2014: Year of the Crumbling Family Mysteries? + My Brick Walls (v. long post ahead)

It's been a while since I've written but I'm just now getting some time to write about my recent discoveries. I have had some luck lately when it comes to some of the mysteries that exist in my family.

Georg Brandmueller
The first was that of Georg Brandmueller. Born in Steudach, Bavaria, Georg emigrated to Baltimore in 1847 and a year later married Johanna Hoeninger. They raised a family in Baltimore, amid some issues due to apparent mental instability of Johanna. She died in 1865 and in 1870, Georg shows up in Springfield, Dane Co., Wisconsin living near his half sister, Anna Margaretha Brandmueller Weller. Living with him is his son John, but it is uncertain where his daughter Margaretha is at this time.

After 1870 I had been unable to find Georg in any records. Shortly after this, the Wellers moved to Waseca, MN, and he is not living with his daughter Margaretha in 1880. He is also not living with his son John Martin. The church in Springfield had no record of Georg dying or otherwise being present. I had thought that perhaps Georg moved to Milwaukee, where his son ended up, but could find no evidence of this.

This past December, I discovered the bounty that is Probate records. I had never had the chance to delve into Dane County probate records before, but on this trip I looked in the index and found a few interesting names. On a whim, I decided to look at the index to see if there was a listing for Georg, even though I had found no evidence that he died in Dane County... to my amazement, there he was. The Archives room was silent and I had to try pretty hard to contain my excitement. I ordered the file and waited patiently.. Inside I found some interesting documents.

The very first page included a handwritten notice, stating that Georg Brandmueller had died 26 June 1874 (AHA!), leaving no will. It further states that he died "without leaving a widow or children of legal age to administer his Estate." (This is curious because his daughter Margaret was 24 at this time, so I'm not sure what the legal age was back then) A man named John Schurz was submitting this document to appeal for role of administrator of the estate, as he was already Georg Brandmueller's creditor.

John Schurz was approved as the administrator, and interestingly, the men who helped him appraise the estate included George Weller, Georg's brother-in-law. Georg left very few possessions, most of them relating to his business of shoemaking and repair.

My next step was- well, where was he buried? I still haven't answered that. I thought that perhaps there might be an obituary in a local paper, although I wasn't sure because obits were not very common in the 1870s. I checked the German language paper for Madison (the Wisconsin Botschafter- which is indexed under Monroe, WI, instead of Madison for some reason). I did find a very short notice, and what it said in the 2-3 sentences was very shocking. It mentioned that a shoemaker by the name Brandmueller had killed himself by cutting his wrists, and that there had been similar previous issues with his wife. It also stated that he left behind two children.

In that time period, the Catholic church very strongly frowned upon those who killed themselves, so much so that they were not permitted to be buried on consecrated ground. No wonder there was no record of his burial at the church, because there was no way he would have been buried there. Because of how little money he had, I doubt that where ever he was buried, was marked. So it seems that I may never find his final resting place. There are many small cemeteries in the area of Springfield/Corners and Martinsville, and  I tried looking through most of them at one point several years ago, not having any success. This may just be the final mystery of Georg, figuring out where he was buried, and unfortunately no one living may have the answer to that.

Everett Elisha Reynolds
The next mystery was that of my ancestor Everett Elisha Reynolds, another shoemaker, who appears to have been quite a colorful character. Everett was born in 1847 in North Bridgewater, MA, and moved with his family at a young age to Caribou, Aroostook Co., ME. He married in 1869, had several children. His wife died 7 years later, and most of the children died young (only one lived to adulthood). A few years after the death of his wife, Everett appears in Wisconsin, marries Catherine McConnell, and has three children (including my ancestor Alex Reynolds).

Around the time of the birth of the third child, Everett disappears from Wisconsin, leaving behind his family. There is an article written about 25 years later stating that he traveled to California, Scotland and several other places, and then appears in Massachusetts where he finds an old plow and tows it all the way home to his folks' place in Caribou, ME. The article mentions that much of the information they have is from a diary which belonged to Everett. Everett next appears in census records in Hartford and Canton, Maine, but is not present on the 1930 census.

After this time I was unable to determine where or when Everett lived and died. He had a gravestone next to his first wife in Green Ridge Cemetery, but there was no death date on the stone, indicating he may not be buried there. The gravestone did have an I.O.O.F symbol on it, so I decided to contact the Maine organization to see if they had any records of former members. I had tried this several years ago and gotten no response, but this year I received a response almost immediately, that they would look into it and let me know. They determined that there was an Everett Reynolds who died in Canton around that time, but the information from their records didn't list an exact death date.

I contacted the Town of Canton office to see if they could help. A couple of weeks later, I received a certified copy in the mail: They found that Everett had actually died 7 April 1937 (in Canton), making him almost 90 years old! The death record did list his parents so I could make sure it was actually him, and lucky for me it listed his burial location. I couldn't be more happy to have solved yet another mystery!

Remaining Mystery
Despite having finally determined where and when Everett Elisha Reynolds died, there are still a lot of questions- why did he leave Wisconsin? Why didn't he come back to his family? Or did he? I haven't found him in the 1900 census yet. The biggest question I have, and which I think could answer a lot more questions, is where on earth is that diary of his? Does it still exist, and does it include information on why he left his Wisconsin family behind?

I have sent many queries over the years to various historical societies, hoping to locate the diary (or at least, if it doesn't exist anymore, to gain that knowledge). The new death information caused me to revisit everything I knew about Everett. As such an elusive and colorful ancestor, I have spent a lot of time tracking as much information down about him as I can. I had found a newspaper article from 1926 which was written by O.B. Griffin, which details Everett's biography and the story of bringing the plow back to Caribou. It [in]conveniently mentions nothing about his connections to Wisconsin.

The plow had been donated to the Caribou Historical Society eventually. I had contacted them and they had sent me photocopies of various articles and other things which related to the plow or the Reynolds family, and one of them was a typescript copy from the 1980s which was written by a Stacy Griffin and mentioned that he was transcribing directly from the diary. So, it seems that the diary was still around in the mid-1980s... but what about now? I kept looking at this photocopies and then tried to determine what the relationship is between O.B. Griffin, author of the original story, and Stacy Griffin, author of a later typescript. It turns out they were father and son.

All of a sudden wheels started turning-- if O.B. was writing a detailed account of information from this diary in 1926 and 60 years later, his son was transcribing information from the same diary... could it be possible that the Griffin family has this diary, or knows where it may be? I rushed to contact my acquaintance, Jim, who lives in the Caribou area, as it is a lowly populated area and I figured he might know of Stacy Griffin or other Griffin relatives. He did know of a nephew of Stacy, who I called about two weeks ago. He did not personally know anything about the diary, but he stated that he knew of two people who may have some idea of it. I am waiting now to hear back from him, but am very excited to perhaps being close to solving yet another mystery. Even if it turns out that the diary was destroyed and no longer exists, at least I will have that peace of mind. I do hope that the diary, or perhaps a full transcription, may reside within the Griffin family, and am looking forward to trying to find out for sure.


My Other Brick Walls & Mysteries
(In alphabetical order)

Johann Diebold:
Where was Johann/John Diebold born, and who were his parents? His death record states that the names of his parents were Joseph and Margaret Diebold, with no maiden name listed for his mother. There is no town of birth listed. Various census records indicate he was born in the Alsace region of France/Germany. His death notice written by his wife Adelheid, states only that he was born in "Elsass-Zabern," or Alsace-Saverne, on the 18th of July, 1828. A recently discovered 1860 census for him in New York states that he was born in "Strasburg" or Strasbourg as it is written today.

The nice thing about this region of the cities of Strasbourg and Saverne is that the records appear to all be online (http://www.archivosgenbriand.com/index_english.html). The bad thing is, Johann does not appear to have been born in either of those cities directly, but perhaps in a local village or neighboring town. I have spent a long time looking through towns from the Bas-Rhin region on that site, finding various scatterings of Diebolds in the records- but no Johann so far. What to do? Look through records for every village, town and city in the Bas-Rhin region and hope I find him??


Wilhelmine Hammel:
According to her death record, Wilhelmine Hammel Liebenow was born 30 January 1830 in Germany. There was no place name listed. Her parents were listed as Gottfried and Louisa Hammel. What seems apparent is that she and Christian Liebenow were married in Germany, as their son Ferdinand Liebenow was born in Blumberg, Brandenburg, Germany. Christian was born in Passow, which is relatively close to Blumberg, and my guess would therefore be that Wilhelmine was born in Blumberg and that they were married in Blumberg as well. This is based on the tradition of the man marrying the woman at her home church, and then staying in her home town to raise their children. Because this is just speculation, I will need to prove this. I have not been sure where to begin looking and will need to research specific Archives in the area which may hold the answer I'm looking for.


Louis Hess:
Louis Hess was born October 8th, 1851- but where? And who are his parents? All records indicate that he was born in Alsace-Lorraine. His death record lists a father, Killian Hess, born in France. Other than that, neither his naturalization record nor immigration record list a town of birth, making it pretty near impossible to determine where to look for a birth record and further search on his ancestry. Unless I look through every town in the Alsace region (http://www.archivosgenbriand.com/index_english.html) for a birth record for Louis. That would take a very long time to do.


James Hurst:
Where was he born? And, really, when? His death record states he was born 1 Sept 1832 in County Mayo, Ireland, but no town name is given. Every single census record has a different approximate birth year, including- 1833, 1834, 1836, and 1840. The 1900 census even states he was born in May of 1837- so which is it? I haven't begun to look in Ireland for records, as I haven't determined where to even start. The nice thing is, his death record lists his parents as Michael Hurst and Catherine O'Neill, if we can trust that in the light of all of the mixed up potential years and dates of birth.


John Mayville:
We have DNA evidence which links me and my Mayville line to the immigrant ancestor, Pierre Miville, who was born in Switzerland in the early 17th century. Based on various DNA evidence, we have been linked to Pierre's son Jacques and his wife, Marie Catharine De Baillon (a Filles du Roi). The problem is we have never found definitive evidence of who the parents of John Mayville (b. ca. 1790-1792 according to census records) are. My fellow Miville descendant, Carroll, has spent a long time researching the French Canadians and concluded that based his information, our John Mayville is likely the son of Jean Minville and Marie-Veronique Richard.

Since that original DNA test several years ago, DNA testing has gotten more advanced. Through Ancestry DNA, my grandfather Mayville has taken the test and his DNA has matched closely with others who appear to be descended from Marie-Veronique's parents and grandparents, as well as several who are descended from Jean Minville's mother (Marie-Jeanne Fache)'s parents. Is this definitive proof? Not for me. Anyone can have anything in their family tree, and with how much intermarrying occurred in French Canada, it is sure possible that regardless of my actual lineage, we would match closely with some of these same individuals based on that fact alone. The DNA testing has given me good hope that our belief in John Mayville's parentage is correct, however, I still need hard evidence.

The issue here is I still have not been able to determine when or where John Mayville died. It is believed he died in the DePere or Wrightstown area where he had a farm, but I've found no death record, no death date, and nothing to go off of. The last record I have of him is on 23 Dec 1867 when he and his wife Susan deed land to their daughter Rebecca and her husband George Bowers. John Mayville does not appear on the 1870 census, as far as I have been able to find, making it likely that he died shortly after ridding himself of the land in December of 1867.

Going back further, we have not yet found records (church or otherwise) for the marriage of John Mayville and Susan Reynolds, nor for the births of their children, in Vermont. John was certainly born in Canada, and he first appears on tax rolls in Swanton, Vermont, from 1819 to 1823. Susan's father, Silas, also appears in tax rolls around the same time period, making it likely that they were married in Swanton. However, I still need to find record of that. In 1836 John is given land in Highgate, Vermont. Both of these towns are relatively close to the border with Canada, and the family appears to have moved back and forth between the two towns rather fluidly.

So, I still need to find record of both John Mayville's marriage and death, and I would like to find birth records for their children, if possible.


Alex McConnell:
According to his death record, Alexander McConnell, a prominent businessman in the Jefferson (WI) area, was born on June 8th in 1824, in Perry County, Pennsylvania. There are no parents' names listed. The problem is I cannot find a birth record, and the only Historical Society in the area of Perry County requires $50 for a short search of their records. So far I haven't determined that to be an amount of money I can afford for what would be a search with possibly no results. I would like to track down local churches in the area and see if there is more information there, but have so far been unsuccessful as I do not know where to look for that information.

In Jefferson, it seems that Alex was a member of the Evangelical church, and I would like to look for records there which might hold more clues to Alex's ancestry, but I don't know if this church still exists, and where any possible records may be from this time period.


Mary Ann McGee:
According to her death record from Fond du Lac county, Wisconsin, Mary Ann McGee was born February 27, 1827 in Pompton Township, Passaic County, New Jersey. Her parents' names are not listed, but census records state that both her mother and father were born in New York. As has been so often the case on this list, I have not been able to find a birth record for Mary Ann in New Jersey, as I have not known what church to target to look for, and I am unfamiliar with research in New Jersey.


Ernestine Schassow? Or Ulrith?:
This seems to be the woman of a thousand names. The death record of her daughter, Augusta Koch Liebenow, states her name as Ernestine Schassow. On census records in Pennsylvania, however, her name appears to actually be Christina, and this is confirmed by her death record in Carrick, Allegheny Co., PA. This death record states she was born 25 August 1832.

A man who is related to me through her husband's family (the Koch family) was able to look at the records in Germany for the Koch family, and also sent me information on their marriage, which took place in Bagemuehl, a small town pretty close to Penkun, which is where her husband, Ernest Koch was born. This marriage record indicated that she was born in Bagemuehl.

From other information, I knew that the family belonged to Smithfield E.E. Lutheran church in the Pittsburgh area, and a man there sent me his transcription of her death record, which stated that in fact her maiden name was actually Ulrith, and that she was born in "Strsethof," Pomerania as he wrote it, although he noted that it was quite difficult to read. There is a town in West Pomerania that today is in Poland and is Strzeszów (Stresow in German), but this place is relatively far from Bagemuehl where she was supposedly married to Ernest Koch. Because I couldn't see the record with my own eyes, I have to doubt this church record, or at least hold it to a different light, than the other evidence available.

The next step is to try to locate a birth/baptismal record for her in Germany (or Poland, as the case may be), but it is complicated by the fact that there are two possible maiden names for her (or perhaps one of them was another married name?). I have sent for the death records of her two sons to see if they may shed light on what her name really was.


Peter Tice:
Peter Tice has also been elusive. I have yet to prove who his parents were, as well as when and where he and his wife Elizabeth Romaine died. There is no definitive proof of his parentage. The only true record I have of him is of his marriage to Elizabeth Romaine on 28 Jan 1819. This marriage record does not list his parents. I have also not been able to determine when he died. There are several dates speculated, including that he died in Michigan in 1855, but the obituary for that person does not clearly match what is known about our Peter Tice. That, and he seems to be in Pompton, Passaic Co., NJ, still on the 1860 census. I have not found evidence that he followed his son Ralph to Wisconsin, so it seems likely that he may have died in New Jersey.

Another source has speculated that he died in 1863, however this will does not mention either of his first three known children, John, Letitia and Ralph Tice, only those who appear on later census records. This in itself raises suspicion of whether we have the right Peter Tice on those later census records, but again, it has been difficult to find records which support either an earlier or later death date.

An interesting factor is the recent DNA testing my grandmother underwent (her mother was Blanche Tice). She matched closely (supposedly in the range of 4th cousins), with a woman who descends from Anna Tice b. ca. 1763 and married a Ferris Doty. In the Tice Families in America book, the authors speculated, but could not prove, that Anna's parents were Hendrick Tysse and Fytje Vreeland. Also speculated was that she had a brother named Peter Tice, by the same parents. There is a record of a Peter Tice being born on 30 Jul 1796. There is no record of Anna Tice being born to Hendrick and Fytje, in fact, if she was born in 1763, that would be a whole 12 years before record of their first known child being born, in 1775. However, in that same church, there is a record for an Antje (Anna) Tysse being born 31 Jul 1766 to a Johannes and Maria Tysse. In speculation, this Johannes Tysse may have been a brother to Hendrick Tysse, making Anna b. 1766 the first cousin of Peter b. 1796- and if this indeed was able to be proven as my Peter Tice, then it would indeed fit with how closely my grandmother and this other woman have matched on the DNA site (4th cousin with 96% confidence).

Is there a record somewhere of Peter's death (and Elizabeth Romaine Tice's, too, for that matter)? Can that lead us to the names of his parents? At this point I'm running out of places to look, but also am unfamiliar with most resources in the New Jersey area.


John & Bridget Walsh:
I know virtually nothing about these two. They are the parents of my ancestor, Mary Ann Walsh Hurst. She was supposedly born in Galway, Ireland, but it is unclear if this was County Galway or the city of Galway. Making it more difficult is how ridiculously common her name is, coupled with the ridiculously commonplace names of her parents. The obvious starting point is locating her birth record in Ireland, but I do not know where or how to begin, so there isn't much to go from as far as determining more about John and Bridget Walsh. I have obtained death records for both of their other daughters who lived to adulthood, Anna Walsh Ryan and Bridget Walsh Busby, and they list their parents as unknown or as how I have written them- nobody seems to have known mother Bridget's maiden name.

Amazingly, there is a picture of Bridget from the early 1890s shortly before she died. But we know almost nothing about her. She died 12 April 1895 in Waunakee, and the death record indicates she was born in February of 1809 in Ireland, but no further information about where she was born nor who her parents were.

John is even less well known. The only information on him comes from his gravestone in St. Mary of the Lake cemetery, which stated that he was born in 1811 and died in 1878 (not lucky enough that the stone listed exact dates). I have tried contacting the church for information, as they should certainly have at least a burial date for him if not a more complete record, but so far they have been unwilling or unable to provide information on him. So, John Walsh, one of thousands with that same name, remains a complete mystery.


Simon Walter / Walther:
Where was Simon Walter born, and who were his parents? For a long time I knew virtually nothing about Simon other than his name (which seems to vary sometimes as Simeon (death record @ his German Ev. Lutheran church), Seaman (1860 census), and Samuel (1880 census)). I accidentally came across a findagrave record for him, stating he was buried in St. John's Lutheran Church's cemetery in Oak Creek, and soon contacted the church inquiring about records. I'm sure I've written about this in the past, but they allowed me to come in person to take a look at the church registers, and view Simon's death/burial record. This record provided a birth date of April 10, 1810, and stated that he was born in "Neubeuren bf. Wiesenfeld."

So what's the problem? Well... from every single person I've ever asked, German native or not, there doesn't seem to be a place called Neubeuren that exists near a place called Wiesenfeld. Scattered throughout Germany are a variety of towns called either Neubeuren, Wiesenfeld, or some variation of either name, but never are they near one another.

Further complicating this: I don't know what German state to even start looking in. Each census listed a different birth location for Simon. The 1860 census stated he was from Hanover, the 1870 census stated he was from Prussia, and the 1880 census stated he was from Bayern (Bavaria). I tried looking at old maps to see if any point any of these places really overlapped and I could find nothing (although I am certainly not an expert on mid-19th century Germany localities.

I could start asking Archives located near ever possible town named Neubeuren or Wiesenfeld, but most of them charge a fortune (thanks, dollar, for being worth so much less than the euro), so it isn't financially plausible to do that and hope I hit the right place. So if anyone has any suggestions on where this place could be, that would be very helpful.

Families of Orenhofen, Trier ; Other Updates

Wow I do get too carried away with real life sometimes. I was just noticing that my tree is about to hit 17,000 individuals, and that I had not updated this blog for some time. Of course I am still here and still working on my genealogy.

So far this year I have done quite a lot of research within two distinct areas. First, I worked on some Dane County families. It turns out my Diebold and Annen lines, combined with the Starck line which moved to Madison from the Milwaukee area, all have an extremely interesting interrelationship within Dane County. Once I got started on some of my Grass family line, who were then related to Essers, Fischenicks, Statz, and Wermuths and all sorts of others throughout Dane County. It was pretty amazing to realize just how close some of these people are related, even if they may not have known it at the time.

I also learned more about the Carpenter line which comes from the Grass family. Maria Katharina Grass married Johannes Carpenter and one of their sons, Lawrence, had owned much of the land which is now occupied by Madison West High School. Through newspaper articles I found that they sold most of the land for the school in the mid-1920s. Pretty neat little history lesson, and some of the articles I found contained photos. Lawrence is buried on the point of Resurrection cemetery which is nearest to Madison West. I wonder if they planned it that way.


My second big project lately is the main topic of this post, that of Orenhofen records. Towards the beginning of this year I decided to start filling in my Starck/Stark family tree more. I got the idea in my head that perhaps I might write a genealogy book on the family some day, so I wanted to work on finding as much information as I could on the Starck family.

One gap that I quickly identified was the family of Johann Stark (and his wife Mary Barbara Oppmann), who was the son of Matthias Stark and Margaretha Schmitz. I did not have much on his family, children or other descendants. I began working on the line and found they had moved to Rozellville/ Day township, Marathon county, Wisconsin. Online, I found the husband of one of Johann's descendants through his son Mathias Leon Stark. This cousin was able to provide me with a spreadsheet containing data from the Sister Barbara Stark genealogy. This was AMAZING! Ever since I had begun researching the Starck family, I had seen many references to the Sister Barbara Stark genealogy, but no one ever had the full genealogy online or otherwise if I contacted them. Sister Barbara completed this genealogy back in the early 1960s. It was really awesome to finally get ahold of some of this data, and the other great information he was willing to share.

The one amazing detail that gave a completely new perspective to my work was the information Sister Barbara had included on siblings of Margaret Schmitz, wife of Mathias Stark. She had included names and married names for the siblings, although not much more detail was included. This set me to work. One of the names was a Katharina Schmitz who had married a John Massino and moved to Madison, Wisconsin. It was easy for me to quickly locate her death record and information on her children, some of whom has lived their lives in Madison and others who had moved to Minnesota.

Another sister was Magdalena Schmitz, who had married a Theodor Heid and lived in Appleton. Here was the first inkling that this thing was much bigger than I had imagined, and that if I kept going it would really never stop. Theodor came from a town named Preist which is right near where Magdalena was born, in Orenhofen. One of their daughters married an Anthony Oppmann who was the brother to Mary Barbara Oppman (married to Johann Stark above).

Christian Schmitz was the brother to these sisters mentioned above. It turns out he ended up in Marathon Co. as had Johann Stark and the Oppmanns, and as it will be seen, another family (Kiefers).

At almost the same time I met, online, a descendant of Nicholas Stark and his second wife, Katherine Kiefer. Nicholas was the son of Johann Starck and Helena Mick. Before I met this cousin, I hadn't had much of anything for this second marriage. I had most of the information filled in for Nick's first marriage to Agnes Hagemann (whose father is my ancestor on another line)  and had even found where Agnes was buried, in a parish in the Black Creek area of Outagamie County. Nick's descendant helped me fill in more gaps and also was able to send me some wonderful photos of his family and of his ancestors the Starks. Every time I find a new Stark picture it makes me really happy to see another face to put to a name I've spent so much time studying.

Anyway, the more of these branches I saw the closer the floodgates came to bursting. Across three main families I saw a big pattern emerging. I was working to prove that the siblings mentioned for Margaretha Schmitz were actually related. I was looking into the married-in families of Oppmann and Kiefer because it seemed the more I looked the more they seemed to keep marrying each other, and kept living near one another on various census records. The main pattern I was finding was: Orenhofen -->> Milwaukee/Oak Creek, Wisconsin -->> Appleton/Fox River Valley, Wisconsin -->> Marathon County, Wisconsin

Some offshoots moved to Marshfield and Madison, and a few of the younger generations ended up in Milwaukee or Chicago. But overall, those families were tightly associated with moves from one locale to the next.

I found that the Heids are buried next to the Starks in St. Joseph's Cemetery in Appleton. Also there is an Anton Schoenhofen who is apparently the son of one of the Micks.

This fascinated me, and I wondered- so, are there others? I sought to prove more relationships of people seen in the census, as well as close some holes in my genealogy. Such as, were my two women Mick ancestors related? I had always imagined that they were but had not been able to prove it. I also wanted to know if others from Orenhofen had immigrated and followed along with my ancestors' path through Wisconsin.

As part of this search I looked into the records for St. Edwards in Black Creek/Mackville/Center Township (where Agnes Hagemann Starck was buried) as I assumed the family [ies??] at some point had belonged. First I stumbled upon the cemetery itself, quite by accident, and found her grave as well as some possible relatives (that I have not proven yet, but including such names as Heid, Schmitz, etc.). I then visited the Green Bay Diocese and searched their microfilms of the church records themselves, for both St. Edward and for St. Joseph's in Appleton. I found many references to the different clans themselves, including, surprisingly, the Waldvogel family which would have been Agnes Hagemann Starck's step mother's parents (Konrad Waldvogel and Anna Maria Keller), who apparently were also part of the Milwaukee/Oak Creek, Wisconsin -->> Appleton/Fox River Valley, Wisconsin -->> Marathon County, Wisconsin  migration (the Waldvogels and Hagemans were NOT from Trier, however)

The church records were useful in highlighting key parts of my research but I was still missing data that I was interested in.

Next was to look back in Germany. I knew the families were Catholic so I did some searching and found the Trier Bistumsarchiv which contains  Catholic records for the Trier region of Germany, which is where Orenhofen and nearby towns are located. I found that the price was quite reasonable, about €15 or $20 for five records. They were able to confirm the siblings' names and birth dates which I had for Margaretha Schmitz, and they also helped me prove that my ancestors Catharina Mick (married Matthias Schmitz) and Helena Mick (Johann Stark) were in fact sisters. This was really amazing to finally find proof for!

Around this same time I had a great stroke of luck and was contacted by a distant relation who had found some of my work on find-a-grave. He is related through the Junk family on my mother's side, and lives in Germany. We discussed our related family and he also offered to help if there was anything I was curious about in Trier, as he has several resources available to him for that region. This was an extremely generous and kind offer on his part. Through the resources and Familienbuchs he has which are based on parish registers and other local data, he has helped me flesh out my Starck, Schmitz and Mick lines, and so much more! From the information he has sent me I have found more branches that emigrated to the United States (particularly to Wisconsin). Thanks to his gracious efforts, I now have solid lines back to the 18th and in some cases, 17th century Germany! It helped to show me that the Starcks and even some of the Schmitzes were involved in pipe baking/making since far before they came to the Milwaukee area and established their clay pipe making business there.

An interesting note on some information I found through this research: It turns out I have two Schmitz lines originating in the Orenhofen area. My main Schmitzes discussed above, and then also a Schmitz line through the Mick line. Father of my ancestors Catharina and Helena Mick was Johann Peter Mick, who was married to a Susanne Schmitz. Susanne's line is not as well drawn out in the records as most of the other Schmitzes from the area, so I do not know as much about her. However, her mother was Maria Magdalene Mischo, who was born 6 Nov 1740 in Schleidweiler (near Orenhofen). Her parents appear to have married in a very small village nearby called Muelchen or Multgen.

There was not much information in the Schleidweiler records regarding the Mischos so I turned to another resource I have for this area, Thomas Pick's work which is online (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~pick). There I found a town of Multgen referenced and some records with the last name of Michau. I wondered if this might be the same general name as Mischo, and realized it did indeed sound a bit French. My German cousin was able to find reference to this town. It was founded by a group of ironworkers who around 1635 had been forced to leave their hometown of Mulgen in the Wallonia region of Belgium. They were mostly French-ancestried and were forced to leave because of a falling-out with their king (I have yet to find more on what or why this would be). I just found out this last bit of information so am still in the process of looking into the whole story, but it is very interesting, and the first hint of any Belgian ancestry for me. I do have French ancestors, but these are the first that I know of who lived in Belgium.

Strasser Mystery solved; more German info

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.

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!