Bourgeois narrative now online.

Oct 21, 2015

I have written a lengthy essay, with photos, that details the Bourgeois story as I know it. It is stored in my dropbox account, and I will happily share it with anyone who asks.  

There are three files: 

“European Ancestors of the Bushu/Bushue/Bushur families” is the narrative with pictures. If you want the broad strokes, this is what you want to read. 

“Jean Bourgeois Descendants” is the eight-generation list of Jean’s descendants, starting with Jean Bourgeois in Switzerland. This is a ten-page indented list of Jean’s children, grandchildren, etc. It lists not just our direct ancestors, but their siblings’ families as well. It’s dense.

“Record of Bourgeois BMD records” is a spreadsheet listing the details of my sources. If you want to see where my information came from, this is what you want. 

If you want one or more of these files, leave a comment, with your email address, that you’d like the link.

IF YOU ARE A BUSHU: I’ve gone about as far as I can with the Bourgeois family. I’m turning my attention to the Hoff family whom I’ve found in a tiny town just north of Mertzen. I’ll be chasing those ancestors this winter. (Agatha Burkey is the daughter of Anne Marie Hoff who came to Ohio with her parents around 1827-1829). 

I’m also trying to get toehold on the Muller family of Goppingen, Germany and the Hierholzers of Birndorf, GE.  Johannes Muller is our great-great-great grandfather. His daughter, MariaAna Hierholzer, married Morand Bourgeois. One of their children was Frank Bushu, who married Agatha Burkey. 

If any readers have information on any of these people, I hope you will share.

Agatha Burkey's parents: Hoff-Meyer ancestry

The origins of Anne Marie Meyer Hoff
October 17, 2015



For the sake of simplicity, I've used Marie and Anne throughout, even though the names are occasionally spelled as Anna and Maria.

This came together so fast I'm still reeling. Frustrated by my inability to confirm that MariaAna Müller was Mary Ann Miller, I started looking for Anne Marie Meyer Hoff whose daughter Anne Marie Hoff married Anton Burkey.* Googling random names the evening of Oct 4, I discovered the existence of The Berkey Book, which the Urbana library had, and I tootled off to the library the next morning to take a look at it.  I didn't see any mention of our Burkeys, but Fr. Burkey* has said they are there; I probably skimmed too fast (as usual). But it made me curious.

When I got home, I logged on to one of my favorite international sites, CDHF.net, plugged in Hoff and Anne Marie Meyer (actually, I plugged in "Me*er" which netted me all versions of Meyer plus a few other names) and got a hit for an 1810 marriage in Fulleren, Alsace, France.* Obviously, this was just a random couple in a random community; but the Huff graves indicate they were from Alsace, this was Alsace, so I decided to pursue the name a bit.

So I went to the Haut Rhin archives (archives.haut-rhin.fr) and started looking for this couple's children in the digitized records of the Fulleren naissance. And hit gold: the names and birth years (that Fr. Burkey had) of eight children matched those in the US. There was no doubt in my mind (nor in Father's when I told him about my find) that I had located the elusive Hoff family. I chased on and was eventually able to piece together the following.

Jean Hoff married Anne Marie Meijer (or Meÿer) 10 Sept 1810 in Fulleren. (Fulleren was Villeren on the old maps, which brings the name closer to the one Fr. Burkey saw in an old German document.) The page numbers in parentheses indicate the page the document is on.

Anna Maria 27 Feb 1812 (143)
Catherine 23 Aug 1813 (152)
Jean (Baptiste) 1 May 1815 (165)
Marie Anne 22 Sept 1816 (172)
          d. 19 Jan, 1817 (I think it's the 19th; hard to read. (p.104 of deces))
Marie Anne 6 Jan 1818 (182)
Antoine 13 Oct 1820 (197-198)
Madeleine 29 Apr 1823 (215)
Anne 13 July 1824 (221)
Francis Joseph 27 Sept 1826 (234)

(No babies in 1827-1830 and by mid 1830, the family is in Ohio. So I accessed the Columbus Diocese's historical society newsletter.)

Baptism transcriptions published in The Barquilla de la Santa Maria
July 4 [1830] Clara Hoof, daughter of John and Mary Hoof; spons. Elizabeth [Hierholzer] Roody. (Feb 1999, p 213)
Oct. 25 [1831] Teresa, daughter of John Hough and Mary Myers; spons. Morris Rodecker and Mary Perkey. [Burkey?](May 1999, p 238)

I have looked, several times , through all the French and Ohio records and cannot find Margaret, listed in Fr. Burkey's analysis of the family. I have a hunch that she was born around 1828, in Ohio, and I just haven't found her birth/baptism. Judging from these dates, I agree with Fr. Burkey that they came to the USA in 1826-1830. However, using multiple spellings, I can't find them in immigration or passenger records on FamilySearch or Ancestry.

Next, I began doing some background searches. I cleaned up and printed out Jean and Anne Marie's marriage record, identified their parents, and began my search.

According to the marriage record, Anne Marie Meÿer was married at 23 in 1810, so she was born about 1787; the marriage record named her parents as Joseph Meijer and Anne Marie Philipp. So I tracked down their marriage: Joseph and Anne Marie were married in Mertzen, 2 Feb 1785. Their daughter, Anne Marie, was born in Mertzen 18 Nov 1787.

Jean Hoff was 22 when he married, so he was born about 1788. The marriage document says his parents were Jean Hoff and Elisabethe Soldermann. Jean Hoff married Elisabethe Soldermann April 4, 1780. On  15 April, 1789, Jean Hooff was born to Jean Hof and Elisabethe Soldermann in Mertzen.

I ordered and received copies of the original birth and marriage documents which confirm the CDHF index.

I began looking for more information about Anna Marie Meyer and John Hoff. Neither FamilySearch nor Ancestry had anything of use. I also checked, again, with the Barq, to be sure I hadn't missed anything. And then I logged into geneanet.net, an international repository of old documents and lots of member-submitted family trees, and hit platinum. I found two family trees, with decent sources, that trace the ancestry of Jean Hoff, Elisabethe Solderman, Joseph Meÿer and Anne Marie Philipp. (I have very good reason, too convoluted to explain, to trust one of these trees. And because the second tree uses both independent sources and the first tree, I'm inclined to trust it as well.)

At this point, I was no longer able to get documents from the Haut Rhin archives, so I ended up using the CDHF index to its document holdings to confirm as much of the member-submitted trees as possible. I was able to confirm about 75%.

But every silver lining has a dark cloud, so here's the bad news.  The Central Department for Family History (the English translation of CDHF, Centre Departmental L'Histoire des Familles) has closed, hopefully temporarily, so I am unable to get copies of the originals. However, the CDHF's index has never been wrong, so in those instances where I am confident I have the right people, I have data confirming the dates and places provided in the Geneanet trees. If the CDHF does reorganize and reopen, I'll order what documents I can afford. The information contained in those old records is invaluable: We get names and dates of all involved people and clues about occupations and literacy. If this was a second marriage, we learn who the first spouse was. Often they mention if parents were still alive and where they were from, and sometimes we learn that a godmother or witness was related and how. The mail I get from the CDHF informing me of their plans suggests they won't be permanently closed, but when I last requested documents, I was told my request could not be fulfilled. So we're in limbo.

I'll admit to a bit of a letdown; this was awfully easy. Other than the invisibility of Margaret, this has been a very straightforward process. I rather like the quests that have some crunch. At this point, I have John Hoff and Anne Marie Meyer Hoff's ancestry (and some collateral lines) back to the early 1600s. I'll post the full Meyer-Hoff tree on Geneanet.net in the next few days.

On the other hand, this freed me up to pursue some other questions. One, I am sure that the Hoffs and the Bourgeois knew one another. I have no idea if they traveled together, planned the emigration together, or if they were simply both impelled west by the same reasons.  I'm not sure what sort of information would clarify their relationship. I haven't seen Bourgeois-Hoff baptisms but there are those Hierholzer links.  And of course, Michael Bourgeois' grandson married John Hoff's granddaughter. That says something. So I'm curious about the emigration.

Second, we know that one of John's brothers, Jacques (Andrew Jacob in Fr. Burkey's materials) emigrated to the US with his wife, Marie Anne Etschman in 1833. I wonder if anyone else from the family came to the USA. I'm beginning to think that the Haut Rhin must have just emptied in the early 1800s. I would try to confirm the dates of Jacques' birth, but 1796 is a period when the French records are gibberish to me. First, they are using the Republican calendar, and second, the script is indecipherable. So I went for the marriage record and found it. Marie Anne Etschman is the 23-year-old daughter of Joseph Etschman and Anne Marie Geiger.

Third, what were the occupations? I shall have to look more closely, but at this point it appears the men for whom I have records were farmers and carpenters.

Finally, what was happening in Alsace that made leaving more attractive than staying? France has just gone through 25 years or so of war, first the revolution and then the Napoleanic Wars. But most histories that I've read rarely mention Alsace, an area closer to Germany/Prussia than to the central areas of France. Alsace got special treatment in at least one treaty so in some ways its population had it easier than the rest of France. On the other hand, there was famine in 1827; did the Hoffs and the Bourgeois foresee it and leave while they could? Did the communities in their tiny piece of France pay them to leave the way the burgers of Magden paid the Burkeys?

So although I'm now able to fill in boxes with names and dates, there are still questions that need answering.  My work here is not done.



Fun Fact 1: When I was in Mertzen in April 2015, I saw Hoffs in the cemetery there. I found it interesting but had NO idea they were MY Hoffs. The birth records I perused last night include two other Hoffs in Mertzen having children at the same time as our Hoffs: Xavier and Jacques. These are Jean's siblings. Jacques emigrated as well to Ohio and became Andrew Jacob. I can't get his birth record so I don't know where the Andrew came from; it isn't included in the CDHF index.

Fun Fact 2: In October of 1829, Sebastien Hoff, son of Francois Joseph Hoff, and Marie Ursule Bourgeois, daughter of Xavier Bourgeois, have a baby boy they name Morand. They were married November 21, 1825. These folks are closely related to our Bourgeois family.

*Fr. Blaine Burkey, O.F.M. Cap., did the original research on the Burkey ancestry and descendants. His carefully documented work meant that I didn't have to start my search with Agatha Burkey and work backwards. We maintain contact; his guidance has been invaluable.
*This was a logical step for me because one of the things that has led me to believe that MariaAna Müller and Mary Ann Miller were the same person was the Hierholzer connection to John Hoff. I suspected that John, who was godfather to several of Elizabeth Hierholzer Rudy's children, was related to Anne Marie Hoff Burkey, mother of Agatha Burkey who married Francis Joseph Bushu, son of Morand Bourgeois and Mary Ann Miller. Because Frank grew up SW of Somerset and attended Holy Trinity and St. Joseph churches, while Agatha grew up in Zanesville attending St. Nicholas church, I wondered how in the world they met, Got all that? So I wanted to confirm a relationship, if there was one, thinking they could have met through the Rudys. And there is one; Elizabeth Hierholzer Rudy was godmother to Anna Marie's last child, Teresa.  Anne Marie did have a younger brother John; I don't know that he was the godfather John Hoff, but it seems probable.
*Almost all the events that I found indexed at CDHF place those events in Mertzen.  The documents I have say the Hoffs and their relatives came from Fulleren, Mertzen, Altkirch, Friesen, and Largitzen. However, tiny Mertzen, population today about 350, was the location for the officials of the area. My guess is that the documents referred to were filed there.

BONUS: Just because I don't think we should ever lose sight of what our ancestors did, I suggest you ruminate upon the following. Jean and Anna Marie traveled from their tiny community where they knew everyone WITH THEIR 8 CHILDREN (the oldest was at most 17) AND ALL THEIR WORLDLY POSSESSIONS, down the Rhine River to Amsterdam or Rotterdam, boarded a ship, sailed for two weeks across the Atlantic, then found passage from wherever they landed to Zanesville, Ohio, where they planted new roots. Dancing backwards in heels suddenly doesn't sound very impressive, does it?

The Miller's Tale: Is MariaAna Müller Mary Ann Miller? UPDATED

The Millers’ Tale

No, this isn’t an ancient essay I’ve resurrected from a long ago literature class. It’s the tapestry I’ve created about the Rivers’ great-great grandmother. Some of it is my imagination at work; it should be clear when I’m speculating about how things might have been. But the framework is based on documents whose accuracy is not questioned.

In telling this story I have two goals. One is pay homage to our ancestors. The other is to successfully argue, using evidence, that the woman who married Morand Bushu was in fact Maria Ana Müller, daughter of a German immigrant and his wife. I do have one huge caveat for the reader: while the odds against Maria Ana Müller being Mary Ann Miller Bushu are incredibly small, they are not zero. I do not have a document that unequivocally names Mary Ann’s parents.

The principle actors in this drama were identified in an 1822 will written by a 25-year-old man who was dying. He was widowed and had an infant daughter for whom the will made provisions. In his will he named his parents, his guardian, his in-laws, and his daughter. The dying man was Johannes Müller; the infant was Maria Ana. This will gave me my first break in the search for Mary Ann Miller. Here is the story, as best as I can determine.

Let me preface this narrative with two small tales. The first is mine. At some point while I was still living at home, mother told me that one of her ancestors was the daughter of a duke/count/nobleman in Europe (I think she said Germany but my memory of this is very fuzzy), that she had fallen in love with the chauffeur and run off with him. Her father cut her out of her will.

The second tale is reported in a brief biographical piece on James Bushu, Herbert Bushu’s uncle. James reported that his mother (Mary Ann Miller Bushu) was the orphan granddaughter of a German count and that she had been swindled out of her inheritance.

The two tales, if you ignore the absurdity of the chauffeur in the 1800s, seem to share an underlying theme: someone was born into wealth but didn't inherit it.

Our story starts in Göppingen, Wurttemberg, Germany on January 9, 1797 when a baby boy is born to Johan Leonhard Müller and Eva Maria Ott. The baby is named Johannes (spelled Johanes in the will), and because he is raised by a court administrator named Ludwig Schafer, I assume that his parents died when he was young. There is evidence that suggests the family was wealthy, but so far I’ve been unsuccessful finding them. Johannes emigrated to America in March of 1817, with the permission of Herr Schafer. UPDATE: I have found German records for both Johan Leonhard and Eva Maria Ott, confirming the birth of their child and their early deaths. Their story will be another essay.

We don’t know why he left, especially since he enjoyed some wealth in Göppingen, but a look at the history of the area gives clues. Johannes was born during the Napoleanic Wars, which caused upheavals throughout the region. At the time of the French Revolution (1789), Württemberg was a duchy in the Holy Roman Empire; when Württemberg threw in with Napoleon in 1806, it became a kingdom. It also saw its population reduced by over 15,000 men who were sent to fight with the French in Prussia and Russia. In 1813, Frederick II, king of Württemberg, abandoned Napoleon and joined the German Confederation. I can't imagine this was met with sanguinity by many people. Militarily and politically, this would have been a volatile region; leaving may have been more like escape.

It's also worth noting that 1816-1817 were the years without summer. Mt. Tambora blew in 1815 and the consequence for agriculture was dramatic. Famine was wide-spread. In Switzerland, families were paid to leave, reducing the strain on the towns for feeding the starving. I know that in the Haut Rhin, deaths sky-rocketed, which may have driven people to emigrate.

Meanwhile a little girl named Anna was baptized on May 18, 1799 in Birndorf, Waldshut, Germany, a small town about 120 miles southwest of Göppingen, also part of the kingdom of Württemberg. She was the first child born to Joseph Herholzer and Helena Reinhardt Herholzer. She was followed by Elisabeth in 1801, Magdalena in 1806, Johannes Baptista in 1808, Marie Ursule in 1812 and an infant who died at birth in 1815. Sometime between the death of the last child and 1819, perhaps responding to the pressures of war and famine, Helena and Joseph packed up the family and left for America.

It doesn’t appear that Joseph was a man of means; in 1819 he bought 15 acres of land (contrast this with Michael Bourgeois’ land purchase a month after arrival of 80 acres). In 1828 his 15 acres and the house were worth $83. Even by 1820 standards, he was not a wealthy man.

And now it gets messy. We know that on August 22, 1820, Johannes Müller and Anna Herholzer got married (they Americanized their names for their wedding: They were John Miller and Ann Harhalsey). We know that in September of 1822, when Johannes wrote his last will, he was a widower with an infant daughter, Maria Ana. And we know that in the 1820 census, Jacob Hesholser had in his household one female under 10, one female 10-15, one male 10-16 and two adults, Joseph and his wife. (I don’t know for sure that Jacob Hesholser is Joseph. However, no Jacob ever appears in later censuses, and we KNOW Joseph is in Perry County in 1819 because he buys land then. In the absence of anyone else, it looks like Jacob and Joseph are the same man.) One person in the family is a naturalized citizen which means someone was born in the United States. Huh!

We also know that Anna was married in August of 1820, and that Elisabeth Herholzer married her first husband, John Downhour in 1821 (exact date unknown). Finally, we can’t find Marie Ursule at any point after her birth; I think she probably died, perhaps before leaving Germany (I doubt this; I think it would have appeared in the German church records. But I don’t know for sure.) Assuming this is Joseph Herholzer, how are we to read this census?

The 1820 census had multiple problems, starting with a delay in completing the enumeration until September 1821. Enumerator training varied widely in thoroughness and accuracy. And we know that Joseph and his family were recent immigrants who spoke German. It would have been good if the enumerator could speak German, but the Irish were also a huge ethnic group in the area, and it would take serious organization skills to ensure that the enumerator and respondent languages matched. To complicate this more, many of the area's German speakers were from Alsace, where the language was Alsatian, a dialect of German. I think understanding all the new settlers was pretty challenging. And Perry County was newly settled with limited amenities. The enumerator's job could not have been easy under any circumstance, but under these? Oy!

Perhaps when the census-taker appeared at the Herholzer household, he didn’t arrive until well into 1821. He got the name wrong. The respondent didn’t understand, or wasn’t told, that he should be counting people in the household as of Aug 7, 1820. So the record shows the people who were in the household when the enumerator showed up. John Baptiste and Magdalena were unmarried; they would have been there.  Elizabeth has married and is gone. Marie Ursule is dead. And Anna? She is married, probably dead as well, and her infant daughter is the "under ten" female in the house. Maria Ana was born in the US; she's the naturalized citizen.

I don’t like having to manipulate the data this much, so I’m not happy with this explanation, though I must admit it is both plausible and reasonably parsimonious. I am saved by the fact that in the larger scheme of things, this doesn’t matter. We don’t need the census to confirm the people, their children, or the locale; we have an extensive trail of official papers to tell us that. The census won’t get me the information I badly need: Maria Ana’s birth, Anna’s death, Marie Ursule’s fate, Johannes’ death, and clear data that tell me who the parents of Mary Ann Miller Bushu were.

Back to our story.

Joseph’s fifteen acres were on the edge of Somerset. According to the 1820 census, he worked in agriculture. I don’t know if this means he actually farmed or if he worked in a supportive role. Part of his household in 1820 were five 14-21 free males of color. Who they were and why they were there is a mystery to me. However, every household in Reading township in 1820 had at least two young men of color.

Johannes Muller, with or without Anna, is invisible in the 1820 census. We know he was THERE; he got married, had a baby, lost his wife, wrote his will, and died. But I don’t know if he was in a rooming house, living with a relative, in his own place (though I should be able to find tax records or a property deed; he doesn’t mention any local property in his will so I’m guessing he’s living with some family. But it doesn’t appear to be the Herholzers.)

In his will, Johannes placed Maria Ana in the care of his in-laws, Joseph Hierholzer and Helena Reinhardt Hierholzer. Maria Ana was to have all his property in Europe, property that he did not own but had a right to for his lifetime. I’m not sure just how property that he had a right to in his lifetime could be conveyed to his daughter, and this could explain how she was “swindled” out of her inheritance.

It appears that the terms of his will were met. In 1830 there was a 5-10 year old male living with the Herholzers. Since there was no child of theirs or of their married daughters who would meet this description, my presumption is this was Maria Ana. In the next seven years, as Elizabeth Herholzer Rudy and John Baptiste Herholzer had children, Mary Ann Miller appeared as godmother in the children’s baptisms. In the last one, that of Eleanor, daughter of John Baptiste Herholzer and Hester Snook, Mary Ann Miller’s co-sponsor was “Morant Burschuas.” Six months after the baptism of John and Hester’s child, on Feb. 28, 1838, a woman named Mary Ann Miller and Morand Bushu marry. I'm convinced this was Johannes Müller's baby girl.

In 1843, after having two sons, Mary Ann and Morand finally had a daughter. She was Emily in the baptismal record, but the date and the names of the parents tell us this was undeniably Ellen. Ellen’s godmother was Helen Reinhardt Herholzer. In many old naming traditions, babies are named for the baby’s grandparent. It is fitting that Mary Ann’s first daughter was named for the woman who was her “mom," if, in fact, Mary Ann is MariaAna.

One other small hint: When Morand's daughter Cecilia takes her vows as a Sister of Providence the name she chooses is . . . Helena.

What I love about this series of baptisms is the powerful sense of a close family. All three of the Herholzer children, as well as Joseph and Helena, served as godparents to one another’s children. And this closeness extends beyond family. I have read almost all the baptisms performed in St. Joseph and Holy Trinity churches; Elizabeth and her parents appear over and over again in the lives of their neighbors. Magdalena, who married Samuel Dean and became Mary, appears less frequently and then disappears entirely. I think they move away. But Elizabeth and her second husband Rudolph Rudy stay put, along with John Baptiste and Hester, having children and celebrating the milestones of their lives.

Shortly after Mary Ann and Morand were married, Joseph Herholzer died (1839). In his will and a codicil, both written before Mary Ann married, he mentions his beloved granddaughter Marie Anna, daughter of his beloved daughter Anna. In his will he leaves Mary Ann a half share of his estate. In his codicil, he says that that inheritance has been fulfilled. He did not provide any specifics so we are left wondering if he removed her from his will because he was unhappy with her (thus explaining James’ contention that she was “swindled). Or perhaps he settled some money on her in anticipation of her marriage.  I doubt we’ll ever know.

John Baptiste Herholzer died in 1845 (I assume his wife Hester predeceased him) and his five children were scattered among relatives; two of them were living with Helena in the 1850 census. At seventy something, she was still raising her grandchildren.

In the 1860 census, Helena Herholzer was living with Michael Bushu who was Morand’s first cousin. I’m not sure why Helena was not with her granddaughter, but we can ask the same question about why she wasn’t with her daughters. Perhaps Michael had more room (there were 11 people living in Morand’s very small log cabin), or lived near people she was close to or lived near the church. Perhaps she changed homes every six months and happened to be with Michael when the enumerator appeared. Regardless, all the evidence strongly suggest the Herholzers and the Bushus were close.

In September 1865 shortly after the birth of her eighth daughter and eleventh child, and the marriage of her first daughter, Ellen (to Samuel Mattingly), Mary Ann Miller Bushu died. She was 44. She lost her mother and father in infancy, married at 17, lost her grandfather (who helped raised her) at 18, bore eleven children in 27 years while living in one of the smallest houses you can imagine. As a farm wife, her responsibilities, shared with her children I’m sure, were enormous: the family’s food, clothes, and health depended upon her. Her days would have been long and hard, tending the fires, gardens, milk cows, chickens; sewing, fixing wounds, emptying slop jars, canning, pickling, and otherwise preserving food for the winter, cooking, cleaning, wiping noses and butts. And she did this while either pregnant or nursing. I know these early pioneer families drew strength and solidarity, as well as good times, from the church and community. I hope that was true for Mary Ann.

Everything in this document is supported with strong, unquestionable evidence, everything, that is, except the names of Mary Ann Miller Bushu’s parents. It is my belief that the material presented here showing repeated family connections over a long period of time is powerful argument that her Mom and Dad were Johannes Müller and Anna Herholzer. I hope my readers agree.

Moran and Mary Ann Bushu's eleven children

When I was a girl attending Catholic schools in the 50s and 60s, I was told repeatedly by the nuns that one of every five girls had a vocation. This scared me no end because, as it happened, I was one of five girls, and I was pretty sure that my gorgeous older sisters weren't convent-bound and equally positive that my younger bratty sister was just not nun material. And I really didn't want to take the veil.

I guess, since I remember my trepidation 55 years later, that this was a deep concern of mine; denying a vocation was right up there with wearing patent leather shoes and french-kissing. Yikes! I was doomed. How lovely it would have been to know that I had five great-great-great aunts who did my time for me. Anyway, because I can now sleep at night, I shall tell their story, a story about a treasure hunt.

In mid-2012, after getting as much Wolf information as I could at the time, I turned my genealogical questions to the Bushu family. I had been given a major leg up by Lester Bushue whose own research supplied me with the names of many ancestors. But there were gaps, so I started to fill them in. And ran into serious obstacles. The people who were missing were five of Francis J. Bushu's sisters. And yes, we all know how much I HATE losing women. So I became a woman with a mission.

It has taken 2 1/2 years of persistent searching, but I have found the women. So here it is.

To recap: Michel Bourgeois 1782 immigrated to the US in 1827. One of his sons was Morand Bourgeois (who will be Moran Bushu from here on), born in Mertzen, Alsace, France in 1810. In 1838, Moran married Mary Ann Miller, age 17, and in the next 27 years they had eleven children.

Henry, 1839
Francis Joseph (Herbert A. Bushu's father) 1841
Ellen 1843
Angeline 1846
James 1848
Anna 1851
Martha 1854
Margaret 1856
Gertrude 1859
Mary Cecilia 1862
Ethel Clara 1865

Mary Ann died in 1865 (at 44) and in the mid 1870s, Moran made the long trip to Buck Township, Edgar County, Illinois, where he bought 240 acres of some of the best land in the country (according to Lester Bushue, for whom farm land is a passion.) It was there that Moran died in 1878. He's buried in St. Mary's cemetery in Paris, Illinois.

The children

My search for the men, Henry, Frank, and James, was fairly easy; they married well, were men of property and substance, and had the luck to appear in all sorts of formal documents. The women? Not so much. So I first got the men out of the way and then turned to the women. Margaret and Ellen married Mattingly men, and the Mattinglys are a very prominent family even today. They produced prodigious numbers of religious, procreated bountifully, and are reasonably easy to trace. If you're counting, this means I have three men and two women accounted for. But there were six more women to find.

I knew that there was one nun in the family, but I wasn't sure which of the women it was. By consulting with other family members, I eventually tracked her down (Cecilia or Sr. Helena). Once I found identified Cecilia, I spent a good deal of time searching websites and libraries until I happened upon the archives of the Columbus Diocese, which led me via a labyrinth I will not describe to two more nuns, Angie (Sr. Raymond) and Anna (Sr. Reginald). And then, while in Paris, Illinois seeking Moran's will, I came upon Ethel's will (which gave me Ethel), and that led me to Martha (Sr. Joseph Clare). But the last, Gertrude (Sr. Bernadine), involved a long, winding trail that didn't bring me home until earlier in 2015.

The following reports as much as I know about all eleven children and a little bit about the process of finding them all.

Henry was the first born, in 1839, and the first to leave. Listed in his father's house in 1860 as a cabinetmaker, by 1870 he had departed for Illinois. He married, and seems to have divorced, Mary Ann Robinson, the daughter of one of Edgar County's founders, Martin Robinson. Martin had married one of daughters of the first settler in Effingham County, Illinois (Frederick Brocket). It appears that when Brocket died, the Robinsons inherited his property, and by extension Henry who must have still been married at the time, according to The History of Effingham County (1883, p. 222). Lester Bushue told me that there's an old mill site on the Little Wabash near where he grew up that's called the Robinson mill. Information about when Henry married and divorced has eluded me to this point. When Morand died in 1878, Henry, minus Mary Ann, and his brother James took over Moran's 240 acres of farm. Henry is an interesting character. For a while he took responsibility for a young boy, Henry Hooker, the orphaned son of I'm not sure who. (Henry Hooker's sister, Ellen, was raised by James Bushu and his wife Cecilia Musselman). In his later years, Henry lived with his widowed sister Margaret Mattingly in Indiana. It was there that he died in 1903 at 64.

Francis Joseph will be treated in depth in another essay, but here's a short bio. Born in 1841, he married Agatha Burkey in 1866, and the family moved to Edgar County, Illinois in 1874. He and Agatha had 9 children. (Frank and Agatha produced almost twice as many children as the rest of his siblings combined. In his later years he was a prominent man in Mattoon, Illinois. It will be fun sharing with everyone what I've learned about him and Agatha. Stay tuned.) Frank died in October of 1922 at 81, and Agatha followed him quickly in January of 1923.

The third child was Ellen, born in 1843 and probably named for her godmother and (probable) grandmother Eleanor Hierholzer. On Jan 31, 1865,  Ellen married Samuel Mattingly, who was a marrying man. (She was Samuel's second wife, and after Ellen died in 1892 at 49, Samuel married a third time.) For a time, her sister Cecilia lived with them; she appears in their household in the 1880 census. Also in the 1880 census is a 10 year old boy, Gerome McKiney. (I think Samuel Mattingly was the son of Michael Mattingly and Honora Durbin. Michael had a daughter Nora who married Charles McKiney. It makes sense that Gerome is Nora and Charles' son, making him Samuel's nephew. Whew!) It doesn't appear Ellen had children, at least none that were living at the time of the censuses.

The fourth child is Angeline and she, along with her younger sister Anna, gave me my first clue that this was no ordinary Catholic family. In August of 1871, Angie entered St. Mary of the Springs convent in Columbus, Ohio. (St. Mary's had begun life in Somerset, Ohio, home to the Bourgeois families). She received her habit in late 1871, and she took her vows in November, 1872, assuming the name Sr. Raymond. Shortly thereafter she was sent to Lancaster, Ohio to help open a school there. Life at these early outposts was hard, and conditions were less than optimal. In 1885, thirteen years after her profession of faith, Sr. Raymond Bushu died at 39.

James Bushu was born in 1848. He departed for Illinois in 1874 and worked as a farmhand until Moran moved to Edgar County and bought land. After Moran died, Moran's daughters and son Frank deeded their shares of the farm to James and Henry. James was a very successful farmer, so much so that he merited his own biographical entry in Volume Two of the Portrait and Biographical Album of Vermillion and Edgar Counties, published in 1889. James and Henry raised cattle, hogs, and horses. James married Cecilia Musselman in January of 1878. They had no children but helped raised Ellen Hooker, Henry (Harry) Hooker, and Frank Musselman, perhaps Cecilia's brother. James is the source of the tale that his mother, Mary Ann Miller, was the granddaughter of a German count. He lived a long, prosperous life and enjoyed considerable success, serving as County Supervisor and School Director. He died in 1936 at 88, Cecilia in 1939.

Anna is the sixth child, born in 1851. Though younger than her sister Angeline, she preceded her to St. Mary of the Springs, entering the convent in November of 1869, receiving the habit in February of 1870, and professing vows in February of 1871, taking the name of Sr. Reginald. Annie died at 30, in 1881, leaving everything to the convent. Henry was executor. Both she and her sister are buried in the cemetery at St. Mary of the Springs.*

The seventh child is Martha, born in 1855. Martha joined the Sisters of Providence in Viga, Indiana in 1881. By then, the family had moved to Edgar County, and Viga was much closer than Columbus, Ohio.  She took her vows in 1884, assuming the name of Sr. Joseph Clare. I have a handwritten note that describes Sr. Joseph as having a "quiet, retiring disposition, silent and faithful to duty. She did not show much tact for teaching and at various times was employed in domestic duties." It appears that she may have been assigned a ministry in someplace other than the Viga convent, as when she developed TB, she "came home to die" in 1907 at 52. The note goes on to comment on her leaving her inheritance to the community, noting that "she made her will in favor of the community and insisted on her family abiding by its contents." At the time the undated, unsigned note was written, James had paid the first installment.

Number eight is Margaret, born in 1856, and she did NOT enter the convent. Instead, she married another Mattingly man, James, in 1880, with whom she had four children: Mary Gertrude, Francis, Claude, and Ralph Joseph. In 1890 James died in Tipton, Indiana, not long after Margaret delivered her fourth child in May of 1888.  In 1900, Margaret was still living in Tipton, and her brother Henry was with her. Some time after Henry's death in 1905, Margaret and three children moved to Otney, Colorado, not far from Pueblo. My guess is she had tuberculosis and was hoping to recover her health in the mountain air. There she died in 1912 at 56; she was buried in Tipton, Indiana.

The ninth baby is Gertrude, my will 'o the wisp. Gertrude was born in 1859. She appeared in the 1860 and 1870 censuses living at home, she quit-claimed her share of her father's estate to James and Henry in 1878 when Moran died, and then vanished. I spent almost two years looking for this woman in censuses, marriage records, death records, everywhere. Nothing. And then one day, on a whim, noting that Gertrude was a very unusual name in that era, I decided to do a wild card search. Such a search is risky; it meant that I entered the name "Gertrude" and her birth year, 1859, into Ancestry's search box for the 1880 census. I got 15 hits and one of them was for Gertrude Bushne in Washington, Kentucky.  She was Sr. Bernadine at St. Catherine of Sienna Convent in Bardstown, KY. And we actually know a bit about her. She entered the novitiate in 1878 (about 2 weeks before her father died), and took her vows in March of 1880. She was elected Prioress of the Congregation in 1897 and served until 1900. During her administration, the convent, grounds, and chapel were beautified. Shortly after she died, in 1903 at age 44*, the convent burned. When they rebuilt, they dedicated a set of windows over the organ in the choir to her. They're gorgeous. So was Gertrude.

Mary Cecilia, born in 1862 is the tenth child and our fifth nun. Ordained in 1885 as Sr. Helena at the Congregation of the Holy Cross convent (now St. Mary's at Notre Dame), Cecilia is the one nun we knew about, probably because she lived a long, productive life. When she celebrated her 75th anniversary with the convent (at 98) the Indianapolis Star published a lovely piece about her. She taught all over the country, knew Fr. Edward Sorin who founded Notre Dame, and served on the staff at St. John's Hospital in Anderson, Indiana. Sr. Helena died at 103, in 1965.

Moran and Mary Ann's last baby, number eleven, was Ethel Clare, born in 1865. Shortly after Ethel's birth, Mary Ann died, quite possibly as a result of complications during or after birth. Ethel did not have the long life that Cecilia enjoyed; she died in 1898, at age 33. She never married, but she left a critical legacy. In her will, she left her watch to Ellen Hooker, her clothes, cape, shoes and cloak to Maggie Steiner, and $150 to a Sr. Joseph Clare in a convent in Indiana, a bequest that started me on the search that ended with five sister Sisters. Five nuns who "paid it forward," so that I don't have to feel guilty to have fallen in love with a mortal man.  Thank you, Sisters!


*I shouldn't do this, but I will. I have this image of young Anna entering the convent and her beloved older sister joining her so they can be together. Perhaps they both shared a desire for the convent, but Angie, as the older daughter, was responsible for the little ones once Mary Ann died, so Anna entered the novitiate ahead of her sister. But as soon as she is able, Angie, too, joins the convent, only to be sent off to Lancaster shortly after taking vows. So the two sisters' dream of serving together crashes, first by separation and then by death.
I won't explain how I know this, but our great-great-grandfather Moran and his wife Mary Ann were deeply religious. Moran subscribed to the Catholic Telegraph Register and in the mid-late 1800s, that's a very big deal. So imagine how this religious family with five nuns would have reacted to Henry's divorce. Oy!
I can't help being struck by the huge variation in life expectancies. The men live into their 70s or 80s; the women, with the exception of Cecilia, all die before they're 60, most before 50. At some point, I shall have to investigate that.

Ancestry and Family Search errors

In case you use FamilySearch or Ancestry a lot, here's a heads up. I check member trees when I'm trying to see if others have more information than I have on someone in my family. Every once in a while, my search pays off with a new name, and off I go to confirm the information with reliable sources. But generally I find that what people post doesn't include the source used (or the source is someone else's tree) and sometimes I find flat out errors. Today's search for more information on Francis J. Bushu, my great-grandfather, led me to trees that were, quite simply, wrong. Recently, I had the same experience with Wolf.

I'm not talking about errors that place someone in the wrong town or provide an incorrect date, although those are not minor mistakes. In both the Bushu and Wolf instances, NAMES were wrong, as were RELATIONSHIPS. Martin Wolf married Mary Ann Diemer, NOT Mary Ann Scantt (even though that's what's on Frank Wolf's death record). And several Bushu trees have inaccuracies about who married whom, who parented whom, and so on.

I don't want to call out anyone. I'm assuming the errors are in collateral lines, where people may feel accuracy -- for their purposes -- isn't a high priority. But I do want to make sure that the errors don't get compounded by their inclusions in YOUR tree. I am happy to direct you to the sources I use for my research so you can confirm for yourself the accuracy of your data. Just ask.