Treasure Chest Thursday - What one maiden name can lead you to

Having recently come upon the maiden name of my ancestor Margaret Robitzer, I've been engaged in discovering her roots in the town of Uttwiller (aka Ottweiler), Alsace-Lorraine, France. It's amazing how knowing that one name has led to so many new discoveries. To give you an idea, here's a screenshot of my family tree at Tribalpages.com, showing what I knew about Margaret before her maiden name was confirmed.

Here's a screenshot of it now, with all the info I've found so far.

This is why I love genealogy. No brick wall is permanent, and amazing discoveries could be waiting for you just behind the next document you find.

Sunday's Obituary - John Frederick Beilstein

A few months ago, I wrote about the most bizarre and tragic family history story I've ever discovered in my family - the story of Bertha Beilstein. At the time, I went through newspapers on Ancestry. and Newspaper Archive, and various websites found through Google searches and pulled together over 70 different articles on the story. Somehow, in all that searching, I was not able to find a single obituary for her father, John Frederick Beilstein, whose death was the trigger (no pun intended) for the whole series of events. Then recently, I saw an ad for Newspapers.com, a site I haven't previously subscribed to, saying they were offering a discount price of $8 a month. I thought, I can spend 8 bucks to take a peek in a new database. So I did.

The first thing I found? John Frederick's obituary.

There was some new information in this that I haven't seen anywhere else. It says he came to the US at the age of 5 with his father Philip Beilstein (a name I haven't seen anywhere else yet) and that his wife Mary was in fact his cousin (something I've long suspected). It also says he learned the butchering trade from his father, which means that my ancestor Jacob Beilstein (John Frederick's brother-in-law and apprentice) owed his profession to Philip. Interesting side note - the obituary gives Nicholas Voegtly's last name as Beckley in the list of survivors, but spells it correctly when it gives the name of the cemetery where John Frederick was buried (Voegtly cemetery).

It just goes to show you, you really do need to fish in all ponds if you really want to find all the information you can about your ancestors. Ancestry, FamilySearch, Newspapers.com, and many other sites all exist separately for a reason - they may share some record sets, but they each have some unique records that no one else does, and you never know which pond may have that one document that you're looking for.

Going Professional

 

When I was a student at BYU back in 2000, I decided I wanted to major in genealogy. My plan was to graduate with a bachelor's in family history and genealogy, then set up shop as a professional researcher. A conversation I had with one of my professors changed my mind, however. He said genealogy was a great career so long as the economy was doing well. If things went south, people's interest in researching their ancestors dried up quickly, he said. So with two semesters left until graduation, I changed my major, and used my genealogy skills and knowledge solely for my own personal research.

The desire to work as a genealogy professional never left me, though. It was always in the back of my mind, and every once in a while I'd toy around with the question "what if I actually did it?" But the demands of providing for a family seemed to be too much to risk changing careers, even to something that I loved as much as I love genealogy.

Then a couple years ago, I heard about the ProGren program. I was very interested, and soon signed up for ProGen9. It was a year and a half commitment, and really stretched me as a genealogist and in my knowledge (or lack thereof) of running my own business. But I realized that I really, really wanted to be a professional genealogist. I talked things over with my wife, and with her full support, we met with our accountant and set about creating my very own genealogy business.

I am happy to announce that I am, as of now, in business as a professional genealogist! My business name is The Generations Welder, because to me, no generation is an island. We are all linked to the generations that came before us, whether we know it or not. My goal as a genealogy professional is to help people discover those links to their family's past, and hopefully strengthen that sense of connection to their forebears.

You can visit me at my website, www.theGenerationsWelder.com, or on social media. I'm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Google+. I am really excited to use my skills and education to help people come to know and appreciate their ancestors.  If you're interested in starting a research project, contact me and I'll be happy to see what I can do for you.

Wedding Wednesday - Tina Leistiko and John Levick

Wedding photo of Tina (Joseph) Leistiko and John Levick

Among all the photos I've collected in my genealogy research, there are a few that I just love looking at again and again. They just stand out to me, either because of the people in them, the significance or provenance of that particular photo, or what I've learned as a result of that picture. The above photo, a picture taken for my great-great-grandaunt Tina (Joseph) Leistiko's wedding to her second husband John Levick, hits me on all three points.

1. People in the photo - Given that my middle name is Joseph, a name I share with my grandfather and passed down to one of my sons, I've felt a particular connection to my Joseph relatives. This was the first picture I was shown of my Joseph relatives (and the only I saw for many years), and I just love seeing them all together like this. You can see the resemblance between my great-great-grandfather Samuel Joseph (seated second from the right) and his brother Gottlieb Joseph (seated second from the left). This is also the only known picture of Marie Joseph, the little girl sitting on her father Elmer Joseph's lap. She was two years old in this picture, and died seven years later in a car accident. I also love the fact the my great-grandmother Augusta (Joseph) Staffen is in this picture, standing third from the right. She died when my grandpa was only 5, so we have very few pictures of her.

2. Significance or provenance of the photo - Unlike some families I know, my family doesn't really have any heirlooms. No rings or jewelry that belonged to a great-great-grandparent, no desks or chairs or armoires passed down, no family Bibles (though I should point out there are family Bibles out there, just none made it down my line). The one thing I do have that's been handed down to me are some family pictures and a few postcards. I was just recently given the original copy my grandpa owns of Tina and John's wedding picture, which makes it at 98 years old one of the very oldest pictures I have. As far as I know, this was my great-grandmother's own copy of the picture. And to think I now have something in my possession that was once hers, that she actually handled and looked at, is thrilling to me.

3. What I've learned as a result of the picture - This picture has been the instigator of many genealogical conversations with my parents and grandparents. We've talked about Augusta and her background, about her father and aunts and uncles, about her grandfather Ludwig Heinrich Joseph, seated in the middle of his two sons, and how large his hands are (I can't help but think he could easily palm a basketball). It even taught me something today, if indirectly. While looking at this picture again, I thought I'd go back to John and Tina's marriage record, which I found in FamilySearch's database of Montana county marriages. Looking through it, I noticed something I'd forgotten.

The witnesses for the marriage were written as Chas. Staffin and Augeta Staffin. These would be Charles Staffan, first husband of my great-grandmother Augusta, and Augusta herself. I only have one other record of Charles with Augusta, and that's their marriage record from 1910. Given that John and Tina were married in January 1918, and Charles died later that same year, this is likely the last record he appeared in before his death. Kind of a sobering thought. But in a way, I'm glad that the last time he appears in a record, it's with family.

Do you have any pictures that are as meaningful to you in your research? Comment below and let me know!

Getting to know Margaret Robitzer

Having recently discovered Margaret Robitzer's maiden name, I did exactly the same thing that has led me to so many other discoveries in recent years - I joined a mailing list. This time it was for Alsace-Lorraine, the area I suspected Margaret had come from. Searching Ancestry.com had led me to Margaret's death certificate from 1914, which gave me two additional bits of info - the names of her parents, Jacob Robitzer and Catherine (last name unknown), and her immigration record, showing she arrived in New York in 1852 aboard the ship Caspian. Armed with all this info, I asked the mailing list if they could help me get more info on Margaret's family.

They came through in SPADES.

Within a matter of hours, I had information on her parents (whose names were actually Johann Robitzer and Catherine Robitzer, and yes, they were related - first cousins), as well as several generations of her ancestors, all hailing from the town of Uttwiller in Bas-Rhin, Alsace-Lorraine, France. I couldn't believe it! The only hitch was, with all the info they were sending me, they didn't tell me exactly where the info came from. And being the stickler for details that I am, I had to find the source of all this goodness.

I went back to Google and started searching for Robitzer, Uttwiller, and Alsace-Lorraine. I eventually found my way to a site all in French (which I was able to translate thanks to my Chrome browser) that housed all kinds of records from the Bas-Rhin area! After poking around the site for a few minutes, I discovered census records from the 1830s-1880s, as well as digitized copies of the original civil birth, marriage, and death records covering decades, beautifully organized and easily searchable by year, with a huge index for everything. The scans were amazing, the handwriting was clear and legible, and because the town was so small (population about 250), there were usually only half a dozen births, marriages, or deaths any given year, so searching year after year after year was very easy. I have to say, this region is, in my opinion, the gold standard of genealogy record websites. Everyone needs to organize their documents in exactly this way.

So now, after a few days of searching these records, I've been able to put together the immediate family Margaret left behind when she left France in 1852. There are a lot of Robitzers and connected families in these records, so reassembling her family in Uttwiller (and probably in the surround villages as well) is going to take some time (which I don't mind at all!). Here's what I've put together so far.

Quick side note - some of the given names will be French and some German. I would assume that all the names would have been German originally, given that whenever their names are listed for them in the documents, the names are in their French forms, but when they signed their own names, they signed the German forms of the names. I haven't yet found showing the exact German forms of everyone's names, so for now I'll just use the French versions that I have found.

Johannes Robitzer, son of Philipp Jacob Robitzer and Barbara Lickel, married his first cousin Anne Catherine Robitzer, daughter of Johann Heinrich Robitzer and Margaretha Mühlheim in 1815. They eventually became the parents of 9 children, though two of them died in childhood, Anne Catherine at age 4 and Jean Michel at age 10. The surviving children were Jean, Jean Henry, Jacques, Catherine (named after her older sister, who died a year before she was born), Jean Michel (named after his older brother, who died three years before he was born), Margaret, and George. Johannes was listed as a day laborer when he and Anne Catherine got married in 1815, though by the birth of their first child he was listed as a farmer, so he seems to have established himself pretty quickly. His wife was the daughter of a teacher, though what he taught and where I don't yet know.

Johannes and Anne Catherine lost two children in 1826, Anne Catherine in August and Jean Michel just 3 months later. Because my ancestor Margaret wasn't born until 1831, she never got to meet these older siblings. Anne Catherine passed away in 1844, a few months shy of her 50th birthday, leaving Johannes to raise the four kids still at home by himself. From what I've seen so far, he never remarried. Margaret is not listed in the 1851 census, so I'm not sure where she was, as she didn't arrive in New York until 1852. The other children gradually moved out until only Michel was left (I'm not sure if it was the same house and Michel took over as head of the family, or if Johannes moved in with his son). I don't know if the other kids immigrated or stayed in the area, but I'm glad at least Michel was there for him. The last record I have of Johannes is the 1866 census, showing him at 81 years old living with his son Michel, Michel's wife Marie, and their son Michel.

It's kind of a somber thought, picturing Johannes with a large family that gradually gets smaller and smaller as children pass away, then his wife, then children move away until it's just him and third youngest child, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson. Hopefully some of his other kids either stayed nearby or at least kept in contact with him.

While I was reviewing all of this information for this blog post, I realized something. When my ancestor John Gibson died in 1914, his daughter Annie Condon was the informant for the information given on the death certificate. Where the certificate asks for parents' names, Annie said she didn't know. Also, it's interesting that she gave her father's birthplace as England, instead of Canada (where both she and her father were born). Annie was John's only daughter and second child, and she was born less than 10 years after John's parents had died. Yet, unless she purposely gave false information, she apparently didn't know these basic facts about her own father. The only reason for this that I know of is he didn't tell his kids about his family. I have to wonder why he didn't tell his kids about his family. Was there a falling out? Did something happen? I don't know if I'll ever know for sure.

Comparing that to Margaret's family, it seems obvious that she did the opposite. Her obituary states when she came over to America, and that she left from Alsace Lorraine. Her death certificate, with info given by her daughter Annie Clara McClelland, gives her parents' names (the father's name was slightly off, but pretty close coming from someone who had never met their own grandfather). She passed down at least some of her history to her children. Whatever drove her to leave her native land, she didn't leave her immediate posterity in the dark as to where she came from like John Gibson did.

This is a picture of Margaret, the only one I know of in existence. When I first received a copy of it, the information on the picture was all I knew of her. A few years later, I'd added a first name, but not much more. But now, I feel like I can look at this picture and say to her "I know you. Your name was Margaret Robitzer. You came from a big family of 9 kids. You lost your mom when you were only 13. You left home at 21 and never saw that family again. You married and had an ever bigger family of your own. And most of all, you told your children where you were from. You didn't leave the father and siblings back in France out of your story. And now that I know you and them, I will make sure that your story is never forgotten again."

Persistence Pays Off Again!

One of my brick walls for the last decade or so has been finding the maiden name of Margaret, my 4th-great-grandmother on my paternal grandmother's side. She was the wife of George Waechter, and was an immigrant from Germany, Prussia, or France (depending on the record you're looking at).

Just under three years ago, while researching my Beilstein side (the family George and Margaret's daughter Amelia married into), I found that George and Margaret had a daughter named Annie Clara Waechter who did a very remarkable thing - despite being born just 10 years after the end of the Civil War, she lived until 1967. In addition to having lived from the age of the telegraph and steam engine until the days of the space race and color television, she also did something that makes her one of my genealogical heroines - she filled out a Form SS-5 and applied for a Social Security Number. This is a fantastic thing because, unlike death certificates, which are usually completed by surviving spouses or children, the SS-5 was filled out by the applicant themselves. This means that the information on her parents' names, including the mother's maiden name, came directly from her. While this still leaves room for error (as it's not coming from her mother herself), this is about as close to the original source as I've been able find. So I filled out my FOIA request and included the requisite check of $27 (thank you SSA), and waited for a response.

And waited.

And waited.

After only six months, my check was finally cashed. So I waited a bit longer.

And waited.

And waited.

I went in and out of remembering that this request was still out there somewhere, and hoped against hope that the record might someday come. I tried looking up numbers to call or addresses to write to, but each time I made contact I was told to wait for them to get back to me. Which they never did.

So eventually I got busy with other things like having a third child, going back to school, and job hunting, and my quest for Margaret's maiden name got pushed aside. Until this past January when a blog post from The Legal Genealogist Judy Russell came along. She went over what you can expect to find in the SS-5 and gave some tips on how to obtain it.

I decided to ask Judy on Google+ if there wasn't something I could do to finally get my hands on that SS-5 without forking over another $27. She recommended I contact the public affairs office of my area's representative (senators are over too big an area, and the request might get lost) and have them lean on the SSA a little, which might get my request fulfilled. So I looked him up and did so. Within a couple hours I got a privacy release form, basically saying "tell us who you are, what you're looking for, and give us permission to go look for it for you". I was told that his office would be in touch with me in 30 days or less. So I set my calendar and started watching the mailbox.

Then yesterday, a miracle happened - the SS-5 arrived! I was almost too excited to open it, afraid that somehow that maiden name wouldn't be there. But it was!

I now have a document giving me the maiden name of my ancestor - Margaret Robitzer! Margaret is a special ancestor for me, as she is the source of my very own mitochondrial DNA, and that of my siblings and cousins from my mom's sister. One of my cousins on that side is pregnant with a baby girl right now, and that baby girl is the only person among my branch of Margaret's descendants who will receive that DNA and be capable of passing it on (no pressure, kiddo!). It's awesome to me - literally awe-some - to be able to trace that DNA from its most recent recipient in 2016 back to its earliest known source in 1830 to somewhere between France and Germany in the Robitzer family.

The moral of the story: never give up hope. Keep pushing for that record that you know is out there, and eventually it will find its way to you. No matter how thick that brick wall seems, a way through may just show up in your mailbox years after you'd given up on ever finding it.

Why I blog

There are many reasons to blog about your family history. I'd like to share my top five reasons why I do this blog.

5. Blogging about my research helps me track where I've looked, what I've found, and what I still need to look for. With so many ancestors in my tree, and so much data in my files, there's no way to remember every search I've made and every nugget I've found. Keeping up this blog helps me recall my biggest (and sometimes smallest) discoveries and when I made them.

4. The writing process helps me think about and analyze my findings. When you're in the middle of the research, you sometimes overlook an important clue, or forget to look for a certain record. Writing out the story of an ancestor or documenting my research on a specific topic helps me take a bird's eye view to the subject. I can then see where I still need to fill some gaps, look for more data, or wrap up that particular search and move on to the next one.

3. Blogging is basically laying cousin bait, as Lisa Louise Cooke puts it. Writing a blog puts my family history information out on Google for everyone in the world to see. Someone researching the same family lines or geographic locations can find my blog, and get in touch with me. This has happened lots of times. I've been contacted by people with information on Montana orphanages, talked to a relative of my great-great-grandfather Samuel Joseph's third wife Julianna Kublick, and connected with a descendant of my great-grandfather Jim Harris's last wife Ruth Young. I never would have found them, nor they me, without my blog.

2. Writing a blog is a fun and (hopefully) entertaining way to share my family's history with my non-genealogist family. A cousin of mine once told me he read a blog post I posted a link to on Facebook, and ended up spending the afternoon reading more of my old posts about our ancestors. Not everyone gets to (or wants to) play Sherlock Holmes, but everyone loves a good story.

1. The number one reason I blog is simple - everyone's story deserves to be told. When I was a missionary in Japan back in 1997, my greatest desire was to help someone in a way that would be worth remembering. As I got into genealogy, I learned that everyone in our family, past and present, has a story, and they are all worth remembering - even (and I'd say especially) those ancestors who were the farmers and day laborers that didn't get noticed by society much. Through my blog, I can share their stories and help them be remembered. Their lives weren't perfect; some were pretty rough characters, some had lives filled with heartache and loss, and others I just simply don't have a clue as to who they really were. But their stories are part of my story, and maybe through telling their stories, I will weave a story of my own worth remembering.