Meet My Raynor - Captain Joseph James Raynor

In light of the fact that it’s been nearly a year since I last wrote (???), I decided to post an article I wrote for a family newsletter that never got published, and seeing as I don’t know if it ever will, I’d like to share it here. The writing prompt was to introduce readers to someone in your family tree, and since it was for a Raynor family newsletter, I decided to write about my 2x great-grandfather, Captain Joseph James Raynor, who I never really talk about but whom I actually know quite a bit about. And so, without further ado, I invite you to meet my Raynor….

Meet Captain Joseph James Raynor, my 2x great-grandfather. Joseph, an Edward descendant, was a lifelong resident of Freeport. Through him, I can trace my Raynor ancestry through three lines—Joseph’s parents were both Raynors, Hiram Horatio Raynor and Ann Raynor, and Joseph’s paternal grandparents were both Raynors, Joseph Raynor and Elizabeth Raynor. Joseph, who was an only child, was born January 7, 1856 at 283 South Main Street in Freeport, which was built in the 1840s by his father. Like his father Hiram, Joseph became an oyster and clam planter and dealer.

He married his wife, Annie Poole, of Oceanside on December 12, 1879, and they raised three children at the family homestead on South Main Street. He was part of a close-knit group of “old timer” fisherman, baymen, and boat captains who would gather every year for a birthday party, where they would reminisce about life working Freeport’s waterways; many of them lived into their 70s and 80s. Joseph himself lived to be one day shy of 88 years old, dying January 6, 1944.

Joseph and Annie Raynor, with two of their three children, Monroe and Lidie, circa 1889. Tintype courtesy the Freeport Memorial Library and Freeport Historical Society.

According to his obituary in the Freeport Daily Review, “Although he had retired 20 years ago as a wholesale oyster dealer, he went out daily in his boat to fish, until stricken with a heart attack four years ago while out on the bay. As a boy, he started out with his father to plant oysters in the bay, as soon as he was old enough. Later the oysters were shipped to the city. He continued with the work through manhood.” At the time of his death, Joseph’s two grandsons, including my grandfather Clifford Monroe Raynor, were serving in World War II. Joseph was a member of the Methodist Church in Freeport.

Joseph and Annie Raynor, circa 1930s

I never met Joseph. He died over 30 years before I was born. But I would visit him all the time. When I worked in Roosevelt, I used to ride my bike to Greenfield Cemetery in Uniondale to visit the Raynor family plot and say “hi” to my Raynor forebears – my great-grandparents, my 2x great aunt and uncle, 3x great grandparents Hiram and Ann, and my 2x great grandparents, Annie and Captain Joseph. Nearly 80 years after his death, Joseph’s descendants—my brother, my sister, and my sister’s children—still live in Freeport, near the waterways and waterfront on which Joseph lived and worked, and which he loved.

Keeping the magic of the old country alive...

Today began as all St. Patrick’s Day do in our house, waking up to the shenanigans of mischievous leprechauns, who once again foiled our leprechaun traps and left-behind not their pot of gold, but some good-hearted pranks and consolation prizes of green candy and St. Patrick’s Day swag.

Every year…my 6-year-old son hasn’t given up hope that one day that pot of gold will be ours. To be honest, neither have I….

And the morning continued, as it always does, with me sharing with my kids how their great-great-grandfather, Timothy Cronin, saw a leprechaun when he was a wee lad growing up in Ireland. I never met my great-grandfather - he died before my mother was even born. But I always felt a special connection to him, as we were both late August babies born almost exactly 100 years apart. He was born in County Cork, the youngest of 11 kids, 9 of whom grew to adulthood. He left Ireland when he was 9 years old, which is how old my daughter is right now. According to his daughter, my dearly-departed grandmother, his older sister had saved up money for new clothes in the New World but her mother made her buy a ticket for and bring her baby brother to New York instead. According to my grandmother, young Tim was quite the handful and his sisters actually sent him back to Ireland rather than deal with his shenanigans, and he returned to New York for good a few years later, along with most of his brothers and sisters and his mother, but I have yet to be able to confirm or disprove this story.

The most important part of this story, though, is that while he was still young and living in Ireland, he actually saw one of the elusive leprechauns, this living embodiment of the old magic of the Emerald Isle, though he wasn’t able to catch it. As a grown man in New York, he shared this story with his daughter, my grandmother, when she was young, and many years later, she shared it with her daughter, my mother, who later shared it with me, when I was young, and I in turn, shared it with my entire third grade class as proof that leprechauns were in fact real when my teacher tried to use them as an example of something that was imaginary. I never spoke up in class, but even then, I felt it was important to set the record straight. And every St. Patrick’s Day, I now share that story with my children, a story that has been passed down for 100 years from the old country.

For the most part, my family came to America so long ago that most of the traditions, culture, and stories from the old country, whether it be England, Germany, Ireland, wherever, have been lost. They didn’t get passed down long enough to make it to my generation and so I often feel very disconnected from any kind of cultural roots. But Tim Cronin was my most recent, generationally, immigrant ancestor and I knew very well someone (my grandmother) who knew him very well (her father) and this story is a tangible connection to my mother, to my grandmother, to my great-grandfather, and to Ireland.

Timothy Cronin, on the left, in his bar in Freeport, New York, on his 39th birthday.

And so this is a tradition that I continue, in the hopes that my children will bring it forward another generation. We may never get rich off of a pot of gold, we may never catch a leprechaun, but we will be rich in this family tradition. As a child, you still believe there is magic in the world. As an adult, that magic slowly fades. But I will believe in this magic forever because it connects me to my family, who are all gone, and it connects me to my roots. One day I will go to Ireland and catch a leprechaun, who I know are real, because my grandmother told me so, and she would never lie to me. :)

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! - if you’re lucky enough to be Irish, you are lucky enough (and we’re all Irish today!)

(I will also leave you with one of my favorite songs as a child from Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers, an Irish group my parents were huge fans of and which we used to listen to on our record player (yes, I am that old!))

Ancestry Thrulines finally comes "thru"...

If you have an AncestryDNA account, you’ve probably seen something called Thrulines. I pretty much never use this feature. What it does is list your ancestors by generation and tell you who you’re genetically connected to through that person, based on your tree and the other user-based trees in the system. In theory, I could see the point of it - by using lateral connections, it might help you find a connection point further back than you already got on your tree, if that person had more information than you. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of having such a well-built tree is there are few people who have connections further back than I do…although on the flip side, I hope my tree has helped my genetic connections build back their own trees.

Also occasionally I see “Potential Ancestor” pop up - like above, that’s how I see the potential benefit of Thrulines, that I might connect to someone who has their tree built back further than me. But those “Potential Ancestors” have pretty much either been not sourced or backed up by evidence, or just plain wrong. As my very wise Cousin April pointed out to me, Thrulines is only as good as the information people have in their tree, and a lotta lotta people have a lotta lotta poorly built trees out there. And so, I don’t usually find Thrulines helpful and I don’t usually use it.

Until now.

Just for the fun of it, since I recently added some new generations to some of my branches, I took a look at my Thrulines…and saw two new potential ancestors, parents for my 2x great-grandmother, Nora Donohue Cronin. I know next to nothing about the Donohues. Nora came over from County Cork, Ireland as an adult, joining most of her children in New York, and every record I have of her, she is living in a mental hospital and described as “insane.” So she was never in any position to pass down her family stories or history to her children or grandchildren. But this person, this Thruline connection, had Nora on their tree, with brothers Cornelius and John, sister Julia, and parents, Cornelius Donohue and Honora Haley/Holey. And, they had documentation. I took a look through some of it - the family definitely came from the same area of Cork as my Nora did. This person had done some good research. But I was used to disappointment with Thrulines. I clicked on Julia Donohue’s probate record from 1904 - she had never married, and so her siblings were her beneficiaries.

And there it was, in the listing of Julia’s next of kin -

Source Citation

New York, Kings County, Probate Administration Records; Author: New York. Surrogate's Court (Kings County); Probate Place: Kings, New York. Accessed from Ancestry.com January 31, 2022.

Your petitioner Cornelius Donohue residing at 572 57th Street, Brooklyn, a brother John Donohue residing at Kilkorne, County Cork, Ireland a sister Honora Cronin residing at Flatbush Insane Asylum, Borough of Brooklyn, New York

A Honora Donohue Cronin residing at an insane asylum in Brooklyn? In the 1900 U.S. census, my Nora Donohue Cronin was a patient at the Long Island State Hospital in Brooklyn - Flatbush, to be specific, and the Long Island State Hospital was a psychiatric hospital. The Nora on this person’s tree and my Nora were one and the same, and this person had documentation, through Nora’s siblings, on her parents. I never knew Nora had siblings. I never knew she had siblings in New York. I never knew her parents names.

Ancestry Thrulines had finally paid off for me.

The moral of the story here? Lateral connections are important. We focus on our direct ancestors, and I’m guilty of this as well, but I know from experience - and this story is proof of it - that sometimes our direct ancestors don’t have the information we need to build backwards. Doesn’t mean it’s not there - means maybe that information can be found through a sibling. I have Nora’s death record - it does not list any parents. But the death records for her brother Cornelius and sister Julia do list their parents. And don’t give up on features, databases, websites, etc. Just because it doesn’t pan out for one person or one line doesn’t mean it won’t be helpful in some other area of your research.

Websites I used in this research:

Ancestry.com

Family history research brick walls: the long and short of it (usually the long)

We all hit brick walls. It is an inevitability of researching our family trees. Some are permanent - it’s a hard pill to swallow, but it’s part of the game. We will never discover everybody - eventually, we hit the end of the line, although hopefully later rather than sooner.

But some brick walls are temporary. Some require talking to a cousin you just discovered who has the photos or family Bible pages you need. Some require walking into an archive and looking at some physical books or microfilm. Some require thinking outside the box. Some require patience. Some require diligence. Some require all, or a combination of some, of these things.

Meet Charles Haase. He was my 4x great-grandfather and I actually knew a lot about him, considering when he lived and how short he lived - 1839 to 1891. I have census records. I have a Civil War pension file full of affidavits and baptismal records. I have a marriage and death record. I have correspondences with Haase cousins with other military records and their valuable lines of family oral history and traditions.

But despite all that, Charles was a brick wall for me. As much as I knew about him once he was in the United States, I knew nothing about him prior to that. I had his marriage record - it listed no parents and no specific origin in Germany. I had his death record - it listed no parents and no specific origin in Germany. He was an unmutable, undeniable brick wall. And being the stubborn genealogist that I was, I was determined to look at him from every possible angle till I could either chip away at him or say, well at least I tried everything.

I worked on Charles for weeks, for months - literally for years. Not all in a row. I moved on to other branches, I grew other parts of my tree - but I kept coming back to Charles.

I found census records that consistently said he was from Saxony. More specific than Germany, but still not particularly helpful.

I found evidence that his middle name was Gustav. Fantastic - him and about a million other German men.

Ancestry released U.S. Dutch Reformed church records and I found Charles in them for his children’s baptisms. They stated he was Saxe-Weimar…a little bit more specific, but still not helpful. I came across this record, which would end up being the key, my Rosetta Stone, if you will, to unlocking the mystery of Charles Haase, though I didn’t know it at the time:

Source Citation

The Archives of the Reformed Church in America; New Brunswick, New Jersey; Christ Church, Members, Marriages, Baptisms, 1853-1951. Accessed on Ancestry.com January 28, 2022.

Charles’ daughters, Paulina Henrietta and Magdalena, were baptized in Christ Church, Union City, New Jersey in October 1870. The handwriting is fancy and hard to read. It doesn’t help that it’s also written in old German script to boot. I could read that Karl Gustav Haas - Charles - was born in Saxe-Weimar, Deutschland (Germany) and I could see that there was a specific town name listed for the very first time ever - but I couldn’t read it. Frustrated, I gave up and moved on.

But it was there, and man, did it call to me. I had the place Charles came from within reach…and just out of reach. I’m a glutton for punishment, man - if there was any chance I could figure it out, well then, let’s give it a go until my brain explodes.

So, this was the name of the place Charles was from:

There are three words there - the last two say “Sachsen Weimar” and so the first word had to be a specific town or village within Saxe-Weimar, a grand duchy in the eastern part of the German Empire. I’m pretty good at reading Old German script but there are a lot of letters that look very similar to each other - was the second to last letter a g or a p? Maybe it was a z? Was the first letter a D or an I? Was the second letter an r? An a? A u? The only letter I knew for sure was that there was an “i” in the middle and probably an “s” at the end. I looked at a map of Saxe-Weimar. It’s a pretty big place. There was no way I was going to be able to check every single place name that had an “i” in it and possibly an “s.”

When I’m unsure about the spelling of a German place name but I can make out part of it, I go to the Meyers Gazetteer, which allows you to look up German place names by Boolean search, meaning you can substitute symbols for letters and get returns on all places with those letters and combination of substituted letters. You can also specify which region of Germany you want to focus on. It’s extremely helpful.

I did this search for months.

I searched for Duigs. I searched for Duips. I search for Drigs. I searched for Drips. I search for Daigs. I searched for Daips. I searched for Daizs, Duizs, Drizs, Druys, Drays, Driys, combinations of ai with asterisks, ri with asterisks, day in and day out.

I pored over maps of the Saxe-Weimar region for any place name that phonetically might jump out at me because maybe, the spelling was off.

I gave up, I moved on, I came back.

I had no solid evidence to move on - but a place name had popped up in my search that I couldn’t get out of my head.

Triptis.

It’s a small town in the Saale-Orla-Kreis district of modern-day Thuringia - but in the 1870s, was a part of Saxe-Weimar. It had an -rip- and it ended in an “s.” Maybe whoever had recorded those baptismal records had heard a “D” instead of a “T” when Charles said where he was from. Maybe he heard one syllable instead of two.

Maybe that first letter I had thought was a D was actually a T all along.

Whatever the case, my gut was saying I had to check it out. I had nothing else to go on - what did I have to lose?

I checked Ancestry. I checked FamilySearch. I checked Archion. Nobody had records for Triptis. Well, there ya go. I finally had a place to start looking but nothing in which to look. Sometimes that’s the way the cookie, but not the brick wall, crumbles.

I gave up and I moved on. I was working on a completely different German branch of my family tree one day and discovered that Archion, which had not previously had records for their village of origin, had added those church books. Major breakthrough on that line, woo hoo! And I thought…if they added it for one place, maybe they added it for another…say, Triptis?

They hadn’t. But it was a good reminder to me that digital records and archives are fluid - just because the record you’re looking for isn’t there yet, doesn’t mean that it’s not in the process of being added tomorrow, next week, or next year.

I discovered Charles on my tree easily 15 years ago at this point. Last month, I checked Archion again for Triptis records…and there they were. No longer just out of reach…finally within reach. It was still a long shot. For all the work I had put in, I was basically working on a hope and a prayer. I had records for Charles saying he had been born in March of 1838, so I checked for a baptism there first. Nothing. I was flooded with disappointment. What if I had been wrong? What if his birth date was wrong? By, like, a lot??? What if I was looking in the wrong time frame, the wrong town, the wrong everything?

That’s when you take a deep breath. Birth dates are often wrong. I decided to check a five year range of all names in both directions of March 1838. But I also had a document that put his birth as March 1839. So I decided to check there first. And there he was. Carl Gustav Haas, just staring right back at me. Right where he was supposed to be, right where he had been all along, waiting for me. Baptized March 1839 in Triptis, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, 9th child of Johann Carl Friedrich Haase and Johanna Carolina Bruger. I had just met my 5x great-grandparents for the very first time. I knew now Triptis was another ancestral village of mine. I had chipped away at that brick wall and gotten lucky. The search, though, was not ending - this was just the beginning.

My dad would have loved this discovery. Charles was his 3x great-grandfather and I think we both had a special place in our hearts for this Civil War-veteran haberdasher. I wish I could tell him about it, but perhaps he already knows - perhaps he was nudging things along from the other side. In any case, I have a lot of work ahead of me. These crumbled brick walls don’t research themselves.

Triptis, Germany. From Wikipedia.

The moral of the story is, there’s a time and a place to call it quits on a line of research. Some dead ends will always be dead ends. Some exhaustive research will end in disappointment. But trust your gut. If you think there’s more to the story - well, then the story’s not over till you say it’s over.

Websites I used in this research:

Ancestry.com
Archion

A connection to Hart Island - the importance of reading the entire document and checking multiple sources

I know very little about my Irish ancestors in general - in regards to my 2x great-grandmother, Mary Agnes Enright, I know she was born in Ballingarry, County Limerick before immigrating to New York, and that her parents, John Enright and Bridget Collins, also immigrated late in life, dying in New York at the start of the 20th century. John and Bridget are buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn, where I have visited their grave. That visit helped me pinpoint death dates for the two of them - Bridget died in 1906, and John died just a year later in 1907.

I had some information on them from Irish Catholic church records but very little on them, besides the 1905 New York census and death records, once they arrived in New York. I moved on to other branches on my tree that were providing more fruitful research results and gave the Enrights a break. That’s the cycle of it all - hit a brick wall, move on, come back at a later time. I decided to go back over all the records I had for John - now that I have “just the facts” on a lot of people, I’m trying to glean whatever I can to discover something more about who they are besides when they were born and when they died. I took another look at a transcription of his death record on Ancestry:

Parents’ names? Check. Already had that. Age and place of birth? Already had that. Took a look at his years in the US and was actually able to use that to find him in a passenger list manifest from 1898. A good rule of thumb is to not connect one person to another when it comes to immigration - just because two people were married doesn’t mean they immigrated together. And John and Bridget didn’t - he came over by himself in 1898 to join his wife and children. So that was new, if not helpful, information. I knew Bridget had died at their home at 377 Warren Street in Brooklyn, and I wondered what had happened to John after her death - did he move in with one of his kids? But the death address on the transcription said “New York City, workhouse.” Workhouse? I was intrigued. I decided to check FamilySearch’s transcription, which gave me even more specifics:

My 3x great-grandfather had died in the Bronx—specifically at a workhouse on Hart Island.

I belong to a New York City Facebook genealogy group and people talk about Hart Island all the time. Hart Island is the City’s public cemetery and is the final (for the lucky ones, temporary) resting place of over one million souls. When people in my group talk about Hart Island, they’re usually looking for a family member who was too poor to have been buried by their family, or someone who may have died alone, unclaimed by family. But Hart Island has been used for many things, including a quarantine station, a psychiatric hospital, a tuberculosis ward, a reform school, a homeless shelter, a rehabilitation facility, a military base, and a jail. I believe some of these things were collectively referred to as the workhouse, which housed almost two thousand aged and infirm men, narcotics addicts, and short-term inmates from the penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island. I believe my John Enright was one of those aged and infirm men.

It strikes me as strange that he would end up there, since he had multiple grown children living in New York at the time. But perhaps they were not in a situation, financially or space-wise, to take him in. His obituary says he died at his daughter Catherine’s home in Brooklyn, but his death record definitely says he died in the Bronx, which is the borough Hart Island is located in. I went to go look at his actual death record to see if there were any clues in it, and couldn’t find it, which makes me think I never actually had it—was it possible I had requested a death record for him, thinking he died in Brooklyn, and received a “not found” letter from the Municipal Archives—because he actually died in the Bronx??

It makes me wonder what the last year of his life must have been like. According to his immigration record, he was suffering from senility in 1898 - after the passing of his wife, did a lack of money and mental acuity land him on Hart Island?

So that’s my next step on this journey into my Enrights - find out more about Hart Island, about what life might have been like there, see if any records exist, find out what I can about John’s last days. It’s important to me to not just discover an ancestor existed, but to use that person as an opportunity to learn about the history of that time and place, and to place my person within that context. It’s all intertwined - the who, when, where - into a story, one of billions that are part of one grand story, and that’s all genealogy really is.

Websites I used for this research:

Ancestry.com

Familysearch

Sometimes Interesting

New York Public Library

New York City website

The voyage back and forth...

Immigration - Static versus Fluid

When we talk about immigration, we often think—or tell people— “My family came over in so-and-so year” and that becomes our immigration touchstone. Whether they were processed through Castle Garden or Ellis Island, stowed away, were part of the Great Migration, were exiled to Australia, whatever the case may be, we find a ship’s passenger list manifest with our ancestor’s name on it and that becomes our immigrant ancestor and that becomes their immigration year.

But what if they went back “home” again? For many immigrants to America at least, immigration wasn’t necessarily permanent or static. It was fluid. A family member came over to the U.S. to work hard, make money, and then returned home to support their family in their homeland. Or they took the money they had made, returned home, and brought several more relatives over with them. So if you find your immigrant ancestor and when they came over—keep looking. They might have made the voyage back and forth, more than once, and each point of entry back into the country is a valuable piece of the puzzle that could have information not included on their first immigration record.

A Return to Meiningen

My 3x great-grandfather, Caspar Lindemann, raised his family in Stedtlingen, a tiny village outside of Meiningen, Germany. They immigrated as a family, arriving in New York in 1891 - him, his wife, and at least 5 of their children. The year they came was the year before Ellis Island opened, and in a time period when very little was recorded on a passenger list manifest besides names, ages, and a general place of origin. In fact, Caspar’s name is impossible to even read on the manifest, lost in a crease amongst his family members’ names. He is listed as living in Brooklyn in the 1892 census. And then in 1900, his wife is living with two of their children and Caspar is nowhere to be found. This was a mystery to me for years…till I took a look at an incoming passenger list manifest from July 1902 and lo and behold, there was Caspar Lindemann, coming to America from Stedtlingen, Meiningen. Again. 11 years after the first time. There are ways to check that this is your person —for example, Caspar was held at Ellis Island “for senility” and he was picked up by Martin Wolbern, who I know was his son-in-law at the time. Because this passenger list manifest went through Ellis Island in the 20th century, there is a ton more information about Caspar on it, such as the exact place he had been living in Germany (his hometown), how long he had been gone (looks like 6 years), and who he was being picked up by. I still have so many questions, like why he went without his wife, why he was gone so long (he did have children and grandchildren still living in Germany), why he was traveling alone while senile…but he is someone who came to America, went back home, and returned again. He died in New York in 1910.

Erin Go Bragh

In this second case, it wasn’t quite Ireland Forever, but it was Ireland I’m Not Quite Done With You. Another 3x great-grandfather of mine, John Horgan, left County Cork in 1871 with his young bride, Julia, and settled in New York where they had a daughter, Mary, my 2x great-grandmother. Julia died young in 1887 and John never remarried. Like the aforementioned Caspar, I knew John had died in New York City in 1908…but he was absolutely nowhere to be found in the 1900 census. This happens a lot - people moved around, people weren’t home, people deliberately avoided census-takers, people’s names were spelled wrong, people’s names were transcribed or indexed wrong…there are a million reasons you might not be able to find your relative in a census. But if you’ve exhausted all other options, you might want to consider, especially if they were an immigrant ancestor, that they might not have even been in the country, that they might have returned to their homeland. So unfortunately, there aren’t a ton of outgoing passenger list records for New York at least, so you can’t always track them leaving - but you can often track them coming back again. In the case of John, I found him leaving Queenstown, Ireland in June of 1900. So somewhere between his U.S. naturalization in 1888 and then, he had gone back to Ireland. He is mis-indexed and transcribed in that record, but on New York incoming passenger list record shows way more than his initial immigration in 1871 as well as that this was actually him, since it says he is going to join his daughter Mrs. Garey at 358 E. 10th Street, who I know was my 2x great-grandmother. But again, while I am left with more information, I am left with more questions! - why did he return to Ireland? The passenger list manifest gives his last address as Cork but where did he live while he was there? Who did he see? Why did he come back? As with many genealogical discoveries, one question answered leads to three more questions…

You Can Take the Boy Out of County Cork…

Actually, it seems, you can’t. My third family example brings us to another County Cork family. My great-grandfather’s brother, Cornelius Cronin, was born there in the 1860s and along with his mother and his many siblings, made his way during the 1880s-1890s to Brooklyn, New York. My grandmother remembers him living with them on Long Island when she was very little, and he is there with her family in the 1920 census, but in her notes she wrote that he returned to Ireland for good at one point. As it turns out, it’s a little more complicated. As I said, he came over in the late 19th century, and I have a record of him marrying in Manhattan in 1910. And then between then and 1920 I lost track of him for awhile. I discovered the probate record for one of his brothers’ in Brooklyn in 1913 that listed his residence as Ireland, which was helpful, but for years that’s all I knew. I was finally able to put more pieces of the puzzle together recently. Following his 1910 marriage, he and his wife appear on an incoming UK passenger list manifest in 1911 in Queenstown, Ireland. From Cornelius’ brother’s will, we know they were still living there in 1913. I discovered a death record for a woman I believe was his wife from May 1915 - who died in Cork at age 42 from tuberculosis. And then Cornelius appears on a passenger list manifest arriving in New York, again, in July 1915, two months later. As I said, he is still in New York five years later, living with his brother’s family, but Cornelius, more than any of my other fluid immigrant ancestors, doesn’t seem to know where home is…it appears that my grandmother’s notes may have been correct, in that Cornelius appears on no more US census records, has no US death record that I’ve been able to find, and looks to be back in the UK on an incoming passenger list manifest in 1922. I lose him for good from that point, but in this case, it seems you can’t take the Cork out of the boy…

Final Notes

• Not all immigration was static or one-way; some immigration was fluid, and some of our immigrant ancestors traveled back and forth before landing on a place to stay, either back in their homeland or in the new homeland.

• If someone is missing from the record, like a census, check passenger lists to see if they left the country at some point and returned.

• If you see your ancestor’s name on more than passenger list, it’s possible they all belong to him/her. Look for clues, like addresses, hometowns, and relatives who you know belong to you.

Websites I used for this research:

Ancestry

Irish Genealogy

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

History Repeating

The quote that is the title of this blog post is often attributed to Spanish philosopher George Santayana. We all know it. Historians live by it. I rarely (never) wade into political debates, and offer no thoughts either way on the article below, but I was researching a client’s family tree and came across this article, that has nothing to do with said client’s family, from the January 13, 1901 Albany Argus.

“No Bacteria in This Vaccine”

The article subheadings read:

Process By Which Lymph Used in Albany is Obtained

Health Officer on Vaccination

Unnecessary Fear of this Simple Preventative of Smallpox—Statistics of the Sheffield Epidemic—Rules to be Followed

I won’t go into the details but suggest you read the story. Whatever your thoughts on the current vaccine debate and pandemic, it’s interesting (and yes, disheartening) to see the same news stories about disease, science, and medicine that we see in the media today in a newspaper from 120 years ago.

I wonder what news coverage the year 2141 will bring…

From the Albany Argus January 20, 1901

Websites Used in This Research:

Old Fulton New York Postcards

We are the memory keepers

I was reading something on the internet the other day that it only takes three generations for someone to be completely forgotten. Even though it was part of a post that was supposed to be dumb and funny and had nothing to do with genealogy, it really struck a chord with me. I mean, that’s a huge part of why I do what I do. It’s the reason I make a point of reading the names on headstones that I pass when I’m in a cemetery. It’s why when I’m researching I look for missing children who never lived to adulthood. It’s why I share my family tree information with anybody who wants or needs it. I do family history research because it’s fun and I’m really good at it, but reading that comment made what I do feel all the more important.

Forgotten after three generations?? Not if I can help it!

Requiem

As a genealogist, I have to say that my favorite record in research, due to the sheer amount of family history information that can be found in it, is the obituary. A well-written obituary not only gives the important dates and names, but some of the facts in between - where someone worked, what social organizations or what church they belonged to, who their parents and siblings were, who their kids married, and how they journeyed through life. Obituaries have knocked down seemingly-impossible brick walls for me on numerous occasions.

My dad does not have one.

When my grandmother died, I wrote up her obit for the local paper. I made sure all the pertinent info was in it. My dad has a roughly sketched out bio on the website for the funeral home that took care of his final rites. But I was not in the headspace to write up something proper. It’s too final. It’s too real. I’m still not there, but today is his birthday - he would have been 68 and I had plans to try to visit him this weekend to celebrate him and my son, whose 5th birthday is in just about a week. But that’s dust in the wind now. And so I offer this obituary not just as a resource for future generations researching our family history, but as a glimpse into the dash - my dad is not just the dates 1952 and 2020. This is just a little bit of what happened in the in between:

Timothy James Gorry passed suddenly on October 8, 2020 in Freeport, New York. He was born November 27, 1952 in Jamaica, Queens, New York to Elmer A. Gorry and Helen (Stutzmann) Gorry. He lived his early years in Queens Village but grew up in Freeport, Long Island, New York. He attended elementary school at Our Holy Redeemer School in Freeport and graduated from Chaminade High School in 1970, following in the footsteps on his father (Class of ’47) and followed by his youngest son Denis (Class of 2004). He loved football, and played the sport for Chaminade and St. John’s University. He was a lifelong New York Jets fan. He followed in his father’s footsteps of working for NBC at the real-life “30 Rock” in New York City, where he was employed for almost 50 years. In 1992, he won an Emmy for his work on the Olympics in Barcelona. He loved traveling – later in life, his favorite trips were to Atlantic City where he loved playing craps. He was married to Margaret Raynor, who he had known since childhood, from 1976 until her death in 2000 – they raised four children together. In his retirement he doted on his three grandchildren, enjoyed watching the Jets lose over a beer at Jeremy’s Alehouse on Freeport’s Nautical Mile, and loved spending time with his family. He made friends wherever he went. He was a history buff, loved reading, and was a talented cook - when he worked on the Today Show, he would often come home and test out recipes they had filmed for the show that day. He is survived by his wife, Lorrie; his siblings Terry of Nokomis, Florida; Tracy Stock Schroeder of Freeport, NY; Mary Kennedy of Fort Collins, CO; and Betsy White of Rio Rancho, NM; his children Mary (Sam) Hall of Macungie, PA; Tim of Los Angeles, CA; Maggie (Frank) Collado of Freeport, NY; and Denis of Freeport, NY; beloved Pop Pop of grandchildren Elena and Julian Hall and Francine Collado. Burial was in St. Charles Cemetery, Farmingdale, NY.

Happy birthday, Dad.

When the dead speak to us, Part I

I am not a religious person. I don’t know what happens to us after death. I don’t know that I believe in heaven or spirits or ghosts. I am a superstitious person, though. And I do feel super connected to the dead. I speak to my ancestors. I introduce myself when I visit their graves. When I share their stories with people, I talk about them like I’ve known them my whole life, like I interact with them on a daily basis. When I hit a family history brick wall, I ask them for help. I mean, if I can’t find Great Grandma’s parents, if there’s an afterlife, she should be there with them, right? And maybe she could tell them I’m looking for them… I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a crazy person, speaking to myself when I talk to them. But there’s something – a germ of a feeling, something inside of me if not outside of me – that *feels* something.

I get very strong gut feelings when I do family history research…I’ve been doing this long enough to know the clues to look for, and the trails to follow, but there are times I need to make a leap of faith in order to prove a connection and those gut feelings are almost always right. It’s one of the reasons I’m so good at what I do. And when those gut feelings happen, I feel like it’s not always just me…sometimes it feels like I got a little outside help. When my grandmother died… from the very beginning, I asked her for help. Maybe her spirit is not out there, but maybe it is…and she was *the* family historian, so if there is a heaven or an afterlife, who better to ask to find all those lost relatives, all those ancestors hiding out in history, nowhere to be found in provable records, and give them a little nudge, nudge, nudge to break down those brick walls?

But it’s not just her. Sometimes I feel like they can see me, my ancestors – that they know who I am and what I do, that because I’m trying to find them, some of them are out there in the universe trying to help me. The nudges, the tingling, the intuition…

Well, I had one of these genealogical revelation this past week - and it was huge. And the first person I wanted to share it with, because it was a brick wall branch of his family tree, was my father, who died almost 2 months ago. And he’s not here, and every time that fact hits me I’m devastated all over again, so I cried for two days straight. And then I thought – if there is a hereafter, who might have done some pushing and prodding on the other side? Someone who loved hearing about all my family history discoveries and also knew that this particular family had been a huge, frustrating dead end for me forever?

Augusta Lindemann Stutzmann and her husband, Rudolph Stutzmann, from their 1920 US passport application.

My great-great grandmother was Augusta Lindemann Stutzmann. Her parents were Caspar Lindemann and Eva Margarethe Voigt. She was born in 1874 in Stedtlingen, Saxe-Meiningen, Germany. Her husband, Rudolph Stutzmann, was a prominent figure in German-American Brooklyn/Queens society in the early 20th century and so I knew a lot about her from the time of her immigration to America in the 1890s but almost nothing from before. From her parents’ death records, I had names of her grandparents – Caspar Lindemann and Anna Marshal, and John Voigt and Elisabeth Fries. But Stedtlingen was a teeny tiny village outside of the city of Meiningen, and there were no German records to be found for the place.

The church in Stedtlingen, Germany.

Today, there are literally just over 500 residents in Stedtlingen. Augusta’s mother Eva was born in nearby Bettenhausen, but again, small village - just over 800 residents today - and no records. And so, I could trace Augusta, my most recent immigrant ancestor in terms of immigration year to her beginnings in America, and back two generations into Germany through American records, but no further. I have a website I use that is specifically for German records and it always turned up empty for both Stedtlingen and Bettenhausen. I checked all the time. Always unsuccessful.

Till now.

I was hired to do German research and so I renewed my subscription to this website, Archion.de, just about a month after my father died. I’ve shied away from doing research on my own family tree since his passing because it’s been too painful, but I had some luck with research for this client and I had just spent 20 euros on a month-long subscription so thought I should probably use it as much as possible in that time…and I felt this mental nudging. Nothing big, no lightning bolt from the sky…but there was an internal tugging that I couldn’t ignore. And it was telling me to check Archion for Stedtlingen records. So I did. And there was nothing there.

But Bettenhausen was.

And wouldn’t you know, as if she’d been sitting there this whole time twiddling her thumbs waiting for me, Eva Margarethe Voigt was there in her 1844 birth record with her parents, who were not in fact John and Elisabeth as I thought all these years, but Michael Gottlieb Bernhard Voigt and Anna Maria Fries.

Hi, 4x great-grandparents. I’ve been searching for you for so long. It’s so nice to finally meet you.

PS Thanks, Dad. I know it was you. I miss you so much it hurts.

Websites I used in this research:
www.archion.de

Untitled Genealogy Post 10.28.20

It’s been three weeks since my father died.

My mother died 20 years ago and though I still have bad days over losing her, two decades had dulled the pain enough that I forgot how sharp it feels in your gut, till I lost my father.

In a seemingly complete zig zag of emotion, which describes pretty much all my waking hours lately, I will say - we’ve been lucky. And by we, I mean all of us.

Nowadays, anyone born in the late 20th or 21st century in the Western world has been lucky when it comes to death. Death is a fact of life, but our experience with it has been minimized, compared to our ancestors, for whom death and loss were basically a way of life. I went 20 years without experiencing a traumatic loss. And it was another 20 years before I experienced that again. Some people go 50, 60 years without experiencing a close or devastating loss of a loved one.

Meanwhile, just a few generations past and for many generations before them, all there was was death and loss. There were some families who said good-bye to loved ones as they boarded ships to cross the unknown ocean to live in an unknown land, and they never saw each other again. Parents who never saw their children again or ever met their grandchildren. There were no phones calls to make. There were no photographs to share. It wasn’t death, but it was loss, and it happened all the time.

And then I think of people like my great-great grandmother, Mary Ellen Horgan Gorry, who was married to my great-great grandfather Jimmy Gorry in 1890 and had four children - Joseph Francis in 1891, twins Ellen and Mary in 1893, and my great grandfather Elmer Anthony in 1896. But Ellen and Mary died as infants in 1893, Jimmy died of tuberculosis after a 2 month illness in 1897, only 27 years old, and less than a year later, 7 year old Joseph died as well - Mary had loss three children and become a widow, all by the age of 25. Her story is not atypical. Death is a part of life, but it was more visible and pervasive back then. Mary herself went on to live to be 82, and she spent the last three years of her life sharing a home with her great-grandson, my dad, who called her More Grandma.

More Grandma with her grandsons Gerard, left, and Elmer, right. Circa 1939.

We have photographs and videos of our lost loved ones to help us remember them. We know how to write, and can write down our thoughts and memories for future generations. We have airplanes and cars that can transport us to be together in times of loss and grief - my brother in California was able to travel to New York to be with family the very same day my father died.

Yes, in a lot of ways we are lucky nowadays. But I wonder if past generations’ familiarity with death made it easier for our ancestors. If death is lurking around every corner and is expected and constant, do you feel the loss of loved ones as deep? If you don’t have photos to look at, then do you have anything to cry over every day? When infant mortality is so high, do you mourn the many you lose or do you celebrate the ones who lived? When disease is rampant, are you grateful your child was spared, even if your husband and parents were not? Does the constant realization of the fragility of life make you appreciate people more while they’re still in it?

Maybe it is past generations, and not us, who were actually the lucky ones…

I don’t know the point of this post. All I know is that the hole in my heart that has been there for 20 years is now twice as big.

Life ends, and life goes on: a tribute to my father

My father died suddenly last night.

As a genealogist, I am immersed constantly in the circle of life - wading through death records, obituaries, and wills and visiting cemeteries are all a normal part of a day’s work. And it’s very easy to forget that these documents, so valuable to family historians, belong to a person who lived - and who died. A person who worked. A person who danced. A person who laughed. A person who loved. A person who had a family - a family who, when that person died, whether old or young or tragically or suddenly or after a long illness - grieved.

Every now and then I am brought back to that reality - there are documents that record deaths so sad or tragic that I remember, this was a person. They lived, and now they are gone. For me, genealogy is more than tracing family trees - it’s paying tribute to those lives lived, no matter how long or short, no matter how well or not. My job is to find people - and to see them and acknowledge, I know you were here.

I have a lot of my dad in me. He was an avid reader and a history buff. He was a world traveler. He enjoyed a good beer. He loved movies and television and the media (he spent almost 50 years working in the television industry - he even won an Emmy.) He loved his family. He passed all these loves along to me. He saw my love of family history and developed his own interest in it, researching his side of the family and giving me a starting point from which to carry on. He’s one of the only people who would listen to me gush about my latest family tree discovery not only without his eyes glazing over but with actual interest. He’s one of the only people I ever met who loved cemeteries as much as I do.

He was my biggest supporter - I’m a writer and he knew I had more stories in my head and he always encouraged me to write them down and get them out. I went through some rough patches when I was younger and he was always there, no judgment and no questions asked.

Neither of us was big on talking about our feelings but we bonded over genealogy. And watching football together, even though were rooted for different teams - he taught me to love the game. For better or for worse, my kids are Jets fans because of him and every Sunday they would cheer J-E-T-S Jets, Jets, Jets! for their Pop Pop, even though we don’t live with him anymore.

I’m grateful my children knew him and were as close to their Pop Pop as they were, even though we moved away 3 years ago. We lived in the downstairs apartment of his house until my youngest was a year and a half, and I loved that my kids got to see him every day. I loved the symmetry that my children spent their first years in their grandparents’ house, just as my father spent his first years living with his parents in the same house as his grandparents (and great-grandmother).

Life ends, and life goes on. It always does. But today my heart hurts. And I hope in 100 years when future generations in my family are working on our family tree and come across a death record - maybe my dad’s - they will remember that it belonged to a person. A person who worked. A person who danced. A person who laughed. A person who loved. A person who had a family - a family who, when that person died, grieved.

Love you, Dad, bigger than the universe <3

Timothy James Gorry
1952-2020

City of Dreams

Finally, it’s done!

It took me over three years but I finally finished City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York by Tyler Anbinder. Not because it wasn’t interesting - on the contrary, it was an amazing read. But in my defense, the book (not including the appendices and end notes) was 550+ pages, we moved to a different state, I’m raising two young kids, working a full-time job and two freelance gigs…my 13-year-old self would roll her eyes and look at me in disdain as she devoured a second or third book in a day BUT I’m proud to have found any time to read any book in the last decade and this one was well-worth the time it took to finish.

I highly recommend this book for anybody with immigrant ancestors, whether or not they lived in or came through New York - and that’s pretty much all Americans. If you’re a history buff, or a Big Apple-phile, or you love the musical Hamilton (he gets a pretty big shout-out early-on in the read) or you’re interested in learning some context for what life was like for your New York immigrant ancestors, whether they were colonial immigrants or arrived in the last 30 years, this is an interesting, informative read. It’s dense, packed full of data and details, but not overwhelming to get through (unless you have a job and a family and have recently moved and have zero free time). The one thing I would criticize is that at the end, the author gets a little political. Even though I personally agree with his critique of recent politics regarding immigration, I think it’s a disservice to his argument that immigration has always been a point of contention, that the rejection and acceptance of immigrant groups ebbs and flows, that the contributions of immigrants over the life of New York City to the job market, real estate market, as consumers, as manufacturers, in politics and in innovation. Tyler Anbinder is better served when he points these things out throughout his book and explicitly at the end - there are consistent threads that run through 400 years of immigration history and its effects on and reception by American society. Whatever your beliefs and thoughts on immigration, legal or otherwise, there is a lot of food for thought in this book. And for the rest of us, who are just history and genealogy nerds, this is a book I believe I’ll go back to again and again to help contextualize the dates and places for the immigration of different ancestors - why they came and what it was like while they were here.

Slowly making my way through Tyler Anbinder’s book City of Dreams…well worth the three-plus years it took to finish!

Seven Mistakes to Avoid When Researching Your Family Tree

These are Common Errors to Avoid When Doing Research on Your Family History

This is a transcription of a recorded podcast. If you want to hear the podcast, just click Play on the player above.

I was telling him about all this great info that Mary had found regarding my family tree, and he was so excited to hear this information, he started telling me these stories. When we got home, he didn't want to go to bed, even though it was late at night. We ended up just opening up a bottle of whiskey and talked until about, gosh was, like, 2-3 in the morning.

Hello, and welcome to the Heritage Guru podcast. Helping you discover your family's history. Hello and welcome. This is Sam. I'm the host up, Mary, my wife is the genealogist in this family. She actually got me into genealogy. I had no clue about genealogy, well, very little clue about genealogy before we met. Before that, I had done a little bit of genealogy, family history research, back in 1995. Somewhere about there, I lived in New York. I went to the archives in New York City on Varick Street, I think it was, and before that, I went to Ellis Island. For some reason, I thought there were records there, but there weren't. When I got there, one of the guards, or the security people there said, Oh, no, they're not here. They're they're kept in downtown Manhattan. So you know, I made another trip. Another day or, might have been several months later. I don't remember exactly, but I went there and I tried to find some info. I didn't have much luck, and then I just kind of left it at that. But it is interesting when I hear Mary talk about genealogy, I got into it. So let's jump right in.

Number one. You copy someone else's work. In other words, you have no documentation. You may have some erroneous info from this example from the Internet, so ancestry dot com is a great resource. They tout these green leaves that if you get a hit on someone that's in your family tree, but that's not always accurate unless you have that documentation. It's not a guarantee that that is a person in your family tree Number two. You don't want to trust the transcription. I mentioned this in the other episode, but you want to trust the actual document. Someone copied the info from the original document that they may have written something down that they didn't actually think was important or there may have misspelled something or maybe had bad handwriting. So that's why you need the actual document and don't trust the transcription. Number three. You keep discoveries to yourself so we trace our trees for our families, but you don't share the information with your siblings or aunts or mom or dad or even our kids. So how are they gonna know about their family if you don't share that information? And the other thing also, that can be a good bonding experience. So, for example, last year my dad came to visit. He lives out of out of the country. He lives abroad. And he came to visit last April and I picked him up from the airport. It was late at night. It would have been about by the time we got home. Must have been about 12 12 30 I don't know. And then we ended up just ah, you know, on the way back to the house from the airport, we were I was telling him about all this great info that Mary and fan regarding my family tree, and he was so excited to hear that this information he started telling me these stories that when we got home, he didn't want to go to bed. Even though it's late at night, we ended up just opening up a bottle of whiskey and talk until about, Ah, gosh was, like 2-3 in the morning and then But it was such a was a nice bonding experience and got to hear all these stories and I wrote them down and I still have them. And, um so, yeah, you know, it could be a nice bonding experience when I get information. Like to share it with my Aunt Hilda and my cousin Judy there, the genealogists in my family I mean, they're not did not genealogists per se, but they like to research our family history. So it's a nice It's a nice little thing. It gives you an excuse to call your family number four. You get discouraged. Genealogy is hard. You know, I don't blame people for wanting to quit their to call it quits, but a lot of times records aren't available. Handwriting can be tough to read. You hit a brick wall. Oftentimes, government agencies take forever to send a birth certificate, for example, you know, sometimes some some walls may not be may not be able to surmount them. Some information. Family treat may not be solved, but it takes patience, and it takes time. So keep searching, you'll find. Hopefully you'll find something great, Grandma Harriet’s history. Number five. You only use ancestry dot com now ancestry dot com can be a great resource for finding information about your family. History makes family history more accessible, but it's not the end all be all there. Still, tons of records and documents that still haven't been are archived. Take a walk in a cemetery or a library, go to conferences and pow-wow with other people who do family research, family history research, for instance. We're going to the New York State Family History Conference, and that's in September. So we're looking forward to that, and we'll get the hob nob with other folks that into, ah, genealogy and researching family trees. And also these these shows about genealogy like Who do you think you are? They'll have ah, guest on, for example, like Matthew Broderick and I love that show by the way. Who doesn't love Matthew Broderick? Such an adorable guy. But ah, such a likable guy, the genealogists. You know, they go to different, Ah, different countries and look at archives and churches and the look at old newspapers and government agencies across across the seas. So you know, it's it's you can't just rely on ancestry dot com Number six. You forget your history. You have to put our families into context. So put an ancestor into a time and place what was going on exactly. So it helps you understand things like wine answers. White ancestor had an occupation, so I had an ancestor that was a Sicilian and he was a fisherman. And why was he a fisherman? Because he lived on an island. Yeah, So putting yourself in a time and place can give you information as to why a family migrated or why they were certain religion, or whether some, whether or not someone served in the military and why Mother had three kids and they died in only two years. So, for example, like the Spanish influenza in the 1917 to 1919 people's lives were cut short. Families were mowed down by by this terrible, terrible pandemic. So again, putting yourself in a certain time certain epoch can give you a lot of information as to why Answer stir certain answers has made decisions. And number seven you think you're finished. Family history research, my friend, is never done. There may be lows, but you'll uncover people in places that you never dreamed of. You might find a cousin or an aunt or I'm sorry. Say Aunt. Like Long Island, I'm originally from Long Island, New York. So we say and I don't know why, but the other people I know across the country, they say, Aunt So, uh, you know, you you'll find stories that you may be never could have imagined. Um, and it gives, Like I mentioned before, it gives you an excuse to call relatives and let them know, Um, what you found the information you found. You can bond and it opens up avenues And, ah, you know, you get a wonder sense of wonder when you discover things about yourself and about your family history and it opens branches. You're not sure where to find this info. If you need help, you can always contact Mary to the website Heritage and vino dot com or heritage guru dot com. And just contact us through the contact form on, and that's about it. If you have any questions or or anything, just let us know any comments, Please share. Please common and please subscribe. Thanks so much, and I hope to see you soon.

Seven Tips to Help You Research Your Family Tree- Podcast #01

Tips to Help Hurdle Brick Walls in My Family Tree Research

Keep Track of Your Sources

You know your Great Grandma Harriet’s baptismal date, but, how did you get that info? Without the source, you can’t check what church she was baptized in, who here sponsors were. This can be a great resource for finding other names in your family tree.

Check Someone Else’s Source

If you got information about an ancestor from a sibling or cousin, where did they get that info from? They may be looking at a transcription and not an actual document. Transcriptions can have mistakes because the person that took the information from the document may have misspelled the ancestor’s name, for instance. Or they didn’t take all the info down because they thought it wasn’t relevant.

Use Primary and Secondary Sources

If you have a transcription, try to find the actual record. If you’re using a compiled family history, try to find the actual sources they used. Reason being, the more times information is copied, the further away you get from the actual primary and secondary information. There’s more of a chance for errors to be made and passed along.

Learn a New Language

You don’t have to become fluent in German, but, whatever countries your family originated in, whatever languages they spoke, learn to recognize important genealogical words in that language. Words like, born, baptized, married, died, buried, parents, godparents, from (where they lived), etc. If you know these keywords, it will be a great tool for deciphering family records more easily.

Keep a Cheat Sheet Handy

Keep a list of the above mentioned keywords nearby. If you’re doing online family research, keep your cheat sheet next to your computer. You might need to go to a cemetery to find an ancestor’s headstone. It won’t help if you leave your cheat sheet at home. Take it with you!

Look at Other Branches of Your Family Tree

It may be tempting to focus on your direct lineage, but, following sibling branches can be extremely helpful in connecting to cousins, close or distant. These can be rewarding discoveries, which can also yield a wealth of family history information. If you’ve been hitting a brick wall, sometimes the information you’re looking for that’s missing on your direct ancestor’s documents can be found on the documents for one of their siblings. This is a good way of overcoming genealogical brick walls.

Take Breaks

Family history research can be exhausting. It can be easy to call it quits. It’s good to walk away for a few hours, days, or even months. Doing so helps clear your mind and come back to genealogy with fresh eyes. Researching your family tree is not easy. If you want to hire a genealogist, please consider Mary to help discover your ancestors. Contact her here or order today to get started.

Tips for Discovering Your Family Tree

Cemetery Sunday: St. Paul's United Church of Christ in Trexlertown, PA - looking at German headstones

So before I begin talking about the German headstones in this cemetery, I want to make a special note of a fairly new grave marker that was placed on the grave site of Joseph Schwalm, who was “accidentally killed in the construction of the original church and the first one to be buried in this graveyard.”

Joseph Schwalm headstone - first person to be buried in the St. Paul’s cemetery, accidentally killed in the construction of the original church.

Now, let’s talk about all the headstones in this cemetery that are in German. The Lehigh Valley was populated by German immigrants - “Pennsylvania Dutch” doesn’t just refer to the Amish and Mennonites - although there are many who still live in the vicinity - it refers to all those early German settlers. German customs and food are easy to find in this area, which makes me feel very at home because even though everything about me screams Irish, at heart I relate mostly to my German heritage. The German history of this area is pervasive, and so it shouldn’t be surprising that walking into a cemetery in eastern Pennsylvania feels like walking into a cemetery in Germany - headstone after headstone is etched in German, not English. And so today we’re going to talk about the Schaffers - John Jacob Schaffer was born April 10, 1799 and died March 19, 1878. I found him in the 1860 census living in Fogelsville, just north of Trexlertown, with his daughters Harriet and Martha - his occupation is listed as yeoman. In 1870, he was living in Trexlertown with Harriet.

John Jacob Schaffer, 1799-1878.

There are other Schaffers there as well. Justina Schaffer, maiden name Haack, wife of Michael Schaffer, was born in 1735 and died in 1832. It looks like she was an immigrant from Germany - her and Michael’s children were baptized at Christ Church in Berks County in the 1760s.

In these cases, it’s helpful to be familiar with family history words in a different language. You don’t have to be fluent, but if you know that “geboren” means born, “ehefrau” means wife, “jahr” means year, and so on, it makes it easier to pick out the “important” details on a document…or headstone. You don’t even have to memorize these words. By now, I pretty much know these by heart, but I also have my handy dandy cheat sheet that I use for other words.

I also want to make note of this headstone, which was like too many that I came across in this cemetery and too many that I come across any time I visit any cemetery - here we have S. H. Lafayette Hausman, son of Solomon and Elizabeth Hausman, born May 20, 1841, died May 17, 1842, two days short of his first birthday. High child mortality rates were just a fact of life but they always hit me hard, especially now that I’m a mother and I think of what it would have been like to try to care for my children back then…it’s hard enough keeping them alive some days in this day and age! And these children, who die in between censuses, who leave no “paper trail” behind, who have no descendants, are the most likely family members to be lost and forgotten, so I like to make a point to visit their graves and tell them that they are not lost, they are not forgotten. Apparently Solomon and Elizabeth are buried in St. Paul’s, too - sadly, it appears the baby they lost was their only child.

S. H. Lafayette Hausman, 1841-1842

Cemetery Sunday: St. Paul's United Church of Christ, Trexlertown, PA, Part Two

Last week I talked about my family visit to the churchyard cemetery at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ and the several Revolutionary War veterans we found buried there. Today, I’m going to talk about the Civil War veteran I came across. Because he lived in the 1800s, I was able to find more records on him and fill in the gaps in his life.

Nathan Muthard, Civil War Veteran

The headstone I found was for Nathan Muthard, who served as a private in Company B, 176th Regiment of the Pennsylvania Infantry. He was born in 1827 and died in 1898. This was according to his headstone.

Nathan Muthard, Civil War Veteran

So according to records I found on Ancestry.com, Nathan enlisted in Lehigh County on October 16, 1862 at age 36, which, to be honest, is a little on the older side to enlist in the military. He mustered in Philadelphia on November 7, 1862. Knowing his unit, we can look up where he might have served during the war - the 176th regiment went down to Washington, D.C. and then Suffolk, Virginia. They served there until the end of `1862, then moved to New Borne, North Carolina; Port Royal Harbor, South Carolina; St. Helena Island, Beaufort, and Hilton Head, all in South Carolina, until July, 1863. They were ordered home and mustered out August 19, 1863. The regiment lost no one to battle, but 44 men to disease.

We can also find out more not just about Nathan’s military service, but about his life. Things got a little confusing at first because there is one Nathan Muthard in the area but I finally found him in the 1880 census, age 52, with his wife Susan, 56, his son Leon, 13, and daughter Aquilla, 10. They are living in Upper Macungie, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where Nathan made a living as a farmer. According to that census, he was born in Pennsylvania. Once you have other names to anchor the person you’re looking for - so we know the Nathan we’re looking for has a wife Susan and children named Leon and Aquilla - it makes it easier to find other records that are correct. So, the 1870 census, 10 years earlier, finds the family in Upper Macungie, with two older daughters - Eliza, born about 1859, and Louisa, born about 1863. So Eliza and Louisa were both born before Nathan went away to war - in fact, Louisa was probably an infant when he left, or Susan may have still been pregnant with her. Leon and Aquilla were both born after he came back.

In older time periods, when people either didn’t want to or couldn’t space out their children further, you often have children born one year after the other. A husband going away to war can explain a 3 year gap between children, like the gap between Louisa (1863) and Leon (1866). The birth and death of a young child can also explain a larger gap, like the one between Eliza (1859) and Louisa (1863). A search turned up an entry for Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church in Maxatawny, Berks County, Pennsylvania, not far from where Nathan and Susan lived in Upper Macungie . It reads: “John Alfred & Henry Peter Muthart aged 15 days/born Mar. 2 1862 died (Mar.) 17 1862/Parents Nathan Muthart and Susan born Kuntz/Sponsors Alphrin Steinberger and Betsie Manoe Muthart and Kittie/Sickness The one started to complain on Thursday and the other on Saturday died Monday at 9.30 from convulsions.”

So Nathan and Susan (who we now know had the maiden name Kuntz) had twins in between Eliza and Louisa, who died as infants. As twins have a tendency to be born earlier and smaller, I often come across many who died as infants, either one or both. Records from Zion Church also show that daughter Eliza was baptized Eliza Amanda on July 24, 1859, born June 27.

We can also find Nathan, pre-Civil war, in the 1850 census, with his wife, called Susanna, and a son, Benjamin, born about 1846. And again, in 1860, where Nathan’s occupation is described as miner - so it appears he may have been a jack of all trades, career-wise. In 1860, we see Eliza for the first time as well as an older brother, Charles, born about 1850. Benjamin is actually living with the family listed right above them, so either next door, or the same farm - the name of the family is Kuhns. Mathias Kuhns is 31, and based on our knowledge that Susan’s maiden name was Kuntz, we might make a guess that Mathias is her brother, and her son Benjamin is living with (and probably working for) his uncle>

The final record I have for Nathan is the 1890 Civil War Veterans Schedule, which is a valuable document if the Civil War veteran in your family was still alive at that point - especially in light of the loss of the 1890 U.S. Census. Nathan was living in Wescosville, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania at that point.

Nathan Muthard died December 18, 1898. Interestingly, even though he was born in Pennsylvania, his headstone is in German. His gravesite told us when he was born, when he died, and that he served in the Civil War. Those were good enough clues for us to learn about the life he led and the family he built in those years in between.

Websites I used in this research:
Ancestry.com
Civil War Archive

Cemetery Sunday: St. Paul's United Church of Christ, Trexlertown, PA, Part One

About six weeks ago, back when people were still allowed to travel, my father and stepmother came to visit and as one is wont to do when relatives come to visit, we went to a cemetery.

Wait….you, you DON’T do that when your family comes to visit???

I love cemeteries

I love cemeteries. And I get that from my dad. So when he saw this old churchyard cemetery, he wanted to stop in. I pass by that cemetery all the time but had never actually visited, so I thought, yeah, why not? Some families do picnics and water parks together, some visit the dead.

St. Paul’s United Church of Christ

Saint Paul’s United Church of Christ, Trexlertown, PA

The church is St. Paul’s United Church of Christ. The church itself is beautiful and historic looking, with a bell tower, big stained glass windows, and stonework. According to its website, the original church was erected in 1874 and the present building dedicated in 1922. It originally housed a Reformed and Lutheran congregation, which is reflected in the cemetery, in which there are not only many headstones with German names, but many headstones in which entire inscriptions are in German. There is a newer section but many of the graves have crooked, broken, faded headstones and date back 100, even almost 200 years.

Veteran Grave Sites

There is a lot to share about this cemetery, so I think for this post I’ll focus on the Revolutionary War veteran grave sites, and save the Civil War vetern and German genealogy for my next posts. As you can see, there were small American flags on many of the graves. As you probably know, this is an honor and designation left at the graves of war veterans. We saw some World War vets and a Vietnam vet in the newer section, but the very first flag we walked up to was for a Revolutionary War veteran. There were more than a few—that’s how old this cemetery is. It was awe-inspiring. I think part of what I love about cemeteries as they are tangible pieces of history. You can actually run your fingers over words that were chiseled in the past. You can touch a stone that was touched by a grieving family member hundreds of years ago. It’s amazing and humbling at the same time.

Revolutionary War Veterans

Jeremiah Schmidt headstone

Jeremiah Schmidt was a private with the 6 Company 1st Battalion of the Pennsylvania Militia. He was born May 5, 1755 and died November 27, 1810. He would have been only 21 years old when the Revolutionary War broke out. It is hard to tell, but his original headstone is inscribed in German.

Gottfried Diefenderfer was born about 1730. He appears to have been an immigrant, as his headstone calls him a “pioneer” in 1750. He would have been in his mid-40s already when the Revolutionary War of his adopted country broke out. He served in the Northampton County Militia, the 1st Pennsylvania Rifle Regiment, and was a Frontier Ranger. He was also a founding member of St. Paul’s. He died in 1806. According to his will, he left much of his estate to his wife, Anna Margrate, and the rest to his children. One of his sons was Jacob, who is buried right next to him, and was also a veteran of the American Revolution. Born March 16, 1763, he would have been only 13 when the war started. He served as a private in 8 Company 5th Battalion of the Pennsylvania Militia in 1782, when he would have been 19 years old. He died September 29, 1837.

Jacob Diefenderfer headstone

Gottfried Diefenderfer’s grave

Jacob Diefenderfer’s grave

I was able to find Jacob in the 1820 and 1830 census records, living in Macungie, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. I found a burial record for Jacob’s son, Jonathan, born October 17, 1789 and died in 1874. Jonathan, as it turns out, is a third generation war veteran, serving in the War of 1812.

The inscriptions on these headstones are just names and dates - these men served their country; and for many men like Gottfried, it wasn’t even the country of their birth. And while their were many who made the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefield, many others like Gottfried and Jacob Diefenderfer and Jeremiah Schmidt, went on to have families, work hard, build lives before passing on.

Websites I used in this research:
Ancestry.com
St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, Trexlertown

Peter Casey, age 24, died of influenza November 5, 1918—when your family crosses paths with world history

Perhaps the middle of an impending coronavirus pandemic is not the most appropriate time for a post about the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918…or, you know, maybe it is!

In the course of your family history research, you may run into death dates of 1918 and 1919 over and over…and over again. And you might find that these are not people dying in the waning years of their lives, but people who are young, who should be thriving, who should be in the robust, life-building years of their lives.

Say hello to the Spanish Influenza pandemic.

The Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918-1919

The 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history. It was a world-wide, global pandemic during the years 1918-1919. Experts estimate that the one-third of the world’s population at that time were infected…or 500 million people. 50 million people died from it.

50 million…that’s a 50 followed by six zeros!

While people still die from the flu today, the Spanish flu pandemic was characterized by higher mortality rates than usual in young children, seemingly healthy 20-40 year olds, and the elderly. The Spanish flu killed more soldiers during World War I than any one battle.

1918-1919: Killer Years

In the course of researching my own family tree and doing family history research for clients, there are many occasions where a young, seemingly vibrant family member just up and dies. And then I look at the year on their tombstone, the death index, the obituary, and if it’s 1918 or 1919, there’s a pretty good chance I know why.

My great-grandmother, Ellen Marie Casey Cronin, had a younger brother, Peter, born in 1895 in Brooklyn. I can see him as a (probably) rambunctious 5 year old in the 1900 census, and 10 years later as a 16 year old helping his father out with the family business. Peter registered for the draft for World War I and asked for an exemption to help support his parents. He was 22.

One year later, he was dead.

Peter Casey’s cause of death

I always knew my great-grandmother’s brother had died in 1918. He was in the New York death index, his name and dates were on the family headstone…but I could only assume that he was one of the millions of young, healthy people cut down in the prime of their lives by the Spanish flu.

Until yesterday.

Ancestry.com posted indexes - but very detailed indexes - to death certificates from 1862-1948. Peter died November 5, 1918, and right there, under cause of death was “bronchopneumonia, (brought on by) influenza”.

Influenza.

Peter was only 24 years old.

I have others on my tree that I suspect but still can’t prove were victims of the flu - my 1st cousin 4x removed, Edward Silberberg, who was only 16 years old when he died on October 27, 1918, or my 1st cousin 2 x removed, Julia Flannery, who was only 15 years old when she died December 21, 1918. That’s mostly due to their ages that I suspect flu - my great-great grandfather, also Peter Casey (Peter’s father), died in 1919 and it was not due to influenza—at 54, he also was outside the victim demographic.

My heart breaks for these young lives lost, cut down before they could make a significant mark on this world. But disease is a part of this world. Natural disasters are a part of this world. Accidents are a part of this world. And these deaths are a poignant reminder of how fragile life is.

Websites I used for this research:
Centers for Disease Control
Ancestry.com

Direct - To - Consumer DNA Testing Kits: The Lowdown

Genealogy is a rewarding but time-consuming pursuit.  Many people have an interest in learning more about their family origin but are discouraged by the many hours it takes to research their genealogical history themselves. So they turn to professional researchers like me to uncover family tree information going back many generations. I use a wide variety of resources including legal records on birth, marriage and death. I also search military records, passenger manifestos, newspapers, photo archives, and more to provide a thorough family history to my clients. But for genealogy enthusiasts seeking information beyond their family tree—indeed beyond recorded history—the current crop of direct-to-consumer DNA testing services offers some interesting opportunities.

With millions of DNA samples at their disposal—one popular service has a proprietary database of some 15 million collected samples, as well as access to millions more housed in public databases—DNA testing services can offer unparalleled information on your ethnicity and geographical origins. And because they use digitally analyzed and catalogued information, they can do it with remarkable speed! You should note, however, that the lion’s share of DNA data they collect comes from the Western Hemisphere—and more specifically Europe. Some ethnic groups are under-represented in their samples, so if you are of Asian or Native American descent, you may be disappointed in the information you receive. There is also a socio-economic bias inherent in the information they collect, since samples come largely from people who have the disposable income to seek DNA testing in the first place.

Most notably, DNA analysis services provide insights into your biological and health makeup that a family tree genealogist typically doesn’t. If you are interested in learning whether you carry a marker for a specific health risk, DNA services are your best bet. On the other hand, these services are direct in their disclaimers that you should not make health decisions based on the information they provide.

Some DNA services analyze the physical traits associated with various genes, which may be of interest to you. These services can provide you with an estimate of how likely you are to conform to those traits. These traits run the gamut from things you’d readily notice (like a cleft chin or unibrow) to more idiosyncratic traits like an aversion to cilantro or sensitivity to sweetness.

Many DNA services offer updates to their clients, based on new analysis they perform as their sample databases grow. If you buy a subscription for ongoing service (as opposed to ordering a one-time report) your genetic picture can grow clearer and more detailed as time goes on.

With so much information available to you based on a simple saliva test, you may be wondering what DNA testing can’t do. DNA testing is strictly scientific, by definition. DNA testing services don’t provide the backstory so many genealogy enthusiasts hunger for. Did your great-great-grandmother endure a natural disaster like an earthquake or hurricane? Did her town suffer through a cholera epidemic? Was she unusual for being a working woman during her time? What kind of job was she likely to hold in her part of the world? Someone who has a passion for history (like me!) can provide that kind of rich color and more.

While some DNA testing services offer a lot of options—some will even analyze your mixed breed dog’s DNA to determine its purebred origins!—those options are still finite. When you hire me, your report is entirely customizable. Are you a musician interested in finding out whether your ancestors were similarly gifted? I can search orchestra rosters, public notices of concerts in your family’s hometown, and other obscure resources to satisfy your curiosity.

While the information you get from DNA testing services is highly personalized (that’s what DNA provides—a very specific, scientific description that belongs only to you), like most large companies, they rarely provide personal service. I am delighted to take your phone calls, questions and special requests—anything to enrich your experience of your family’s story.