Week 13: Worship (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – 2024 Version)

The theme for Week 13 is "Worship." The lives of many of our ancestors were shaped by their choices (or lack of a choice) in how and where they could worship. This week, consider an ancestor and how their worship practices influenced their life. Click here to see all the prompts for 2024.

I remember my mother telling me about her paternal grandmother. Her grandmother was Emma Sophia Thielke. She was a small woman; I believe under five feet tall. She was born on Jan 10, 1874 in Watertown, Jefferson County, Wisconsin. She married August Frederick Hafenstein on Nov 6, 1901 in Watertown, Jefferson County, Wisconsin.   

They lived in Columbus, Columbia County, Wisconsin at 239A West James St. This was the upstairs apartment of the home. The home doesn’t exist anymore, it was torn down many years ago, and between 2013 and 2015, it was made into a parking lot for the library. 

My mother had fond memories of getting to stay overnight at her grandmother’s house. She once told me that her grandmother, who was Methodist, my mother being raised Catholic, would get up real early on Sunday and go to her church for service. Then come back and take her granddaughter to a local Catholic Church and stay with her through that service. 

From this story, I have a feeling that her grandmother valued religion even if it wasn’t the religion that she worshiped. I think, most grandmothers would have been satisfied to drag their grandchildren to their own church. However, to take the time to attend two different services is remarkable.

Emma passed away on Mar 14, 1955 in Columbus, Columbia County. By then, my mother who was married, already had four of her own children. 

One final remark for genealogical purposes, Emma wasn’t my mother’s biological grandmother, because my mother was born out of wedlock before Emma’s son and my grandmother were married. My mother was two years old when her parents married. My mother did not know this fact until she was 18, and she never told any of her children that she was adopted. However, the stories she told about her grandmother and grandfather were stories about loving, adoring grandparents, who didn’t care if she was their biological granddaughter or not. She was their granddaughter in all the ways that matter!

Remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!

Week 10: Translation (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – 2023 Version)

The theme for Week 10 is “Translation.” Would any of your ancestors have needed someone to translate for them? Have you had to work with records in a language other than your own? No matter the language, it’s good time to write! Click here to check out all the themes for2023.

I have come across German in my research and it was a class I took in High School. I know some basic words such as Born is Geboren and Died is Gestorben. The month of may is Mai and the month of March is März. These items come in quite handy when looking at some of the older gravestones in my research along with some of the documents.

However, with today’s technology, all we need is a Translate app on our phone. Allow the app to access our phone camera and point the phone (camera) towards the gravestone and it will translate the stone. Of course, the stone needs to be readable.

While researching my mother’s step great-grandfather, John Thielke. I found that he appears in German newspapers that were published in Watertown, Wisconsin. My guess is that there was a strong German presence in Watertown. The 1900 US Census, states he could read and write, so I wonder if he became bilingual?

John was born on Sep 21, 1839 in Germany. His Baptism record is found on Ancestry and of course it’s written in German, and the handwriting if very challenging to read. Plus, the Translate app doesn’t work very well for sloppy handwriting. This is one reason; you should transcribe the document. How do you transcribe a document you don’t understand the language? You transcribe it with the letters you see and it will end up being in a different language. Then I can use the Translate App on that typed transcribed record. Fingers crossed that I can truly make out the letters, because a double S is written as a strange B letter.

John came to America in 1857. On Oct 27, 1863 he married Wilhelmina Buss in the Town of Melford, Jefferson County, Wisconsin. They had 10 children, of which 7, all girls survived to adulthood. He belonged to the German Methodist Episcopal Church. John died on May 16, 1903 in Watertown, Jefferson County, Wisconsin, USA.

I was lucky, that I took German in High School. I am also lucky that I started my genealogy journey when I was in my late teens and thus kept that little German to English dictionary. Don’t let foreign languages stop your research since we have Google Translate on our computers and many Translate apps to choose from for our phones.

Remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!