and friends.

German, however, is a whole other story. That's what I'm dealing with now, with my Stutzmann family line. In some ways, German is easier, because many of the words are extremely similar to their English counterpart. But looking at 19th- and 18th- century records, which is what I'm doing, and you have to factor in the completely different letters as well as the completely different way they wrote letters that we're familiar with, so that looking at these records can be like translating an alien language.

Nancy over at My Ancestors and Me has a great post with really helpful suggestions for resources on translating old German handwriting here and here. I've printed out some of the pages as cheat sheets because while I can recognize many of the proper nouns as names and places, I realize there's probably a lot of useful and important information I'm glossing over because I can't understand it. And looking at at least one of the records, I see a possible profession for Rudolph Schlick that I'd like to know.

So, it's always good to ask for help. And if you know something others don't, it's always good to help! And for anyone needing German handwriting resources, if you want to save time, definitely check out My Ancestors and Me.