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!