Plainview Family History Center:Friedrich Stutzmann

I would like to begin this post by thanking everyone who takes time out of their lives to help the rest of us historians out by transcribing and indexing these records. Without the index provided by FamilySearch, my Stutzmann research would literally have been like looking for a needle in a haystack, between the atrocious handwriting and 19th-century German alphabet. Most of it would have still been possible for me to find, but it would have taken me probably weeks on end as well as the better part of my eyesight, and though I will probably still have to do the line-by-line approach to find some other names I'm looking for, I am so grateful to all those genealogists out there who realize we really are a community - a family even! - and share their time and information!

My grandmother, my father's mother, was Helen Meta Stutzmann Gorry, born 1932. Her father, Frederick Casper Stutzmann, was born in New York in 1903. His father, Rudolph Stutzmann, was born in New York in 1875. His father, Friedrich, was, according to Schlegel's German family genealogies, born in Grossbockenheim, Germany on Dec. 12, 1844. Here is what I found on the microfilm I ordered from the Family History Library:

Friedrich Stutzmann's baptismal record is second from the top, FHL #193970.


Close up of Friedrich's baptismal record.


Friedrich's father is Peter Stutzmann and his mother is Luise Charlotte Schlick.

Can I just say that after viewing all these records, I love German meticulousness but I haaatteee trying to read the actual words. Even the few words I understand in German, like parents (eltern) and born (geboren) I can't read because the letters are so different. And don't get me started on the handwriting! The only reason I can tell that Friedrich's mother's last name is Schlick is because other records tell me it is.

Luckily, this same record can be found in the Grossbockenheim Protestant kirchenbuch, in standardized form, showing Friedrich was baptized Dec. 21, 1845:

Friedrich Stutzmann's baptismal record, FHL #193802.


Plainview Family History Center:the Stutzmanns of Grossbockenheim, part I

More and more over the past few years, I have become convinced that my German heritage is going to prove the most fruitful. (Those Germans sure did keep meticulous records!) The thing is, I know the information is there, but trying to get my Germans to give it up is like pulling teeth. Worse, actually. They don't like to be forced. You can't move too quick. You have to get to know them very well. They have to feel really comfortable with you. There has to be mutual trust. And then the doors open up and the information - all that beautiful, meticulous German record-keeping! - just pours forth. For the most part. There are always those stubborn ancestors that still hold out on you, like they're waiting for a formal invitation to join the genealogy party. But overall, it's unbelievable. And extremely exciting. And rewarding, from the standpoint of a genealogist, but also as a person - I always identified with my Irish heritage, because my name is Irish and it was the side I knew the most about. But the more I learn about my German branches, the more I realize I'm starting to identify more with my German family. (See aforementioned stubbornness...)

So on that note, let's get to it! I went to the Plainview Family History Center to look at the microfilm of actual records for my Stutzmann line for which transcriptions had been posted on the FamilySearch website. I cannot stress enough how valuable it is to have as specific a place as possible for your family, especially in German research, because often their meticulous records are organized by town name, not family name - case in point being that the German lines I have had the most success with are the ones for which I have the most specific starting point, namely the town from which they orginated.

In the case of the Stutzmanns, that town in Grossbockenheim, in the Rheinland-Pfalz region of Germany. The town of origin was recorded in an anthology of genealogy books, Schlegel's German American Families in the United States, published in 1916. While Schlegel's got a lottttt of info wrong, they at least got the town name right. Stutzmann is my paternal grandmother's line, and because her grandfather, Rudolph Stutzmann, was such an influential member of Queens County German society at the turn of the 20th century, his genealogy had actually been pretty extensively (though somewhat inaccurately) recorded, at least back to *his* grandfather, Peter Stutzmann. Rudolph's father, Friedrich - don't you love all these perfectly German names?? - was born in Grossbockenheim in 1844. He died in Ridgewood Heights, Queens County, New York, in 1906. Friedrich's father, Peter, was born in Grossbockenheim in 1812 and died in Brooklyn in 1892, about six months after arriving in New York. Schlegel's had listed parents for Peter - Christoph and Jacobine. Boy, did that throw me off forever, mainly because those were not his parents names! I don't care how official your sources look...unless its primary or secondary sources, you need to doublecheck. And you should doublecheck and verify anyway because even primary sources get it wrong!

Okay...

So, in the course of exploring the newly designed FamilySearch website, I discovered that they had a ton of Stutzmann information on there! The source they were using was mainly the kirchenbuch, or church book, for the Protestant church used by residents of Grossbockenheim. It was here that I discovered that Peter's mother was, in fact, Jacobine or Jacobina (Blasius, to be precise) but that his father's name was Johann Michael Stutzmann. And I'm working on a hunch, based on Michael's possible parentage, that while Peter's maternal family and maternal grandmother's family had been established in Grossbockenheim for centuries, that the Stutzmann line is actually from the nearby town of Asselheim. Anyway, these records were great, but they were transcriptions of original church records at best and transcriptions of transcriptions of original church records at worst, so in order to get a degree closer, I decided to order them to my local Family History Center.

On that first visit, I looked at several Stutzmann records in the kirchenbuch, namely Friedrich Stutzmann's baptismal record, as well as those of his two older brothers, Rudolph and Peter; the record of his father Peter Stutzmann's marriage to his mother, Luise Charlotte Schlick; and a possible death record for Michael Stutzmann. For anyone else doing Stutzmann (or Schlick or D'Huy or Blasius) genealogy, the exacts records I looked at were Family History Library microfilms #193800, #193801, and #193802, all covering baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and burials for the Protestant kirchenbuch for Grossbockenheim, 1633-1927. I also looked at #193970, the
parish register transcripts of baptisms, confirmations, marriages, burials and sermons of J. P. Lattermann, covering Grossbockenheim between 1837-1848.

Unfortunately, I had a crap camera, so I didn't get the pictures I wanted the first time, and also, I ordered so many rolls and it takes me an hour and half to 2 hours to go through each roll, so I had to go back again tonight and I'm going to have to go back again at least two more times I'd say (and of course more times after that, since I have other rolls for other branches that I want to order, but that'll for a story for another day...)

But this post is getting long, so details and photos to follow!

Family history ADHD: glancing at my Danish heritage

Never fear - I am still in the midst of my FHC/Stutzmann research - I've just had to postpone my return visit to the Family History Center and I don't want to post any photos of the records I've found so far and hope to find until I bring my good camera with me!

But over the weekend I was watching a show on the History Channel with the boyfriend and they were talking about Viking burial mounds in Denmark and it made me realize how almost completely I've ignored the Danish branch of my family tree, even though it might prove to be the most unique of all my family history.

I think part of it is that it's such a small percentage of my family history, at least in comparing it to the twin behemoths of Irish and German ancestry. It was my great great great grandfather, Peter Hansen Berg, who was born near Copenhagen, Denmark about 1824 before, according to family stories, running away to sea and coming to America about the age of 12.

Another part is that I don't know much beyond that. As with most of my Irish ancestry, my Danish immigrant ancestor is my brick wall ancestor. And while I can pinpoint his place of origin more exactly than my Irish family, I don't really have much else to go on. I do have a relative who has parents and dates and places for Peter's parents, but I've never been able to verify that on my own and I don't know where that information came from, so I don't know if that information is reliable in any way.

And a third part that is more recent is simply the language barrier. I can fake my way through a lot of English-looking German words and I have my German language cheat sheet. But Danish is a language completely unfamiliar to me. It might as well be Chinese. Which isn't a good excuse for ignoring a branch but it's a reason for the feet-dragging.

But talk of Danish Vikings on this show really did pique my curiosity about this country and culture and family branch that I know nothing about. So I guess I might start with the one lead I'm actually lucky I have - the cousin who has possible parents for Peter Hansen Berg - and try to trace that line of information and see if anything reliable turns up, and if that might lead to any threads I can trace backward from there. You know, after I finish the stuff I'm already working on.

Welcome to the world of family history ADHD! :)

Genealogy field trip: Plainview Family History Center

So I've been doing genealogy for about 15 years now and this was the first time I'd ever been to a Family History Center. Three weeks ago I ordered several microfilm rolls from the LDS Family History Library and on Tuesday, I got an e-mail that they had been received at the FHC in Plainview. Not too bad of a lag time between ordering and delivery. The Plainview FHC only has evening hours twice a week so today I took off from work to make my first FHC field trip. The one in Plainview, like many Family History Centers, is adjacent to a Mormon temple, like this one:

















And this is the Family History Center, right next door:

Now, I had done some research on how FHCs work but I didn't know exactly what to expect. The centers are staffed by volunteers, who were immediately friendly and helpful. At Plainview, they ask you to only bring your notepad, pencil, and camera/phone into the library with you. Also, in accordance with Mormon religious views, they ask you not to consume caffeine on the premises, so it was a good thing I had just finished my coffee when I arrived. The FHC is very small - in Plainview there's an office, a reading room, and a microfilm machine room. The films I had ordered were right there in the back, nicely labeled. They let you take out one roll at a time. It had been awhile since I used a microfilm machine so the volunteer helped me load it. First disappointment - there's really no method available to make copies of any records you find. There's apparently a wonky photocopying machine, but that's it. Luckily, I had thought ahead of time to bring a digital camera to take photos of any records I found. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to charge it. Thank God for camera phones...so, important, bring some kind of camera with you if you make the trip, preferably one that's charged. And then I was in it! I was there for two hours today - I had ordered five rolls and only got through two of them. Part of the problem was that the records were in German, making them difficult to read. Another problem was, as always, messy handwriting, also making them difficult to read. But I found my great great great grandfather Friedrich Stutzmann's baptismal record, his parents' marriage record, and his grandfather's death record, all handwritten and old looking, which was awesome. They may be harder to read, but original records are so much better at actually drawing you into the past. I will talk about what I found in my next post(s). For now, I have these 5 rolls until April 8th, and I can extend my borrowing time if I need to. I have about 250 years further back to look through and from I skimmed when I glanced at the third roll, the handwriting gets even messier and closer together. This is going to be some hard work. But this is the kind of work that is so necessary and that, for now anyway, you absolutely can't get done unless you go out into the field. The Internet got me started on this particular search, but any good genealogist will take it to the next level. Looking forward to my next trip back!

Running into family in unexpected places

The father of a friend of the boyfriend's died this week, unfortunately, but when the bf told me the news, he said, "Guess where the wake is going to be. Stutzmann's." R. Stutzmann and Son is the official name of the funeral home and it's just a little bizarre to look at that name on the side of the building and know that R. Stutzmann was my great great grandfather, Rudolph. He opened the doors at his first location in Ridgewood, Queens, in 1901. The funeral home is no longer a family business - it was bought out by a conglomerate some years ago (think what the Fishers were trying to avoid in Six Feet Under, if you ever watched that show) - but the name is still there so I guess it's still part of Rudolph's legacy. He was a real mover and shaker in his day and though I think of him every time I see a Ridgewood Savings Bank (which he helped found and of which he was the first president) it's kind of cool to see his name still attached to the other successful business he founded.

Expanding my genealogical horizons: diving into the Caribbean (records, that is)

My family history is totally American and Western European, so whenever I do genealogy research, records pertaining to those two areas are the ones I am most familiar and comfortable with. Because of the request of two of my friends with Italian ancestry for help, I've dabbled in some Italian records, too. But the world is a lot bigger than just the United States and Europe and I'm starting to realize that in my genealogy research. For me, personally, having a narrow geographical view of the world has been okay, and probably more than okay, as I really feel well-versed in a lot of those records because I have to use them so often. But I've recently gotten requests from friends with Caribbean ancestry for some help on where to look and what to look for, and so, since I'm in a lull in my own personal research, I've started dabbling in that. The Family Search website is a particularly good place to start. They have an array of records online outside of the American-European genealogy sphere, although be forewarned, a lot of these records are not indexed. My best friend's family is from the Dominican Republic and with a name and date and place, I was able to find her grandfather's death record as well as his baptismal record (VERY enlightening and interesting), but it took hours of scrolling through page by page by page...yes, folks, genealogy is not as easy as "Who Do You Think You Are?" makes it seem! Luckily, I took five years of Spanish, so reading these records was a lot easier than whenever I use German records. Which is a lot. Anyway, my sister has a friend who is Jamaican and whose grandfather was born in Cuba. He has questions about what his grandfather did for a living and any siblings he might have had. So the past couple of days I've been looking to see where he might be able to go to get those answers. No matter what kind of genealogy you're doing, you're going to have to go beyond records that have been put online. European and American family history is much more easily accessible online but even then you can't just depend on the Internet to do thorough research (although you can use the Internet to find out what on-site records might be available). And of course the boyfriend's family is Honduran - there aren't many records from Honduras available online although Ancestry.com was very helpful in finding passenger manifests that showed his great-grandfather's many trips to New Orleans and provided a lot of good biographical information. More info may be available in Honduras - next vacation perhaps? I also realized this weekend when my sister asked me where her friend might be able to find info on his grandfather that for people who don't do genealogy, they literally have no idea where to even start. For us, it's second nature to think "birth certificate, census, city directory, will, immigration" etc. etc. but the "lay person" if you will doesn't even know half of what's available to them. So you can be helpful to a friend (or a stranger) just by pointing them in the right direction. Plus, every genealogist uses different records and may have discovered something obscure but helpful that you may never have heard of, even if you're a well-versed genealogist in your own right - which is today's reminder of the importance of sharing!! :) Rambling, done. Have a good week everyone!

Expanding my genealogical horizons - planning a visit to a Family History Center

A little late to the Family History Center game? Probably. My dad started his genealogy research on his Gorry line by visiting the local Family History Center and he found really great records to help get us started on that. I have been a great advocate of the FamilySearch website ever since they dropped all the user-submitted content and started uploading real primary and secondary sources. They continue to add records every day and thanks to the help of "civilian" volunteers, more and more of those records are getting indexed every day.

Another recent change to the FamilySearch website is that now you can order microfilm and microfiche to view at your local Family History Center online. I don't drive, which has been part of the reason I've never actually made a visit to my local FHC yet - I would have had to make a trip there to order records and then made another trip back to view them and it would have been a bit of a hassle.

Yes, sometimes I'm a lazy genealogist. It happens to the best of us.

But as part of their recent uploading records effort, I've discovered some great information about my Stutzmann family line, which until that info was posted, was a dead end at about 1775 in Grossbockenheim, Germany. But records from the local kirchenbuch (church book) and familienregister (family register) were transcribed that trace this line about three generations and 100 years further back. Which was an awesome find. But transcriptions are at best secondary or even third-generation sources, and sometimes there's pertinent information within the original document that the transcriber didn't feel was worth copying, but which you might find important or at least interesting, and so I finally bit the bullet and ordered my very first microfilms from the LDS. And because I always go big or go home, I ordered 5 of them. (At $5.50 a pop they're not exactly free but still waaay cheaper than ordering records from, say, the NYC municipal archives, state archives, or NARA).

The website said it could take up to six months for orders to go through, but I got the e-mail today that they had been shipped, which I'm very excited about. It's been awhile since I've felt anything but frustrated by genealogy research. The records are all in German of course but in the past few months where I've had some luck with my German lines I've gotten familiar with some of the important words and the layout of their records, so I'll brush up on that ahead of time and bring some cheat sheets with me, but I'm feeling really good about this. And if this experience continues to go well, I already have other records I've jotted down for other family lines that I'd like to look up on microfilm.

It's nice (and a relief!) to feel excited about genealogy again!


NBC Announces The Celebrities Tracing Their Family Trees On Season Three Of 'Who Do You Think You Are?' Premiering February 3

NBC Announces The Celebrities Tracing Their Family Trees On Season Three Of 'Who Do You Think You Are?' Premiering February 3


I hate how easy this show makes genealogy research look - on our NEHGS field trip, Cousin April and I teased online genealogist David Allen Lambert that we were waiting for him to simply present us with our completed family tree, drawn out on a fancy scroll and everything, like it happens for all the celebrities who visit the NEHGS on "Who Do You Think You Are?" - but I love that this show brings genealogy to the forefront of pop culture, I love seeing the excitement and wonder and awe each celebrity feels upon each new family history discovery, and I love that it might spark a genealogical interest in at least one viewer who is not me :)

Looks like a good mix of family history backgrounds - welcome back, show!

Tombstone Tuesday: Mel Blanc

My father is quite possibly more into headstones than I am. (He has a coffee table book idea of photographs of angel headstones). He e-mailed me this photo of voice actor Mel Blanc's headstone just last week. Good thing we have each other for this kind of thing. Someone normal who received this photo might think it was creepy. I just think it's cool. :)


Happy New Year everyone! May everyone have fruitful genealogy research in 2012!



The Poole puzzle

Since I love to jump all over the place when it comes to genealogy, this is a certain puzzle about another branch of my tree that I've been working on recently regarding my Poole family.

Annie Poole was my great great grandmother, born on Long Island about 1859, died Jan. 20, 1934 in Freeport on Long Island. This is the only photo I have of her, with my great great grandfather and her husband, Joseph James "J.J." Raynor:





Now, Annie's parents were Richard Poole (1820-1886) and Mary Story (1827-1902), who are both buried in Rockville Cemetery in Lynbrook, not far from Freeport and from Rockville Centre and Oceanside, where the family also resided. Annie's father and brother, also named Richard, were apparently somewhat well-to-do real estate magnates in the area, though I have yet to really delve into the details of the everyday lives of the Poole clan. Now, Richard who was Annie's father was the son of - who else? - Richard Poole (1790-1849) and his wife, Sarah Ackerly. (1795-1856), also both buried in Rockville Cemetery.

This is where the puzzle begins.

There are a few Poole families living in Nassau (then Queens) and Suffolk Counties in that time period, the 1700s and 1800s, and for the most part, they all seem to be related to or descended from one Pierce Poole. I do not know who Richard Poole the Absolute Senior's father is. I have a hunch I know who his mother was. Through the New England Historic Genealogical Society's website here, I found a will abstract for a William Johnson from 1818 that lists as an heir his grandson, Richard Pool, son of Mary Johnson, wife of Ezekiel Langdon. Now, I have not been able to corroborate my hunch with anything else - this document is all I have. But the time period fits with my Richard Poole and it doesn't hurt that my Richard Poole's possible mother and stepfather, Mary Johnson and Ezekiel Langdon, are also buried in Rockville Cemetery. Unfortunately, it would appear that Richard's father died before 1818 and his mother had already remarried, so the father is not named. Looking at other Poole will abstracts from that time period list no Richard as an heir. So I have this branch of my tree that stops at that point and is contemporary to a whole bunch of other Poole families in the area, but I am as of yet unable to connect them.

The good news is Cousin April and I will be investigating wills and land deeds for our common brick wall ancestor, Jacob Raynor, who lived in the same general area and time period, so I think when we continue that research, either through the Queens County Surrogate Court in Jamaica or at the Plainview Family History Center, I'm going to have to slog through some Poole wills and land deeds as well. Time to put the pieces of this Poole puzzle together!

Genealogy field trip: NEHGS in Boston

Boy, it's been awhile!

Between being sick in bed unable to move and moving to a new apartment and crazy shake-ups at work, it's been hard to find time to do any genealogy, much less write about it. But I know the land of family history has been in all your capable hands, so I feel only slightly guilty!

So, back in May, when Cousin April and I were at the genealogy conference in Charleston, we signed up for the New England Historic Genealogical Society. While the society is, as it's name denotes, is predominantly a resource for New England genealogy, they do have records on most American states as well as some genealogical records. For anyone living in the Boston area, the society serves as a Family History center where you can order and view their microfilm holdings, and for anybody, like April and myself, who come from early colonial New York families whose American origins are in New England, the society can be a valuable resource. Their website can be found here (membership is required to view some of their online databases), but since April and I both had this past Thursday off, we decided to make a quick, one-day excursion to Boston.

From Long Island, with a bit of traffic, the drive is about 4 1/2 hours. Once there (bearing New York bagels for our Boston friends, only the best bagels in the world!), we got a personalized tour from the NEHGS's online genealogist, David Allen Lambert, of the society's holdings - microfilm, books, family histories, probate records, census records, etc., the archives, preservation and conservation, special collections, etc. April and I were in genealogy nerd heaven. You have to be a special kind of person to get super-excited over the fact that you are looking at a book from the 15th century. I'm just sayin'.

We had gone with the express mission to find something, anything on a particular family puzzle we are determined to solve on our shared family tree - the parentage of Jacob Raynor, who died in 1829. Unfortunately, hours of searching turned up nada, though David Lambert was able to suggest some further records we could check out back home in New York (and also tell us, based on some of the items listed in Jacob's estate inventory, that not only was he definitely a farmer, but that like other farmer's in that time period, he owned tools that suggested he also made shoes, probably in the winter months).

So, for April and I, the search for that Big Raynor Mystery continues, and I will update you as we continue our research, since we've decided that we'd like to be able to solve that mystery at least somewhat definitively and present it at the next Raynor Round Up next October, but the NEHGS holdings still impress. If you're in the Boston area and have family from that period/area, I recommend checking it out - though without the tour, the layout and procedure would have been a bit confusing, so read the guidelines on the website ahead of time or don't hesitate to ask staff for directions and help. April and I are already talking about going back again to pursue other branches of our trees (including, for me, the Poole Puzzle, which I will address in a next entry soon) that we think the NEHGS will be more helpful with.



And 30 seconds later...

Yes. I literally examined the two death certificates that fast and made a determination. I am just that good. Catharina Rhinehart is not my 5th great grandmother. She was born in New York and still married at the time of her death. My 5th great grandmother was born in Germany and a widow. As was Magdalena Reinhardt at the time of her death. The age is off by between 5-15 years, which is not uncommon for that time period, and I still have to cross check the residence at time of death, but her death certificate was presented to a son, Wilhelm. My 5th great-grandmother had a son, William/Wilhelm. But this is why I am sure it is her - she is buried in Weehawken Cemetery in Hoboken, New Jersey. Why is that significant?

My 5th great-grandfather, her husband, John Reinhardt, died in Union, New Jersey in 1870. My Reinhardts lived in the Hoboken/Weehawken/Union area for years. My gut is telling me this is her. My gut is wrong about a lot of things, but never about genealogy.

So, it's disappointing because it gives no maiden name, no parents' names, no specific place of birth. But a cemetery listing is HUGE. I have always wondered where John might have been buried in Jersey, and now I have a clue. So now I have another gravesite I get to look for - and an out-of-state one, too! For this New Yorker by way of muchos, muchos, muchos generations, finding a burial site out of state, even if it's just across the river, is EXTREMELY exciting.

It's the little things, people. I am off to look up this cemetery now to see if it still exists. Between Peter Stutzmann and Magdalena Reinhardt, I may have to schedule a Veteran's Day cemetery field trip for next week!

Yay! :)

Finally! NYC Municipal Archives comes through

I am not a patient person. Ask anyone I know. So the fact that I had to wait almost four weeks for the documents I requested from the New York City municipal archives, especially since I had provided both names AND certificate numbers, miffed me just a little bit. I get that they're busy - but don't they get how important my genealogy research is?? To me???

So three out of the four documents I requested were waiting for me in the stack of mail when I got home. The first, Peter Stutzmann's death certificate, is definitely my Peter Stutzmann. I knew it the moment I saw the address at which he died, 54 Morrell Street in Brooklyn. That's where the Stutzmanns were living at that time (1892). Disappointingly, it does not provide his parents' names, though I had wanted that only to verify information I already had, but it did confirm for me that he died in New York even though he pretty much didn't live here - according to his death certificate he had only been living here for four months. And it gives me the cemetery he was buried in, Evergreens, so now I can find his gravesite. So that's kind of cool. Peter Stutzmann, by the way, was my great-great-great grandfather, from Grossbockenheim, Germany.

I received two other death certificates, too - one for Catharina Ann Rhinehart and one for Magdalena Reinhardt, both died in 1887, on the suspicion that one may be my fifth-great grandmother, who went by a variety of first names and who may have died in Brooklyn in 1887. Unfortunately, neither gives parents' names, which was what I was really hoping for, or a maiden name, which would have helped confirm or eliminate, but it gives addresses and the names of children to whom the certificate was delivered, so I have clues to work with, but I am going to have to examine both of these documents much more closely before I can make any kind of determination, but I will keep you posted.

Happy weekend everyone!

Just in time for Halloween...some more cemetery wandering!

I actually didn't go into this cemetery yesterday, since I had an appointment I had to get to, and I've definitely been to more rundown, spookier cemeteries than this one, but it was pouring rain and just so dark and gloomy out, and the entrance with the leafless vine was kind of creepy, that I had to stop and take a few photos. This is the church cemetery at St. Boniface Catholic Church in Elmont, on Long Island, just over the border from Queens County. I love cemeteries but I think even I would get a little spooked by actually being in a cemetery on Halloween, especially on a day like this!

St. Boniface Catholic Church cemetery, Elmont, New York. Taken Oct. 27, 2011.

Through the gate at St. Boniface cemetery, Elmont. Oct. 27, 2011.

Blast from the past: Old Bethpage Village Restoration

Old Bethpage Village Restoration, opened in 1970, recreates a typical mid 19th century Long Island farming village, with preserved and reconstructed buildings from all over Long Island. It's like a very tiny Colonial Williamsburg - you can go inside the buildings, which are set up with furniture and knick knacks and paintings from that time period, and staff dressed in costume will give you the history of the house, or demonstrate some skill or trade that villagers might have used.


Main road to the crossroads

I have always had fond memories of going here on field trips when I was a kid in school - I loved going to the general store for old fashioned candy and a cup of birch beer. I always felt like I was transported back in time. But the boyfriend had never been, so we went over the weekend - it was a blustery but sunny day as we walked around the town square watching 21st century kids playing with 19th century toys, visited the Powell farmhouse (and I cringed as he tried to feed one of the cows), looked at the goods (real 19th century paint powder!) and advertisements in Layton's store. One house was so tiny his head was nearly touching the ceiling and with Halloween so close, I was kind of hoping but kind of not hoping we'd see a ghost.


The boyfriend doesn't even look like he'll fit in this house!

Probably the coolest thing, though, was Noon's Inn, which was an East Meadow tavern that served mostly local farmers looking for a drink at the end of the day and 14 hours of manual labor. The original location of the Inn was two blocks away from where the boyfriend grew up and lives, and it was built circa 1830, though restored to what it would have looked like about 1850 - which was about the time my family was living in East Meadow (my great great grandmother Delia Dauch Berg was born in East Meadow in 1858), so her father and brothers might have actually stepped foot in that building!



Recreated bedroom

The general store - birch beer, anyone?

Noon's Inn, from East Meadow, is on the right.


Terrible photo, but this was a map from 1840 on the schoolhouse wall. On the bottom righthand corner, you can see Raynortown, the old name for Freeport, which is where I live...love it!

Quick Monday post...

Monday's are super busy at work, but I came across this story today on CNN.com by Mark Whitaker. I always enjoy reading about how someone got interested in their family history, the hows and whys they decided to dig a little deeper. Whitaker also gives some good tips for anyone who not only just wants the dates and facts, but the stories behind the stories - he interviewed old family members (with more than a little insistence and cajoling it sounds like) and asked them for any paper documents - books, diaries, letters, etc. - that they had held on to from back then, which I thought was a great idea. You never know who has what, or what they have that will give you more info, even if it's just a glimpse into "a day in the life" of that person - my grandfather was a packrat, and because of that, we have his father's daily planner, documenting the ordinary ins and outs of his routine, including work, card games with friends, visits to family members, for the entire year before my grandfather was born. Ordinary, every day things that tell us a little more about who these people were. Anyway, nice story at CNN. Check it out if your Monday is a little less hectic than mine! :)

Shout-out of the day: Italian Genealogical Group

I have not a drop of Italian blood in me, but I have to give mad props, again, to the Italian Genealogical Group for having been an invaluable resource to me in my family history research. You can see where their work started, what with all the Italian immigrants who came through/ended up in New York City, but for anybody who has late 19th century and/or early 20th century family history in New York City (that would be all five boroughs), you are doing yourself a great disservice by not visiting their website. While you can't find actual records or record information on their website, the group's many wonderful volunteers have put in countless hours indexing the vital record holdings for the city's municipal archives. That means that when visiting the archives in lower Manhattan or sending away for them from the archives' website, you save both time and money by already having a spelling (for those of us whose families loved to spell their names every which way imagineable under he sun) AND a certificate number.

I especially wanted to give them a shout-out today because as I've been going through my laundry list of records I need, I found in their index two certificates I have been searching for for YEARS - the birth certificate of my great grandfather, Frederick Stutzmann (listed under Fred Stutzmann) and the death certificate of HIS grandfather, Peter Stutzmann, who I could never prove emigrated or died in New York City instead of his native Germany, even though I had somewhat reliable information saying he died in New York on January 10, 1891. Well, thanks to a search just 5 minutes ago on IGG's site, I found a Peter Stutzmna who died in Brooklyn on January 10, 1892. I can't know for sure yet that this is MY Peter, but my gut is telling me that it is, and when it comes to genealogy, my gut is always, always right.

You can find the Italian Genealogical Group's website here.