Week 17: Document (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks)

"Document" can be a noun or a verb and, as genealogists, we should be using it as both! Perhaps this week you share a neat document you've found or write about your efforts to document an ancestor. Click here to check out all the themes for 2022

Genealogist are always gathering documents to prove relationships and facts. When I was preparing to join the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), I was just gathering documents to prove facts that I thought I already knew.

I needed birth, marriage and death records for my parents and my maternal grandparents. I went to the courthouse where my mother’s birth certificate is filed along with her parent’s marriage record. My mother was born in 1927 and her parents were married in 1926. I happily went to the courthouse and used the birth index book first. For those of you who don’t know, the birth index book is a large book with the name of the person being born, their birth date and the volume and page number that the birth certificate can be found. Births are recorded by last name and in order of being recorded. I noticed that my mother’s name was listed as Hilts, her mother’s maiden name. Then it was crossed off and Hafenstein was written along with the year 1945. This was not the normal markings one would find in the birth index. 

As I was turning the pages of the volume that contained my mother’s birth certificate, there was nothing unusual about the pages. They were typed pages until I reached my mother’s. It looked like a microfilm printed page; it was black with white lettering. 

On the left side of the page was a 1945 written date, this was the same year as the Indexed book. The rest of the information looked normal, her parents are listed, her date of birth, doctor signatures and more.

I then proceeded to the Marriage index to find my grandparent’s marriage record. The marriage index is a little different, it is an index based on marriage date. They are recorded as they issue certificates, thus I went to May 1926 and found no marriage record for my grandparents. I keep looking through the remainder of the year, into 1927, and then 1928 and finally in 1929 I found the listing. Now I am questioning who is the father of my mother. My mother is a spitting image of my grandmother, so I have no doubts that she is her mother. 

I gather my documents and proceed home. I submit my application to DAR and they reject it, stating that it appears that my mother was adopted, since she was born before my grandparent’s wedding. Since I was going through my maternal grandmother’s line, I just needed to prove that her mother was indeed her biological mother.

I decided to send an inquiry email to the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families to find out if my mother was adopted in 1945 by her step-father. I stated that I am pretty sure that her mother was her biological mother. 

They were nice enough to confirm that my mother’s step-father did adopt her and sent me a form to request her non-identifying adoption paperwork. I did send for the paperwork, which confirmed that my mother was adopted after her 18th birthday. My mother was going to go to college and her step-father didn't want her to bear the shame of showing an illegitimate birth certificate the rest of her life. Up until that day, my mother didn't know that her father wasn't her biological father.  

At this point, my curiosity was sparked. I then contacted the local catholic dioceses for my mother’s baptism record. Unfortunately, the record appears it never had her birth father’s name on it and it was modified to include her step-father’s name.

The moral of this cautionary tale, is that not all documents are accurate. Even though the birth certificate I obtained is a legal document, it is not necessarily an accurate document because when my mother was adopted a new birth certificate was created. Whether or not her original certificate ever contained her biological father’s name, I don’t know. Also, her baptism record contains accurate information but also inaccurate since it also appears to not have her biological father listed on it.

This was my driving force to use DNA in my genealogy endeavors. I am pretty confident that I found out who my biological grandfather is. One of his daughter’s did finally show up as my half-aunt on one of the testing sites. It was his only surviving child. 

So keep looking for those documents and Just Do Genealogy!

Week 16: Negatives (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks)

There are some negatives to family history... Discovering something "negative" about an ancestor, not finding what you were expecting, and even film negatives. This week, explore one of those negatives. Maybe it will turn into a positive! Click here to check out all the themes for2022

Negative can include evidence as in Negative Evidence. For example, I am helping my sister-in-law with a branch of her family, her mother’s maiden name of Steffes. Anyway, starting with the immigrant ancestor of Jacob Steffes (1821-1878) and Anna Arenz (1830-1915), I have been documenting all their descendants. We are working off a family history that someone started in 1980’s. He had listed the youngest child as Engelbart Steffes (1872-1905)

Most of the family is buried in a tiny cemetery located in the unincorporated area of St Joes, Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin. The area is named after the catholic church of Saint Joseph’s and there is a church cemetery.

However, the stone for Engelbart states his last name is Steffen. The stone does list that he is the son of Jacob. The stone has a birth date of 1872 and a death date of 1905. Thus, if Engelbart is a son of Jacob and Anna, he should be living with the family in 1880. However, looking at the census record, I find the other younger children, however no Engelbart.

So, I decided to take another approach, to search for an Engelbart Steffen. I find him in the 1880 census for the St Joe area living with his father Jacob and his mother Margaret. On the Ancestry website, I am also given a hint for a birth and christening records. These two records are for Engelbart Steffen and the birth date matches the gravestone.

I turn to Find A Grave and decide to look at what memorials are created. There are two memorials for this one gravestone, one is for Engelbart Steffen and the other for Engelbart Steffes. At this point I am very confident that there was never an Engelbart Steffes, so I reach out the creator of the memorial for Engelbart Steffes, who happens to be a distant relative of my sister-in-law and a descendant of Jacob and Anna.

I send him a message and point out that there are two memorials, one for each surname and reference the birth record and ask him to review those because I believe that this gravestone is for Engelbart Steffen. Please note, I never state that he is wrong and I am right. I like to gently guide people to come to their own conclusions. I also like to share my reasoning with records so that they can review what I am looking at. The memorial creator responded that he deleted his memorial.

Therefore, I used the Negative Evidence of not finding a Engelbart Steffes to conclude that there wasn’t a person by this name. To confirm this assumption, I found a Engelbart Steffen who fits the tombstone information. Ironically, last week’s theme was “how do you spell that”? and this wasn’t a case of changing the spelling of someone’s name.

Keep in mind, not all situations are this straight forward. I am currently dealing with a different family whose child doesn’t show up in the census record with the rest of the family. However, looking at obituaries, they are all listing each other as siblings. This child is too young to be a farm hand on another farm. Also, his parents and siblings are in the census record, but not him. I try to make sure it wasn’t the case where he was known as a different name as a child and another as an adult. I currently can’t figure out where this child came from. Based on the time frame, perhaps this is an adoption. Maybe from the orphan train or other family who died and left an orphan child. All speculation on my part. Currently I have added this child to the family unit with notes, because I need to investigate him more, to check all the siblings of the parents, maybe see if there are any newspapers articles about visiting orphan trains or other news worthy articles to explain a tragedy in the area that might had left an orphan child.

Good luck with your research and remember to Just do Genealogy!

Week 15: How Do You Spell That? (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks)

One of the things I tell people who are starting out in their family history journey is to not get hung up on a spelling. It's amazing how many ways a name can be spelled. (Just visit your local Starbucks, and you'll know what I mean!) Who is an ancestor who might have had trouble with people mangling their name? Click here to check out all the themes for 2022.

My first acceptance in misspellings deals with my first name. Back in the late 1980’s someone did a family history on my Quinn family branch. My 2nd great grandmother’s maiden name was a Quinn. In this book, they spelled my name Charleen. No big deal, but annoying. 

A few years later, someone did a family history on my O’Brion family branch. My Quinn great grandmother who married a McDonald, had a son who married an O’Brion. This author copied, like photocopied the book pages from the Quinn family book that covered the O’Brion descendants, thus my name is spelled wrong, because they photocopied the book pages. 

Just the surname of O’Brion is a weird spelling, the above branches are on my dad’s side of the family and on my mother’s side I have an O’Brien branch. I have seen the O’Brion family have spellings of O’Brien. Even some of the McDonald descendants have changed the spelling to MacDonald. 

On my mother’s side, her mother’s maiden name is Hiltz. Through the years, various branches use Hilts while others use Hiltz. I even seen brother’s use different spellings. 

I guess spelling wasn’t that important to many. Let’s be honest, many of our Ancestors didn’t know how to read or write. Thus, they didn’t know how to spell their names. Therefore, clerks and such may have spelled it phonetically. Or perhaps they used various spellings to create a unique identity. We all know families that seem to name everyone John, Timothy, James, Michael and so on. Perhaps this helped keep the John Hilts family separate from the John Hiltz family. 

In more modern times with computer systems, spelling definitely counts. Names like O’Brien with the Apostrophe can cause glitches in computer systems because it can confuse some programming languages. I have worked at places where they didn’t want us to input the apostrophe and this sometimes makes the person associated with the name upset. Someone would type O Brien while someone else typed Obrien. We know that when you sort a group of names with these spellings, they are not necessarily sorted together. Also when you do a search for Obrien it would not display O Brien because the blank space would sort before letters. However, if you sort for O Brien, you might see Obrien at the bottom of the list. Confusing right? As a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, they even tired to come up with a standardized spelling for names. For example, if I search for an Ancestor and type in Hilts it will recommend using the spelling of Hiltz. 

Moral of story, don’t dismiss a record based on the spelling. It might be your person, look into it further. Also, don’t sweat the small stuff. If someone spells a name “wrong” in their tree, it might be the spelling they are more familiar with, one they found on a document, or just wasn’t sure which spelling to make default and they had to pick one.

Don’t forget to JUST DO GENEALOGY! 

Week 14: “Check it Out”

The theme for Week 14 (and the monthly theme for April) is "Check It Out." We often use this phrase when we want someone to pay attention to something neat. ("Hey! Check it out!") It's also something you do with some library books. What does that inspire you to write about? Click here to check out all the themes for 2022.

Most genealogist will have some sort of books. I started with “How to” books because starting anything new, I wanted to do it right. Well, it didn’t help. (giggle). It helped a little but I did do my share of mistakes and I even restarted my genealogy, lucky I had less than 300 people in my tree, so it wasn’t all bad.

Through the years I look for books on skills I want to improve on. I have books on organizing my genealogy, many books on DNA, I have some dealing with digitizing my family history, how to cite your sources, about the genealogical research standards, how to become an accredited genealogist. Even books on various software packages that I can use for recording my genealogy.

I also have some history books, one for Columbia County, Wisconsin (a remake), another on the families in Mohawk Valley, New York and a few specific family history books, one for the Boone Family, the Hiltz Family, the O’Brion Family, and the Quinn family.

Genealogy is the only hobby (I use that word loosely because it’s a passion for me), that the more time you spend on it, the harder it gets. Think about it. For example, I crochet, I started out learning the stitches, and the more I do it, the easier it becomes because the better I get at it. Of course, I might have to lookup a new type of stitch or watch a tutorial on how to do that stitch, but everyone is going to do that stitch the same way.

Genealogy on the other hand gets harder because finding the documents to prove the next generation are rarer to find. Everyone’s might be basically doing the same thing, researching their family, their ancestors, etc.… But where they are looking are different based on where your family lived, what records survived that location and as in the book listed above on the families in the Mohawk Valley, New York, what has already been researched. Plus, how far you are able to trace your family will be different for each person because our families are so different. 

Books help me become a better researcher, to see what others are doing to find records. I can learn from others and apply those skills to my work. I always say, work smarter not harder. This also applies to Genealogy. Besides books, I watch a lot of Webinars, YouTube Videos, read other people’s blogs, belong to various Facebook groups so that I can become a better Genealogist. If I learn only one new thing, it is worth it to me. Yes, sometimes the topic is a review, however the lecturer might show me a different way of doing something. We are creatures of habit, thus if we keep doing what we have always done, we will always get the same results. Learning new websites or learning new search strategies might lead us to new results. 

My advice, CHECK IT OUT, and grow your knowledge and skill base for doing genealogy.