Happy birthday, Dad!

Today is my dad's 60th birthday. When I was little, I thought 60 was old. Heck, I thought 40 was old. Now I'm engaged to a 41 year old man. So that can't be old. And when I look at my dad, I think 60 can't be old either. I didn't learn genealogy from my dad, but he caught the bug early on when we started researching his side of the family. He's the one who ordered our first death certificates and who went through my grandfather's papers for old photos and obits and funeral cards. Everybody's eyes glaze over whenever I try to tell them about some exciting new family history find - except my dad! He's always excited for me...or very good at pretending! Either way, I always know I can show him all the things I've learned or discovered - it's nice to have a family member to share this stuff with. So today I wish him a very happy birthday, and many more, and thank him for being the best dad a girl (and genealogist!) could ever ask for!

Family names...cuz you know I love 'em!

I talk about names quite a bit in this blog, just because it's such an important part of family history. Names can actually be quite useful hints when you're researching a tree or branch - it can tell you where a person came from, it can tell you what a parent or grandparent was named, if the child was named after a family member, the repetition of a name can tell you you're on the right track when you're trying to narrow down potential relatives.

So now that I'm expecting my first child, names are again foremost in my mind. My family, especially the Gorry side, is very into name traditions, and I am the prime example, as I cannot even tell you what # Mary Ellen Gorry I am in a long line of them. While in one regard my name lacks originality, I love that it makes me feel more connected to this line of women who came before me - I definitely feel like a part of an important chain, and it definitely makes them feel more real to me. But aside from the name Mary Ellen, Mary and Ellen/Helen are important names that crop up by themselves in every generation of my family - my Aunt Ellen, my grandmother Mary (Elizabeth Cronin Raynor), my grandmother Helen (Meta Stutzmann Gorry), my great-grandmothers Ellen (Marie Casey Cronin) and Helen (Meta Haase Stutzmann), and my great-great grandmothers Ellen (Prendergast Tormey) and Mary (Agnes Enright Casey). Even my mother's middle name was Mary. And not to mention my aunt, my great-grandmother, my great-great grandmother, and my 3rd great grandmother who are all named Mary Ellen Gorry.

So, naming traditions are important to me. But equally as important is the cultural and ethnic background that my fiance brings to the table - both his parents were born in Honduras, and they speak Spanish. I would love my daughter to be bilingual, and am encouraging that side of the family to speak Spanish to her. And so I would also like something about her name to reflect her Latina heritage - her father's last name, even though it comes from Honduras, is very Anglo sounding, since it actually comes down from his Scottish ancestor, so it will have to be reflected in her first/middle name. So the trick is to meld my family name traditions with his Latin roots, and so far I think we've done a good job mixing the two together...but for now how we've done it will remain a secret! :)

Thanksgiving 2012

I have a lot to be thankful for this year. 2012 has been a year of big changes for me, not all of which have been good. I was laid off last month from the only real job I ever had, but even that I'm thankful for because now my future is open to new things, to new opportunities, to anything I want. I'm thankful for the man who asked me to marry him this year and for the little girl growing inside me who will become a part of our family in four months. I'm thankful that for the most part my family survived Hurricane Sandy unscathed and that my grandmother, even though she remains in the hospital, continues to persevere. I'm thankful for good friends, the genealogy resources available to me that were never available before, and for all my helpful contributing cousins!

We all have trials and tribulations we've gone through or might still be going through - our ancestors had theirs; we all know or can imagine their stories. But we are who we are because of everything they went through, good or bad, because of everything WE go through, good or bad, and so I'm thankful for that. There are people I miss - people like my mom and my grandparents who are no longer with us, but on this day, let us remember all the good that was, that is, and that will be, whether we're celebrating with the families we were born into or the families we chose to surround ourselves with.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Adding branches to the family tree

Parents have children who grow up to have children who grow up to have children. If they didn't, we wouldn't have anything to research as family historians! And while usually I talk about the branches I've discovered going back in time, today I'd just like to announce that I am officially physically contributing a new branch to the family tree - I am 21 weeks pregnant with my first child, a girl, who should be arriving somewhere around April 3, 2013.

I'm very excited for my daughter. Besides having two parents and countless aunts/uncles/grandparents/friends who love her very much already, she has such a diverse and eclectic ethnic background. She is going to be a prime example of where I see the human family tree heading, a more global, diverse and integrated family tree. I think of her as my little Viking-Mayan princess. Between me and her father, she has German, English, Irish, Danish, Scottish, Sicilian, Jamaican, Honduran, and Mayan roots, that we know of. If that's not a mutt, I don't know what is, but I think that's so cool! And I can't wait to teach her about where she comes from, and to be proud of her family on all sides. After all, every generation needs a family historian. Maybe this little one will be the one. Or maybe not. But she's going to learn about all this stuff anyway! ;)

Family history places: the Teufelsmoor

God bless the Germans and their meticulous record keeping! Unfortunately, you usually need a PLACE name and not a FAMILY name to find the right book, but if you know the place, German OFBs, or ortsfamilienbücher, or sippenbuch, or family book, can be an absolute GODSEND in breaking down brick walls. I recently came across one with possibly reliable info on my Tiedemann/Buckmann family lines - my 3rd great grandmother, Meta Tiedemann, who was married to John Ricklefs (whose whole family is still a massive brick wall!!!) was born in Mittelstenahe, Hanover, Germany to John Henry/ Johann Heinrich Tiedemann and Meta Buckmann. Meta or Mette Buckman was born in Lamstedt, Hanover, but her father, Johann Friedrich, was born near Osterholz, which is close to the city of Bremen. Anyway, a helpful distant cousin had provided me with some of Meta's heritage when he came across me online, but this OFB I came across traces her family back all the way to the 1600s, which is very exciting. But I have yet to verify it - my gut is telling me its reliable, but I only just discovered it this past week so I need to do more work on it.

But this post is not about the Buckmanns. This post is about where the Buckmanns lived and came from. So often we forget that our family members not only lived, they lived in a place and in a time, both things of which affected their lives - what they did, how they lived, how long they lived, why they moved there or from there, etc. etc. So I found info in this OFB for the Buckmanns - Johann Friedrich was born near Osterholz around 1790, as was his father 30 years before, and HIS parents as well. But this OFB I found was for the Teufelsmoor, a name I had never come across before but was obviously the area of Germany where the Buckmanns of the Osterholz region lived. So, according to Wikipedia, the Teufelsmoor is a region of bog and moorland north of Bremen, Germany, forming a large part of the district of Osterholz. It is 190 square miles in size - literally, "Teufelsmoor" means "devil's bog" or "devil's moor," but really the name means unfertile or dead bog or moor.

"The outer edges of the Teufelsmoor were first settled in the 17th and 18th centuries. Around 1750 the colonisation of the entire moor began ... The settlers were simple farmhands and maids from the surrounding area, who were attracted by the prospect of having their own property and being freed from taxes and military service. Until well into the 20th century the living conditions in these moor colonies were anything other than quaint or attractive. An impression of the very poor circumstances is given by the Low German saying "Den Eersten sien Dood, den Tweeten sien Noot, den Drüdden sien Broot" (translates as something like "The first gets death, the second gets misery, the third gets bread."). Life expectancy in the dark, damp bog dwellings was short and the moor's soils were unsuited to farming."

"An extensive network of drainage channels was created, the main drainage ditches being built to act simultaneously as canals for boats. At that time massive inroads were made into the environment and millions of cubic metres of peat were cut. The peat was sold for heating fuel and shipped to Bremen using peat barges. The embankments running alongside these canals were used by burlaks to haul the barges and also opened up the 'long-street villages' (Straßendorf) following the practice in the fen (Fehn) regions. From the embankments the narrow and very long strips of land (Hufen) that ran out into the moor were farmed. ... By harvesting the layers of peat and draining the land the climatic conditions of the entire area were changed considerably. By the end of the 19th century the keeping of dairy cattle had spread to the area."

So this was a time period when my Buckmanns (and related families) lived in that area, and if you look at how old they were when they died, they were in their 30s-50s. I am not well versed as to the political and military situation in that area of Germany at that time, so I don't know why they moved to that region, and I don't know what they did for a living, but I can guess...if they in fact cut and sold peat, it sounds like a hard life that was unfortunately also a short life, and definitely gives some insight into why Johann Friedrich Buckmann eventually left the Teufelsmoor to move north to Lamstedt.

Anyway, I found it interesting to read about this place. As much as I'm learning about my German heritage, there's so much I still don't know about not just my family but about German history itself. A research project for a rainy day, perhaps! :) 

The Teufelsmoor.

Veterans Day thank yous and remembrances

A quick thank you to all the veterans in all our families over ALL the years who fought for our freedoms and way of life, for all the sacrifices they made, especially if it was the ultimate sacrifice of their lives...and thank you to their families, the brave women and children, who sacrificed, too, while their husbands/fathers were away.

Today might be a good day to go back into your records and find your veterans and focus on them and their families - what war did they fight in? Where did they go? What did they do? What were their families doing back home? How long were they away? Did it having a lasting affect on them as a person, as a husband, as a father? Has that trickled down to you today? Obviously, we can't answer all these questions, but we can think about them, and remember these people, who by their actions made us, in even a small way, the people we are today.

My veterans (that I know of):

Charles Haase (1838-1891), my 4th-great grandfather, who served in the U.S. Civil War in the 33rd New Jersey Infantry regiment, company H. He enlisted Sept. 22, 1864 in New Jersey and was discharged Jun. 1, 1865 in Bladensburg, Maryland. He was about 36 when he enlisted, and was married to Barbara Reinhardt and had a small daughter, Louisa. My 3rd great grandfather, Edward, was born a year after he came home.

Charles Haase's Civil War discharge papers.

My grandfather, Clifford Monroe "Dick" Raynor (1914-1991), served in World War II. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy on Oct. 21, 1943 at the age of 29. He served in the Pacific and if we hadn't ended the war by dropping the bomb on Hiroshima, he would've been part of the invasion of Japan. He was released from the Navy Feb. 26, 1946 and 9 months later, he married my grandmother, Mary Cronin.

My grandfather, Clifford "Dick" Raynor.

Memory keepers; surviving Sandy

It's now been about three whole days since we lost power when Hurricane Sandy hit. I consider myself lucky. I live on Long Island and I have no lights, no hot water, no working stove or fridge, and no heat, but I have a roof over my head and a dry room/bed to sleep in. It's giving me a little taste of how people used to live before all these things became standard in the First World. I guess you can't miss what you never had, but when it's 8 p.m. and there's nothing to do except play shadow puppets with a flashlight and I'm not ready for bed yet and I haven't had a hot shower in two days, it definitely makes me appreciate the lives our ancestors led.

But many people in my vicinity didn't fare as well. My father and grandmother live in Freeport, on the South Shore of Long Island, the village my ancestors have lived in for 350 years. They're right on the water, and at the height of the storm, there was six feet of water in the street and more than two feet of water in my grandmother's apartment. She has been staying in a rehab facility following a hospitalization, so she was safe, but my grandmother is my family's genealogy matriarch - she is 97 years old and the keeper of our family's memories - our stories, our documents, our photos. My father is very family history minded as well, so as the water was rising, he and my siblings rescued my grandmother's hope chest and all her photo albums. My brother told me yesterday though that as they were tearing up her destroyed carpet, they found more photos, old photos, that had been submerged in the storm surge. I haven't seen them, but I assume they're probably destroyed. And while I'm grateful my grandmother is okay, and my father and siblings are okay, and most of my grandmother's photos *were* saved, while I know that these are the important things, I'm a little heartbroken over the loss of these other photos. All over Facebook there are similar stories, though, of people having to throw out all their precious memories - photo albums, furniture, other possessions that have been passed down or may have belonged to a dearly departed relative. People lost everything. Not just all their memories - but everything.

But that's the way the story goes. We can't save everything. Records are lost in flood or fire, things that are meaningful to one person are meaningless to another and are thrown away, things erode and fade with the passage of time - life happens. All we can do is hold on to our loved ones while we can. All we can do is pass on what we can, keep telling our family stories from one person to the next, one generation to the next, be memory keepers...all we can do is the best we can.

Thoughts and prayers with everyone else affected by Hurricane Sandy - hope your memories are safe, but more importantly, that your family and loved ones are safe!

Monroe Raynor: a comparison

I am most familiar with my great-grandfather, Monroe Raynor, from my grandparents' wedding photos. That was in 1946 - Monroe was 65. Just this week my father e-mailed me a tintype he found in the Freeport Memorial Library's digital collection of Monroe with his family as a child. He is no more than 9 years old, but probably closer to 7 or 8 (circa 1888-89). Monroe, by the way, lived his whole life in Freeport, Long Island, New York, although I can't be sure where the photo of him as a child was taken. Anyhow, I couldn't help but notice that across the years, across more than 50 years, Monroe has the same face - I had only seen him as an adult in his 60s and 70s, but I recognized him in the face of that 8 year old immediately. It was amazing, and so very cool. I'm probably not the only one who does this, but it's very difficult for me to picture people I knew as adults (such as my grandparents and great-grandparents) or even people I never knew but who I just think of as my ancestors, and therefore as my elders, as children. But we all start there - we were all children before we were adults, before we were parents, before we were grandparents. So it's always quite a find to actually be able to *see* our "elders" as children. Especially when that child's face shows that they were the same person all along, whether they be 7 years old or 70.

Just one additional note: Did nobody ever tell this boy/man to smile when his picture was being taken???? :) 

Monroe Raynor, 1946

Monroe Raynor, circa 1889

Wordless Wednesday: Raynor family photo surprise

Almost wordless; not quite! My father found this photo as part of the Freeport Memorial Library's digital collection, a collaboration with the Freeport Historical Society. The images have show people and places having to do with Long Island history and lo and behold, they happened to have a tintype of a couple and their two young children. The couple are my great-great grandparents, Joseph "J.J." Raynor and Annie Poole Raynor, and their kids are Lidie and my great-grandfather, Monroe Raynor. Before this, I had only seen photos of any of these people as senior citizens (I had only ever seen one photo of my great-great grandparents - and Monroe has the same face as an 8 year old as he does as an old man!). Based on their birthdates and apparent ages, I'd say this tintype is circa 1890 (probably 1889 because the Raynors' youngest son, William Poole Raynor, was born in July 1890 and Annie doesn't quite look pregnant yet). I love their old clothes and hairstyles - this is such a cool find! Thanks, Dad! :)

From left-right: Annie Poole Raynor, Monroe Raynor, Joseph J. Raynor, Lidie Raynor. Circa 1889. Courtesy Freeport Memorial Library

170th annual Long Island Fair - Sept. 30, 2012

Well now this is almost a month late but at the end of September, my fiance and I went to the Long Island Fair at Old Bethpage Village Restoration on Long Island. He had never been, but I remember going once or twice when I was a kid. I love anything having to do with Long Island history and it was a beautiful autumn weekend to be outdoors.

According to the fair's website at www.lifair.com: "Founded in 1841 as the Queens County Agricultural Society, The Agricultural Society of Queens, Nassau & Suffolk Counties is one of the oldest agricultural societies in the United States . The Society has sponsored a fair on Long Island since 1842. The earliest fairs sponsored by the Society were held on various members' farms and vacant lots in the Hempstead and Mineola area. Finally, in 1866, the Society acquired the original fairgrounds on Old Country Road at Washington Avenue in Mineola, and constructed livestock barns, carriage sheds, a business office, and surrounded it all with a castellated fence. The centerpiece of the new Fairgrounds was the large cruciform Exhibition Hall, with a high central tower capped by a grand eagle weathervane. Inside, a fancy iron fountain graced the center of the floor area that provided an exceptional exhibition space for the domestic arts, horticultural and agricultural displays of the fair.

The Queens County Fair was held nearly every Fall on the new Fairgrounds. In 1899, after Nassau County was created out of the three eastern towns of Queens County , the Fair became known as the Mineola Fair. As such, it continued to be held until the 1950s.  

As Nassau County grew, and lost much of its rural and agricultural character, the fair was displaced by the new County Court complex. The Mineola Fair then moved to Roosevelt Raceway.

In 1970 the fair returned to its agricultural roots when it moved to Old Bethpage Village Restoration. Now known as The Long Island Fair, it is held every year on a reconstructed fairground based on the original in Mineola . The fairground, like the original, is graced by a magnificent replica Exhibition Hall, complete with eagle weathervane and iron fountain. One of the largest wooden buildings constructed in the 1990's, it provides a marvelous backdrop for horticultural, agricultural, and domestic arts exhibits. The grounds also contain the only surviving 19th century building of the Mineola site - the small Superintendents' Office built in 1884.

After 170 years the Long Island Fair continues as the only county fair sanctioned by New York State for the counties of Queens, Nassau and Suffolk."

While it was fun, especially watching Sam learn how to dance with the Village dancers and getting to not only see a baseball game played with 1864 rules but also having some of the nice men involved in the old-timey league explain those rules to us, I would've loved for there to be a little more, well, history to the fair - maybe some more historical/homemade crafts, some old fashioned foods we could've enjoyed, some more historical exhibits. Also, the fair is geared toward families - so if you have kids, there are plenty of ways for them to be entertained. For two grown-ups, not so much...well, except for the entertainment of seeing Sam do-si-do :)

Listening to a band on the fairgrounds.

Sam in front of the reconstructed Exhibition Hall.

Sam do-si-dos!...

...and promenades! :)

Sunday's Obituary: Thomas Dauch, The Hempstead Sentinel June 25, 1903

Thomas Dauch was my third great-grandfather. I had an obituary for him but thanks to Fulton History's recent addition of The Hempstead Sentinel pages, I found a much more detailed obit (and a story about his birthday party from 1901, too, which was pretty cool - the obit was pretty much cribbed from the birthday story, but I'll post the birthday story at another time just to check and see if everyone listed in attendance is accounted for in my tree...and who knows, maybe the guest list includes someone from your trees as well!)

Anyway, on to the obit (italics mine): "Thomas Dauch died at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Theo. P. Berg (my great-great grandmother, Delia Dauch Berg), corner of Front and Attorney streets, Sunday, after an illness of several weeks, from apoplexy. He was in his 78th year. The funeral service was held Wednesday afternoon, the Rev. Mr. Munson officiating. Interment was in Greenfield Cemetery"
       "Mr. Dauch had lived here some ten years. He was honored as a worthy citizen, valued as a good neighbor. When 25 years old he left Germany for New York, where he was employed as a cooper. Seven years later he bought a farm of ten acres on the (Hempstead) plains, and a little later increased it to fifty. Some time ago he informed a SENTINEL representative that he never has had a cent of indebtedness, always paying for everything in advance whether it chanced to be a farm or a loaf of bread. He owned considerable real estate. He has five children and 31 grandchildren. His wife died in 1871." Leave it to a German to value most his frugality!

Of course, the best part and an awesome surprise was that the obit, as you can see below, included a photo of great-great-great Grandpa Thomas. He looks like a good, upstanding German in this photo. I think he looks stern, yet gentle.

Always keep looking! You never know what you'll find! To check out the Fulton History newspaper website, go here.

Thomas Dauch obituary, 1903

Sunday's obituary: Theodore P. Berg, Hempstead Sentinel, Jan. 13, 1944

I would love to thank FultonHistory.com, my go-to New York newspaper archive website in my genealogy research, for recently adding a ton of old Hempstead Sentinel pages - because of that, I've found so much more information about my Hempstead, Long Island area family, including this newfound obit for my great-great grandfather, Theodore Peterson Berg. I knew a lot about him already, but this obit proves there are always new things we can discover! (I never knew he owned a deli in Brooklyn or that he ever flew in an airplane, or that he belonged to a mason lodge)

Hempstead Sentinel Jan. 13, 1944 p. 2

Service held for Theodore P. Berg

"Rev. Hubert B. Munson, Methodist minister who had served five generations of the Berg family, officiated at the funeral service of Theodore P. Berg, resident of Hempstead area for 62 years, Monday afternoon at the Pettit funeral parlors. Burial was made in Greenfield Cemetery. A Masonic service was held Sunday afternoon."
     "Born in New York City 90 years ago, Mr. Berg's first job was driving a horse-car in Brooklyn and later he was proprietor of a Brooklyn delicatessen store. He learned the mason trade and followed that business when he moved to the Hempstead area. His first home was near East Meadow, later moving to the corner of Front and Attorney street, where he and his family resided many years." (That house is still there by the way)
     "Illness detained Mr. Berg from spending this winter in Florida, the first time he had missed in 33 years. When he and the late Mrs. Berg first went south, they made the trip by train, but in recent years always drove down in their car. Mr. Berg made one trip by plane, but afterwards decided to continue motoring."
     "A member of Hempstead Lodge of Masons for over 60 years, he was at one time a member of Enterprise Hose Company. He was a devout churchman and was a member of the Hempstead Methodist Church."
     "His survivors include five sons: Thomas A. Berg and Edward T. Berg of Hempstead, Allen H. Berg of West Hempstead, Stanley D. Berg of Charlotte, N.C., and R. Howard Berg of Melborne, Fla.; also a daughter, Amelia B. Raynor, of Freeport, at whose home he died January 6; a brother Albert H. Berg of East Meadow; 24 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren."

AncestryDNA results are in...and I'm shocked!

I am, in a word, flabbergasted. First, I'd just like to commend AncestryDNA for how quickly they got my results. I was told it would take 6-8 weeks upon arrival of the specimen. I think they started processing my DNA on Sept. 19. My results were posted today, Oct. 1. So, not too shabby.

But to say I was surprised by my results would be an understatement, and I honestly thought I wouldn't be surprised at all. I thought, considering I know that everyone in my family hails from either England, Ireland, Germany or Denmark that my results would be pretty straightforward - British Isles, Western European, and possibly a hint of Scandinavian from the 1/32 Danish blood in me.

But how quickly I always forget that just because I know the countries doesn't mean I know the ethnicities...the United States is not the only nation of immigrants.

How much British Isles was in my ethnicity graph? Zero percent.

How much Western European was in my ethnicity graph? Zero percent.

How much Scandinavian was in my ethnicity graph? A whopping 88 percent.

And what made up the other 12 percent? Of all things - Eastern European! What??????

Now, if you're taking an autosomal DNA test, you have to remember that just because an ethnicity DOESN'T show up in your DNA, it doesn't mean it's not there. It just means it wasn't in that sample. But I was shocked by the amount of Scandinavian and I never expected Eastern European, which according to AncestryDNA covers the modern day countries of Poland, Greece, Macedonia, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, Moldova, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Belgarus, and Kosovo.

Reading the description for each ethnicity, though, a whole lotta Scandinavian DNA does make sense. The Vikings invaded and settled in the British Isles - that's where Irish red hair comes from. And I just learned, by reading the description, that the Goths, who eventually populated Germany, were originally from Sweden. And I have both German and British Isles ancestry...

The Eastern European has me a little mor flummoxed, although if I look at the pins for family tree members on the AncestryDNA map, several of my German relatives hail from the Eastern parts of Germany, bordering Poland and the Czech Republic (which isn't counted as Eastern Europe, but which used to be part of the same country as Slovakia, which is). So that's interesting.

In any case, I have a lot more to look at - AncestryDNA gives you potential relative matches within 4-8th cousins, which so far doesn't really look that promising, but I definitely have a lot more to digest. But my (surprising-wow!) results leave me with two thoughts - the first being that perhaps I'm really adopted, just as I always thought when I was little, and the second being...

...I always KNEW I was a Viking!! :)

Richard Lindemann, German enemy alien 1917

Sometimes, when I have nothing better to do (and even sometimes when I DO have stuff I actually need to be doing but I feel like procrastinating), I like to visit FultonHistory.com and just plug in random family members' names, just to see what newspaper stories come up. Not just people I'm looking for, but addresses associated with them, businesses associated with them, friends and family associated with them - you never know what keyword is going to find you new and/or important information.

Two people I've had a difficult time fleshing out are my third great grandparents, Caspar and Margaret Lindemann. I've found them in the census, I've found their death certificates, I've even found Margaret's obituary, but there are no probate records for them in Brooklyn, no passenger list manifests (even though they are two of my most recent ancestors to come over to America, sometime in the 1880s or 1890s), no immigration records, and Caspar especially has been elusive. Considering how high-profile their son-in-law (my great-great-grandfather), Rudolph Stutzmann, was in Brooklyn/Queens circles, I'm surprised I haven't been able to find more on them. I guess I'm looking for specifics like birth dates, an actual date of immigration, or a place name of origin in Germany - anything that could help me find them on the other side of the pond since they were both older with grown children when they came over, so they would've spent a large chunk of their lives in Germany.

Wow, I'm really digressing here, because while my search was for Caspar and Margaret, I was using their grandson, Richard Lindemann, as my keyword in my search. Richard is a mystery to me. According to Schlegel's, his mother was Caspar and Margaret's daughter Caroline, married name Werner, and yet he uses her maiden name. I have no records of her - she supposedly died young, and since Richard is always listed in the census records with his grandparents (and later with his aunt, Augusta Stutzmann), I assume they raised him. Anyway, he was born in Germany and came over as a child. I get positive newspaper search results for him, usually as an adult placing ads for his services as a limo driver (I believe he was also employed by Rudolph Stutzmann in his funeral home business as a hearse driver), but I found one newspaper record from December 8, 1917, that showed him listed as a "German Enemy Alien." I had never heard of such a list, but the page was full of names and the addresses where these men lived, and a note at the end basically said this was only a partial list, with more names to come.

So I Googled it. According to the German Genealogy Group's website, "on April 6, 1917 President Woodrow Wilson took the first steps to minimize the threat from German aliens residing in the United States by issuing twelve regulations for 'alien enemies,' persons of enemy birth who had not completed the naturalization process. ... The names and addresses of all German males from New York City who were not citizens were printed in a series of articles in 'The Herald.' The list was published between December 4, 1917 and December 9, 1917." Obviously, this was around the time World War I was going on, but the list of regulations is insane, paranoid, and frightening. Among the regulations are some that make sense in that the government was worried about spies or attacks from within, but others say the "enemy aliens" could not change their residence or travel freely, they weren't allowed to fly, they weren't allowed at all in Washington D.C., they were not allowed near U.S. waterways except on public ferries, and they were not allowed to own a firearm. The whole list can be found here. And any "enemy alien" found to be in non-compliance was allowed to be interned.

I realize the United States has a history of going overboard with people they see as internal threats (re: Japanese-Americans during World War II) during times of war, but I think of my great-uncle Richard, who, yes, was born in Germany, and no, had not become a citizen, but who had basically grown up in and lived his whole life in Brooklyn. For all intents and purposes, he was a New Yorker. It's a little sad and a little scary in general, but even moreso when it hits so close to home, in that your own relative was so blatantly targeted. I'm sure the men listed on those pages of The Herald were shunned and discriminated against by more than a few of their paranoid neighbors.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting, from both a family standpoint and an historical one, a little piece of national and family history I never knew about.

AncestryDNA: DNA sample has been received!

I apologize for the lack of blogging lately. Real life has been interfering with blogging life and there hasn't been a lot of opportunity/energy to blog, but I'm still here, never fear...I know you were worried and missing me! :)

So, I FINALLY sent in my AncestryDNA sample. I can't believe how long it took me to get that done. I had it sitting on my nightstand for forever, which is unbelievable, considering how excited I was when I got it. I had finally decided to let my boyfriend send in a DNA sample but almost immediately changed my mind. I guess I was having a selfish genetics moment. But this gives me the opportunity to beg Ancestry.com to FINALLY open up AncestryDNA to everybody, so I can buy Sam his own DNA sampling kit (hopefully for a reasonable price!) because I really am beyond curious what his will reveal...I just know it's going to be exciting and shed some light on his wildly varied genetic history! Plus, why should I get all the spitting fun? (The first DNA sampling I ever did was a cheek swab...nowhere near as fun as Ancestry's spit sample!)

Anyway, I received word this week that Ancestry received my DNA sample...now the real waiting begins! 6-8 weeks, if I'm lucky...I guess I was able to wait almost that long to send the sample in, I can wait that long to get my results! I had a dream the other night that I got my results and there was a surprising find in the mix - I feel like it was Ashkenazi Jewish or something like that. I'm really not expecting that at all, but I guess anything's possible. I know for a fact that over half my genetics come from the British Isles (Ireland mostly and a bit o' old world English), but it's possible my German side (about 33 percent) might yield a surprising find, and it might be nice to see Scandinavian pop up courtesy of my 3rd great grandfather Peter Hansen Berg, who was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. My sister totally looks like a Viking warrior princess, so even if Scandinavia doesn't show up, I know it's totally in there. Though I hope it does!

So, that's the deal with that. I'm curious - anybody out there do AncestryDNA or a similar autosomal DNA test and expect to know what they'd find but get some totally unexpected results?

And I promise, I'll try to write more frequently than once a month, because I've missed y'all, too!

Happy weekend! :)

Attention all New York genealogists/anybody with New York family history...

Family Tree Magazine and Ancestry.com will be hosting "The Genealogy Event" at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City Friday Oct. 26 & Saturday Oct. 27.

From the website it looks like there will be both speakers and exhibitors for beginners through more advanced family historians. There are sessions on ethnic-specific genealogy, using technology for research, fleshing out our family trees to include not just the facts but the stories, and a few New York specific genealogy resources such as the New York Public Library and Castle Garden/Ellis Island records.

Tickets are $15 in advance, which is a crazy awesome price. I've been taking a break from genealogy research lately just because of a lack of progress on most fronts and an overload of other fun (sense the sarcasm) stuff life has been throwing at me, but I'm intrigued by this event and might just have to check it out. It seems like a miniature version of the larger, national/regional conferences, and it's right in my backyard, so it's really kind of hard to think of a reason NOT to check this out!

For more details and info, check out www.thegenealogyevent.com or follow this link.

AncestryDNA...finally!

So yesterday I FINALLY got my chance to buy an AncestryDNA kit from Ancestry.com, only several months after my first e-mail (and second) saying I was eligible to purchase from their limited supplies. It was like being on hold for a company with really bad customer service. "Please hold, your call is very important to us..." Meanwhile, an hour later...

If you read this blog on a regular basis, you know I already did my maternal DNA (haplogroup T) and my paternal DNA (through my brother - R1b) but the AncestryDNA test does autosomal DNA testing - that is, it doesn't just look at your maternal line or your paternal line, it looks at a bunch of your DNA and can tell you not necessarily what countries your family comes from, but what ethnic groups and the general areas from which they came. Now, I love my family tree -y'all know that - but as far as family trees go, it's fairly boring. I have family from Ireland, England, Germany, and Denmark, but in autosomal terms, that basically makes me 100 percent northern European. Still, my family has been in America for so long and there are maternal lines I just can't trace that who knows who else my family has intermarried with? So, even though I pretty much expect a fairly homogenous result, I've still been really psyched to do this test. You can do it through a whole bunch of genetic genealogy/genetic testing sites, but the test is still really expensive, and Ancestry has been offering it cheap, which is why I waited.

Anyway, I didn't realize that I was only going to be allowed to buy one test. Limited supplies - duh! The thing is, while I really want to take the test, I feel like I already know what it's going to tell me. What I really wanted was to also buy a test for my boyfriend because I think his genetic genealogy will be fascinating - both his parents are from Honduras, and he has known Mayan, Jamaican, Sicilian, and Scottish branches, and who knows what else!! So, part of me wants to just let him take the test when it comes in the mail - I've been dying to find out more about his background...I know it's going to show a fascinating and diverse mix of people and places...but part of me really wants to be selfish and keep the test all to myself!

Ah, genealogical dilemmas!

Anybody have suggestions of other companies to purchase a (relatively) cheap autosomal DNA test?

Not exactly genealogy, but happy 115th birthday Amelia Earhart!

I didn't know anything about my family history when I was a kid, but I was always interested in history in general, and I used to read a lot. ::cough::nerd::cough::. That's right. I'm a history nerd. Anyway, as a young, impressionable girl, I used to devour books and through that I developed several strong, female heroes who I just thought were the coolest - Laura Ingalls Wilder, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, Annie Oakley, and Amelia Earhart. These were real life women who lived on the harsh frontier and challenged what was expected of them in particular and women in general. I wanted to be just like them.

Today is Amelia Earhart's birthday, and she's been in the news a lot lately because the anniversary of her disappearance (July 2) just passed and there was a research excursion to try to find the wreck or remains of her plane. I think Earhart fascinated me in particular because of her mysterious disappearance...it always made me kind of sad.

As I got older, I learned about my own family history and developed an appreciation for the heroines in my own tree - women who may not have become as famous as my other heroes or who may not have bucked as many trends, but who kept their families together in dire circumstances and did what they could to make a better life for their children and their children's children...people like me.

But I still remember my childhood heroes like Amelia Earhart, and even looked them all up on Ancestry.com records such as census images, tracing their journeys and remembering the things about them that inspired me.

Budget Travel article: Find Your Roots in Ireland

Very nice article from Budget Travel about tracing Irish ancestry on CNN.com today - read it here. On a personal note, the author consults with Paul Gorry, a leading genealogist in Ireland who not only has the same last name as me but uses the same spelling. Makes looking up Gorry Irish ancestry very difficult in Google, as every result has to do with him. Should contact him and see if he can help a girl out!

Third wife's the charm: Friedrich Stutzmann probate proceedings

I've been knee-deep in Raynor genealogy, using the Queens County probate records that are now online at FamilySearch.org, but today I decided to switch it up and take a look at my father's side of the family. I found a bunch of names in the index for Queens, Kings AND New York counties, though the actual records are not yet online (I know, I'm getting greedy) but I did find the index AND probate proceedings for my third great grandfather, Friedrich Stutzmann, who died Jan. 14, 1906 in Ridgewood Heights, Queens County. Now, my third great grandmother, Mathilde Rau, was Friedrich's first wife, and died very young in 1880 from yellow fever. With small children to raise, Friedrich married again, this time to Rosalie Goess/Goesz, who also died fairly young sometime in the 1890s. Looking at his probate proceedings today, I see that, who is requesting letters of administration for his estate, is his WIDOW Augusta. So great great great granddaddy Fred had a third wife that apparently nobody recorded, not even Schlegel's. I went to the Italian Genealogy Group's website, italiangen.org, as I usually do when I'm looking for New York City vital records, and there it is - on May 8, 1901, a Fred Stutzmann married an Auguste Sander.

Looking back, I realize I saw Friedrich with a wife Augusta in the 1905 New York State census, but for some reason, I assumed it was a mistake - that Friedrich's daughter-in-law, also Augusta, had mistakenly been listed as his wife. Because that sometimes happens. So today was twofold productive - the discovery of a third wife I never knew about (even if you're not related to them, second/third/beyond spouses can help you find family in future census records/directories/newspaper articles etc) AND I relearned the valuable lesson to NEVER assume in your research - if you see something that looks like a mistake, check it out. Maybe it is, or maybe it's brand new information.

Here endeth the lesson.