Morand Bushu homestead

From the early to mid 1800s, great great grandparents Morand Bushu and Mary Ann Miller Bushu owned an 80 acre farm in Perry County, Ohio. Susan and I drove past the land last week, and it's lovely, though farming it could be a challenge; some low lying woods where perhaps a creek runs and gently rolling hills. In the SE corner of their farm sits a ruined log cabin that someone later put siding on and inhabited. We gingerly made our way over rotting boards and through weeds to peer in through the now-barred door to see a table on sawhorses, some plastic chairs, mildewed carpet, and detritus of perhaps squatters. We could see where the fireplace had been walled in. We would have loved to have gone in but that would have involved crowbars, breaking the law, and major risk-taking.

The name BUSHU isn't inscribed on the door, but the building is of the right vintage, in the right place. The area is still rural. I'm confident this is the family homestead.

My guess is the entire structure is about 15 x 25. There's an upstairs or loft, but still . . .  Thirteen people lived here and Mary Ann died here after her last child.

Bushus in Mattoon

Here's a quickie. By late 1879, Francis Joseph Bushu and his wife, Agatha Burkey, had moved to a farm in Edgar County, Illinois (US Census 1880). In the early 1900s, Francis sold the farm and moved to Mattoon. By this time was Mattoon was thriving; the Big Four railroad had offices there and rail was big business. Francis and Agatha and their children were an integral part of the town and two of the boys, Melvin and Herbert, worked for the railroad. As the years went by, Otho set up his piano tuning business and sought customers, Samuel was a county official, Myrtle was a party girl, Mel knew how to have a good time, and Herbert was a serious go-getter.

How do I know this? The newspapers of the day reported on the daily doings of their more important citizens; Francis, Agatha, and children were in that category.

Visit the website http://jg-tc.newspapers.com and type the name BUSHU into the search box. You will get over 1500 hits, and yes, they are our family. If you restrict by time frame, say limiting the search to years before 1922, you will still get over 500 hits. Yes, that means the family is mentioned that many times in the papers.

To actually read what was written - as it appeared in the newspaper -- you will need to pay the good people $7.95 a month. But the experience is worth $8. Here are a couple of tidbits.

Herbert went to business college and graduated, took a job with the Big Four as an office boy. Each of his promotions, including one to Mt. Carmel, where he met the lovely Ida, are mentioned in the paper.

Melvin and Myrtle go to Mt. Carmel for Herbert and Ida's wedding; no mention that Francis and Agatha go as well.

There's a huge article on the train wreck that killed Mel, and another when Pauline sued the railroad for his death and won.

Myrtle hosted a party that featured a pie eating contest and another contest involving taking a bit of an apple suspended from the ceiling by a string. The winners are praised.

Betty Lou and Marietta's letter to Santa was published in the Dec. 24, 1922 issue. Betty Lou reminded Santa to bring her sister a doll.

And so it goes. Check it out.

Is your name Bushue or Bushur?

If so, we're related! Aren't you ecstatic?

Seriously, if you are descended from either of those lines, and if you haven't seen the recent research I did on the family in France (where the name was BOURGEOIS), leave a comment here. My research takes all three names -- Bushu, Bushue, and Bushur -- back to 1686 in Montfauçon, Switzerland. And I'm more than happy to share.

BUSHUEs and BUSHUs descend from Michael Bourgeois, born in 1782, and Anna Marie Turain, 1780, who emigrated from Mertzen, France in 1827. BUSHUEs descend from the couple's second son, Myrod, and BUSHUs descend from their third son, Morand.

[Lester Bushue and Jill Boone published an updated BUSHUE family tree in the fall of 2014. It was produced just before the link to the French ancestors was locked into place so the BOURGEOIS ancestry isn't included, but if you haven't gotten a copy, leave a comment here and I'll pass your name to Jill.]

Michael Bourgeois's brother Morand, born in 1785, came to the US later than Michael, in 1833. He and his family lived in Somerset Ohio for a time before moving on to Celina, Ohio. This family goes by BUSHUR. (In 1850, Morand's oldest son Xavier, who was the only child of the nine to remain behind, emigrated to the US with his wife Theresa and their four children.)

Finally, there was another Michael Bushu who bought land with George Messer; he and his wife lived in Somerset. I don't have documentation, but it is possible that he is Michael and Morand (Srs.) uncle. I don't know if this couple had children or have any descendents.

My church and civil records include ancestors for all three families.

Bushu: My sources

For thise who are seeking the most recent family history for the Bushu family of Somerset, Ohio, Mattoon Illinois, Cincinnati, Ohio, I have a family tree on geneanet.org. Look for Mary Rivers' family tree. To date it primarily focuses on the Bushu family. I hope to add the Wolf family as I learn more.

I posted the family tree on Geneanet.org because this particular site takes seriously the notion that genealogy needs to be evidence-based.  Solid evidence of relationships has many forms, but in general the best evidence is a contemporaneous, official document from an unimpeachable source: a birth certificate, a will, a land record. As records become more open to error (censuses, tombstones, lists composed by family later in time), the trustworthiness of the data becomes suspect. By the time we get to Aunt Cecily recalling the birth of her namesake fifty years after the event, we have entered the realm of "interesting."  The family tree I posted at Geneanet was built from original documents from the following sources. In the event that you cannot find a notation about the source of a particular piece of information, assume it's one of these.  But please let me know of missing data so I can correct the problem.

SOURCES

http://archives.cg68.fr. The Archives of the Haut Rhin, Alsace, France. The Bourgeois (Bushu/Bushue/Bushur) family is from the Haut Rhin (and Switzerland). The archives provides online access to microfilm copies of civil and church records from 1793 to 1856 for Strueth, Mertzen, and all towns in the department. These digital images are not name- or year-indexed; to find an 1811 birth, you must figure out what pages out of 250 or so might be 1811, and then read through each record. Tedious, and some years are missing, but it's free and fascinating.

http://archives.cg67.fr. The Archives of the Bas Rhin. The Wolf family is from the Bas Rhin. Although there are some differences in accessing and using these records, the above comments apply. 

The Archives of the Jura in Porrentruy, Switzerland. These records are not online. Swiss records for its citizens are maintained in the region in which the original citizenship was declared. For the Bourgeois, this is the Jura region. I went to the archives in Poorentruy where I obtained the marriage record for the earliest Bourgeois ancestor, Jean Bourgeois, and the birth records for sons Jean and Michael Bourgeois. It is possible to request records by mail. See the website: https://archivescantonales.jura.ch.

http://www.cdhf.net. The Centre Departmentale d'Histoire Familie. Something like Ancestry but not as huge or well-funded. Searchable database of millions of names. "Hits" provide enough information to identify persons for whom original records are wanted. The difference from Ancestry is that you can't access the original documents online; paper copies of original civil or church documemts can be ordered for a fee (in Euros). CDHF has records not available on the Alsace website archives named above. Between the Alsace Archives and the CDHF, I have close to 90 original records as evidence of people and their relationships.

http://colcdioc.org. The Diocese of Columbus Catholic Record Society publishes a newsletter (The Barquilla), which features in each edition several elements of interest to genealogists. It may be a transcription of a cemetery, a list of baptisms for a church in a given year, or excerpts from the Catholic Telegraph Register. Catholics in the area were served by itinerant priests until the first church in Ohio, St. Joseph's was built here, so the earliest records are a little messy, but the historians at The Barq have done a good job of sorting out the confusion. The Barq is fascinating; it is a secondary source, but I have used it, not for evidence of an ancestor's baptism, but as a window to relationships or additional details. For instance, Myrod Bushue's first wife was Mary; we have no other information. But on two separate occasions, Myrod and Mary Moritz/Mourite are sponsors at a baptism. So we have a lead for a hitherto unknown woman.

Http://perrycountyohio.us.  This site was created by Tim Fisher, whoever he is. It is a wonderfully eclectic mix of records: census data, land plats, tax records, marriage and birth records, county histories, and much more. It's worth a look. Records are transcriptions of originals.

Introduction

I've been researching the ancestry of Pauline Myrtle Bushu, my mother, and her brother, Herbert C. Bushu, since 2010 and it's time that the information I've uncovered be available to others researching the same family line. I intend to use this blog to describe advances in what we know about various members of the family tree, add links that the curious might use to learn more about the family, and record my own odyssey. This sounds pretty formal; it won't be.

Pauline Myrtle was the only daughter born to Ida Wolf and Herbert Augustine Bushu. Ida was the daughter of Eva Hertling and Francis Joseph Wolf; Herbert was the son of Francis Joseph Bushu and Agatha Hertling. Pauline was born in 1909 and within a few years, she was blessed with the birth of a brother, Herbert C. Bushu, and cursed with the loss of her mom. This blog is the ancestry of these two children.

I've stood on the shoulders of Lester Bushue, Champaign IL., Fr. Blaine Burkey, Denver CO, and the late, deeply missed, Hans Hertling, Stockstadt, Germany, for the information contained in the family tree for the Bushus in America, the Burkeys in America and Switzerland, and the Hertlings in America and Germany. It's not simply that their hard work made mine easier; it's that they showed me what serious, evidence-based genealogy looked like.

Because of the work of Lester, Fr. Blaine, and Hans, I've been able to focus in two other areas.  First, I've been researching the Wolf family, both here and abroad. Second, I searched for, and found, the Bushu family in France. I'll talk about that in other posts. But anyone who's done genealogy knows nothing is ever done, so currently I'm seeking great-great-grandmother Mary Ann Bushu, nee Miller, who married, in Feb 1838, Morand Bushu, late of France.

[The immigrant family was "Bourgeois" in France and Switzerland, a name that was spelled in the US about 27 different ways for the first 100 years.  To spare everyone's sanity, when I write about the family here, I use Bushu. If I'm referring to them in France, I use Bourgeois.]

Pauline's family tree can be seen at Geneanet.org; look for MJRivers5. The information in the tree is supported with original, contemporaneous documents -- birth, marriage and death records, civil or church. If the particular person you seek does not have serious sources named, please let me know; the records exist but my documenting them isn't perfect.  The tree is a work in progress; be patient.

I maintain a journal of what I do regardless of success; this isn't it. Here you can expect to find interesting findings about the family, successes in individual searches, links and apps I have found particularly useful, and commetary on the whole process.

Bill Bryson points out in one of his books (History of Everything?) that we are all the product of survivors; everyone in our ancestral line lived long enough to reproduce. I find that more exciting than the notion that I could be related to Cleopatra (Hertling) or the great-great-great-great granddaughter of a German Count (Bushu). Living long enough to be a leaf on a tree is something to celebrate.

Let's party!