Season finale of "Who Do You Think You Are?" tonight

It's that time of the week again, folks...tonight is the season finale (I'm fairly certain) of the second season of "Who Do You Think You Are?" Ashley Judd is the subject - I've always liked her as an actress, and it looks like this southern girl discovers some deep New England American roots. Should be interesting.

These seasons are so short they just fly by - didn't this season of WDYTYA just start?? What am I going to watch on Saturday afternoons now when I need a break from cleaning my house? Lol... anyone out there who reads this blog who has seen the British original-recipe version of this show, are those eps worth trying to track down to watch? Do they follow any celebrities Americans might be familiar with (I remember glancing at a list once and only recognizing Alan Cumming)? Are the episodes interesting enough that it doesn't matter if I recognize the celebrity? Not only am I worried about WDYTYA withdrawal but I'm curious to note any differences - I think, while the pursuit of genealogy is similar across national and cultural borders, that the resources are sometimes different and the stories are certainly different. In America, we get eclectic background mixes; we get the children of recent immigrants; and we get those who can trace their families back centuries to the first wave of European immigrants. I wonder if, for example, there are many people in England who are the children or grandchildren of immigrants, or if most people's backgrounds are more homogenous. And I don't know much about modern British history - I know it's a big deal here to discover you had an ancestor who fought in the Civil War - is there a British equivalent to that? Is it easier to trace your family further back because there is the possibility of less immigration and emigration going on? These are the things I think about...

Anyway, just a reminder too that next Tuesday is the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War so I'll be posting about that next week and look for my thoughts on tonight's Ashley Judd WDYTYA installment at some point before Monday (hopefully!)

"Who Do You Think You Are?" airs on NBC at 8 pm EST.

Happy weekend everyone!

Wishing Grandma, the original genealogist, a happy birthday!

She is not, of course, the original genealogist EVER (she's not that old!) but my grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Cronin Raynor, is the original genealogist in my family. She was born April 5, 1915 to Timothy Ambrose Cronin and Ellen Marie Casey. She started genealogy as a hobby when she was younger and it just took off from there - she started when there was no Internet to help, when she had to write letters to churches and relatives and state agencies and visit cemeteries and read books and everything else we should still be doing but which has become much easier and accessible (yes, we are a little "spoiled"! :)) But it's because of her that I had so much information to start with on BOTH sides of my family and it's because of her that I was exposed to genealogy at all, that I saw I how fun and interesting it can be. If genealogy is an inherited trait, I got it from her (and since today is her 96th birthday and she's still going strong, I hope I inherited her other genes as well!) - so thank you, Grandma, from one genealogist to another, and a very happy birthday!





My grandma, Mary, and her older brother, Dan. She looks about 3 yrs old so probably about 1918.



Grandma at about 13 with her mom Ellen Casey Cronin







Grandma with her brother, Dan Cronin, to the left and cousin, Ralph Casey, to the right.

The Casey women - my grandmother (second from left), her mom Ellen Casey Cronin (second from right), and all the Casey aunts (sisters and sister-in-law) at Coney Island.





Grandma and Grandpa at their wedding in 1946.

Grandma, her mom, and my uncle Cliff, about 1949.



The two genealogists and the two Marys :) - Grandma and me, about October 1979.



Belated thoughts on the Gwyneth Paltrow episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?"

It's been a lazy weekend for blogging - sorry for the delay, folks!

• I think Gwyneth Paltrow's family background is more and more an example of the typical American background - an eclectic mix of countries and religions all coming together in this "melting pot." I'm kind of jealous of the variety she has, from the British from Barbados to the Polish rabbis - I'm proud of my heritage but sometimes I feel like it's your standard, boring old-school American ancestry of half-and-half (although not straight-up half-Irish, half-German, when I explain to people who aren't into genealogy my background, that's how I simplify it.)
• I enjoyed Gwyneth's Barbados journey, especially when she was speaking to the historian. Not all of us can be experts in every time period we have family members in, but I think that's what we have to try to do if we're interested in the stories behind the names and dates. We might not have letters or documents detailing the motivations for the decisions our family members made, but to use Gwyneth's family as an example, we can look at what was going on in Barbados at the time, what society was like, to try to figure out why an 18 year old girl would have been desperate to leave there and travel to America...my mom had a similar project like that in college, where she was given a name, a birth date and place and a death date and place, and she had to research what was going on in that place at that time to develop a fictional but accurate life story for that person. I always found that fascinating. And that's what we do with our family trees.
• This episode, unlike the Steve Buscemi episode, epitomized for me how much hand-holding the program does for these celebrities. All Gwyneth did was travel to different locations (Municipal Archives shout-out!) and get folders or books handed to her. If only our research was so simple!
• I liked that Gwyneth was interested in the stories and motivations of her ancestors - I think she called them "more than names and dates," which is what people sometimes forget. I particularly liked her trying to understand her great-grandmother, the reasons behind why she turned out to not be such a great mother to Paltrow's grandfather. And there were reasons.
• Paltrow said to her mother, Blythe Danner, how when you go through all the lines and all the generations, you see "echoes," traits and personalities and stories that get repeated from parents to children to grandchildren. In her case, she mentioned children who look up to and love their fathers as well as people who are seeking a deeper spirituality. I also enjoy that part of genealogy - we enjoy finding those who are different and exotic but we also look for ourselves in these family members.
• She also mentioned how she wished she could have shared what she found out with both her father and grandfather and I think about that, too, all the things I've discovered that I think my mom or my grandparents would have found interesting, that we could've enjoyed learning about together, but I think those who have passed quite possibly may already know these stories from the people who lived them themselves...at least I hope so!

Our weekly WDYTYA reminder and a call for help from my fellow researchers!!!

Let's start by saying that tonight is the Gwyneth Paltrow episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?" I always kind of liked her and her parents, so I'll be interested to see what she's looking for and which lines they follow.

On a personal note, I need some help on several things. Two of them have to do with deciphering handwriting. Handwritten records can always be a tricky thing and after awhile, sometimes you just get locked into one word or you just can't put it together. So I'm asking for a fresh set of eyes to look at these names - one is the maiden name of my fourth great grandmother, Sophie Ricklefs. I won't tell you what every transcription has it as so as not to put a preconceived notion into your heads.

The second is the town in Germany from which my third great grandmother, Meta Tiedemann Ricklefs, hails. For the life of me, I can't tell what it says. But maybe it's a town your family comes from or a name you're familiar with. Maybe all those crazy letters make sense to you or you just need a current puzzle and want to give this one a shot. Both of these are coming from the back page of John Ricklefs and Meta Tiedemann's marriage certificate - any ideas are appreciated!

The third request is not so much a call for help as just putting the information out into the universe - my great-great grandmother Mary Horgan Gorry corresponded with a soldier during World War I named R. Morrow. My father and I think he might have been from New York City and that his first name might have been Robert. He was at the N.C.O. School, Section C Co. E in Camp Greenleaf in Chickamauga, Tennessee in 1918. His letters give a little bit of insight into life at the camp in general and things going on in his life in particular and I just wanted to put out there that if R. Morrow has any family alive today, and any family that might be doing their own family history, that I would love to share his letters with you!

"Who Do You Think You Are?" airs tonight at 8 p.m. EST on NBC - watch it!

Happy weekend everyone!

John Reinhardt death record, Union, Hudson County, New Jersey 1870

I've had this for about six months now, got lazy about uploading it, then misplaced it, and since I've started cleaning house, just recently rediscovered it. I've always been very happy with the service of the New York City Municipal Archives as well as the National Archives, but with my Reinhardt relations having spent a few decades across the river in New Jersey, I've had to use the New Jersey State Archives as well and they have also been extremely helpful. So, two snaps to well organized, well preserved archives!

This is the death record for John Reinhardt, my 5th great-grandfather, the maternal grandfather of my Civil War ancestor Charles Haase. John is one of my immigrant ancestors, and though I don't know specifics about where he came from or what happened to his wife after he died, I now have a little more information on his death. John was also the patriarch of several generations of well-known and influential Reinhardts in the Hudson County, Union/Hoboken/Weehawken area of New Jersey.

So, since the pictures aren't great (the first is the whole record, the second two are the first and second halves of the record taken a little closer), here's what it says (John's is the highlighted name):

It's from Volume AQ, p. 412 from 1 Sept. 1870 - 1 Sept. 1871; town of Union, County of Hudson, State of New Jersey; John Reinhardt died Oct. 17, 1870. He was married, 56 years old, no occupation. Town of death was Union. Place of birth was Germania. No parents listed (boo). Cause of death - atrophy of the brain. Not sure what that means...anyway, it's interesting to see how deaths were recorded before certificates and in different states. Enjoy!

Thoughts on the "Who Do You Think You Are?" Steve Buscemi episode

Finally watched the episode last night and made it through 95 percent of the episode without so much as a tear - I think probably because I was so exhausted from my weekend away - but ended up tearing up toward the end, so anyone who's still betting, the record remains intact. :)

• Was looking to see if I recognized any Valley Stream landmarks, as I am only four towns away...no such luck!
• It was really interesting to see how Buscemi's approach to acting and directing, trying to find the motivations of a character and really getting to know him, translated easily to his genealogical search - not that he was looking for a character per se but that he was hoping someone in his tree would have a compelling story...as a writer who thinks about the motivations and stories of characters, I see myself doing the same thing with my family tree searches...
• I think it's interesting to see what and who interests the person in particular who is searching - Steve probably could have kept tracing his family back, to see where they originally came from, but for him, Ralph Montgomery was the person who caught his attention, and the story of what happened to him and to his family is what drew Steve in.
• Always enjoy seeing the Municipal Archives in Manhattan pop up...that place has been a godsend in my research...
• This show is obviously done with the help of Ancestry.com, and is obviously always used as an advertisement-inside-a-show for the website, but while that felt particularly in-your-face in this episode, with Steve using a lot more features and searches than they usually highlight, I didn't mind, because I really believe the website provides a valuable service, not just in being a place to find records, but in being a place to connect with distant cousins doing the same research. If Steve hadn't found and met up with his third cousin, it's possible he might never have known (or that at least it might have taken much longer to find out) what happened to Julia and Jane Montgomery after Ralph died.
• It was nice to see, for a change, Steve helping with the research. So often on this show the celebrities just show up somewhere and are handed the documents they need, but this episode not only showed Buscemi thumbing through pages and bent over books and microfilm machines, but I think it also gave a sense of how tedious and let's face it, sometimes boring, the whole research process can be, despite the potential for rich and exciting payoffs in information.
• It was interesting how Steve was able to find a family connection to depression and suicide and it was kind of sad how tragic a character Ralph Montgomery seemed to be, but it was when Steve was talking about how discovering all the terrible things his ancestors had to live through and how it made him realize how lucky he was with his own family and how it made their problems seem not so bad that I kind of teared up.
• I was happy that, as someone who considered himself from the "country of Brooklyn" (I thought that was cute), that he was able to find the starting point of when his family left New Jersey and ended up in Brooklyn.

Friday musings and our regular WDYTYA reminder

My dad is starting to think like me.

Today he was talking about all the baby steps and giant leaps, all the zigzags and decisions that each one of our ancestors had to make-unrelated, ordinary people from nowhere near each other in national origin, social stature, religion, money class-so that eventually their descendents would end up in the same place at the same time to meet each other and become our parents and grandparents and so on and so forth. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason and there seems to be a lot of chance and luck involved, but maybe there is something a little more deliberate to it. I don't know. It's crazy but it's so amazing, and I think it's one of the most fascinating things about genealogy, how the journeys of these people's lives are the reasons we are here today...so it's kinda cool that my dad thinks that, too. Right on, Dad! :)

On another happy note, tonight is the first new episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?" in awhile. I believe the featured celebrity is Steve Buscemi. I don't know anything about how family, but I know he's a local Long Island boy from Valley Stream, just a few towns over, so I'm interested to see what he's looking for and what he discovers. I'll be visiting friends this weekend so I won't get to watch the episode till I get back - look for my thoughts and musings on it early next week.

"Who Do You Think You Are?" airs at 8 p.m. EST on NBC.

Happy weekend everyone! :)

Catherina Neher Meinberg Hellmann's will in Brooklyn probate January 1919

FamilySearch, like Ancestry, is constantly updating their available records - recently found this addition to the Kings County Estate Files database, Catharine's will. There are 15 pages, but I've included only the first two pages and the last two pages. The second page lists her heirs, including my 3rd great grandmother, Eva Haase, and the last two pages are her actually will, including my favorite part, Catherine's actual signature (and what a fancy old-fashioned one it is - love it!):

Mad props to those doing genealogy right

Genealogy, it seems, is the hobby of the moment. Some of us have been doing it for years before it became "in." And some of us have discovered an interest in it because of its increase in popularity. Doesn't matter your reasons - but for some of the more recent genealogy converts, (and some of us who have been doing it for so long that we really should know better) easy Internet access to other people's often unsourced trees has led to a proliferation of inaccurate information. People copy trees and then quote those trees as "sources," perpetrating a vicious cycle of bad research.

Believe me, I get how people get caught up in the excitement of finding what they think is an accurate family history when just the day before they knew nothing about their ancestry - if only things in life were that easy, but they rarely are, are they? This is not to say every person has to do their own research from scratch - that's part of the reason we're all doing this, so future generations don't have to - but check that the information you're taking is sourced and it'd be worth your time to check those sources to see if they're primary or secondary sources (the ones that will be most accurate).

That being said, I'd like to use this blog post to recognize those of you who are doing genealogy right. In particular, I'd like to single out Tom M. For those of you who have been following this blog, you'll know that Tom is a distant cousin of mine who only recently started researching his family tree and we've been corresponding, sharing ideas and information. Since he and I started e-mailing only a couple of months ago, he has been knocking down brick walls for our shared family branch left and right. Not only that, but he's been building up accurate and comprehensive bios on as many of his ancestors as he can. He is using all avenues at his disposal - family letters and photos, primary and secondary sources from the trees of distant relatives, such as mine, visiting cemeteries, ordering vital records from the New York Municipal Archives. The Internet is where his search began, but he has used it simply as a jumping off point, which is what it should be - he found e-mail addresses and contact information for people in other states who had information he needed, for historians and archivists in Germany who had information he needed, and he is pursuing those avenues and getting the information that he needs. I am amazed at how much he is finding out and how quickly he is finding it, but it goes to show how a little patience, persistance, and hard work can pay off in such exciting ways.

So thank you and mad props to Tom M. and all you other newbies and pros out there doing genealogy right, setting the good example for us all and future generations, and keeping me inspired. And a quick thank you to Tom, too, for breaking down one of MY brick walls today, on a branch of my tree that we don't share, John Meinberg, who unlike his wife Catherine Neher, has been an impossible nut to crack, and which I'll talk about in another post, hopefully this week.

Happy spring everyone!

Genealogy's Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boy(s)

Growing up, I read my mother's whole collection of Nancy Drew mystery novels from the 1940s, and then moved on to the 1990s continuation that followed an updated Nancy Drew, which sometimes included, and frankly were my favorites, books featuring a collaboration between Nancy Drew and Frank and Joe Hardy to solve a mystery.

Because I see genealogy as part detective work and I'm a huge self-proclaimed fan, I sometimes fancy myself to be Nancy Drew. And since I'm Nancy Drew in this scenario, I guess that would make my dad one of the Hardy Boys.

The other night, he waited till one of my favorite tv shows ended to tell me about some detective work he'd been doing regarding letters his great-grandmother, Mary Horgan Gorry, had written to a soldier, R. Morrow, in 1918, while he was stationed in Tennessee. Who was this guy? How did she know him? Why was he writing to her?

So my dad, like any good genealogist and detective, started with some basic assumptions - if you don't have facts, you start with an educated guess based on what you do know, and the information you find will either help confirm or refute your hypothesis. So my dad tells me that since they were writing to each other, he assumed they knew each other and so that R. Morrow lived in New York. Fair assumption. I'm not sure they had the same soldier pen pal services during World War I that they have nowadays. And just to give himself somewhere to start, he assumed the "R" stood for Robert. Also a fair assumption. He looked in the 1920 census and found a Robert Morrow living at 646 East 16th St. in Manhattan. In 1910, R. Morrow was living at 648 East 16th St.

In 1910, More Grandma lived at 652 East 16th St. So they were neighbors. And my dad is still working on it, trying to figure out what happened to R. Morrow from there on out. He's got some leads. He's making more educated guesses. He's working all angles of this case.

Father, I have taught you well.

:)

Happy weekend everyone!

St. Patrick's Day ode to my Irish ancestry

As an Irish-American, I feel like St. Patrick's Day tends to be more of an Irish-American than an Irish holiday, and as an Irish-American New Yorker, I sometimes feel like it's even a more narrow holiday than that! :)

But today, when all my friends "become" Irish, when they join me in celebrating my heritage, even if they don't know what they're celebrating, even when they think it's about a shot of good Irish whiskey and a glass of good Irish beer, the experience of everyone coming together in the Irish spirit reminds me to be proud of my Irish ancestors who came before.

So today I'd like to thank all those Irish branches of my tree both known - the Gorrys, the Corrs, the Horgans, the Murphys, the Tormeys, the Prendergasts, the Donnellys, the Cronins, the Caseys, the Enrights, the Collins, the Donohues, the Cullinans - and possibly forever unknown, for all your struggles and trials and tribulations, for making it through the potato famine, for living in a time when your country was not your own but belonged to the British, for braving the unknown journey to America so that your children might have a better life than you did and then struggling in the tenements of the Lower East Side barely making ends meet, for continuing on as your husbands and parents and children died early and cruel deaths, for believing in yourselves, for believing in each other, and for believing in the future, and therefore, believing in me.

And today we all say, "Erin go braugh!"  "Ireland forever!"

(And later we'll all say "Sláinte!")

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! :)

Tombstone Tuesday - Catherine Neher Meinberg Hellmann

Thanks to Tom M. for posting this photo on Ancestry.com. This is the headstone of my fourth great-grandmother Catherine Neher Meinberg Hellmann, born 1839 in Heppenheim, Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany, died 1918 in Brooklyn, New York. She is buried in Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, New York. And as she continues to reveal the story of her life to me in bits and pieces, of course I also found her will and probate records on FamilySearch.org last night, so I will post about that later this week.

Heppenheim sippenbuch - the Meinberg connection

All the Johns in my family tree are elusive bastards - John Horgan, John Enright, and the focus of this post, John Meinberg.

John Meinberg was the father of Eva Meinberg Haase and the first husband of Catherine Neher Meinberg Hellmann. He was living in New York by 1861 when Eva was born and was dead/out of the picture by 1878, when Catherine remarried. That is all I know about him.

Catherine, more than any of my ancestors, wants to be found. Her family has been revealing itself to me in leaps and bounds lately, generation after generation, male and female lines.

Her first husband? Not so much.

Well, he might be stubborn, but so am I. (Maybe that's who I got it from!)

From looking up Catherine's family in the sippenbuch, it appears she might have known John from her hometown, as one of the families included in this particular family book is the Meinberg family. I don't have photocopies of the pages about them, but as soon as I've exhausted Catherine's side, I'm coming for you, John!

Musings on the Lionel Richie episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?"

• Any African-American whose family has been here since before the Civil War has a good chance of finding an ancestor who was a slave. As a white American, I can't imagine how that must feel. You can think about these things in the abstract but to be actually confronted with the word "owner" like Lionel was when tracking down J. L. Brown, has to kind of people like a suckerpunch to the gut.
• I definitely felt for him when he was visiting J.L.'s grave site and there was no headstone in the pauper's section of the cemetery. There are certain family members I visit, particularly my poor Irish ancestors, who couldn't afford a marker. It makes you realize how important those things are to not only remembering people gone but to actually have a tangible object and place to go and reflect and grieve and remember.
• Slaves getting pregnant by their owners is an unfortunate part of American history in the South, but how refreshing to see an owner, Morgan Brown, who, though obviously not so enlightened and progressive as to not own another human being in the first place, was compassionate and progressive enough to ask that the slave woman and her child be freed, that she be given property, and that her child receive an education...whether or not that was actually honored after his death, it definitely spoke to Morgan's character.
• Loved all the documents outside of the normal range that Lionel was able to find, including Morgan Brown's diary - how cool??? :)
• I'm glad that Lionel was able to find out so much about his great-grandfather and that what he found out made him proud of his ancestor, even though his grandmother obviously never talked of him and even though his great-grandfather pretty much abandoned his wife and child. That must have been very hard on his grandmother. But it shows that there are two sides to every story, and I also agree with Lionel, that his grandmother probably didn't keep that info from her family - she probably never knew it in the first place.
• This episode's major crying moment - when he was visiting the cemetery where his great-grandfather was buried. Emotional moments like that for them lead to my own emotional moments, every single time!

Learning a new language:deciphering and reading the Heppenheim sippenbuch

First, I want to thank Tom M. yet again for obtaining copies of 12 pages from the second and third volumes of the Heppenheim sippenbuch.

Second, I want to head all you smartasses off and say that yes, I know the book is in German and is therefore in a different language. Got it out of your system? Okay.

Can I just say that this was one of the most overwhelming pieces of documentation I have EVER come across in my entire life. As already stated, the book is in German. On top of that, there are a lot of abbreviations and symbols. This is where this handy little legend courtesy of the St. Louis County Public Library special collections department really came in handy:

Ok, confused yet?

Now, the way it seems to work, as far as I can tell, is you have a family entry with husband, wife, kids, dates of birth, dates of death, dates of marriage, places for all if known, and sometimes little notes about occupation or running off to America without your wife and kids in the case of Martin Neher. The family entry has a number, and next to each name and/or marriage there is also a number, in parentheses. If you follow it, for example, from the father of the first family entry, it will take you to another family entry, where the father is the kid listed with his parents, and you keep going like so until you reach the end.

So there actually is a bit of order to it all, although once you start following several lines, you need to keep track of which parents belong to which kid. But the fun doesn't stop there. For that extra kick, in the case of Heppenheim and vicinity, it was a small town, so on top of being in German and abbreviated, we have the same first and last names repeating over and over again as the same families intermarry with each other for generations.

And then there are those who married more than once.

If a man married more than once, a family entry might list him with two wives and all his kids - I couldn't tell which wife belonged to the first wedding date and therefore did not know which kids belonged to which wife (and god forbid she married more than once, too, and so her first husband's name or next husband's name was also listed). I got so bogged down in one entry I just wanted to cry. Instead I read it several times and then wrote it out several times, but couldn't make heads or tails of it. So I decided to leave the wife for now and follow the husband's line back.

Aha.

In the entry for the husband where he's listed as the child, his marriages are written in order, each wife next to the date of the right marriage. And so I was able to move forward again from there and follow the proper mother back.

The moral is, you are going to have to read this thing both forward and backward and then forward again.

Also of note - if a person is married more than once, there may be multiple family entries, one for each marriage.

The moral of THAT is, make sure you follow the right family numbers.

I'm still going through everything, but from the looks of it, I have very deep Hessian roots, and I'm just so excited to find out more...

Women's History Month - Fearless Females - the Mary Ellen Gorry club

Am I named after any one in my family...

Do I share a name with any female ancestors...

Where to begin, lol...

If you read this blog, then you already know the answer to this, but as this is today's "Fearless Females" blogging prompt, I thought I'd talk about it again...also, I was just exchanging e-mails with Tom M. about how confusing it can be when a name is repeated over and over again in a family - when you're looking at records, you might not know which person that record belongs to. At the same time, a repeated name can be a great clue as to whether or not a person IS part of the family - when I was trying to find Gus Haase's parents, the fact that he had a son named Edward made me think the Edward and Eva Haase I found were probably his parents (and they were).

Anyway, back to me...

I have always liked my name. It's definitely an old-fashioned name, not one you come across to much anymore (unless you know a lot of Irish Catholics, which I do), but barring everything else - documents, photos, stories, everything - my name has always made me feel connected to my family history. Always. Who knows...maybe that's why I became so interested in genealogy to begin with.

As I've written before, I am the latest in a long line of Marys, Mary Ellens, and Mary Ellen Gorrys (some by birth, some by marriage). My dad's sister was Mary Ellen Gorry. My grandfather's mother was Mary Ellen (Tormey) Gorry. Her husband's mother was Mary Ellen (Horgan) Gorry (and a sister who died in infancy was Mary Gorry). HER husband's mother was Mary (Corr) Gorry (and his sister was Mary Gorry). And HER husband's mother (and possibly sister) were both Mary Gorry. Unoriginal? Yes. a tangible connection to great-grandmothers and aunts past? Absolutely.

Then there are my other Mary Ellen connections. My maternal aunt (and godmother) is Ellen. Her mom (and my grandmother) is Mary. HER mom (and my great-grandmother) is Ellen. HER mom (and my great great grandmother) was...anyone want to guess? Sense the pattern?...Mary. So my name connects me to my mom's side of the family as well.

No wonder I tend to identify with my Irish roots...

It makes me sad when I think I might be the last Mary Ellen Gorry, at least on my branch of the Gorry tree. There aren't a lot of Gorry branches as far as I know - on my line, there are my two brothers and the three sons of my dad's male cousins by his dad's brother. Those are the only Gorry men on my branch as far back as my 4th great grandfather Cornelius Gorry (1812-1897), so unless any of my brothers or cousins marry a Mary or have a daughter named Mary, I'm it. It's a nice club to be a part of, and I'm determined to make all the Marys and Ellens and Mary Ellens proud... :)

German genealogy resource - the "sippenbuch"

Today, I discovered a German genealogy resource I had never heard of before but which seems to be not only a somewhat common German practice but an extremely valuable resource to boot.

Wait, first I have to thank Tom for solving the Martin Neher comment mystery.

Nancy Drew and the Case of the Martin Nehr Comment

While I still don't know who the person is who posted the comment with the information about Martin Neher's origins and parentage in Heppenheim, Germany, Tom sent me an e-mail saying that it is probably reliable information, as it came from a "sippenbuch."

According to the Special Collections Department newsletter from the St. Louis County Public Library:

"Numerous rich sources for German genealogy are published in German-speaking countries. Chief among them are Ortssippenbücher (OSBs), also known as Ortsfamilienbücher, Familienbücher, Dorfsippenbücher and Sippenbücher. Literally translated, these terms mean “local clan books” (Sippe means “clan”) or
“family books.” OSBs are the published results of indexing and abstracting projects usually done by genealogical and historical societies.

An OSB focuses on a local village or grouping of villages within an ecclesiastical parish or administrative district. Genealogical information is abstracted from local church and civil records and commonly presented as one might find on a family group sheet. Compilers usually assign a unique numerical code to each individual for cross–referencing purposes (OSBs for neighboring communities can also reference each other). Genealogical information usually follows a standard format using common symbols and abbreviations, making it possible to decipher entries without an extensive knowledge of German.
Besides genealogical information, many OSBs also offer histories about the locality, its churches and schools, and they often include lists of clergy, teachers, community leaders, and soldiers who died during military service. Some OSBs include lists of emigrants from the village with their destinations."

Because these are basically compilations of actual vital records, despite the possibility of human error during the transcription and compilation, these seem like they are probably fairly reliable. Okay, so the Heppenheim Historical Society put together several volumes of what is called the Sippenbuch Heppenheim, which is where the info from the Martin Neher comment came from and from the looks of it, there is much more information on the Neher family in there.

So my next goal now is to somehow get my hands on these books - it looks like I might be able to order a microfilm copy from a Family History Center, so I may have to try that, as apparently it's not so simple as to order one of these books from Amazon. But for any of you out there with German ancestry who has never heard of this resource before, it might be worth it, if you know the town or area where your ancestors came from, to see if there is a sippenbuch that might be helpful to you and your research.

Some quick thoughts on the fourth episode of WDYTYA

• Oh, tears and tears and tears at this one. I'm not a mother but my heart just went out to Kim Cattrall's mom and her two aunties, as she called them (so cute), as they told about how their family was devastated by their father's leaving, as they finally got the courage to find out what happened to him, how their hearts must have just broken at finally seeing a picture of him and seeing his happy little second family, and how they were finally able to get some closure.
• So often this show depicts stories of discovering brave or pioneering or groundbreaking ancestors being discovered, but the truth is that all families have those people who are just unlikeable, for whatever reason.
• Kim, like Lisa Kudrow last season, was interested in only one particular person, and a very recent person at that - our search for family isn't always in the distant past. Our parents and grandparents, just as our children and grandchildren, are also parts of our family history.
• As someone so interested in family records who thinks all sorts of documentation is just so important, I can't understand a person, like Kim's grandfather, who just did not want to be in any pictures. I have an aunt, my great grandfather's Aunt Hannah, who lied about her age all the time and went so far as to scratch out any dates on documents. As a family historian, I could strangle her.
• I was glad to see at the end of the episode that Kim's mom and aunties reached out to their half-siblings in Australia - I totally get Kim's not wanting to pursue it at the time, I think the whole journey packed a huge emotional wallop on all of them, but after letting things settle down for a bit, I'm glad to see they did that.
• I couldn't believe Kim Cattrall's accent - I know her primarily from Sex and the City as a loud and fabulous New Yorker and to hear her accent get even more British as she spent time in England was awesome.

Reminder - fourth episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?" tonight

Tonight's episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?" focuses on Kim Cattrall's search for why her grandfather abandoned her family years and years ago. The previews hint at some kind of bigamy on his part. As Kim is actually British, they should show some different records for her research than are used by her American counterparts. Should be interesting. I won't get to watch this episode until this weekend, but look for my thoughts on it at some point tomorrow or Sunday.

"Who Do You Think You Are?" airs tonight on NBC at 8 p.m. EST - watch it!

Happy weekend everyone!

Taking a closer look at ship passenger manifests

I'm not sure what made me go back and look at the ship passenger manifests for my great-great grandparents, Rudolph and Augusta Stutzmann, but that's what I'm doing today. Most people with immigrant ancestors will, hopefully, be able to find their person or people on a ship passenger manifest documenting their entry into the United States (or wherever your ancestor might have gone to). Rudolph Stutzmann was actually born here in New York, but because he was a rich bank president, he and his wife traveled extensively, and so I have them listed on 8 different lists from 1910 to 1932.

So, here's what I've looked at on them before - all the usual suspects such as birth date and place, ship name, arrival date in New York, departing port. Sometimes their home address was listed, sometimes his occupation, sometimes his passport number. She is listed on several manifests as "a citizen by marriage." (Augusta was born in Germany). Corresponding newspaper articles about the Stutzmanns helped me realize why some of these trips were made - once when they toured Germany and France with the German singing society they belonged to, once when they sailed to Bermuda for a "conference" for bank presidents and their wives (my job needs to have conferences like that!), once when Rudolph toured post World War I France as the representative of the Ridgewood branch of the American Red Cross.

Today, I decided to dig a little deeper. Why not? I think sometimes we focus so much on the details, on what we need to find or just on our particular people, that we forget that this is a historical document, that it contains a lot more information than what I think I have to look for. This applies not to just ship passenger manifests. This applies to every document we look at.

I started with a trip Rudolph made in 1932. I didn't know why he made the trip. I didn't know where the ship had sailed, as both departure and arrival port were listed as New York. And then I skimmed the entire page where his name was listed and saw that two names were crossed out because they had "departed at Havana."

So Rudolph had gone to Cuba.

I checked out the front page of the manifest and saw that yes, several passengers had embarked at Havana. I decided to look at other ship manifests - some were pretty obvious that they had sailed out of European ports, such as Hamburg or Cherbourg. But I noticed that some of them made more than one stop. One ship had orginated in Bremen. Another made a stop at Southampton, England. Many of these ships were carrying diplomats. One had a count. A couple of other ships were carrying actresses.

I'm starting to get a better feel for Rudolph and Augusta's world. So this is how they rolled, huh?

I'm still in the process of reading these manifests. This blog post is a reminder to myself, and hopefully you all, to apply this approach to other sources I both come across in the future and that I've already saved and only taken a glimpse at.

Happy Hump Day everyone - only 2 and a half more days until the weekend! :)