Genealogical Inquiry

Strasser Mystery solved; more German info

2011-10-04T11:52:00.000-07:00

My last post, quite some time ago, concluded with my about to embark on searching German church records by hand. That search only opened up new mysteries to me. The records were difficult to read at times, and all in German. The German was relatively straightforward to understand, however, so I did not have trouble. They also had a booklet that a few church ladies had put together translating some of the records.

These records were, however, fantastic in that they provided birth places in Germany for my ancestors. Simon Walter was listed as being born in Neubeuren bei Wiesenfeld. His wife, Margaretha, was a different story. She was listed intermittently as either a Strasser or Kuernlein // Kaemmlein by birth. The church records shed no light on these because they ALSO alternated between listing two two names. Sometimes her children's records said one thing, and then her own death record said another. Was Simon married to two women named Margaretha? In the cemetery records there was also a listing of an Eva Elisabetha Strasser, whose maiden name was Kuernlein, born 14 Sept 1805 in Weisenbach. She had a husband listed as Johann Michael Strasser, only his birth year was 1822 and he had been born someplace called Schnelldorf. Margaretha herself was born 2 Jan 1827, also in Weisenbach.

How were these three related?? The church records were infuriating. I had them all laid out in front of me in the basement of the church and they just kept leading me in circles without providing information on how exactly these three were related. They had to be. They were from the same tiny town in Germany. They had the same names. They had similar generations (1822/1827, and then the older generation line at 1805). Were johann and Margaretha siblings? What was going on?

I photographed every record and came home, still studying the same information and still baffled. I searched the internet for the town name "Weisenbach by Wuerttemburg" as it had been listed on the records. I determined that the town I was looking for was in Schwaebisch Hall region of Stuttgart, Wurttemburg state. There was even a road between Weisenbach and Schnelldorf, explaining how the Strasser and Kaemmlein families had met.

Because I was now armed with the proper locales and exact birth dates (thank you, St Johns in Oak Creek!) I could now attempt to find records in Germany. Luckily records existed. They let me know that Margaretha, wife of Simon Walter was a Kaemmlein by birth. Her mother was, Eva Elisabetha Kaemmlein, who had Margaretha illegitimately and therefore Margaretha had her mother's maiden name. The father may be listed on the record but it is incredibly hard to read on the scan they sent me in the mail.

Apparently, Eva Kaemmlein married Johann Michael Kaemmlein, only 5 years older than her illegitimate daughter, and came to America with him in 1852. I do not know more about the marriage of Eva and Johann Michael, but at least I do know the proper relationships between these three.

From this info I was able to find more info on the Kaemmlein family. Eva's parents were Johann George Kaemmlein and Anna Barbara Ballbach.

I can't afford to find more information at this time but I'm satisfied with having learned what I did so far.

More family research in German records:

I also acquired the birthdates of George Brandmueller and Johanna Hoeninger. Georg was born 12 Aug 1824 in Steudach, Erlangen-Büchenbach, Mittelfranken, Bavaria. His parents were Adam Brandmueller and Anna Neidhardt. I have found the Brandmueller line back to the mid 1700s now! Can you believe it?

Johanna Hoeninger was born 16 Sep 1824 in Buechenbach to Johann Michael Hoeninger (I had wondered as her sons had this name) and Barbara Rudelt. Barbara was an illegitimate child of Conrad Petsch and Catharina Rudelt. She is alternately listed by either surname in various records.

I have slowly been acquiring more info on the Grass families also. More to come when I can afford the research!!

German update; new Christofferson info, much more.

2011-05-17T19:35:00.000-07:00

Quite a lot of time has passed since I last took the time to write here, but I have been still working on a variety of things.

I recently undertook the monumental task of trying to track down records in Germany for all of my German ancestors. This hasn't been easy, because for many of my ancestors I still do not know a town name of origination. That means finding records is next to impossible. For others, I have pretty good information so I have been able to make some contacts and find out a little more information.

One such is the family of Lawrence Grass. I knew his daughter Adelheid Grass Diebold had been born in "Kerpen bei Koeln" i.e. the town of Kerpen near Cologne. Kerpen has an archive located in their town and a very helpful archivist there has been able to help me find the birth records of Adelheid and Lorenz, as well as the marriage record of Lorenz Grass to Anna Maria Lapper. From these documents I found a new generation: Lorenz Grass's parents were Aegidius Grass (! what a name) and Maria Catherina Ahrens. Anna Maria Lapper's mother was listed on the marriage record as "Maria Anna Lapper" and no father was listed.

They were also able to find a registry for the marriage of Maria Ahrens and Aegidius Grass, as well as a listing of all of their children baptized.

I also contacted a variety of places in central Bavaria, to try to track down exactly where the Brandmueller and Hoenninger/Hönninger/Heninger families were from. I had received information from Baltimore church records that the Brandmueller family came from Steudach, Bavaria, while the Hönningers came from Buechenbach. An archive in Bamberg was able to locate Hönninger records for me, in Mittelfranken, but the unfortunate part of the story is that it costs 60 euro per HOUR for research to be conducted at the archives. That has put my search there on hold as I cannot afford that at all.

I am still hoping to track down more German records as time and money allows.

Closer to home, I have been able to figure out a couple of mysteries lately and I am really quite pleased if these fully pan out as I hope they will. The first was that of the Christoffersons, my uncle's family. For a while I have been stuck on Carl Christofferson's parents. He was born at an awkward time just before the 1880 census, but then was old enough that by the 1900 census he was living on his own and therefore not connected to any parents. I could not for the life of me figure out where he was on the 1880 census although I knew it had to be in Blooming Grove. Multiple records indicated he was born in Blooming Grove, and he was born, as I said, not long before the 1880 census.

Well I decided to plug in the information I knew into ancestry.com again (thanks to my cousin who shares her account with me from time to time!!), because I'm a sucker for staring at the same information over and over that doesn't belong to my family. Haha. Kidding. This time I did a specific search for 1880 in Blooming Grove (instead of Wisconsin as a whole) and came up with a Charles Christofferson b. ca. 1875, living with parents Hans Peter Christofferson and Kari Endresdatter. Of course, Carl and Charles are pretty damn similar, and this is THE only Christofferson family I could find in Blooming Grove in 1880.

This family also listed an Andrew Christofferson as this Charles's brother. Mattie Hanson, sister of Tena Hanson (who married Carl Christofferson) had married an Andrew Christofferson. I thought this was a little too much of a coincidence.

I then looked at the public family trees on ancestry, which I don't think I had done for this family, and all of the trees confirmed what that census told me, with exact dates for the siblings. One tree even had a picture of all five siblings and I'm fairly certain the man labeled Carl in the photo resembles my uncle and his relatives. This was extremely pleasing because I was able to find Hans and Kari's death certificates and marriage records which indicated birth and death dates of course as well as parents' names. Hans Christofferson is the son of Christian Amundson and Barbara Hansdatter. Kari Andresdatter is the daughter of Andrew (Endre) Knudson and Barbra Halversdatter. I'm pretty excited because this just gave me a big step forward by finding the immigrant ancestors for my uncle Eric!

My next mystery solved was Simon Walter, my own immigrant ancestor on my grandpa's biological father's side. I had been able to find him in the census from 1855 to 1880 in Wisconsin but had not found him after that, nor in any immigration records. From all I could find, he was born around 1806-1810 and I didn't know when he died. One unique finding was the 1880 census had a column where the enumerator could list diseases or illnesses the person was suffering. I've never seen anything listed there before. But for Simon Walter, it said he was suffering from "Bilious Fever." I don't know much of what that means in today's terms but I assumed it was relatively serious, especially for a man around 70 years old.

The other day I was scanning find-a-grave to see if I could find anything new on a variety of lines. I searched for the surname "Walter" in Milwaukee County. The first hit that caught my eye was a memorial for a John Walter, b. Sep 28 1853. This was very interesting to me as this was the son of Simon Walter, and the brother of my ancestor Fred Walter. Then I looked at who else was in the cemetery, the "Independent Cemetery" in Oak Creek: a Katherina Walter and a SIMON WALTER. Almost lost my mind with excitement. Checked into it a little more, the dates for Katherine also fit with what I had for John's first wife (Katherina Baum). And, the Simon Walter was listed as born 12 Apr 1810 and died 7 Nov 1880. Death in 1880, not long after that 1880 census that stated he was ill with something that sounded nasty? Hmm.

My next step was figuring out what this whole "Independent Cemetery" business was about - it didn't seem to have anything online about it or any religious affiliations. So I asked someone (Nancy Honadel) at the Oak Creek Historical Society that I had gotten help from previously on some Catholic ancestors in the area who was able to help me track down that this was a combination of a cemetery for something called the Independent Cemetery, and then for St. John's Lutheran Church. She had a list of burials for St. John's which included not only John, Katherine, and Simon, but also a "Lena" died 1878 and a Margaretha died 1892.

I'm VERY interested in these as Simon had at least one wife named Magdalena/Margaretha. All of the children's birth records submitted in the 1860s state that their mother was a Margaretha Kuernlein (never really figured out how to read that name). However, half of the death recs I have found have listed their mother as a M. Strasser. Kind of very different from Kuernlein or any variation of THAT name. My latest idea on that front is that there were two different women that Simon married, and one may be responsible for some of children, and the other the rest. Needless to say I am chomping at the bit to solve that mystery.

Lucky me, I got in touch with a Pastor at this church, still standing, next door to the cemetery, and he is allowing me to come search the church documents in person this Friday. Am I excited? Yes. The only qualms I have were he mentioned sticking me in the basement with all the records. Sounds quite daunting. So we'll see what comes of that. I am very much looking forward to the opportunity to look into these records firsthand.

I'll try to update this a little more frequently!

Brandmuller, Stark and Koch update!

2010-05-23T15:48:00.000-07:00

Yet another delayed post. I have done a lot in the span of time since I wrote last.

One of the biggest areas of new information is in the Brandmueller region. I was able to discover at long last what parish the family belonged to in Baltimore. They belonged to St. Alphonsus which was near their home. The St. Mary's Archives contain the church records for this parish, and thus I was able to receive copies of baptismal registries for all of the siblings of my ancestor Margaret Brandmueller as well as their birthdates. These records are exceptional in that they allowed my to confirm Johanna's maiden name as Heninger, and also provided me with the area in Bavaria where both George Brandmueller and Johanna Heninger immigrated from. I now know that Johanna was from Buchenbach and Georg was from Staudach. I have yet to try to locate any information in these places. As far as I can tell it will be quite difficult.

Additionally I received death records for Michael Brandmueller (George's brother), Anna Brandmueller (George's mother) and JOHANNA HERSELF! I was extremely pleased when I received the latter two records. I had no idea that George's mother had come to America at all; I assumed that the children struck out on their own. The record gives Anna's maiden name but it is difficult to discern. It is something like "Neidhardt."

Johanna Heninger Brandmueller died 3 Feb 1864 of consumption.

I still wonder what happened to George, however, and have been trying to find this out. The last record I have of him is 1870 in Springfield, Dane Co., with the son Michael. I haven't been able to figuer out where Margaretha was because she hadn't married Peter Annen yet. I am trying to look into census records to determine if she was working as a domestic for someone in the area. I went to the church where they were married in an attempt to find records or graves for George Brandmueller. I found a great deal of Annen relatives there which helps support how Margaretha Brandmueller met Peter Annen. I didn't find anyone at the church when I visited so I am hoping to contact someone soon.

Another piece of this is that I found a family by the name of Weller who immigrated from Bavaria to...town of Springfield, Dane Co., and are living in the same area as George Brandmueller...the mother in this family is named Margaretha BRANDMUELLER, and came from Staudach. I am hoping to ascertain more of this relationship but it seems very likely that this lady is the sister of George!

I am excited that I have finally made a little progress on that line, however!

Another interesting line I've recently received new information is the Johanna Stark line of the Rinke family. This is, I think, unrelated to the Stark/Steffen line but I have long thought there might be a connection between the two lines because of the closeness of quarters of the two families. New information is starting to support this.

I recently undertook to do a full transcription of St. James Cemetery in Franklin, Wis., since I had already done most of the stones on my first trip there upon discovering that most of them were related to me. On the second trip I discovered some more Starck stones I hadn't seen on my first trip, thanks mostly to the fact that the shrubbery hadn't grown in yet (it was early April when I made the trip, and during summertime some stones are obscured by great big bushes and hostas).

In any event this new discovery of a Johann and Helena Starck was extremely puzzling to me as they didn't seem to fit in with the Starcks who had married into the Steffen family buried in that cemetery. There was a small group of other Starcks in the back of the cemetery which similarly did not fit into the first family. As the semester got a little hotter I put the Star[c]k problem on the backburner.

I received an email last week from Yon Hafer, who has proven to be a valuable resource. He has photos of a family I've never seen before, because my grandfather was adopted. He has photos of the Rinke family, and most notably of Johanna Stark Rinke, who was my ancestor and died young. Yon gave me information about Johanna's parents - that their names were Johann and Helena (Mick) Starck and that they had died in a cholera outbreak in Oct 1866..... This rang a bell. I checked my transcription - Johanna at St. James had died in Oct 1866 and so had Helena. I couldn't even BELIEVE this! I'm pretty excited to see what else I might learn on this line.

Another line I've found out more about is Ernest Koch and his wife Christina Schoso. I found the death record for Ernest - he died 24 Apr 1901. It gave me parents names (Ludwig and Albertina) as well as his date of birth. I similarly found Christina's death rec which didn't have parents' names, unfortunately. From these records, though, I was able to find out where they were buried in Pittsburgh.

I have been doing quite a bit else, too, and will try to update this a bit more frequently now that it is summer.

Monster winter break update

2010-01-17T21:30:00.001-08:00

Hey all!

Well over break I have been basically pounding through as much genealogy as I can get done in such a short time. I've been trekking all over the internet in search of new little pieces to add to my family tree.

I did some work on my family photo album back in December. Another project has been putting together an application to the Daughters of the American Revolution. This was a rather spur of the moment decision, and as it turns out it is relatively costly to join. I figure I should join at some point, though, because of all of my ancestors who were in the Revolution. I am using Joseph Reynolds (1751-1831, great-grandfather of Everett Elisha Reynolds) as my main ancestor. Later on I can add on and link all of my other ancestors, too.

As part of that experience I asked my paternal grandparents what sort of records they have from that side of the family as far as birth and marriage records. I received not only records but some copies of letters to my great-grandmother Geraldine Reynolds, which contained some new family info.

One letter is signed what looks like "Don"; I don't know who else this may be except for Donald Schwennesen. This letter contains references to some letters my Geraldine had at some point from Harrison McConnell in California. This could be where the whole gold mining story came from. I don't know where these letters are, however. But it did confirm some flimsy census work I had had on Harrison McConnell, as well as his relationship to my family. He included in his letter a skeleton family tree he had been working on.

Other letters were from Randy Gjertson a relative on the Liebenow side. I have since tried contacting him but haven't heard back yet.

I also received a copy of a newspaper clipping that shows Geraldine Reynolds with a doll in the 1920s. I had no clue about this, and apparently my grandmother still has the doll in the picture.

As I said I have been traipsing every which way. I finally found the phone number for Leona Mayville Buttweiler. She is Dewey's daughter, is 85 she said, and as I had read in some old letters, had done quite a bit of genealogy. Well, she is a treasure! All I had to do was mention the family and she just went on about the family and random tidbits I had and hadn't known before, while reiterating several times that she has "lots of stuff on the Mayvilles and Reynoldses."

She gave me her address and I wrote her a letter as she said that when I did that it would make it easier for her to send her some copies of what she has. From what she said, she has a lot of records that don't seem to be in the public records, marriage records and so forth from the mid 19th century. I am extremely excited to see what she may have, and it is amazing to think that she knew all of these people that I only know through records. The closest I have to her is my grandmother Mary Diebold Mayville, who tells me stories about all the relatives on her side. I look forward to hopefully talking to Leona more and seeing what she has. If she had photos, that would be amazing!

I also looked a little more in-depth at the records familysearch.org has been getting transcribed. That has quickly become a treasure trove for me. Their pilot records are located here.

They have Ohio state death records there which enabled me to track down more of, and flesh out, the Noell family. I was able to find out where Julius Noell's parents were buried as well as more definite dates for a lot of his family. I still can't find out where he and Verna Luella Reynolds, along with their children, ended up. I am going to try calling some New York cemeteries to try to figure it out.

familysearch also has cook county, illinois birth and marriage records online which helped me find out a bit more about the Schwennesen family. I found out where Grace Reynolds and her husband Otto Schwennesen is buried as well as their son Donald O. Schwennesen who I mentioned earlier. Donald's find-a-grave page included a full obituary which has a lot of information about his descendents.

Another bit I found on familysearch just tonight was that there were some Washington State death records indexed. I searched "Gloria Mayville" (daughter of Nina Morris and Edmund Mayville) because I still have not been able to find what happened to her. What popped up was fantastic. I still have to confirm this, but if it's the true connection, it makes me extremely happy.

A death record popped up for a Patricia Lynn Barkley who died in 1951 with parents listed as James H. Barkley and GLORIA V. MAYVILLE. the Gloria I'm looking for has a middle name of Velma which meshes NICELY with this. So, next I checked the SSDI for a "Gloria Barkley" it came up with Gloria V. Barkley b. Jan 11, 1924 d. Feb 19 1995. The only thing I have for dates for my Gloria is that she was born Feb 11, 1924, but this date is only from Clorie Greeley Mayville's birthday book - so being off by a month would not be unusual (I have found a couple other such discrepancies in her birthday book).

I am attempting to find an obituary for this Gloria Barkley who died in Vancouver, WA, to confirm the connection but things are looking good. Vancouver WA is just across the river from Clackamas valley, where Gloria Mayville's sister Gertrude Mayville Schultz lived and died.

I'm excited to possibly finally have some information about this line. I hope that Gloria had more children and maybe I can contact them for information on their line. That would be very exciting. The last little bit I found was a transcription of James H. Barkley's grave in Evergreen Memorial Cemetery in Vancouver, which says :

"James H. Barkley oct 12, 1919 - jun 15, 1978, us army. wife: Gloria Barkley, vancouver, MGM, 19 jun 1978"

I am going to try contacting this cemetery, also to see if they can provide any more information to me.

Well this post has gotten quite long!! I'll hopefully have more information soon.

Shepherd, Mayville, Annen Quick update

2009-11-28T11:41:00.000-08:00

Hello,

I realized I hadn't updated this for a while so I wanted to add a little quick note.

I recently obtained a copy of Peter Annen's (b. 1848) naturalization records. The document provides some really interesting information, such as that he arrived with his family arrived on the ship Columbia which sailed to Quebec in July of 1857. From there they entered the U.S. in Detroit and came to Wisconsin. It lists his wife and children's information, also, so it's a pretty good document.

Additionally I have been talking recently to several researchers from the Shepherd family (Greeley connection) and have been getting a little more information about those branches than I previously had.

I've also recently been talking to a Mayville who lived here in Wisconsin for some time, his family was from Michigan where they had emigrated from Quebec. I was glad to meet him because I have always wondered how my Wisconsin line of Mayvilles was related to the Michigan line. I will hopefully be finding out a little more about that line, especially with the help of Carroll.

I'm still trying to get ahold of Edmund Mayville Jr.'s obituary from California. A lady on raogk.org has been supposed to get me a copy since June and still have not done so, which is quite frustrating due to lack of options. I am highly curious as to if he had a family out there. There has been someone from California visiting this page as well as my family photo site, looking at the Mayville stuff and I really wonder if they are related, because that would be fantastic. If you see this, could you please email me? I know the Mayvilles generally don't like to talk about the family, but I would be glad to meet you!

Well I haven't much else to say right now. Hopefully I will have some more time to work on genealogy when winter break rolls around!

Reynolds & Liebenow updates

2009-06-10T22:42:00.000-07:00

Woo, it seems today I have made some small leaps in a couple of what seem to have been brick walls..

I talked to Gilbert H. from Caribou, ME, on the phone today. He is a local historian there, having lived in the area his whole life (73 years I believe). He told me about a pamphlet he had found which was from the Reynolds Family Association and had a section about our family, particularly about Everett Elisha Reynolds. This pamphlet was published in 1931 and apparently Everett was still alive then.

I found there to be some very interesting information in what he read aloud to me from this book: it states that Everett "is a shoemaker of Canton, ME", "Lived in Brockton; Wisconsin for seven years; California two years; Caribou, Hartford, Ft. Fairfield, ME. In 1888 went to Glasgow, Scotland for short time."

He went to SCOTLAND?! He was busy in 1888. This is the year he left his Wisconsin family; the year he supposedly went to California (according to my grandmother her story had been he went to Cali for a gold rush? [gold rush part ruled implausible because of the year] and wrote to the family a few times but then was never heard from again); the year he found the plow and brought it to Green Ridge Grange starting on August 3rd 1888 and taking 37 days to reach Green Ridge, ME.; and NOW he also went to Scotland in 1888. Now isn't that something???

This basically has connected almost everything I have found out so far, from his first wife Melissa Harris (and children, including another daughter that I hadn't known about yet), to his time in Wisconsin and his marriage to Kate McConnell (which this book acknowledges that at the time- 1931- she and the three children were living in Chicago... I'm not sure about that I need to try to see if my grandma knows why she would have been in Chicago at all).

It connects all of the scattered people and places who I have been trying to prove are all tied to a single entity, Everett Elisha Reynolds, rather than perhaps chasing two different people who lived parts of each of these lives but aren't the same person and one isn't my ancestor. No, I can now almost definitively (and only "almost" because nothing is EVER definitive in genealogy or anything else for that matter) say, that Everett Elisha Reynolds, the man I have traced in all of these unlikely, varied places, with varied little notes attached, is indeed one person who did all of these things and is indeed my ancestor without a doubt.

I think most intriguingly is that he sent in this information himself, because he was a member of the Reynolds Family Association (RFA) and I believe that they probably required then, as they do now, all applying members to submit their direct Reynolds lineage and any pertinent information to each person.

I think the last two bits of information I really want are to know if Everett's journal is still around, and also to try to find out when Everett died. I tried looking through RFA obituaries today at the Historical Society, because their yearly newletter/pamphlet contains a section for obituaries of Reynolds descendants, but in years 1931-36 I could not find him. I suppose it wouldn't shock me that he lived to be 100, but who on earth knows. I just need to find out somehow.

Gilbert didn't know anything of a Reynolds diary when I mentioned it, but he said he would inquire around town. He also said his wife's second cousin is a Dr. Jay Reynolds who lives in, I think, Ft. Fairfield, and whom Jim Ashby suggested I write asking if there was such a diary still around. I haven't heard from the Dr. Reynolds but I hope someone will find something out there in Maine.

Also, I have been working on my photo project... It's nearing "final" stages- won't ever be done, really, hopefully, I keep adding new pictures- but one of the last stages is digging through all of my family emails for pictures people have sent me over the years to include in the family photos I have just from my family. The site is http://jadesgenes.250x.com

In any event, I was just rummaging through the Liebenow family folder in my email and I found the email where someone transcribed the marriage record from a Pittsburgh church for Ferdinand Liebenow and Augusta Koch. It says witnesses were Ferdinand Koch and Albertina Koch. I decided to search the 1900 census for a Ferdinand Koch living in PA, but assuming I had already done this when I first got the email, I didn't expect to find anything. Well, I found one about 40 some years old in 1900, living in Pittsburgh. He has a huge household, and I look at the bottom and see that his PARENTS are living with him.

Well, I see that this could very likely be the brother of my August Koch, because her death record has the father's name as Earnest Koch and mother as Earnestine Schoso (b. ca. 1832 and living in 1905 with Ferdinand and Augusta in Wisconsin). So, the parents names are Ernest and Christiana. Ernest is b. Jan 1834 and the wife is Aug 1832. Their immigration year is given as 1882, which is [admittedly a sort of long shot] the same year as Augusta Koch immigrated (I don't think I have found their names in any passenger lists yet but I need to try harder to now, to confirm this census-made connection).

So, I am pretty excited about these new openings and will hopefully keep updating this about them

Bingen Homestead, Great-Grandparent treasure trove

2009-06-01T16:50:00.000-07:00

This past weekend turned out to be quite exciting. On Saturday I drove to Milwaukee to meet my cousin Jack Bingen Copet who I have corresponded with for a few years now about the Bingen family.

Jack showed me around Allenton and Addison, two small communities in Washington Co. This included several churches and cemeteries. The last cemetery we visited was St. Anthony, which contained the graves of my ancestors Johann Bingen and Anna Maria Mueller as well as Anna Mueller's parents, Mathias Mueller and Elizabeth Bommersbach.

After wandering around outside of St. Anthony's church for a while we went to the top of the hill where a cousin of ours, Dorothy Weiss, lives. Jack wanted to ask her all she knew about where the Bingen homestead was, and who we might ask for permission to look at it. We were told that it was just ruins back in the woods somewhere, but we still agreed that it would be very interesting to look at anyways.

We drove to this person's farm and asked them if they knew anything about it. The man who owned the farm told us it was back along this, basically, wagon trail, and that it would get brush-y and we'd have to go for a little jog but that the foundation was still there and the remains of a summer kitchen.

We started driving back on the trail but it was crazy- lots of rocks rutting the entire thing, huge dips and other similar things, so we eventually abandoned the car and set out on foot for as far as we could go on the path.

The entire path was overdrawn by a canopy of trees, bright new green leaves leaving dappled splotches of light all on the ground. We walked briskly to avoid the perpetual onslaught of bugs, but were constantly looking around everywhere for signs of what we had been told to look for. We walked very far back along the path and eventually ran into a full-blown forest where the path we were on split in two directions. Each of us went down one way and then came back, deciding we still didn't see anything.

We gave up and traipsed back to the car, determined to ask Mark, the farm owner, some more questions to try to find what we were looking for. Just as we reached it we took another look at the square of grassy field next to the car. I had briefly considered the spot right when we stopped, I guess using my affinity for archaeological concerns, but I hadn't seen anything conclusive that looked like a foundation from where we were on the path.

We asked Mark, and he offered to take us on his 4-wheeler to show us. Of course, he stopped right where we had stopped the car. The ruins were back behind some of the huge overgrowth of grass and weeds, prickly plants and so on, that had taken over the small square of land since a home had been there. Mark left us, and Jack and I proceeded to jump through the tall foliage to where we could see a lot of stones. We found the back edge of what we believe was the foundation of a house, the stones perfectly aligned in a straight edge.

Well we took a lot of pictures, took a couple of interesting rocks from there and then left.

Yesterday I was at my grandmother's house doing some yardwork and we decided to go in the basement to try to find the elusive little book that Mathew Diebold wrote all of his plans in for building the Diebold house that now stands on Breese Terrace here in Madison.

We found a large box and the first thing I saw was a bag of pictures!! I couldn't believe it. My grandmother didn't understand, either, because she had thought all of our family pictures were upstairs and already indexed. But no, here is a nice big collection I now have to get labelled and indexed for my photo porject.

Also in the box was a huge assortment of memorabilia from my great-grandparents Blanche Tice and Sylvester Diebold. We found a program from a 1914 horse show that had Mathew Diebold's most famous horse, Lady Broderick, being shown by his son James Diebold.

Blanche's yearbook from Marshfield High School were there as well as her nursing yearbooks from when she attended nursing school at St. Joseph's in Marshfield. There was also a scrapbook album Blanche had assembled from her Junior, senior and post-hs years including a lot of interesting mementos, old crepe napkins and other things, and at the back a series of journal-style entries detailing trips and other high points in life after graduating from high school. Included in this was the chilling "Joe died" on a particular June day. Blanche was initially engaged to Joe Marsh when he signed up for service and had acute appendicitis strike him soon after arriving at camp. He underwent a number of botched surgeries and eventually died, and this is what caused Blanche to enter nursing school. So, this was altogether extremely poignant look into Blanche's early life.

I found another box with an old metal chain link purse that must have been hers as well as some drawings Sylvester did in middle and high school - ca. 1915! They are pretty fantastic and all in good shape still. These were very exciting finds!!

Long time no see?

2009-05-26T20:28:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry about the length of time that has elapsed since my last entry, because, of course, I have been doing genealogy even when not having the time to update this blog.

I haven't found anything extremely big or anything but here are a few little tidbits from recent memory:

Generally catching up on emails, I've been in contact with a lot of random lines all over the place. I found a man, Gerhard Wiederholt, who is connected to the Mayville family through the Nachtwey family (I was able to find that line back to the 17th century!) and ALSO to the Hartung family, which his wife belongs to. So it turns out we are cousins by marriage twice, by two completely different families. Isn't that funny how it turns out?

I was also contacted by a random Mueller who lives in Germany--- between he and Gerhard my German has been quite tried!!--- who was gracious enough to trace back my Mueller line (Bingen ties) although he apparently doesn't have a connection to this line.

Just last week I found out a little more about William Mayville, a stray son of Susan Reynolds and John Mayville. The last I could find of William was in 1910 living in Montana after the death of his wife Acsah Averill Mayville. A Huycke relative occasionally sends me records he comes across, however. Recently he sent me Silas Reynolds's pension files from when he served in the Revolutionary War, and before that he sent me William Mayville's pension files, because he had served in the Civil War.

Well, the pension files were extremely interesting, and included affidavits from both Ephraim and Peter Mayville as well as other relatives and family friends. It also included William's full birthdate, which I had previously not been able to find. And at the very, very end of this huge document was a short little notation stating that William had died 13 Feb, 1919 in Tennessee! I couldn't understand how he possibly ended up in Tennessee. He had been born in Vermont, lived in Wisconsin for a number of years, moved on to Minnesota and then to Montana, before- apparently- deciding to live at the National Soldiers' Home in Johnson City, TN. I admit it's a pretty area but quite the opposite of anything I expected to find.

With this new date I set to work looking for ways to locate his death record and also find where he was buried. Through findagrave.com I found he is buried out in Tennessee and I hope to find someone who would be willing to visit his grave and photograph it. My Aunt Anne Mayville lives in Nashville but the cemetery is actually closer to my dad's family who live in Fuquay-Varina outside of Raleigh, NC. I hope that someone will help me out at some point.

I was able to find that Tennessee has started an online index for some of their later records and this included William's record. I found a volunteer on raogk.org who made a copy of this record for me, for a somewhat steep price of $10. I volunteer at the Historical Society for RAOGK, also, but usually only charge a couple dollars because I don't believe in paying exorbitant amounts for what should, really, be free and available to everyone. I would agree, however, that associated fees are not necessarily the fault of the researcher, buuuut... well.

Anyway, I hope to receive that record soon and hopefully it has something to say, although I would expect it to contain scant information at best.

I may be meeting towards the end of this week with Jack Bingen Copet, because I realized I haven't yet seen the graves of my Bingen ancestors out in Washington Co., WI. He's out of a job and has agreed to meet with me to show me around. We've been in contact probably 3-4 years now so it should be interesting to finally meet!

That is all I can think of for now but I will be sure to update this considerably more frequently now that it is summer break!

Mayville/ Miville Continued

2009-01-27T22:05:00.000-08:00

Carroll has helped us find the links between our John Mayville and the immigrant ancestor Pierre Miville. John, or Jean, 's father was Jean, son of Charles, son of Charles, son of Jacques, son of Pierre.

Pierre and Jacques have very interesting stories, just search for them on google and there are myriad sites, especially about Pierre. Pierre was solid Swiss, but the name Miville apparently has Roman origins. I would imagine so does the family itself.

I have been looking into some of these things alongside what Carroll has sent me. As I mentioned before, Pierre was Captain of Richelieu's Guards. He did in fact have to flee, it appears, when Richelieu and King Louis XIII (both benefactors of Pierre) died within half a year of each other.

Also as I mentioned, Jacques, son of Pierre, married a Filles du Roi. Catherine de Baillion was from a family of minor nobles and as the link I provided before said, Catherine is a descendent of Charlemagne, and therefore so am I. This has been a possibility for me for several years, as I followed one line back through the Leonards of England towards Charlemagne, but that proved to be rather faulty and I gave up on finding direct evidence. With Catherine, however, it appears that many prominent French genealogists have proven with primary documents that she is a descendant of Charlemagne.

One of my Charles Miville ancestors was apparently involved at least to a slight degree in some fur trading, which I find interesting. There are a lot of other various bits of information that I have been exploring, so I am excited to find out more.

I am overall very excited just for the fact that we finally have made the connection to our ancestors. I'm supposing, still, that whatever caused John Mayville to leave Canada must have been something wretched because I still feel like he was trying to cover up something. I still don't even want to rule out the Native American card, either. Especially since there does not seem to be much online at all about Jean/John Mayville's parents, Jean Minville and Marie-Veronique Richard.

So, of course that leaves a lot more to be investigated. I need to contact Odette Ladd to see what she says and dig out a couple of my Huycke correspondents also to let them know the big news. and Ned Braatz. I can't forget him. He will be very happy as well. Hopefully I will have time to do that at work tomorrow.

I also now, need to work on figuring out the Michigan Mayvilles. They must be closely related because that name variant is not so very common, or so it seems. Maybe Carroll can tell me a bit more. I'll have to see if I can contact one of them and get them to do the DNA testing or something just so we can see how close the match might be.

Its a shame school is interfering with the amount of time I want to be able to dedicate to this stuff rather than to pointless things like Chemistry... Yuck.

Mayville/Miville

2009-01-25T20:50:00.000-08:00

So, the other day my uncle Rob Mayville finally received the results of his Paternal DNA test. They apparently don't have an exact haplogroup for him, but I believe it is r1b. This is based on the fact that, since we went through Ancestry.com, they matched my uncle's DNA against other submissions and found people with similar sequences. All of these people are in the r1b haplogroup, which generally comes from around Western Europe.

I have to look into some other things, but I took a look at whose sequences my uncle's DNA matched with and we were lucky to have a very close match with a man named Carroll Deschaine. All but one of the 46 markers tested were the same between Carroll and my uncle, and according to the site this meant that the relationship between the two could be as close as 6 generations back. The other matches were 10, 12 and more generations back. I couldn't believe this match was so close.

I emailed Carroll today to ask if he had done any work on his genealogy and might know how we are related. His answer was pretty awesome. He is a Miville descendent. Our common ancestor is most likely Pierre Miville but the common ancestor might even be even closer than that (either way Pierre is my ancestor).

Carroll indicated that he has done extensive work on this family and that my line may belong to Pierre's son Francois because apparently his line was associated with a lot of name mutations. He is going to help me connect my line to Pierre, as there is a sizable gap in known information. What is known, however, is that the line does connect, because we have hard DNA evidence for once.

I am really excited about this. I have been looking into the family now, especially Pierre. Pierre was apparently a guard for Cardinal Richlieu. http://www.delmars.com/family/perrault/2985.htm

This could be where the garbled nonsensical story that I have heard from the Mayvilles came from. That story purports that John Mayville (or, "the guy who came from France") was on Napoleon's court and had to flee so he went to Canada. As you will see at the link above, Pierre was a guard for Richelieu and was the immigrant ancestor. So, could be the story was at least right in tying our family to SOME important French guy.

Additionally, the two sons of Pierre both married Filles du Roi, or Daughters of the King. These were women sent to help populate the new territory in Canada. They were mostly nobility at first and then became more hardworking women from lower down in the strata.

Francois had one wife which he had 12 children with and then married a second woman who was a Filles du Roi. Jacques's only wife was a Fille du Roi, Catherine du Baillon (http://www.acadian-home.org/catherine-de-baillon.html)

This is really interesting, and I am excited to see what Carroll can help me turn up. His line is, I think still in Canada, and he speaks French and is very familiar with Quebec records. He is also very willing to help. We got very lucky with this find and I'm really excited to see what will come of it!

I still want to know what John Mayville seems to have been trying to hide, though.. Seriously.

New Reynolds Info!

2009-01-10T14:28:00.000-08:00

I had written to the Caribou Historical Society in Maine in the hope that they would have information about my Reynolds family or at least about the Green Ridge Grange. They wrote back that they had several newspaper articles about the Grange and that the plow that Everett Reynolds brought to the Grange was now taken care of by the Historical Society.

The man agreed to photograph the plow and send me the other things he had found but he said there wasn't really anything about my family, which puzzled me, since the Reynolds family was pretty involved with the town of Caribou from the get-go, if my other information was correct.

I received the information earlier this week, and should have written here sooner but I have been following up on things because I received a great deal of information.

The first thing in the stack of papers was a picture of the plow and then a closeup of a plaque that is on it, which describes Everett E. Reynolds' journey and, interestingly enough, mentions that he had a diary in which he kept note of things.

[Picture of the plow & plaque]

I couldn't believe that, and I noted that it was very interesting that he took this journey to Caribou in 1887, about the time he disappeared from Jefferson County, Wisconsin!!

The next few pages were about the Green Ridge Grange. It was essentially a meeting place for the local farmers and a place where dances and other public gatherings were held.

[Picture of the original Grange]

The picture above has the name Fred I. Reynolds written alongside it. He is the second cousin of my ancestor Elisha T. Reynolds.

There were several articles [click here] about the Grange, including one about it burning down not long ago and another a memoir by Maude Brown, a Reynolds descendant. The article includes interesting info about the Reynolds family first arriving in the area and how the area was first known as Reynolds, Maine. I found that to be pretty interesting!!

The next four pages were the history of Green Ridge Grange as compiled August 2, 1948. It mentions the story of the plow arriving there and again states that Everett E. Reynolds had a diary in which he wrote about his trip. It says that the diary was now in the possession of relatives. I still can't believe he had a diary, but I am hoping that it still exists! It could provide so much information on a man who disappeared from here without any true reason.

I wrote to a Dr. Reynolds of Fort Fairfield on the recommendation of Jim Ashby, and hopefully he will know something about this diary, and if it still exists.

[History of the Grange: page 1 ; page 2 ; page 3 ; page 4]

I was then at the end of my packet but I noticed that I had received a smaller letter sized envelope also from the Caribou HS. I wasn't sure what it was and I opened it to find a note explaining that it had been found after the first packet was sent out.

It was a photocopy of a letter, written to a Miss Ashby. I recognized the name first because she shares a surname with one of my contacts in Maine and also because the name was interwoven with the history of the Grange and other things I had come across in researching the Caribou area.

I was puzzled as to why it was included because it started out fairly regularly, a friendly update between friends, so I checked the end to find a signature: Everett E. Reynolds.

Well you know I almost dropped over dead at seeing this, most especially because the letter was dated Sept. 8, 1926 and was written from Canton, ME.

I will provide the transcription below and then further discussion. The letter contains so many grammatical errors that it would be pointless to include the standard "sic" notation after each one. Everett also didn't use periods so I will insert some where appropriate.

Canton Me Sept 8 1926
Dear Miss Ashby,
I rec. your letter last night[.] I was much plesed to here from you and well I rember you when you was a small Girl was well aquainted with your Father am glad your Mother is in good helth[.] I can say I am ingoying [enjoying] the best of helth for a man in his 80 year but I cant do as much work as I could in my young days[.] I have about all the work I can do all the time make a good living have ben in Canton 14 years but am thinking some of goin a way for the winter but cant till before next month[.] I am sending you a [piece??] from a Bangor (paper) that O.B. Griffin wrote about me and the old Plow I gave the Plow to the Green Ridge Grange 25 years ago and they think they have a [prise?] and I geuss [sic] they have[.] I live all a lone do my cooking and have just what I want have cooked minney [???] the winter in the woods & in sporting camps so you see I no how to cook[.] I should be plesed to here from you at enny [???] time and I will try and ans. [answer] in my humble way[.] it gives me cheer to here from frends [__ry]

Truly yours
Everett E. Reynolds

[Letter: page 1 ; page 2]

I am so excited about this letter. First, it gives a good idea of where he is living and confirms my ideas about that. He was on the 1910 census in Hartford, ME but in 1920 he was in Canton, ME.

Also, the age he gives corresponds to the man who is my ancestor.

Additionally, the paper he mentions, with the article about him and the plow, almost has to be the same article I have, or at least something very similar. In that case the article might have been written earlier that year, 1926, for the 25th anniversary of the plow being in the possession of the Grange. Now I can try to track down Bangor papers from 1926, because the article has "July 1" at the top. I am hoping that this will work out because the article I have is in bad condition and hard to read half of it, so I believe that if I get a copy of the full article it will help provide even more information about Everett E. Reynolds.

I am also hoping that this information will also help me narrow down when Everett died. Previously I knew only "sometime after 1920." But now I know that he was living in 1926 and seemed to be in good health. I need to try to get a hold of the 1930 census, and I found a woman in Maine who is going to try to help locate his death record. I can't imagine why it would not exist anywhere as late as 1930.

New Year update

2009-01-02T14:19:00.000-08:00

Hey sorry for the long absence here, I was very busy with my semester and hardly had any time to update.

I have been contacted by a number of interesting individuals over the past few months. One of them was a Brandmueller. Not sure if there is a direct connection from his line to mine, but I would not be surprised, as they were from the same area and it is not a common name. I am hoping we can find out more information about these lines but the Brandmuellers have to this point remained quite elusive.

My uncle Bob Mayville has submitted a DNA sample to the ancestry.com labs. This could help put rest to one of the many mysteries surrounding the Mayville line, and we'll see if my theories are upheld. We will be able to determine whether there is any Native American blood and hopefully see if there are any roots in France.

I'm excited to hear back but at the same time I am leery of things like this. Submit a swab to some big company somewhere? I would prefer it if it was possible to make sure there weren't any screw-ups- mixing up DNA from other people or something, for instance. Who knows. I mean, I'm sure its legit or Ancestry.com would be ostracized forever... at the same time, you never know when the next scam is going to come along.

Anyway, since winter break began I have been sending off letters again. One I believe was inquiring about the McConnells again, and a couple to various places in Maine to check on more things with the Reynoldses. Honest to god they are hard to track down. I wrote to the town clerk of Jay, ME where the records for Canton, ME are supposed to be. They didn't have any death record for Everett Reynolds and gave me a new number to call. Not sure that will yield anything.

I wrote also to the Caribou, ME Historical Society. A town so small does indeed have its own Historical Society and I was able to obtain their address with the help of a couple more contacts I have made from around that town. I was lucky to find these people because otherwise I would be in the dark. Its unfortunate that everywhere I check seems to have no further information for me, as I heard back from the Caribou HS.

The man who wrote back said that there wasn't anything about the Reynoldses there, which is interesting because they were purported by several other people to have been integral to the beginnings of that town. They do, however, have pictures of the Green Ridge Grange which was mentioned in the newspaper article I have, and they also have the plow that Everett Reynolds brought to Maine from Massachusetts. He is sending me photos of that, too. I'm pretty excited just to see that. I wish we could somehow find out more, though. Its very unfortunate.

I have another thing on my bucket list and that is to finally call Mr. Hitchcock of Caribou. I have been waiting until I have time to come up with specific questions to ask him, as he is the town historian and from what I have been told, knew some members of the Reynolds family.

I'm also buckling down to get some work done on my family photo project. I'm trying to remember, really, where I left off as it was a few months ago. I have most pictures uploaded so I believe I will be getting them onto the website soon. Hopefully.

There should be some new updates at some point. Happy New Year!

Huycke, Reynolds, Brilliott, etc.

2008-10-19T10:01:00.001-07:00

As usual during the school year, I've still been up to random little bits of things, usually as people contact me rather than me seek them out.

Last weekend I went to Appleton and was able to locate a few graves of ancestors on my dad's side of the family, namely Mathias Stark and his wife Margaretha Schmitz, as well as several of their children. I also located Margaretha's father Mathias Schmitz and her mother is buried next to him but her stone is now missing. I know she is there, though, because I called the cemetery (St. Joseph) prior to my visit to determine what section they were in. There was a proliferation of Starks, and abutting their plots were a great deal of Steffens which I assume must be related in some way (although I obviously don't know yet how). Hopefully I can figure that out.

I was contacted last week by a Brilliott descendent still living in Wisconsin. This is pretty exciting for my cousin Stephanie, since she had very much lost touch with a lot of her family. I have gotten a few more details about this family now from this contact.

I also received an email from a Huycke descendent whose ancestor's brother (William Henry Powers Huycke) was married to Rebecca N. Mayville. She has more information about this branch and may have some photos which are of interest. I sent her pictures that I have uploaded of Mayvilles and then of Unknown people on the Mayville side in the hopes that she or her family may recognize someone.

Finally, I was contacted today by a man who lives in Caribou, ME! He said he lives right by Green Ridge Cemetery and said the following:

The Grange hall you wrote of is no longer standing. It caught fire and burned approximately 15 years ago and stood about 1/4 mile north of the cemetery at the intersection of Green Ridge road and East green Ridge road. Green Ridge is located south east of the small City of Caribou and the cemetery is within the town limits of Caribou, The land where the cemetery lies was originally owned by Everett Reynolds, and the Cemetery originated with the burial of Everett Reynolds. I have heard of the "plow" you inquired about though I am not sure where it is located now, but it may be in a local museum that the Caribou Historical Society has set up. The Grange Hall was empty of its contents prior to its burning so my assumption is that the plow is still in existence. Local legend has it that Everett Reynolds died accidently. Supposedly he was in a wagon driving his team of horses when a Black bear suddenly appeared and spooked the horses. Mr Reynolds was thrown from the wagon when the team bolted and died as a result of the fall. It sounds to me that the Everett Reynolds you are inquiring about is the possible son of the Everett Reynolds buried in the cemetery along with his wife and other family members, The Everett Reynolds buried in the cemetery is the original settler of this area and the Reynolds family still has members residing in the area, though I don't believe any of them reside on Green Ridge.

I'm very excited about this and now that I have a contact in Caribou I hope to be able to learn considerably more about this puzzling part of the family. I'll post when I know more.

Mayville, etc.

2008-09-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

It has been, obviously, far too long since my last post, and despite the 17 credits that are eating my alive right now, I have had some small amount of time to work on some genealogy. A couple of weeks ago I was working on fleshing out my Mayville tree a bit more. I was contacted first by a Christopher Mayville who says he is of the Vermont Mayvilles. Unfortunately he does not have much on his line and therefore we are unable to make a connection at this time.

I found out the exact death date for Sylvia Viola Mayville, a daughter of Ephraim and Loretta, although I do not know why she dies so young,... She and her husband, William Thompson (son of Roxy Huycke Peep and Lyman Thompson) both died in 1918 within a few days of each other. Obvious answer- the Influenza... but of course, not confirmed.

I also looked into the death of George Mayville, which was in 1955 and caused by him drowning himself. Apparently he had been in World War I and was gassed, and this caused mental issues wherein he had been in and out of a mental institution in Oshkosh before drowning himself near Unity. His obituary said he was buried at Brighton Cemetery. I found this odd since we have never found his stone, and he died in 1955 so the stone couldn't have disappeared completely by now.

We decided to take a short trip up to Unity and there we searched in vain for any sign of a stone for him. Now we think that both Loretta and George are there without a stone. I did, however, discover that Sylvia and Will are buried there and just never noticed for some reason. I can't believe I never noticed... but now I know.

On other fronts I am waiting for mail to come back... Apparently a letter I sent to a society in PA was returned, so I need to check with my source of that address and ask them what happened to the society. I am also still waiting to hear back from the OddFellows of Maine, and am hoping that I actually WILL hear back from them... and I believe there are a few other letter floating around unanswered as of yet. Hopefully I will find out more soon.

Reynolds in Maine!

2008-08-22T23:11:00.000-07:00

I am exceedingly excited at present because a guy in Maine went to the Green Ridge cemetery for me near Caribou, ME to check out what Reynoldses might be there. He reported that the cemetery might as well be called "Reynolds Cemetery" for the amount of people there with that name. Unfortunately his camera had a serious malfunction so he had to return again at a later time.

Anyway, he was just able to send me the pictures and they are very great indeed. Included in the cemetery are my ancestors Elisha T. Reynolds and wife Adeliza Fuller. Included are most of Elisha's siblings and I think an obelisk for his parents.

But most interestingly enough are three particular stones.

The first says "Everett E. Reynolds" and the symbol of rings "F L T" with the birthdate of 3 Aug 1847 but no death date...

The next stone over is Everett's first wife Grace Melissa Harris Reynolds, saying "Mother" with the dates "1851-1876"

The next stone is their son, Herbert Ellery Reynolds with dates 1870-1886.

Now, this is interesting for many reasons. First, there were no other Reynoldeses in the Caribou/Green Ridge area except my family, so the Everett E. Reynolds in the article my grandma gave me almost certainly must be the same man who is my ancestor. But his stone in this cemetery has no death date-- did someone just not have money for the date, or was he buried elsewhere---- or did he truly disappear completely? The stone of his first wife, though, is part of the evidence I was looking for.

Also interesting is the death year for his son Herbert-- I have in my notes from a Reynolds family book that he died in 1880, but just a week or so ago I had been fiddling with censuses and I found an 1880 census with a boy of that age living with, I think, Everett's parents. No evidence of Verna Luella though (try as I might), who was the only child of Everett's first marriage to make it to adulthood.

Anyways, back from my tangent--- if Herbert was still alive until 1886, why did Everett not take him with when-if he went to Wisconsin? And about Everett's second marriage---- His third child in that marriage, Grace V., was born in 1886. After this time Everett disappears from Wisconsin and might or might not be the man of the newspaper article I have.

I need to find someone in Caribou, Maine who knows about this family, or at the very least about what Green Ridge was, and also if anyone has records for that cemetery. I need to find out if Everett was ever buried there or if he was buried someplace else.

I'm excited because this opens the door to new knowledge while also seeming to prove a couple of theories I had going based on information but I have to be careful to not be too hasty. I only hope that I can somehow find out more information.

Also, I've been working again on the McConnell front since the other day Bob Speckman sent me a link to a site which listed some Jefferson area newspapers in which a "Mrs. McConnel" was listed as dying sometime in November, 1892. I'm on the hunt for this article and it seems there might be someone who may finally be able to tell me definitively about some records for the Hake Cemetery in Jefferson. I'm hoping very much that that pans out since every source I get sends me in a circle back on info I already have and I really just need to find new information!!

Additionally, I spent the past few days up north in Shawano because the lady who currently owns a house my ancestor Collin Mayville lived in with his family, invited me to come help them restore the house. We spent the past couple days pulling old, old wood siding off of the house complete with old square peg handmade nails. That was really neat but also quite a lot of work and quite a lot remains to be done.

In addition, I have been curious about the "F L T" which was on Everett E. Reynolds's grave as well as, I noticed today, on the Mayville family stone up north in Shawano. I just googled to see if I could finally find it (because I think I have some sort of pendant or something that was said to be Collin's which has the F L T on it also) and I found this site: http://www.graveaddiction.com/symbol.html

It explains that F L T is: "A symbol of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization. Stands for Friendship, Love, and Truth."

Another interesting tidbit about Everett E. Reynolds. If he was a member of this society...... ???

Vital Recs visit (Hurley, Christofferson) and McConnell letters

2008-08-10T11:32:00.000-07:00

I meant to write since Thursday when I took a tirp to the Vital Recs office but I've been a bit busy, Thursday afterwards being spent with plugging new names into the genealogy and working over all of my usual sources to see if I could find new information.

I didn't research any of my ancestors this time but instead those of my cousin Steph and my uncle Eric. Since Eric's is shorter and disappointing I will tell what I found (or didn't find) on his family-

I looked up Eva Latus/Latue Skolaski to see what I could find of her parents, etc. It provided a father's name of John Latus but no mother. Eva died in 1932 of diabetes.

Next, I finally found George Young's death record. I had started at the beginning of the years and gone through each one to try to find the right George Young, which was challenging because it is English and a common name. In either event, I finally found that he died 22 Mar 1960 of prostrate cancer. In a turn of bad luck, it did not list his parents' names for some reason. I just thought of that I ought to look for an obituary in the Wisconsin State Journal sinc ehe died in the 60s and in Madison he should have an obit... although, probably, if the informant for the death record didn't have his parents' names, the person who put in the obit might not know also. I will have to check.

Another spot of unfortunate luck came when I located August V. Skolaski Sr.'s death record. He died in 1936 and I had been hoping to find the names of his parents. I was unlucky on that respect.

Lastly on Eric's side I looked up Herman Christofferson because I still hadn't found much on that line (isn't it funny on the most important names- the male line dominated lines in my families, its harder to find info? the Mayvilles, Diebolds, everybody-- doesn't go as far as the other more obscure and hidden names). From Herman's death record I found that his parents were Carl Christofferson and Tena Hanson. I tried locating more information about them but was generally unable to. It might take a thorough search of the vital recs office, again, to find anything on these two.

So, now I move on to my cousin Steph's genealogy, of which I found quite a bit to confirm what I had tried to find prior to my visits, and also enough to jog Steph's memory on her family since she remembered very little.

I looked at a bunch of the Hurley family first, starting with Steph's great-grandparents John S. Hurley and Katherine Byrnes. She had provided years of birth and death for them so I was able to find exact dates now. I confirmed a slight guess I'd had that John's parents were Thomas Hurley and Isabel Dockery. In the next week or so I will go to the historical society and check out that couple's death records which I found in the pre-1907 index. This will hopefully provide me more to look for when I try checking into Irish records-- and will hopefully be easier since its not such a common name as my Irish folks (Walsh, Hurst).

I of course found most of these Hurleys then in Wisconsin census and filled out the siblings of Steph's ancestors.

On Katherine Byrnes's death rec I found her parents to be Patrick Byrnes and Bridgett Keenan. Wasn't able to find much of them in the census mostly because of the amount of name variations on Byrnes/Byrns/Burns, but I will keep looking.

Next I checked out Steph's ancestor Paul T. Drescher. It didn't have his wife's name listed to that didn't help much in the way of trying to locate her but apparently she had pre-deceased him. Either way I found his parents to be Gottlieb Drescher and Minnie Kuhnau (although the record was hard to read that last name).

I looked at Steph's grandpa William Ignatius Hurley just to confirm his parents and dates I had. He is buried at Roselawn in Monona.

Lastly I found LaVetta A. Drescher Hurley's death record and found her mother's maiden name to be Marie Brilliott (father Paul Drescher, aforementioned). This is a really pretty surname (Brilliott) of French origin although the family came from Switzerland directly. I'm sure it will trace back to more direct French origins. Because of this unique surname, I found that they were the only family in the United States with that name at all in the census years currently available. They all lived in Sauk Co. Marie's parents were John Brilliott and Caroline Kaufmann. John's parents were the Swiss immigrants, Russ and Mary Agnes Brilliott. I have charted out most of their children as available from census and then online pre-1907 index. Caroline Kaufmann's parents were John and Josephine Kaufmann and I haven't found so very much about them. There are several people researching various Brilliotts (or at least, having one or two familiar characters in their genealogies, so I have been looking into that.

Finally, yesterday I received a letter from somewhere in Perry County, Pennsylvania regarding a letter I had sent quite over a month ago regarding records on Alexander McConnell being born there, in the hopes of tracking down his parents' names.

Well, as I should know by now it is impossible to find anything on this family, and this instance is not any different. The researcher was unable to find his family but there is a family record in their files from when Donald Schwennesen tried to reach them. I hadn't known they had tried to do any research, but it included Donald's letter which had in it much of the information I have already been able to confirm about the family. Unfortunately his letter was from 1979 and he died five years ago. I don't know his children's names or whereabouts otherwise I would write them regarding his researches... although I can't imagine they would be much more fruitful than my own.

In any event the researcher also included a chunk of photocopies out of the "History of York County Pennsylvania," which details the origins of the Hoeck/Hake family-- From their arrival in about 1748/9 to various endeavors throughout the country including, and it mentions this specifically- the group that came to Jefferson Co., WI. The document is rather dense and so will take a couple lookings-at to see if any of the information is viable for further pursuance.

RAOGK; Skolaski, Hurley, etc.

2008-08-03T23:01:00.000-07:00

In preparation for my next visit to Vital Recs on Thursday (which was precipitated by my necessity of finding info about the Hurleys for Steph), I have been digging around to see what else I could spend time looking for while there.

Because of this I discovered that I had not yet found information on Frank Skolaski Sr.'s parents (Uncle Eric's family) besides that they were August Skolaski and Eva Latue. So I decided to look through the census and try to find the family in 1900, which I had been unable to do. I was able to find them with a very bad misspelling of the surname and found the approximate birth month & year for his parents. Then I was able to find them in other census years also with ridiculous misspellings and hidden in the households of their children and narrowed down that they lived past 1920. I did a google search on the name "August Skolaski" and since it is a unique name it came back with several hits which had to do exactly with this family. One was an article about August Skolaski's grandson also named August Skolaski who had something to do with the creation of a church somewhere around Madison. There were several other links including one to a genealogy for August & Eva's son John from someone on his wife's side. This gave approximate years of death for August and Eva so I will make sure to start with those years. I will hopefully be able to find the names of their parents, so that will be exciting.

The other day I did a little digging on the Steffen part of my family. Not much, just dealing with Emma Steffen and her husband Robert Posselt and their children.

I also am now a volunteer for Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK) (http://www.raogk.org/). This is mostly because for the past year and now for the next few years I have/will live in close proximity to the Historical Society and therefore will be able to constantly access things that people might not be able to if they live a considerable distance away, so I decided I should finally become a volunteer to put my abilities to some use.

Another reason is because I have used the same site twice.. I haven't gotten responses yet, really, except for the guy who I asked to go to Green Ridge Cemetery for me in Caribou, ME. He should be getting back to me soon with what, if anything, he found there.. and I'm pretty anxious about that-- but actually, very glad I was able to find someone who could go there at all! Of course I very much wish I was able to go there myself and check it out but thats not exactly possible with the current state of finances, etc. so I will have to make do with this.

I got my first request the other day and already fulfilled it. It is interesting being part of other people's genealogy and helping them find information important to their research. That's why most of the time I wish this could be a full time job rather than going to college for random stuff, and who knows if I'll actually end up doing that? But oh well, I suppose.

A little update

2008-07-29T11:57:00.000-07:00

I have been digging around on my Uncle Eric Christofferson's side of the family again. Apparently I was previously unable to find the family of Frank Grain in the 1900 census but I finally tracked them down today by searching the first name of "Frank" and narrowing in on Seneca, Wood Co., where I believed they lived at the time. I was successful in finding them with a poor misspelling of their last name ("Gren"), and therefore I found more specific dates for their children including Frances Grain.

I also looked into Frances's sister Mary's husband Henry Tidmarsh, who immigrated from England in 1904. I checked the Ellis Island records and found him very quickly. He immigrated on the Carpathia and I thought this was really interesting, because he came only a year after her maiden voyage, and less than ten years later the Carpathia was involved in scooping Titanic survivors out of the Atlantic. Then, of course, it was sunk in 1918. So there's a cool little bit of history on a distantly related man.

Cousin's Genealogy; slight Reynolds update

2008-07-28T15:38:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to say I've begun slight work on my cousin Steph Diebold's genealogy for her mom's side of the family. So far I haven't had much luck beyond guesswork with some censuses because she didn't have much info to start with. It looks like I will have to make a trip to the Vital Recs office before I can really make any definite progress. There are weird age gaps in the genealogy and then a bunch of them were recent immigrants who seems to have died not long after arriving, so tracing definite familial connections just in the census is not the best plan. In addition, none of them seem to have registered any births, marriages or deaths in the pre-1907 indices, so that is also not very helpful. But, so far she's got some Germans and some Irish. We'll see where it goes.

A small update on my Reynolds paper: I haven't yet heard from the person I wrote a letter to a couple weeks ago, so I tried to think of other ways I might get the information I need from such an obscure area of the country. I remembered that I had seen a site once called Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness and I decided to look up volunteers in Aroostook County. I found a man who is going to check on Green Ridge Cemetery for me. I still hope that I can find a way to get the better copy of that article my grandmother gave me but for right now chances seem slim. I will have to do some more digging around to see what other places I might be able to write to in order to find this article. Hopefully someplace will have it.

Everett Reynolds- The great mystery

2008-07-22T20:33:00.000-07:00

I haven't found much lately mostly because for the past two weeks I was away on vacation. In any event, while visiting my paternal grandparents in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, my grandmother showed me a terrible photocopy of a newspaper clipping she had gotten at some point which is about a man named Everett E. Reynolds who matches the man who is supposed to be my 3greats-grandfather: but she does not remember from whence it came. This is unfortunate, and so is the state of the of the photocopy itself as someone had patched the original with tape that mostly blocked out in the photocopy what the article said, and a chunk is completely missing from the bottom. I decided to type up a transcript of the article for better analysis, and where there are parts missing it is indicated by blanks. Its quite interesting and comes with a photo of the man, who does, when compared with a picture of my great-great grandfather Alex Reynolds, look to be exclusively related. Here is the transcript and perhaps I can scan the document at some point and toggle with it to find out what else it says.

Caribou, July 1

“Many times visitors at Green Ridge Grange hall have asked, What’s that? When the first saw the old plow resting quietly on its sh-- in the grange room. Perhaps it is not to be wondered at, as it surely does not resemble a modern plow to any great extent, but it was a plow, nevertheless, more than a century and a half ago.
“A study of its lines and construction, makes one realize how far we have come in our advance from the primitive state of winning a living from the soil of the advanced science of agriculture of today. Sometimes as I stand before the old plow lost in thoughts of the past, I see the generations that have gone, before me, and I listen to the story the old plow tells me of yhat [sic] it has seen since first it came on the stage of life.
“Some of its history is known only to the old plow itself and this it silently keeps, safely locked away from all our curiosity. The latter part of its history is known to us and while there may be other plows that have as strange a history, surely no other plow ever made such a journey as this.
“Some 30 years ago it was the privilege of the writer to see the old plow that was owned by Israel Putnam and which he left in the field hooked to his oxen when the messenger brought the news that the British soldiers had fired on the American farmers at Lexington. The general appearance of the Green Ridge plow is very much the same as the Putnam plow except it is of lighter construction. It must have been made about the same time, possibly a decade _______ later. It is evident that it ___ ____ used to any great extent, _______ that a better or more substantial plow must have come into use soon after it was made. It would appear, and this fact is borne out by what knowledge we have that the plow is about 150 years old.
“It was discovered in 1887 [1881?] in the barn loft of a farmer ___ _orge, Mass., by Everett Reynolds who had taken refuge in the ____from a heavy shower w--e ______hing trip.
“Mr. Reynolds came ________ old Yankee family of Pilgrim stock, and was interested _________iat had American histor__ b----red the farmer for the plow and it passed into his possession. [might say something else?]. Mr. Reynolds was a shoemaker by trade and was at the time located in Bl----- Mass., but with his parents -- a young man had gone into Aroostook county Maine as pioneers. The parents remained at Green Ridge where they settled, in company with a number of families of that --me and their bodies rest in Green Ridge Cemetery.
“After a time Everett returned to Massachusetts to work at his trade. It was during this time that he discovered the old plow _______ conceived the idea of mounting the plow on a wheelbarrow and in this way making a journey to Aroostook county Maine to visit his parents and other relatives.
“He had a wheelbarrow specially constructed for this purpose ______ compartment in the body for a change of clothes and a few th___ necessary for the _________ made him _____________ the purp__________ condition________

[a huge chunk is missing and skips up to the next column:]
“yourself but Mr. Reynolds remarked that he was glad to pay for the _____ and that he belonged to a party that preserved the Union and freed the slaves.” He started on leaving the old man glutting after him.
“He reached Bangor on August 28 and remained for the Fair and on the 31st left for Aroostook, and reached Ho--ton [Houlton? This is apparently near Green Ridge Grange] at 5 p.m., September 6, and at Presque Isle in time for dinner Sunday, September 9, stopping at Gus Whitney’s Hotel. Although it was Sunday, Mr. Reynolds was anxious to complete his journey and after dinner he started the plow again reaching the home of his parents at Green Ridge near the site of Grange Hall at 5:30 [a.?] m., 3- days after the start was made. He visited relatives at places along the way and of course could _________d rainy weather.
“The shoes worn on the trip are still in Mr. Reynold’s possession, a treasured ________ of the trip.
“Mr. Reynolds was born at Bridgewater, Mass., August 3 [or 8?], 1847, and is thus near ____ years of age. He still works daily in his shop. He is descended from Robert Reynolds who landed at Boston in 1632 and on the mother’s side of Dr. Samuel Fuller who arrived in the Mayflower in 1620.
“In spite of ____ _____t Mr. Reynolds started his strange journey, on ____dey, his birthday was attended by no adverse handicaps. He now resides in Canton, Maine, and is a well preserved man for his years, both physically and mentally as a recent photograph __________.
“The old plow was presented to Green Ridge Grange by Mr. Reynolds, a quarter of a century ago, and as soon as the new hall is completed will occupy a place of honor again, in the _____. Then a ________ to the good _______that hath for all the na----s [nations?] gone. And glory -- now to the good old plow, when a thousand years have flown.”

Conclusions (notes I wrote when I first looked through this):

-Birthdate matches
-Parents and family all around Caribou & Fort Fairfield. Ancestry of parents matches.
-Shoemaker
-Canton, 1920 has Everett E. Reynolds living, widowed… article does not mention any wife.

So, article is from Maine.. Possibly Caribou with date of “July 1” while he was living in Canton (so after 1910).

Green Ridge Grange appears to be some sort of building or club?
Definition of a Grange is:
1. A farm, with its farmhouse and nearby buildings
2. Chiefly British, a country house with its various farm buildings, usually constituting the dwelling of a yeoman or gentleman farmer.

Route he took: Bangor NE to Houlton took 6 days, North to Presque Isle in 3 days, then in 12 hours was able to make it to his parent’s house, at Green Ridge Grange.

Further notes:

In the mean time I have written to a place in Caribou, ME asking if there is any way to track down an original copy of the newspaper article, as well as to see if anyone has records for the cemetery these people are supposedly buried in. If I can tie this Everett to the parents I have are his in our family tree, as well as if his first wife Melissa is there or any of his children from his first wife, this would be amazing and I will have finally solved this!! I am very excited and hope I can find someone out in Maine who can help me!

Small update

2008-07-02T08:44:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a lot of random little things lately jsut finding out some info from my grandma to put in about the Walsh side of the family and the Ryan connection, trying to track down more relatives on that branch to get a more complete picture and hopefully find out a little more about the ones we don't know much about.

Yesterday I spent some time looking up churches online.. the Ryans belonged to a St. Patrick's in Lodi and I emailed them to try to find out more info about Mary Ann Walsh's sister Ann Nancy Walsh who married Thomas Ryan. I found her death date from an online cemetery record but I was hoping that they might have more info. I also emailed St. Mary of the Lake which is where the Walshes belonged in Westport, and where John and Bridget Walsh are buried, in the hopes that they might have more detailed records,especially pertaining to John Walsh. There is another church, St. Martin's, which is where Mary Ann Walsh and James Hurst were supposedly married, I am going to send them a letter asking them if they have any records, either.

In other parts of the family I received some info from, apparently, someone at the Dodge/Jefferson Counties Genealogical Society.. She emailed me rather out of the blue saying she was responding to my query (and I'm not sure which one?) about the McConnells and Reynoldses in Rock River Cemetery. Either way she had told me she had obits for people I was looking for as well as proof that the McConnells were buried at Hake cemetery, and that she would mail this info to me.

This sounded slightly too good to be true so I guess I wasn't surprised by what exactly I received. I got some transcripts of the cemetery, not records pertaining to who is buried there, and miscellaneous obits for people named McConnell who have no apparent relation. The one gem, I think, it Everett Garfield Reynolds's obituary which I didn't know existed and it provides some interesting info. Here's a transcript:

"Everett Garfield Reynolds was born may 22, 1882, and passed away July 5, 1949 at London Wis. He was the son of Everett Sr. and his wife, Kate (McConnel) Reynolds.
"He attended the London school and as a young man he was employed as a farm hand, but worked the greater part of his life as a painter. Many residents of London and surrounding territory came to know him as their house painter and home decorator.
"As a citizen and neighbor he was always accommodating, pleasant, honest, and gentle. Very quietly he lived a peaceful life, minding his own addairs. He was never married.
"Genereally speaking, his health was always fair, until Monday, June 17, when he suffered a troke. Dr. K. K. Amundson, who attended him, advised removal to a hospital and this was done at once. However, in spite of excellent care, there was no hope of his recovery. He passed away on Friday, July 5th.
"Preceeded in death by his parents and one brother, there are still suviving him two sisters and one brother, who are Mrs. Lu Noel of Yonkers, New York, Mrs. Otto Schwennesen, Chicago, and Alexander of Madison, Wis. There are also three nieces and four nephews.
"The departed attained the age of 58 years, one month, and 13 days. He had been a member of the Moravian church and the funeral services were conducted by the Rev. D. C. Heinrich on July 7 grom the Prescott funeral home at Cambridge. Internment was in Rock river cemetery."

Cemetery Visits; new censuses available; Everett Reynolds' disappearing act; photo project

2008-06-09T09:27:00.000-07:00

Hold tight for a long entry!

The weekend before this past one I went to several cemeteries. The first, St. James, held great promise as I had no idea who I would actually find there but had read online that my ancestor Peter Steffen had donated the land for the cemetery and the church. I went there first because I was excited that he might be there since I don't know much about him or his family.

I found that I am probably related to almost everyone in the cemetery there. The cemetery is full of Hagemanns and Fischers which was pretty intersting. My greatest find, though, was Peter Steffen's moument which had his daughter Franziska Steffen Starck's information on it. Franziska was married to Peter Starck, and their daughter Helen Stark is my great-great grandmother. Franziska had died young but I hadn't been able to find records for her birth nor death. The stone however had both dates in full, and this is very exciting. There were other Steffens throughout the cemetery as well as other families married in to the ones mentioned before. Some of the Steffens were ones I did not have in my records and I have yet to figure out who exactly they are. Other names in the cemetery such as Puetz and Peshon are related to us through the surnames already mentioned, also.

An interesting find towards the back of the cemetery was a stone which had some young Starck people on it but I only know who one of them was.. there was a Mathias, Margaretha and Gertud and I was only able to find the Mathias in the records I have as being a brother of Peter Starck. I do not know who the others are but all are early births and deaths.

After this cemetery I went down the road a ways to St. Martin of Tours cemetery. I searched the entire cemetery, puzzled that I hadn't found Peter Stark even though his death record had said this was where he was buried. As I was walking back to the car I saw the name Stark on the back of a stone which I had searched the front of earlier. I got closer and found that indeed Peter's name, and that of his second wife Margaret Logic, was carved on the back of his daughter Mary Stark's stone with her husband George Acker.

Next I made a return to St. Louis Cemetery in Caledonia because I had found out that the family of Franziska Steffen's mother, Elizabetha Rauguth, had lived in Caledonia and belonged to the St. Louis parish. This is quite the coincidence that the ancestors/families of my grandpa Schmitt's father and mother lived near and knew each other long before Catherine Emerich and Lester Walter were even born. I'm not sure if this was a conscious connection or not but I will try to find out.

Finally, this past weekend I went back to Hake (Rock River) Cemetery in Jefferson to try to look for the McConnells that I could not find on my previous visit. Alex McConnell's death record said that he was buried there but I have still been unable to find his gravestone or that of his wife, Elizabeth Hake McConnell. I did some poking around but all I found really was a gopher which came lunging at me across the cemetery. I also noted that Alex's business partner W. H. Hake was buried a row down the hill from where the McConnell children are (and where I believe Alex and Elizabeth to be as well).

I have also been puzzling over the problem of Everett Elisha Reynolds. I do not know for sure if he simply disappeared or died while the family was living in Deerfield. I found on familysearch.org's new pilot site that they have Wisconsin censuses from, 1855, 75, 85, 95 and 05, most I've never seen before much less knew existed. Through these I looked up several families I am interested in, including finding John Mayville in DePere in 1855.

But back to the Deerfield question. When my grandmother first told me about these families as I was starting research on that side of the family, she told me a story about how "Garfield Reynolds" had gone west to California during the gold rush, and that he had written some letters back at first but then the family had never heard from him again.

The only Garfield I have found in my records was the son of Everett Elisha Reynolds and Kate McConnell, and he was born in 1882, quite long after the California gold rush (1849) and seems to have lived in Jefferson Co most of his life as a painter, usually his residence was with his widowed(?) mother, Kate. He died there in 1940 and is buried at Hake Cemetery with his mother but no Everett anywhere to be found. I had narrowed down that Everett had died or disappeared by 1900 but with the 1895 census available I was able to narrow down his timeframe to disappearing between 1886 (the year his last child was born) and 1895. I find that he could not have gone west for the gold rush in CA (he was born in 1847) and that his father (Elisha Tilton) would not have done so either, because he seems to have lived out his life in its entirety in northern Maine.

So the dilemma is, who is this my grandmother was referring to? His name can't have been Garfield, but was it Everett Elisha? The story must be true to some respect- someone had disappeared- but who was it? Kate was listed as a widow in 1895 and 1900-- did Everett simply die in Deerfield, or did he go west for some unknown reason and not turn back?

I already have one instance of him leaving his life to go somewhere new. Everett had a wife, Melissa Harris, in his native Maine. All but one of the children from that marriage died young, the last of those in 1880 when presumably he picked up and left for Wisconsin--- not sure if he brought his one daughter, Verna Luella, with him but he married Kate McConnell in 1881 and had three children, then within 5 years had disappeared again. So, that is something I have been puzzling about, as well as who took care of Verna for all this time and how she ended up marrying a man from Ohio.

Something else going on is that I have started a new project, because I just didn't have enough to do before :P I have started scanning all of my Mayville grandparents' photos in the hope of eventually getting them on a website (http://jadesgenes.250x.com/) eventually... although it is going to take quite some while as I haven't even gotten to the beginning of the scanning, and once I do that I have to resize images and upload them, and then code it all on... in general its a huge project.

I have made an appointment for the Vital Recs office on Wednesday. the day was completely open so the lady offered me two slots in a row, so I will have over 4 hours to search the records. Woohoo.

Mayville/ Shawano Connection

2008-05-22T20:24:00.000-07:00

This past weekend we went on our annual cemetery visits up north from Ellington to DePere, Shawano, Unity and Marshfield. On the way I found some notes and maps I had put in my genealogy notebook (one of three or four at this point) a few months ago and had promptly forgotten about. It was pictures of two houses I believed were around Shawano and which Collin Mayville and family had lived in.

Back when said maps etc were printed I had gone through the Shawano census of 1920 and figured out a possible approximate location of where they lived, and hoped that if I went to look for a house, it would be one of the two (most probably a particular house that has a distinct outer design which I felt I could easily recognise).

So, in any event, we decided to add a house search to our cemetery plans and headed to South Franklin St. in Shawano around midday. It didn't take too long to find.. just a few blocks. It was about a block further than my census studies had indicated (I used the same strategy in locating the Tice house in Marshfield), but as soon as I saw aforementioned distinct outer design, I knew it was the right house, despite it sadly lacking the front wraparound porch that the family had swarmed around in all of the pictures we had.

In any event, when I saw the house, our car came to a screeching halt, startling a woman who was in the front yard of the house gardening with a small dog (Natasha). We parked and showed Brandy the ca. 1920s picture of her house. She immediately said she had the abstracts, and came out with a stack of papers dating from 1854 to present. It was pretty amazing and we were basically able to surmise that in general, Collin did not own the LAND the house was on, and probably the family rented the house.

This led to a tour of the interior which has much of the original walls, wood floors, etc. The original front door was still there as was the original bell... its this little thing on the door down by the mail slot which you press and it rings then pops back up. Apparently pretty rare to find. The front door's hinges were really prettily detailed as well.

In doors there are two staircases, the front leading to two large bedrooms and the back which was apparently servants quarters when the house was first built. There were some smaller rooms up there.

Brandy is planning on restoring the house, and has already started small bits of the process. I offered to help this summer if she's interested; she's going to be taking the siding off and restoring it. Ironically, she also had been thinking of adding a front porch on but once she saw it originally had one, she's decided its going back for sure. I'm excited to be involved and to see how it ends up looking.

Emmerichs, Stark

2008-05-04T12:50:00.000-07:00

Hello first of all, I received an awesome email last week regarding the Emmerich family. A lady named Sue Stabler contacted me, and she is a granddaughter of Alex Emerich, who is my great-great grandfather. She knows a lot about the family, consequently, and I'm very excited to learn what information she may have about the Emmerichs, since we don't know very much!! She also has pictures of course and I can't wait to see them. Its going to be great. She told me that Peter and Catherine (Hageman) Emmerich donated the land that St. Louis Church (in Caledonia) is now on, and that one of the stained glass windows was dedicated to them.

This is very exciting and should help flesh out that area of the family tree.

Another email I just received pertains to Johanna Stark who married Ferdinand Rinke and is the mother of Matilda Rinke (who married Alex Emerich). Cathy may have information which provides the names of Johanna's parents, who I was previously unable to find any information about. That will be a good step forward!!

Its almost summer so that is very good- Soon I will be hitting up a bunch of cemeteries and hopefully finding out a lot of new info about the family.

Liebenow, McConnell, misc.

2008-04-14T18:29:00.000-07:00

Haven't had a lot of time but I figured I ought to update this quick before I head into the last big stretch of the school year- oh how I want it to be over with.

In any event... Some little things that have occurred offhand include:

I received a document from the Dodge/Jefferson Co. Genealogical Society which told me that in 1877 and 1879, my ancestor Alex McConnell was in a partnership with an unnamed Hake, and they ran a dry goods store together. In 1881 the partnership dissolved with Alex taking full ownership. This is important because it connect further Alex with his wife Elizabeth Hake (although still haven't determined her parents), and it also confirms what my grandma Alice Annen Schmitt told me regarding Alex, that he had a dry goods store. So thats very well, hopefully more information will surface about this.

I've also been exchanging letters with Roland Liebenow. He is a cousin of mine through Ferdinand and August (Koch) Liebenow. Anyways we have been discussing place of origin of the Liebenow family, and that Christian's father's name was William. Also, there were other Liebenows who came who were Christian's siblings I believe.

Thats about all I can remember for right now. If I think of anything, I'll be sure to post it.

Christofferson Connection, Misc stuff

2008-03-09T21:34:00.000-07:00

Hey all I've just recently started working on my uncle Eric Christofferson's genealogy. So far I found a few lines going back pretty far to the Colonial South and then to Switzerland its pretty interesting :)

Also I contacted the Oak Creek Historical Society through a letter sent last week, asking them about a cemetery in Oak Creek, St. James, which is supposed to have my Steffen ancestors in it. I received an email yesterday from a woman at the historical society who had a list of Steffens buried in that church and also a list of Ranguth/Rauguths who are apparently buried at St. Louis Cemetery in Caledonia. I was there last year looking for Emmerichs!! Now I'll be going back in the spring to look for my Ranguth/Rauguth ancestors. Its pretty interesting that they were members of the same parish. I contacted Carol, who is a secretary at St. Louis, in order to see if she can find any records for me. She found a lot of information for me when I was researching the Emmerichs.

Rauguth/Steffen & McConnell/Hake

2008-02-21T14:24:00.000-08:00

Just a little tidbit so you know I haven't forgotten about this thing.. I think that I have found miscellaneous scraps of info that I haven't put here in the past month, because I've been pretty busy with school.. however, I figure this is a pretty big update even for it being rather small.

I went to the historical society quick because I found a record for the death of an Anna E. Steffen, who I thought may be the same who was married to John Peter Steffen (their daughter Franciska married Peter Stark, whose daughter Helen married into the Walter family). Turns out that this was indeed the person I was looking for. I confirmed her maiden name of Anna Elizabeth Rauguth, and also found out her birth date. Additionally, the death record stated that she is buried at St. Jacob's, which I haven't yet determined the location of. They lived around Oak Creek, however, so I would assume it is in that area.

Another good find was Alex McConnell's death record. He is not in the Wisconsin Historical Society's index of pre-1907 Birth, Marriage and Death records, so I was not able to find him in that way. Instead, knowing his date of death, I looked for someone who had died the same day and in the same county as Alex, and looked that person up. I then looked near that person's record and happened to find Alex's death record. It proved very useful.

Firstly, It told me that his birthday was 8 Jun 1824 and that he was born in Perry Co., Pennsylvania. From census records, it was impossible to tell where he was born because in some places it stated he was born in Pennsylvania and in others, it said Ohio. Therefore, this will help in the search for his parents, because I now have a county to start with in PA. It is possible that Alex's father's name was either Samuel or John, as these were two heads of household living in Perry Co. in both 1820 and 1830.

Additionally, the record provided that he was buried in Hake Cemetery, and his wife was Elizabeth Hake. This is extraordinary, because it only serves to further the connection with the Hakes which most certainly exists, even though I and my Hake contacts have been unable to ascertain who Elizabeth's parents were for sure (we still think her father was John Philip).

If you remember, I took a trip to that cemetery (now Rock River) a few months ago, and clearly Alex & Elizabeth's stones were no longer visible. I am hoping once it is warm enough, to be able to visit the cemetery and poke around a bit to figure out where the stones might be. I would be inclined to believe that they are in the somewhat vacant space near Kate McConnell & Garfield Reynolds, as well as the other children of Alex & Elizabeth. Hopefully I can turn something up. I also want to try to find out who in particular is in charge of that cemetery so I might find interment records which could indicate further useful information.

I've let my Hake contacts know about the information I got today... Vital Records were apparently not required until the early 20th century for Pennsylvania, so I am not sure how much I will be able to find; however, I plan on writing to a genealogical society in that area, if possible.

Trip to the WI Vital Records Office

2008-01-16T22:56:00.000-08:00

Today I got two hours to find as much information as I could. I found some pretty good stuff, and I am pretty happy about it.

I finally found Theresa Kaiser Hess's death record. She died in 1939. This provided me with her full birth date, which I didn't have before, as well as her death date (of course) and the name of her father- Bernard. Her mother's name wasn't listed for some reason.

I also tried to find Ruth Dimmys Tarbell Greeley's death record- couldn't find it.

Additionally, I got pretty lucky when looking for Sarah Elizabeth Mayville Beaulieu's death record--- it was in the first book I picked up. She died in Long Lake, WI, in 1925, about a week after her brother Collin died. She was the last to die of Ephraim's children with Hannah Nora Preston.

I also messed around with the Walter family. Lester Walter's father was Fred. I confirmed his parents' names, that he married Helen Stark, as well as got exact birth/death dates for him. Also found Helen Stark's birth and death dates, neither of which I had previously, as well as confirmed her father was Peter Stark.

Also, I looked up Fred's father Fred Sr. I found when he died and was able to find his birth date, too. I tried to find his wife, Elizabeth Hauch Walter but while searching I came across the death record of Fred's SISTER Elizabeth Walter, who died a few years after him as a result of slipping on ice. I was able to confirm this was his sister because both of their records listed father Simon Walter and Margaret Strasser. I hadn't known their parents' names previously.

The biggest thing I found, so far, is Katherine McConnell Reynolds's mother's name. Well, I also found Katherine's exact birth and death dates, but I found that her mother was Elizabeth Hake (her father was Alexander McConnell). For some reason I recognized the name Hake...

A few months ago I found out that Katherine was buried at Rock River Cemetery in Jefferson, WI., so I went to look at the stones for myself and found that the cemetery was full of people named Hake, and in particular Kate and her siblings and son were surrounded by Hakes. I thought it odd but of course didn't think too much of it.

So I looked up these Hakes on findagrave.com first, then looked a couple up on rootsweb. They are all intermingled. A guy named Bob Speckman had added pictures and info to some of the gravelistings on findagrave, and the site had his email address. I contacted him about the Hakes and asked him if he knew of an Elizabeth Hake. From what I found on Rootsweb, and then what he told me, it seems there was an Elizabeth Hake born in 1819 to John Phillip Hake (the man who donated the land for the cemetery), but Bob hadn't been able to track her down--- everyone but her, he knew more info about.

So it seems that I might have his missing Elizabeth, but we can't quite prove it yet... we just know that Elizabeth it related to the bunch somehow. A Reverend Emanuel Hake, also buried in that cemetery, and born around the same time as Elizabeth, married a Jane Elizabeth McConnell, who I can only assume is closely related to my Alex McConnell (if not his sister or something). I'm pretty excited about this discovery. the Hakes trace back pretty well... but the McConnell's are still a mystery.

I almost forgot--- Bob seems to be the leading Hake researcher, so it was lucky that I contacted him-- he knows a lot and has a lot of good resources. He had, offchance, in a pile of newspaper copies he got just recently from the Jefferson Historical Society, the obituary for Alex McConnell, which confirmed all of the moving I had found in the censuses, and also provided the date of his death, and the fact that he married Elizabeth Hake and they lived in the "Hake Neighborhood." This is also really exciting, because I had had no solid dates yet for Alex and still don't for Elizabeth-- unless we prove she's the daughter of John Phillp Hake.

Perry, Mayville, Tice

2008-01-13T21:34:00.000-08:00

Haven't updated lately but I've been doing several things throughout the past week or so. Last week I looked in Elouisa Mayville's marriage with George Washington Perry. I discovered that their son Ephraim had gone to Colorado around 1880 and had begun a family there. I also discovered that Elouisa, her husband George W., and her children George Myron and Lucy M. were all buried at Fort Howard Cemetery in Green Bay, WI.

Today I set out to find them in that cemetery, and despite four inches of snow coating everything, I did. They are in Section E.

Also, today I received an email from Pamela F. Tice. She got ahold of a copy of the will of Peter Tice (father of Ralph Tice). She sent me a transcription of it although I wish she would email me a copy of the document, also, so I can compare it.

Additionally I just found out a little more about a couple of Melissa Mayville and Alfred Nachtwey's children. I found three of them on the Social Security database.

Also, I found out that Edmund Mayville actually got married- didn't know this previously. He married Nina Muriel Morris around 1920 or so. They had at least three children, Edmund, Gloria and Gertrude Mayville. Clorie Greeley Mayville's birthday book had listed those three children's names and birthdays, but we weren't sure who they belonged to until I checked the 1930 census last week. I found Edmund Jr and Gertrude on the SSI also, enabling to find their death dates as well as the fact that Gertrude married and Edward Schultz. Gertrude ended up around the Oregon area and Edmund Jr. ended up in Buena Park, California.

This is pretty exciting news because they are only Ephraim Mayville's grandchildren and Edmund Jr. may have carried on the characteristic Mayville look. That would be great to contact his family if he had any, because of the close relationship to Ephraim. Unfortunately Edmund Jr. died in 2004.

Emmerich line back from Franciscus

2008-01-01T19:28:00.000-08:00

Albert Emmerich, my contact in Germany, just sent me what he has found so far in the Emmerich line, past Franciscus Emmerich. I now know that line back to the beginning of the early 17th century, which is very good as far as finding records in Germany goes since a lot of them were destroyed as a result of the World Wars.

Additionally, Albert has begun helping me track down any Liebenow researchers who may be in or around Germany. This is very helpful and will hopefully lead to further information on that line.

Sawtell/Tarbell Connection

2007-12-30T17:08:00.000-08:00

The other day I received two letters from Margot Gifford who lives in New York. She is researching the Sawtell line, which is connected to mine through Amy Julietta Tarbell, who married James Avidon Sawtell.

Margot sent me some information that she tracked down regarding the ancestry of James Avidon Sawtell back to 16th-century England, as well as a copy of a letter which she received from Andrew Ojanen of the Chester [VT] Historical Society. This letter relayed that he has also been in contact with Erin Thompson of Vermont (of whom I have also been in contact with) and various information dealing with the Sawtell and Tarbell connections. There was also a reference to me.

Other than adding this information to my genealogy, I haven't been doing much. I have an appointment at Wisconsin Vital Recs on Wilson St., on the 16th of January.

Nachtwey Information

2007-12-14T21:23:00.000-08:00

Today I spent some time at work looking into Alfred Nachtwey's family. Alfred was married to Melissa Mayville, and I realized that I had virtually no information on him. I found out his parents' names as well as his father's parents, and siblings of Alfred; followed by children of these siblings.

Yesterday's additions

2007-12-13T20:31:00.001-08:00

First post! Haha. Well, yesterday I added to my genealogy the death of a distant cousin, Raymond K. Zach. Apparently he is a Diebold descendent, as I am. My grandmother told me of his obituary in the Wisconsin State Journal (11/26/07) and his relation to us.

Its unfortunate that I cannot get her to write down all of the knowledge she has, despite my attempts. She always says she is busy for some reason, when she never really has anything to do... she just makes stuff for her to do. But I think it is very important that she impart all of this knowledge.

As far as other stuff I've worked on this week, I've been looking ever closer at the Mayville line and trying to track down all traces of any Mayvilles in any records in Wisconsin. I went through censuses and found new BMD files at the Wisconsin Historical Society on a branch in Marinette, Wisconsin, about 100 years ago. They were two brothers, Jean Baptiste and Edward Mayville, born in Quebec, married to sisters of the last name of Asselin.

It must be that these Mayvilles are related to some degree, although their emigration to Wisconsin comes about 60 years after my line came here.

Also in the records I looked up the marriage record of Minerva Mayville and Lewis Dodge. I am trying to figure out who Lewis was, and why he married both Lucy and Minerva- as well as why those two seem to have died within years of marrying Lewis. I have so far been unsuccessful, but found that Lewis's parents were Abel and Betsey; however, the Abel is not certain as the name was quite difficult for me to discern, besides that it began with an "A."

I received an email from Sue Newman today, or, rather, she and her husband. She has been unwell and therefore unable to reply to me; she is a Mayville researcher and said a while ago that she has some information that I would be interested in. I do hope that she is healthy soon!

In that respect, a few weeks ago I sent a letter to Odette Ladd's aunt concerning a Mayville family bible which she may have in her possession, and which may unlock some important secrets in the Mayville line.

Besides that I haven't done much recently- except that a few weeks ago I finally discovered Adeliza Fuller's line, which as I suspected leads us back to the Mayflower. Her heritage had evaded me for a while on account of her unusual name; her family is very interesting in that her brothers all have names beginning with "E" and her sisters have "A" names.

The search continues for more on the Walter line.

The Beginning

2007-12-13T16:43:00.000-08:00

I thought this might be a good idea for me to start, because I have the tendency, to, a few years after entering some data or the other, forget where in particular I got said information. And so, whenever I update my genealogy I think I will update here with an overview of what I find, as well as links to useful sites, etc.