Well, almost wordless...this is a picture I took last night of my children snuggled in bed together under an afghan made by my great-grandmother (so their great-great grandmother) Ellen Casey Cronin, and given to me by my grandmother (so their great-grandmother) Mary Cronin Raynor at my baby shower in 2013. I don't know exactly when it was made but if my great-grandmother died in the 1970s in her 70s, it was probably made sometime in the 1950s-1960s, making it about 50 years old. My daughter met my grandmother; my son never did. I love that they are connected to two earlier generations (one of whom I never met either, my great-grandmother) through something made and touched by their hands.
What I'm grateful for this Thanksgiving....
(From a family history standpoint, that is)
I'm grateful for my family. Well, that's from the standpoint of just being a person, I guess. But this is my son's first Thanksgiving, and our first Thanksgiving as a family of four. I'm grateful for my hardworking husband who still makes time for living room TV date nights with me and for horsing around with the kids (sometimes literally, when they pretend he's a horse...) and I'm grateful for my kids, who fight and cry and drive me crazy but then hug each other and give me kisses and play with each other and are best friends.
I'm grateful for the many, many genealogy volunteers and family historians using their valuable time to index records for websites like FamilySearch, websites that are free (and so I'm also grateful for websites like FamilySearch).
I'm grateful for organizations like Reclaim the Records, that are fighting the good fight to make genealogy records that haven't been available, available, even when it means going to court....and then posting those records online, again, for free.
I'm grateful for all the family historians out there, reaching out to each other, trying to make those cousin connections, sharing their knowledge and their documents and helping each other out. I'm grateful to those people just beginning their family history research, who know next to nothing, but are reaching out for help, because you're extending those family connections, helping our personal family trees and our global family trees to grow.
Whether your family is your blood family, the family that raised you or the family of friends who you chose, love them and enjoy them this holiday season and always.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
In Remembrance of Veterans Day
Today is Veterans Day in the United States. Today we remember and thank all the men and women who served their country as members of the armed forces...thank you for all your sacrifices on behalf of the rest of us, and thank you to all your families for their sacrifices as well. A special thank you to the veterans in my family tree, in particular Charles Haase, my 4th great-grandfather, who served in the Army during the Civil War, and Dick Raynor, my grandfather, who served in the Navy during World War II.
Clifford "Dick" Raynor served in the Pacific Theater with the U.S. Navy during World War II.
Charles Haase was discharged from the Army in June of 1865 at the end of the the Civil War.
For anyone who has military veterans in their family trees, all military records are free at Findmypast through Sunday, Nov. 13 in commemoration of Veterans Day.
Those Places Thursday: The Elbe-Weser Triangle
New leaf hints have recently popped up on my Ancestry.com family tree related to one of their databases for Lutheran church records in the Elbe-Weser Triangle region of Germany. I'm always interested in finding out more about the places my ancestors lived - the geography and weather, the politics, the religion. I know very little about the history of Germany, which has been tumultuous at best in many years; I know the various kingdoms and states have changed borders and belonged to different countries depending on the place and time period. My Ricklefs and Tiedemann ancestors hail from the Elbe-Weser Triangle. My third great-grandparents, who immigrated to New York, were both born there in the 1860s. Thanks to church and family books and now this Elbe-Weser Lutheran church records database, I can reliably trace my Tiedemann side deep into this area of current-day Lower Saxony in northern Germany, as far back as the late 1600s. The land itself, located between the Elbe and Weser rivers between the "triangle" formed by the cities of Bremen, Cuxhaven and Hamburg, is usually flat marshlands, mudflats, bog and geest. The years my Tiedemann lines (which include the surnames Buckmann, Boerger, Albers, Luehrs, Steffens, Buck, Soehl and Stelling) lived there means my ancestors saw the Thirty Years War, which was a devastating religious war; and lived under the rule of and was a part of Sweden, the Electorate and later Kingdom of Hanover, the French Empire and later Prussia.
The Ancestry database is great, and if you have ancestors from the Elbe-Weser Triangle region, I suggest you check it out - for all the hints that popped up for me, quite a few did not but I was able to find the records by keying in my relatives' names. The only thing is not all the information contained in each entry is indexed; for example, all birth, marriage and death entries are supposed to include the occupation of the parents or person in the record, but that information is not indexed. So I'm going to have to brush up on my reading of German handwriting skills and take a closer look at these records to see if I can find out what these people did for a living. With the kind of terrain in the area, I can't imagine they were farmers, so it'll be interesting to see if I can discover that information. Every little insight helps us understand our ancestors better!
Tuesday's Tip: Genealogy research guides and having a reference library
We all have our personal family history records that we keep, as both evidence to support our research and as resources to go back to when we have questions about those particular ancestors or others we might be trying to connect to them.
But there are also research guides and handbooks we can keep handy that can be helpful to all of us in our research. These books can be compilations about what resources are at our disposable, especially resources not widely known and not easily accessed online, such as what archives, libraries or courthouses might be in a particular vicinity and what might be in their holdings. We might have old maps delineating old boundaries and place names for areas we are researching. Another good book to consider would be the The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual, by the Board for Certification of Genealogists. This manual outlines the proof standards that professional genealogists hold themselves to in order to make sure they have done the most exhaustive and comprehensive research using the most reliable data available to determine that the information being included in a family tree is most likely correct. This is the book people use when they're studying to become professional genealogists, but in this day and age when so much unreliable and incorrect data is being shared online in the genealogy community, every person researching his or her family tree who wants to make sure it's as accurate as possible with the data available should consider learning the genealogical proof standard. This manual is a good reference to have on your genealogy bookshelf.
Definitely think about what genealogy reference books would be helpful to your own personal research. There are some, like Genealogical Standards, that might be helpful on all family historian's bookshelves, but there could be reference books more specific to your personal research. For me, having books on the place and government breakdown of Germany is helpful, as is having old maps of the New York City area. What references do you go back to over and over again that would be helpful to have in your own genealogy library?
Thankful Thursday: Reading, family history & Banned Books Week
Today is Thankful Thursday, and today I'm thankful for Banned Books Week. What does that have to do with genealogy, you might ask? Well, besides my love for genealogy, I have a great love of reading - I am a voracious reader, a loud-and-proud bibliophile. But I don't just love books, I love to read anything I can get my hands on - magazines, newspapers, probate records, family histories, land deeds...you see where this is going?
I don't think you can be a serious family historian without being a reader as well...so much of tracing your heritage is reading primary and secondary documents - vital records, first- and second-hand accounts of personal experiences during moments in history, wills, family letters, obituaries, newspaper articles, etc. If you don't like to read, you're not going to last very long as a family history hobbyist or enthusiast.
And on top of that, if you want to really understand the times and places in which your ancestors lived, it doesn't hurt to have read about those times and places, either in novel or non-fiction form. You know, in books. So today we talk about Banned Books Week, which is this week. This year Banned Books Week focuses on celebrating diversity in writing, diversity that others often try to suppress as being subversive, amoral or against the norm. Diversity in thoughts, ideas, and creativity is okay. Don't agree with what someone's writing? Great! You've just learned to form your own opinion. It's by learning about others' perspectives that we learn to understand them and where they're coming from, even if we don't agree with it...and so much of genealogy is about learning to understand ourselves and where we came from, so it kind of goes hand-in-hand. Nothing terrible ever happened in this world through the respectful exchange and discussion of ideas...but a lot of terrible things have happened because of censorship. So today I'm thankful for all the banned or challenged books that I enjoyed as a child and an adult, from contemporary ones to classics (yes, books have been challenged and banned as long as they've been published and circulated...which ones do you think your ancestors enjoyed reading??), I'm thankful for my love of reading, and I'm thankful that I can take that love of reading and apply it to another area I love, family history.
For more on Banned Books Week, visit here.
For a list of the most challenged books in the United States, visit here.
The best genealogy TV show you never watched: HBO's Family Tree
We all know that genealogy and family history has pervaded pop culture...and is even considered a television genre now, thanks to tv shows such as Who Do You Think You Are?, Genealogy Roadshow and Finding Your Roots. (Check out this interesting article by Megan Smolenyak here.)
I love when my two great loves - media and genealogy - combine!
For the most part, that genre falls into the reality tv category - real life people tracing their lineages, trying to find out more about their heritage, looking for and looking up real ancestors. But there was a little show that aired on HBO for one season in 2013 that took family history into the scripted television realm - hilariously, poignantly and accurately.
Family Tree was created by improv script genius Christopher Guest, of Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman fame. The show starred Chris O'Dowd as Tom Chadwick, a down-on-his-luck Irishman who is left a trunkful of seemingly meaningless photos, trinkets and knickknacks by his recently deceased aunt. The show followed his journey as he discovers that these items actually paint a picture of the day-to-day lives of people in his family tree. Using these family heirlooms as clues, he travels around England and even all the way to America tracking down not just family members but their stories, meeting people whose lives were touched by his family members, and finding out not just more about his heritage but about himself in the process.
Much like in Guest's other works, the actors in Family Tree are given a lot of wiggle room to riff and improvise their lines and scenes, and if you're a fan of Guest's movies, look for a lot of his regularly cast actors to pop up in various episodes of this show. I happen to like Guest's style - it makes this kind of scripted show feel more "real." I've been a huge fan of Chris O'Dowd since his days on The IT Crowd, long before he wooed Kristen Wiig and female audience members in Bridesmaids. But what I really love about Family Tree is the authenticity of Tom's family history journey. He finds some items from a bygone era in a box. In order to find out more about the people these items belonged to, he asks questions from older family members. For every answer he gets about his family, five more questions pop up. He doesn't just sit on his computer and Google the information he needs - these items take him on a physical journey. It reminds me so much of going through the seemingly meaningless items my grandfather collected in his basement - clipped obituaries, schoolgirl autograph books, old letters, his father's dayplanner, tons of old photographs with NO NAMES written on the backs (grr!!). They all gave glimpses into the everyday lives of people in my family, and while some gave me answers and most raised so many more questions.
I loved Family Tree - I was sorry it lasted only one season, but it was an excellent season. If you never saw it, check it out. If you did watch it, watch it again - you can see the first episode on Amazon for free (with commercials, but still - WOO HOO!). If it draws you in, and I hope it does, you can buy the rest of the season on DVD or digitally.
Did you watch this show when it aired? What did you think of it? Does genealogy work as a scripted show premise? Let me know in the comments below!
Ancestor profile: The mystery of Denis Cronin
I know little, and really next to nothing, about my great-great grandfather Denis Cronin. Everything I know about him is via sideways genealogy, such as birth and death records for his children, which list him as their father. I know his son and my great-grandfather, Timothy Cronin, was born in County Cork in 1879 and came to the United States as a child. I know Timothy was the youngest of the nine children of Denis Cronin and Nora/Hanora/Hanoria/Norry Dono(g)hue (on all her American records, she's Nora). I know that Nora and all her children ended up in New York by the year 1900, with no sign of Denis. I always assumed he had died over in Ireland prior to their immigration, but I have nothing to back that up. I know Denis had a sister, Julia, who married John Cullinane, and they and their children ended up in Westchester County, and their granddaughter, Nora Cullinane, was the maid of honor at my grandmother (and her second cousin) Mary Cronin's wedding.
So what does that tell me about Denis? Absolutely nothing. I don't know when or where he was born. I don't know when or where he died. I know very little about his life in between. He is a ghost. We all have those ghost ancestors, the ones who are impossible to find. They're the ancestors that drive me to drink...they're also the ancestors that drive me to keep digging.
Irishgenealogy.ie recently released civil and church records that has shed a bit more light on Denis. According to the birth records of my great-grandfather and his siblings, Denis was a farmer at times and at other times, a laborer. He lived in various locales in the same vicinity of County Cork, including Curraraigue, Dromtariffe, Crinaloo and Knockatuder...although he may have been born in County Kerry. I am unable to find a death record for him yet. I'm in the midst of trying to cross-reference possible parents for Denis, his sister Julia and a possible brother Timothy to see if I can come up with parents who match all three, but that's a project for a day when I'm not running after a 3 1/2 year old and a 9 month old. But thanks to the Irish Genealogy website records, I found an intriguing addition to the few and far between facts I know about Denis - according to my great-grandfather's birth record, Denis' residence in 1879 was London.
Wait...what?
I have never heard anything at all about any of my Irish Catholic ancestors living or working anywhere but Ireland and New York. So why was Denis in London? Was he living there to support the family? Why London, when the rest of the family left Ireland for America? What did he do there? Did he ever return to Ireland? Did he die there? I always assumed he died in Ireland before the whole Cronin clan up and left for America, but maybe he was in England instead? Since a Julia Cronin was the birth informant and Denis' residence is listed as London, I assume that means he wasn't around for my great-grandfather's birth. Did he know his wife was pregnant? How long into her pregnancy did he leave? Did he even ever get to meet his youngest son, my great-grandfather?
As you can see, this one little word, this one little teasing nugget of new information has given me no answers, not really...just a million more questions.
::Sigh::
I'm not quite resigned yet to the fact that I might never know what actually happened to my great-great grandfather. I've started looking into some English records to see if he turns up in any of those. Maybe I'll have some luck answering even one of my questions.
My grandmother was my genealogy mentor...Grandma, wherever you are...this is your grandfather I'm looking for!! Give me some heavenly inspiration on what to do next!
Have you used these records yet? Have you had any luck discovering new family members or new information about known ancestors? Have you come across any new and strange puzzle pieces such as my London tidbit? Despite my frustrations, my excitement at these records still wins the day - if you haven't checked them out yet, go now, go! :)
https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/
New free records available on Irish genealogy website - a boon for those of us of Irish descent!
The website is Irishgenealogy.ie and the welcome message from the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs reads: "I am very pleased to welcome you to irishgenealogy.ie the website dedicated to helping you search for family history records for past generations. The website is now home to the historic records of Births, Marriages and Deaths of the General Register Office. These records join the Indexes to the historic records of Births, Marriages and Deaths that were already available on the website.
My Department and I are conscious of the importance of genealogy as an important way of connecting with those abroad who wish to trace their roots and, also permitting those here in Ireland to establish their family history.
At present, the genealogy landscape can seem confusing so, my Department has concentrated on the development of some additional search functionality for www.irishgenealogy.ie by way of providing a portal or search facility for digital genealogy records.
Visitors will be able to search records from a number of on-line sources including the historic Registers and Indexes to the Civil Registers of Births, Marriages and Deaths, the Church Records already available on www.irishgenealogy.ie, and others such as the 1901 and 1911 Census and Soldiers wills, to name but a few.
Further information on how to research family history in Ireland is contained in the section Research in Ireland."
There are some year limitations on some of their databases, and the search functionality can be tedious and confusing, but the website, like many genealogy websites is an ongoing work in progress - they will be adding more records as they go, so keep checking back with them.
I, personally, am thrilled - of all my backgrounds, my Irish heritage has been, without fail, my hardest to research. Stumbling blocks, brick walls, dead ends - you name it, I have it on my Irish branches. But I'm hoping these new records will open up some new avenues to pursue, some new lines of questioning. Already I've found three interesting documents, both of which I've only seen in transcription form before (and just fyi, transcriptions don't always include every piece of information from a document). The first is the death record of my 4th great grandfather, Cornelius Gorry, who died in Williamstown, Kells, County Meath on May 23, 1897 at the age of 85.
Death register page containing Cornelius Gorry's death record from 1897 in Kells, County Meath.
Close-up of death register entry for Cornelius Gorry.
There is no new information here but there's nothing like seeing the old handwriting, the actual document (even in image form) to make it feel real and to add weight and authority to this person and event (remember, there can be mistakes in transcriptions as well).
The second document is the death record for Cornelius' wife, Mary, from Feb. 25, 1893. It lists her as the wife of Cornelius and their daughter Catherine MacNamee was the informant (Catherine's husband James MacNamee was the informant for Cornelius), but it lists Mary as being 62 at the time of her death. That means she was born about 1831. What this tells me is there was either a mistake made about her age (which often happened, though not by more than 10 years, if even that many, usually) OR this Mary was not the Mary who was the mother of my 3rd great-grandfather, James Gorry - because he was born about 1835. So, that mystery continues.
The third document I found was the civil birth record for my great-grandfather, Timothy Cronin, which I had never seen. According to it, he was born August 22, 1879 in Carragraigue - Dromtariffe in County Cork (registered in the District of Millstreet) to Denis Cronin and Hanoria Donohue. His father was a labourer and the birth informant was Julia Cronin, who was present at the birth - this was quite possibly his sister Julia, who was about 15 or 16 at the time. Now, it wasn't unusual for someone "present at birth" to be the informant, but it seems the informant was usually the father. But if you look at the record, Denis Cronin's place of residence is listed as... London!
Entry for Timothy Cronin in birth register, Millstreet, County Cork.
Wait, what? Stop the presses. That's not even in Ireland! But since this opens up more questions than answers, we'll talk about this newfound discovery in my next blog post...stay tuned!!!
#neverforget
A Stutzman DNA mystery
Every now and then I check my AncestryDNA account to see if I have any new DNA matches. Last night I found something interesting - my dad, whose account I'm the administrator of, had a DNA match to someone who had Stutzmans in their family tree. My dad's mother's maiden name was Stutzman(n), and I've been able to trace the family somewhat far back into Germany, but more successfully on the lines that married into the Stutzmanns, not the Stutzmann family itself.
Now, this DNA match wasn't a close one - within 4-6 generations, which could mean as far back as 8 generations, but Stutzman isn't a common name, so I decided to see if I could find a connection. This person had the Stutzman line traced back only one generation, but it was easy enough to use Ancestry to dig a little deeper. This person's family traced back to the Stutzmans of Somerset County, Pennsylvania - to the Pennsylvania Dutch. As I said, Stutzman isn't a name I come across a lot, but any time I do, it's almost always as part of the Amish and Mennonite communities in Pennsylvania, and later in Illinois and Indiana. If any of you watched the Katey Sagal episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?", she was descended from Christian Stutzman and Barbara Hochstedler, the progenitors of many of the Amish and Mennonite Stutzmans of Pennsylvania...including, the forebears of the Stutzman my dad connected to genetically.
But my Stutzmanns come from the Pfalz Rheinland region of Germany, and the Pennsylvania Stutzmans come from Bern Canton, Switzerland. My Stutzmanns were also Lutheran, not Mennonite. And then there's of course the matter of the extra "n" at the end of my Stutzmann family name. Yet, I had always wondered if there was a connection between my German Stutzmanns and the Swiss Stutzmanns, because even today if you Google Stutzmann, the people who come up are often from Switzerland. I can trace the Stutzmanns only back as far as the early 1700s (I know, I say "only", but that's not that far for my German family tree lines!) - is it possible that before they were in Germany, the family came from Switzerland? Is there a point, further back than I've been able to find yet, where the two families intersect? Or did I get so excited by seeing the Stutzman name in this tree that I got tunnel vision, and that's not even where the DNA connection is??? Could it be another line altogether??
There's still a lot I need to learn about genetic genealogy. There's still a lot I don't understand, obviously. I know there are ways to determine on what line and when people might intersect genetically, but I don't know how. I might need to spend more time on a website like The Genetic Genealogist, who often does a great job of breaking down the scientific mumbo jumbo of genetic genealogy into layman's terms. But for now, my dad's DNA connection to this Stutzman individual will remain a mystery.
Have you ever gotten a DNA connection and thought you probably knew where the connection was, but couldn't figure it out? Or found out the connection was on a completely unexpected and surprising line?
Those Places Thursday: "The Green House" restaurant in Freeport, 1915
Almost two weeks ago, I posted my great-grandfather's obituary, in which it stated that in the 1920s he had owned and operated a popular fisherman hangout, The Greenhouse restaurant, but it didn't say where it was located.
Well, relatives and readers to the rescue! I got a card in the mail last week from my Aunt Ellen, who read my blog post and sent me two photos of "The Green House"! The note stated that the photos were from her mother, whose father, Timothy Cronin, was the one who owned the restaurant. The photos are from 1915, the year my grandmother was born and the year the Cronins moved from Brooklyn to Freeport, Long Island. The restaurant, which I guess was officially called Cronin's Bay House, based on the note from my aunt, was located at the end of Bedell Street, right on the water. (For anyone not familiar with Long Island, Freeport is a waterfront village on the South Shore of Long Island famous for it's fishing industry and its waterfront restaurants, both in 1915 and today). The building is big, and it looks busy, packed with people on the porch and boats docked in the front - its very reminiscent of Freeport's Nautical Mile today, only all old-timey!
I just love these glimpses into the past, these flashes of the every day lives of our ancestors...thank you so much Aunt Ellen for sharing these with me!!
Cronin's Bay House, "The Green House" - the end of Bedell Street in Freeport, New York, 1915.
Sunday's Obituary: Timothy A. Cronin (1879-1948)
My great-grandfather, Timothy Ambrose Cronin, died June 16, 1948 at the age of 68. According to his death certificate and his obituary, he had a heart attack. Born in County Cork, Ireland, he is my most recent immigrant ancestor, generationally (he came here as a child sometime in the late 1880s - my 3rd great-grandparents Casper and Margaret Lindemann came here in 1891). I knew he worked in and owned saloons and pubs over the years, but I learned from his obituary that in the 1920s he owned a restaurant called the Greenhouse, which was "a favorite seafood restaurant of fishing parties." I'll have to do some further research to find out where exactly the Greenhouse was located. Tim Cronin was survived by his wife, Ellen (nee Casey), his daughter Mary Raynor, his son, Sergeant Daniel Cronin of the Freeport Police Department (where he worked with his friend, Timothy's son-in-law and Mary's husband, Dick Raynor), and a grandson - my uncle Cliff. He is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn. Thanks to the Old Fulton Postcards website for this obit.
Timothy Ambrose Cronin obituary from the June 17, 1948 Nassau Daily Review Star. Courtesy Old Fulton Postcards.
Tuesday's Tip: if I can't find a record of my ancestor does it mean it's not there?
So, today's Tuesday genealogy tip is: think outside the box. The question is: if you can't find a record of your ancestor, does it mean it isn't there? Getting existential here...
The problems with looking for genealogy records are manifold: the record never existed, it doesn't exist anymore, it's not online, the handwriting is illegible, the transcriber made an error, the indexer made an error, your ancestor liked to use many names and many spellings, and so on and so forth. So how do we find any records of anybody?
First, do an exhaustive search before you give up and declare that the family history record is not online. And if you've given up, come back again in several months to check again, because it might have been added since you stopped looking. What does an exhaustive search look like? If you're looking for John Smith, born 1843 in New York, do NOT limit yourself to those facts!! Look for them, but also look for J. Smith, just Smith, Smythe, Smithe, born anywhere between 1840 and 1850, born in the United States, leave some facts out, use your BOOLEAN search function, where different characters (*, ?, _) substitute for letters or letter groups. So search for Sm?th* and you'll get Smith, Smythe and Smithe all in one search.
I feel like sharing this tip today because I finally found a record I had been searching for for years - the immigration record for Hulda Lindemann Wolbern, who we've been talking about in this blog recently, and my third great-grandparents (and her parents), Casper and Eva Margarethe Lindemann. Casper and Eva came to America from Germany in the late 1800s with their children Reinhold, Augusta (my 2nd-great grandmother), Hulda, Augustine (Lena), Charles, Amanda and their grandson Richard. There were many conflicting accounts of when they emigrated but couldn't find anything according to any of the dates I had. After looking for Lind*man* family members all weekend, I finally started searching for Amanda tonight. Not Amanda Lindemann. Just Amanda. I knew she was born in 1882, and I knew she was here by 1892, because she's in the 1892 New York census. So I looked for Amanda, born 1880-1884, emigrated between 1882-1892. And lo and behold, an Amanda popped up. Not Amanda with a last name - just Amanda. So I checked out the image (Tuesday's tiny genealogy tip - ALWAYS check the image, not just the index, because I have often found transcription errors in the index) and there was an Amanda, traveling with a Richard, a Carl (Charles was also known as Carl), an Augustina, a Hulda, an Eva and a head of household whose name was completely lost in a decaying crease on the page. Jackpot. All the names and ages were right. Because I knew this was them, I could make out the "Cas" in Casper and the L in Lindemann in the cracked part of the page. But because it was the head of the household whose name was lost completely, and his was the only one where the last name was written, the rest of the family members also lost their last names...so they were there, in the record, but a search for Lindemann would never turn them up. Funny how easy it was after years of being so hard.
So, these members of the family (my Augusta and her brother Reinhold apparently traveled to the U.S. separately) sailed into New York on July 2, 1891 aboard the Rotterdam, a Dutch ship, which took on passengers in Boulogne, France and Amsterdam, Netherlands. That seems to strange to me, only because all my German ancestors before this have all sailed out of German ports. I have information that Augusta Lindemann was born in Stedtlingen, in central Germany far from any ocean ports, but even though I know the family was there in the 1870s and 1880s, I don't know where they were after that fact, so maybe Amsterdam or Boulogne were the closest ports to where they were...did they spend any extended amount of time in either of these areas? Which port did they embark at? This is the way genealogy goes - answer one question, find five more questions. But I'm happy. I know very little about Casper and Eva (who also went by Margaret) and so this is one new tiny piece of their puzzles that I get to fill in!
The Lindemann family sailed into New York July 2, 1891 aboard the Rotterdam.
Death certificate for Hulda Wolbern (nee Lindemann): Death aboard the General Slocum steamboat
Oh, I am so sad. I got the death certificate for Hulda Wolbern (nee Lindemann) in the mail today. (Thank you, New York City Municipal Archives! I complained, but a 2 month wait is not too bad...) I knew this was going to be an emotional moment for me, possibly the MOST emotional moment for me as a genealogist, and I wasn't wrong. I think this is the most heartbreaking record I've ever had to look at. I'm not entirely sure why. I've dealt with records for my own family and for clients where someone died young - in their 20s, leaving behind a wife and young kids, or even a kid themselves, never getting the chance to grow up and leave behind a legacy of their own. But I think there's just something about the manner of Hulda's death, the personal family tragedy behind it and the greater New York, German-American and American tragedy behind it. Hulda's death certificate tells me not just about the circumstances surrounding her death...it represents the deaths of all the women and children who died in the General Slocum steamboat disaster June 15, 1904.
So what does this death record say and look like? It's from the Bronx, even though Hulda lived in Brooklyn. Most of the victims have Bronx death certificates because that was the borough closest to the disaster. The actual date of the certificate is June 21, 1904, because it took a few days for Hulda's body to be identified. Place of death: East River, off Port Morris (the southern tip of the Bronx, right across from Randall's Island). Character of premises (such as whether a home, hospital, etc.): Steamboat, "General Slocum". She was married, 28 years old, born in Germany and living in the U.S. and New York for 18 years (which means I can look for an immigration record from around 1886). Her father was Caspar Lindemann. Her mother, for some reason, is not listed.
The certificate was filled out by Joseph I. Berry, Bronx borough coroner, and he identified Hulda's body in the morgue. The certificate says an inquest is pending - I wonder if that's particular to Hulda or to the General Slocum victims in general, if that inquest is public information, and if I would have the heart and stomach to ever read it if I could get my hands on it...
After his examination, Mr. Berry determined that Hulda's cause of death was "asphyxia submersion." So Hulda didn't die in the fire - she drowned, as most of the victims did. She is buried in Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery in Middle Village, as many of my German ancestors are. On the second page of the report, we see that the undertaker was R. Stutzman. Rudolph Stutzmann was my great-great grandfather. Hulda Wolbern was his wife's sister. Rudolph helped care for the remains of many of his (and therefore my) family members but I wonder if it was particularly hard caring for his sister-in-law. I wonder if it was comforting to his wife Augusta and her parents and siblings, knowing that in the end their sister and daughter was in the hands of a loving family member.
Life is not endless. It's a journey with an off ramp that everyone must take. When it happens, it's sad but it's a fact of life. I've seen hundreds of death records. Everyone gets one eventually. But when it happens, we hope it's after a long, fulfilling life and that the manner is a peaceful one. I can look at all these records somewhat objectively usually, but Hulda's record is very emotional for me - because she was a young mother, because she lost her infant son, because they both died under such tragic circumstances. I couldn't find you forever, Hulda, but I hope you know you and your little boy aren't lost anymore. I found you. You are remembered.
You can read more about Hulda and the General Slocum steamboat disaster in my other blog posts here:
And thanks again to the German Genealogy Group for helping me solve this mystery!
Marriage record from NYC Municipal Archives confirms identity of Hulda Lindemann Wolbern
This is just going to be a quick entry on this rainy morning - two months after I put in my request to the New York City Municipal Archives, I finally got one of the five records I asked for. It usually takes this long. At least this long. But I had forgotten. And I was antsy for a response. The record I got was the marriage certificate for Hulda Lindemann and Martin J. Wolbern, who were married Nov. 3, 1901 in a Brooklyn Lutheran church. It was the record I was least antsy for, as it gives me no brand new information, but it's an important document none the less because it confirms that the Hulda Wolbern who died in the General Slocum steamboat disaster in 1904 was my Hulda Lindemann. The certificate states this Hulda Lindemann was born in Germany about 1876 to Casper Lindemann and Margaret Voigt - everything that jives with what I know about Hulda's sister, my great-great grandmother Augusta Lindemann Stutzmann. One of the witnesses to the marriage was Lena Lindemann, who was another sister of Augusta's and Hulda's. So everything jives. This is my Hulda. I looked at the signatures on the back of the certificate and I got sad looking at Hulda's - seeing someone's signature makes them feel more real, like a piece of them has manged to reach through time to you. Any time you look at these signatures, you're looking at the writing of someone who is long gone, but I was struck by the notion that she maybe she was so happy that day when she was signing her name, excited about the possibilities the future held as she began her married life. Little did she know that three years later she would be dead at 28 in an awful tragic accident. I felt a little like the ancient Greek Cassandra, who had the power of prophecy but the inability to change the future. Looking at Hulda's signature, I know what her future holds, but because it already happened, there's nothing I can do to change it.
I'm hopeful that since I received one document this means my others are on the way. I'm bracing myself for Hulda's death certificate, which I feel will be more of an emotional experience than these records usually are for me. But I'm looking forward to the marriage application records I requested, as I'm hoping they'll shed some light on some of my Irish ancestry...
Black Sheep Sunday: 3rd great uncle John Casey stabs his wife Celena
Yikes. Talk about scandalous people in your family tree. Discovered this jewel of a relative while scouring the Fulton History newspaper archives. John Casey, born about 1863 in Longford, Ireland to Thomas Casey and Margaret McCarthy, was the brother of my great great grandfather Peter Casey. This is from the September 13, 1905 Brooklyn Daily Eagle under the headline "Held For Stabbing Wife - John Casey Also Resisted Arrest Bond Placed at $200": "John Casey, 32 years old ... was charged ... with assault in stabbing his wife, Celena Casey, in the thumb with an ice pick. He was arrested last night in the saloon at Garfield Place and Fifth Avenue by Court Officer Joseph Murray. He resisted arrest.. The couple have two children." I don't know what happened to John and Celena after this. I don't know why this happened. Had he been drinking? Was this a one-time thing? Did they have a normally tempestuous relationship? Did their children know about the incident?
From the Sept. 13, 1905 Brooklyn Daily Eagle - John Casey was arrested for stabbing his wife Celena.
Putting the puzzle pieces in place: Clifford Raynor's World War II Navy service
So I've been waiting to get some documents from the New York City Municipal Archives before I wrote another blog, but I forgot how long it takes. It's been so long since I ordered anything from them...I guess I thought since I was requesting only documents, not a search for said documents, that they would've gotten to me by now, but alas, here I am two months out, running to the mailbox every. single. day. as if I were waiting for a love letter from my crush... ::sigh:: Every day begins with hope and ends with disappointment...I live only 30 miles from the Archives. I could've gone in and found everything myself ages ago...don't tell my 3-year-old daughter. I'm always admonishing her to be patient.
And so, while we wait...
I was watching an episode of Genealogy Roadshow recently and they were looking at old Civil War muster rolls, which I have for my 4th-great grandfather Charles Haase, but I also have Navy muster rolls for my grandfather Clifford Raynor's service during World War II. Muster rolls are kind of like attendance, and were taken every couple of months, and so can kind of recreate your family member's service journey, showing exactly where he was on those muster dates. As far as I can tell, though, my grandfather's muster rolls, which are available online, don't say where the muster roll was taken, just his rank, any change in rank, and what ship he was serving on - the USS Amsterdam, which was a CL-101 Cleveland-class light cruiser.
The USS Amsterdam
I knew my grandfather served in the Pacific Theater (although not until after he had passed - if only I had known while he was alive and had also been old enough to understand what his service had meant!) but none of the details. So I had muster roll dates - Jan. 8, 1945, March 31, 1945, July 1, 1945 and so on. So I checked online. Wikipedia actually has a somewhat detailed service history for the Amsterdam - Jan. 8, 1945 the ship was commissioned at the Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Virginia, July 1, 1945 it left Leyte, Philippines as part of the 3rd Fleet went on the offensive with Task Force 38 to protect US planes doing airstrikes against Japan, and so on. While I knew my grandfather never saw hand-to-hand combat, as it were, the way infantry and others who fought on land did, I guess I never realized that he actually was a huge supportive part of the battles that were going on. He might not have seen combat, but he saw combat.
I decided to revisit the Fulton History newspaper archive website to look at old newspaper reports just to round out the picture a little more. My grandfather enlisted in the Navy in November of 1943 - when his grandfather, Joseph J. Raynor died in January of 1944, my grandfather was stationed in Newport, Rhode Island. in March of 1944 he was attending Wright College in Chicago, which was used by the Navy during World War II for its Electronics Training Program, which trained men to work with the radio and electronic equipment aboard naval crafts.
After training, my grandfather served as a radio technician in the Navy. While Grandpa ended up in the Pacific, his brother, Monroe was serving on the other side of the world in Germany. My grandfather was one of seven siblings; he and his brother were the only boys. I wonder how my great-grandparents felt having both their sons fighting in a world war, on both fronts...
The Raynor brothers, Bob and Dick.
Anyway, what was the point of all of this? Each record or database gives me pieces, glimpses, of my grandfather's wartime naval service - I have muster rolls, I have Google, I have websites dedicated to detailing the service of every naval craft, I have newspaper articles. Don't ever just be satisfied with what you can glean from one record - "Oh, my grandfather was in the Navy on this date, this date, and this date during the war...cool." What part of the world did he serve in? What battles was he a part of? What did he do while he was in service, what was his "everyday" job? How and when did he get involved? Always ask questions. Always dig a little deeper. Always want to find out more. I actually knew most of this info from prior research. Today I pinpointed Grandpa's exact location at each muster roll. I also learned that radio technician was a highly skilled, highly selective job, which I never knew. I have so many questions for my grandfather now about his naval wartime life! Maybe in the next life (or Grandma, if you're hanging around and can ask him and pass along the answers to me in a dream, that would be cool, too...)
Nature versus nurture: when your family is adopted...
Lately I've been working with a few clients who are either adopted themselves or who have a parent or grandparent who was adopted. Many of these people are just starting to find out more about their families through genetic genealogy, but a lot of them are still in the dark, and might always be. I've also been thinking lately about people in my own life who have a parent or grandparent who was adopted, disrupting the genetic family chain, possibly permanently.
In genealogy, we always talk about how important it is to know where we come from to understand more about who we are as people - what makes us tick, who in our families are we like, what traits did we inherit? So what does this mean for people who are not genetically part of their family? Does genealogy care about them? Should they care about genealogy?
OF COURSE!!!
Genealogy is about genetics, yes - who you got your blues eyes from, where you got your artistic talent from, what peoples handed down the genes that you carry in your body today, be it Celtic, Native American, West African, Mediterranean, Jewish, etc. But genealogy is more than that - genealogy is about FAMILY, and family can be through birth or it can be through choice. Some traits get passed down genetically, yes, but others get passed down through relationships. Tradition, inspiration and lessons are not encoded in our DNA - they're passed on in stories and through shared experiences. So even if your family tree isn't "really" your family tree, it is STILL your family tree. Maybe your family is Italian, and you are Asian, but you still inherited your Sicilian great-grandmother's meatball recipe, which you can pass on to your children; you still gained an appreciation for classical music from your grandfather; you still sing the same lullaby to your baby that your mother sang to you and her mother sang to her; you still decided to pursue a career in law because that's been your family business for over 100 years...
Genealogy is only half nature...the rest is nurture. Who we are is not just in our genes...it's how our families, how our relationships, how generations of relationships have molded us as people. Sometimes we get too caught up in the genetics, the "nature" of it all...let's not forget about the PEOPLE, and how we were, and continue to, nurture.
OMG...she was married?? Or how I confirmed the fate of Hulda Lindemann in the General Slocum disaster
My great-great grandmother was Augusta Lindemann Stutzmann. The family of her husband, Rudolph Stutzmann, is chronicled in the anthology, Schlegel's American Families of German Ancestry and in the Stutzmann family summary, they briefly address Augusta's family as well. It was here that I first learned of the General Slocum disaster, as the book says that Augusta's sister Hulda was a victim. I've written of the disaster before but just as a quick reminder, the General Slocum was a paddleboat, and on June 15, 1904, it set sail from New York City with 1,358 passengers, mostly women and children from the German-American community, most from the Lower East Side, who were out on a fun church outing. The ship caught fire and more than 1,000 of those on board died - only 321 people survived. It was the largest non-war related loss of life in the whole United States until 9/11. You can read more about it on the New York Public Library website here: http://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/06/13/great-slocum-disaster-june-15-1904
Anyway, according to Schlegel's, Hulda, who was only 28 at the time, died that day, but I couldn't find a death certificate for her anywhere. I couldn't find any proof to back up that story or find out what really happened to her. On top of that, a lot of the information in Schlegel's had proven to be inaccurate, so maybe it didn't get that fact about Hulda right? She wasn't in the 1905 census, so she probably had died before then, and in 1900 she was living with a family, the Feldhusens, as a servant. They lived on the Lower East Side, and I had found the names of the mother and the son on a list of the dead from that day - a list Hulda's name wasn't on, but I thought maybe she had accompanied the Feldhusens on the trip and was among the missing - but still, why would she not have a death certificate???
So today I went to the Genealogy Federation of Long Island conference at Bethpage Public Library. In addition to hosting various speakers and presentations, there were different vendors and genealogy organizations there set up at tables. One of these groups represented was the German Genealogy Group, which, along with the Italian Genealogy Group, has an awesome website for any New York City genealogy research, even if your family isn't German or Italian. But on the banner behind their table I noticed that it said they had a General Slocum passenger list manifest in their database. So I decided to ask if they could look for Hulda for me. A kind older gentleman whose name I didn't get but who was so helpful looked up Lindemann for me. No luck. Looked up Hulda for me. Two hits, but neither had a last name even close to Lindemann. He asked me how old she would've been. 28, I told him. Well, one of the Huldas in the list, Hulda Wolbern, had been 28. Are you sure your Hulda never married, a woman with the group asked me. I hesitated.
No, I wasn't sure.
Schegel's never listed her as being married. But I knew the Stutzmann-Lindemann family account, while an awesome place to start, was pretty inaccurate. Had I been searching for Hulda all these years under the wrong name???
Turns out that, yes, I had been. I couldn't even wait until I got home - I used my phone to go on the FamilySearch website and found a Hulda Linderman Wolbern buried in Lutheran Cemetery in Middle Village who had died June 15, 1904. Linderman. Practically Lindemann. And buried in the same cemetery as my Lindemanns. This was her. I had found her. I feel so so so excited to have finally found her and at the same time, just so sad to know she died in such a terrible disaster and probably suffered a terrible death. I plan to order her marriage record and death record immediately. I'm hoping both will shed some light on where the Lindemanns came from in Germany, because that is a line that has been a huge brick wall for me for a long time. I wonder how explicit her death record will be. Or if she was one of the missing. I found another birth record on FamilySearch today - I discovered Hulda and her husband had a son, Henry, in 1903. Here was a cousin I never knew about. How sad, I told my husband, that he lost his mom when he was just one. My husband asked me if the baby had been on the ship with her, since the outing was for mothers and children. My heart sank. A death certificate search revealed that yes, one year old Henry Wolbern died that day as well. I found and lost a cousin in the space of 10 minutes, and as the mother of young children, my heart is just breaking for Hulda and her baby boy.
Let us remember all the lives that were lost that day. Let us remember all our family members, however long they've been gone - they aren't just names and dates, they were people who lived and who loved.
And thank you to the gentleman with the German Genealogy Group who helped me put this mystery to rest and for helping me find my little cousin who died that day because everybody deserves to be remembered.