Jaak Panksepp and genealogy

You know the feeling: You finally, FINALLY, nail down that elusive 17th century ancestor. You've got her cold: name, parents, dates, place, and your data match marriage documents, baptismal records, censuses, cemetery photos. Yes! But wait, you have to RECORD all this, cite your sources, make sure your translation is correct, make sure it's all recorded carefully and fully for the next person. And all the while you're chomping at the bit to grab that next hint -- the godparents' names, the witnesses -- and chase the next, earlier ancestor. Waaah! I don't wanna!!! Waaah!

Sound familiar? So why do we struggle to do our due diligence? Because the thrill is in the hunt, not the kill, that's why.

Welcome to the science of Jaak Panksepp. Before I go on, I shall warn you I am going to butcher Jaak in this summary. Google him, read his research; he's a serious neuroscientist. But first let me tell you how he relates to what follows,

In a nutshell, Panksepp says that humans (and the animals and lizards that came before) are driven to hunt because they are rewarded, via the release of happy-making endorphins, for the HUNT. It's not the kill that satisfies; it's the stalking, the creeping, the sudden pounce, the aha (well, he doesn't say that; he just talks about the reward of seeking). He argues that's the impetus behind my dog who will kill a squirrel and leave it on the deck (because she just ate and isn't hungry, but Oh it's so much fun to chase and catch). I argue that it's the impetus behind shopping. If you are someone who loves to shop but often finds himself staring at something just purchased and then sticking it in a drawer, you know what I mean. The hunt was fabulous; the get? not so much.

So, genealogy. I'm not a shopper of stuff, but I LOVE shopping for ancestors. And, like my squirrel-displaying dog, I like to show off my catches. We all do. We find new and wonderful ways to display the long reach of our ancestry, back 8, 10, 15 generations. And then we show it to our siblings, tape it to walls at reunions, and wait for others to ooh and ahh. And they don't.

Why? Well, perhaps because they didn't experience the high of the seek and what they are looking at is terrifically boring.  Imagine for a moment your second cousin once removed who loves to fish. And he brings to the reunion not just a photo of his August 17, 2013 catch of an 8-pound bass in Lake Whosybutt but a terrific, not-to-be-believed graphic of his catches from 1988, with species, dates, sizes, locations, and bait. That's us, genie friends. Our 20' x 6' banners that stretch to the 15th century with names, dates, places. We tack them up and wonder why they fetch no more than a glance: well, think fish.

So what do those of us who've gone to unbelievable lengths to track down our 16th century relatives do?  Here's one idea. We know a lot, right? And then there's the Internet, Wikipedia, Google Earth. So pick three or four really early ancestors and make a brief graphic, with pictures of places and information about that social world in which they lived. Put them on a poster. Or a two-page handout. You can pick the earliest ones, the ones you have the most information about, the one that is maybe famous or infamous, or the one who breaks your heart.

The stories I like are about the earliest Bourgeois, Jean, who's born in Montfaucon, Switzerland in 1694 and gets married in Mertzen Alsace France just 15 km away but over the Jura Mountains, which are serious mountains.  I have photos of Montfaucon, its church, and a lovely image of his baptismal record. Or about the Bourgeois relative who fought with Napolean and was awarded the Medale Ste Helene. Or maybe the young 18th century woman who bore a child out of wedlock, an infant girl who died the next day, followed seven years later by her mom, still unmarried, still living with her uncle. Or the brothers who were French one day and conscripted by Hitler the next, only to die on the Russian front.

When I recently visited a sister with both stories and a lovely 12 generation chart, it was the stories that got her attention. Oddly, our relatives just assume we've done it right; they don't really necessarily want to see the tidy progression through the centuries. But if you can briefly introduce them to the truly bad German Chancellor who just happens to be a relative, or to the tragedy of the orphaned baby who marries at 17, has eleven children, and dies at 44, you will hold their attention.

Is Anne Marie Moritz of Friesen Meinrad's wife? Maybe

On Sept 9, 2016, I got an email from a man I've corresponded with via my blog, Bryan Bushue. He is seeking Mary Bushue, the first wife of Meinrad Bushue (Bourgeois) and mother of Jonas Bushue, Bryan's ancestor. He knew from my blog that entries from The Barqilla de la Santa Maria suggest her name was something like Mourite or Moretz, but that I have nothing more: no immigration record, no marriage record, no record of Jonas' birth.  The email was a bombshell; he'd found an Anne Marie Moritz born in Friesen in 1811 to Joseph Moritz and Reine Phillippe. He thought it was a long shot that she was his ancestor, but I disagree. I think he may have found his great-great-great grandmother.  

I can never resist an excuse to rummage in the French archives, so that's what I did, late into the night and the following morning.  I logged into my favorite sites and uncovered a lot of information.  Unfortunately, I found nothing that confirms that Anne Marie is Meinrad's first wife, but I think we have enough evidence that it's a strong possibility.

According to her headstone, Mary Ann, consort of Meinrad Burshow, died 21 August 1845. She was 34 years, 4 months, and 10 days old, which places her birth on11 April 1811, according to a website that does that sort of backward calculation. 

The woman Bryan identified, Anne Marie Moritz, was born 1 April 1811 to Joseph Moritz, 49, mayor of Friesen, and Reine (or Regine) Phillippe, 24. Reine was Joseph's second wife. They married 17 July 1808 after the death of Joseph's first wife, Anne Marie Stein, who died in mid-1807. In addition to Anne Marie, they had a son, Jean, born 1 Jan 1809, (which suggests that Joseph's father's name was Jean), and on 28 June, 1813, they had a second daughter, Anne. On 1 March, 1814, Joseph died, leaving his young wife with three children under 6. Reine (Regina in record) remarried, to Jean Hellbruner, on 19 March 1816. 

There are quite a few Moritz's in Friesen and sorting them out, as always, was a chore. But I read all the original indexes (the civil officials in Friesen almost always created a  handwritten index to their records, created at the end of each year, which makes life lots easier for the researcher) for the births, marriages, and deaths in Friesen (marriages to 1847, deaths to 1840) and found no evidence that Anne Marie married or died in those time periods. So we have a woman born at the right time who then disappeared from the French record. Perhaps she reappeared on the other side of the Atlantic? 

So is she Jonas Bushue's mom?  I have no solid evidence that she is, but some good reasons to believe she could be.

1. Friesen is 5 km. from Mertzen, the Bourgeois home. The Bourgeois men and women often married men and women from surrounding communities, so it's easy to see the families being acquainted.
2. This is especially true since both Joseph Moritz and several of the Bourgeois men were civic officials. So it isn't just that they would have known one another; the families would have been peers.
3. In addition, various witnesses in the Moritz marriage and birth documents include the Flurys, a family that has strong relationships within the Bourgeois family. And various Moritzs marry into families that appear in the Bourgeois records. I didn't check all the names but I think that would be valuable. 
4. Then there's what's missing: a marriage. As the daughter of a prominent man, Anne Marie would have been a hot prospect, and I can't find a marriage record. Just to be sure, I checked for a marriage in Largitzen as well, a town often paired with Friesen. Nothing. If she married, it wasn't in the area around her home, and that would be very unusual.
5. And while nobody should put too much weight on dates, there's the eerie confluence of the information on Mary Ann Burshow's headstone that says she was 34 years, 4 months, and 10 days old when she died 21 Aug 1845. April 11, 1811 is damn close to 1 Apr 1811. 
6. I should note that the transposition of her name when anglicized, from Anne Marie to Mary Ann, bothers me not a whit. My assumption is that she was known as Marie (after all she has a younger sister Anne). 

If Mary Ann IS Anne Marie, when and how did she get here? In 1827 she was 16, unlikely to travel alone, so who was she with? I checked the 1830 census in Perry County for Hellbruner (and variations), the name of Anne Marie’s stepfather; nothing even close. Jonas was born in Sept of 1829 so, assuming no gun-jumping, Meinrad and Mary Ann married around the end of 1828, meaning Mary Ann was here by then. Of course, we don't know when Meinrad arrived so it's still possible that they traveled together. The CRHF has no record of an Anne Marie Moritz emigration. 

The Bourgeois family is listed, with lots of creative names and ages, on a compilation of passenger lists from ships entering Baltimore between April 1, 1827 and Sept 30, 1827. I read the entire list; no Moritz (or anything close) to be found. The Bourgeois register of names lists, in addition to the parents, three young males and two females. The assumption is that Meinrad is the missing male but that's not certain; it could be Michael. One of the females could be Anne Marie Moritz, but then one of the family's young daughters is missing, not unheard of but . . . the immigration record is too messy to help. (See “The Bourgeois Immigration Tangle” for more than you could possibly want to know.)

Passenger records weren't mandatory in 1827 so it's possible that IF Anne Marie emigrated to the US, we won't find a record. And finding that an Anne Marie Moritz emigrated from France to the US in 1827 is not proof she is Meinrad's wife (though it would certainly increase the probability). But I think it would be worthwhile to obtain the original emigration record for Meinrad and family listed at CRHF; perhaps there are details about just who was traveling.

I'd also write Friesen for information. A prominent genealogist, whose name I don't recall, suggests writing to these small communities and asking for the name of the person who is the "town's memory." Every town has such a person, someone who listened to the old stories and remembers them. So I'd write Friesen, ask if they have official information about emigrations, and ask for the name of the story keeper. 

And I would also spread a wider net in the search for Meinrad and Mary Ann's marriage. Somerset and its environs were served by itinerant priests in the 1820s and their records can end up in odd places: I found Johannes Muller and Anna Hierholzer's marriage record in Chilicothe, Ohio. Of course, those old records don't always provide more than the names of those who are marrying, but one can hope.

One final note: Gerard Marck has his ancestry posted at geneanet.org. I've seen his trees before (we share ancestors), and he's pretty reliable. He has Joseph Moritz's ancestry back three generations, to the mid 1600s. Interestingly, he has both of Joseph's marriages but he has only one of his children by Reine Phillip: Jean.

In the process of sorting out names, I looked at a lot of records. Here are a few of the Moritz records checked. These records helped me eliminate possible Anne Maries and Josephs.

1. Jean Moritz, Joseph's older brother, married Marguerite Kohler (another Mertzen name associated with the Bourgeois). They had Marie Margarite in 1806 and Anne Marie 18 July 1813. 
2. Anne Marie Moritz, 33, died 4 May 1821,
3. Anne Moritz, 68, died in 1840
4. Anne Marie Moritz, 27, married Jean Frettig 20 Apr 1841
5. Anne Marie Moritz, 22, m. Jean Colombe 13 Jan 1841.
6. Anne Marie Moritz m. Pierre Pflager 21 Apr 1847. Page is missing in Haut Rhin records. But in 1847, Anne Marie would have been 36, pretty old for a first marriage (though not impossible). I checked the surrounding pages; it wasn’t out of order, the page was missed during scanning.
7. Joseph Moritz, 24, died 5 Feb 1819.
8. Joseph Moritz, 3, died 11 Jan, 1820. 

The mystery of Meinrad Bushue's wife Mary

Who was Myrod Bushue's first wife?

It would appear from some of the comments on this blog that there are a few folks out there who would like more information about Mary Ann Bushue, first wife of Myrod (Meinrad in French records) Bourgeois 1803. When Lester Bushue (Myrod and Mary are his direct ancestors) did his research on the family, he was unable to learn anything more about Mary, so recently he asked me to see what I could learn. While people may want to do their own searches, for those who may not want to go over old ground, here is a summary of what I did and learned.

My searches

I searched the records indexed in The Barquilla  for St. Joseph and Holy Trinity churches and found no record of a marriage between Myrod and Mary nor the baptism of their only son Jonas, born ~1829.

However, Mary's birth name is in 2 baptisms for which she is a sponsor:

     24 Mar 1834 Mary Anna of Wendelin Tol (?) and Mary Anna Stuter; sponsors, Mynrad Boujour and Mary Mourite.

     5 Jan 1840 Conditionally John Henry, son of M. Burcheau and Mary A. Miller. Spons Minerad Burcheau and Mary Burcheau (nee Moretz).

So we have a name. The variety of spellings I've seen that resemble Moretz/Mourite suggests to me that Mary Ann was either an immigrant herself or that her parents were. I also surmise she was German-speaking, simply because German-speaking immigrant marrying German-speaking immigrant is far more likely than anything else. But obviously, the unlikely is always possible. I just didn't pursue that line of inquiry; instead I limited myself to finding a recent immigrant.

Tim Fisher's Perry County site does not have a marriage for Myrod and Mary Ann, nor Jonas' birth. It does list two Morrises, George and Jessee, but no Moritz, Moretz, etc. Mary Ann could be a sister or daughter of one of them, but I doubt it. I don't see too many priests or officials mispelling Morris as Moretz; the reverse is more llikely.

Because the Bourgeois family's immigration record is confusing (see my Bourgeois immigration post for more details), I considered that Myrod may have married Mary in France. So I checked the Mertzen and Strueth marriages from 1824-1827. (It would be highly unlikely that Myrod would have married any younger than 18 and the family was gone by mid 1827.) No marriage.

I also considered that Mary Ann may have been from one of the little communities surrounding Mertzen and Strueth and that she emigrated with her own family. In this scenario, she could have known Myrod before he left or met him in Somerset. This search was more complex.

In the hours and hours I've spent ruining my eyesight reading the French records of Mertzen and Strueth, I've never seen a name similar to Moretz. So I tackled the question from two other angles. First, I checked for the name, using lots of wildcard characters, at the CRHF, a private, non-profit French (mainly Haut Rhin) record depository. Nothing.

Then I checked at geneanet.net, a site that hosts lots of French family trees. I limited the search to the area 20 km around Strueth. Again, using lots of spellings and wildcards, nothing came up.

I have not done an exhaustive search of immigration records. Too many possible arrival dates, name spellings, ports.

My final effort was to write a genealogist, Sue Saylor, who works at the Perry County chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society. Her report follows.

From Sue Saylor, reseacher, Perry County genie society
July 12, 2016

Well, I tried.......... but I'm afraid I couldn't find any definite answers to what Mary's maiden name might have been.  I checked as many sources that I have available to me for Moreitz, Morris, & Mautz, etc.
Some of the things I checked are:
Ohio Marriages Jan. 1, 1821 - 31 Dec. 1830
Fairfield Co. early marriages
Index to Wills and Estates of Fairfield Co. 1803-1900 (There was an Alvah S. Bushee, but no Morris / Mautz, Moreitz that matched)
Perry County Wills and other court cases
Family Histories and our genealogy collection in general

In 2003 our Chapter published the Pioneers of Perry County by 1830 with the 1820 census. I did not find any biographies pertaining to your families or the Morris, etc. Nor did the census for this county list any Morris. (Of course this was one person's interpretation of our census for 1820.)
Some other surnames that appear in her abstraction of the Reading Twp. area are:
Moirs, John
Montz, Jacob and John
Muntz, Jacob
Means, George, Jacob and Patrick
Moultz, Leonard
Meek, Frederick, George and John

I found two early Wills in our Probate. One for Huldah Morris in 1852 and Conrad Mautz in 1847. I found Huldah's Will on familysearch, but it didn't mention family other than her husband, Jesse? If you want to view the Conrad Mautz Will, go to familysearch--Ohio --Probate Records - Wills for the time appropriate time. Unfortunately, these Wills are not indexed, and the page numbering isn't ideal, but it's doable. Just look for his name in the index.
The first 3500 (actual) Probate cases here have been moved to the archives, and it almost takes an act of Congress to get someone to make copies or even get access. :-(

Sorry, I couldn't help this time. If anything else comes to mind, I'd be happy to check it out if possible.
Thanks
Sue

My own musings at this point

I don't think her name was Morris. The two spellings we have of her name suggest it was one that made scribes guess about the spelling (maybe because a German accent was involved). Names from The Barq that seem reasonable include Moretz, Moritz, Mautz, Mourite, and Moutz.

Saylor didn't look at land records, but I don't see how those would help unless there's a land sale in which Mary gives up her dower rights.

Where to go from here
If I were asked, I'd suggest that her descendants keep searching Ancestry and FamilySearch; as more records get indexed and added online, her marriage or the birth of her son may appear. Those records could have been recorded far from Somerset; I found Johannes Muller-Anna Hierholzer's marriage in Chillicothe, Ohio. They weren't married there; it's just where the itinerant priest's records ended up.

The US didn't require passenger records until after 1829, and given we don't know precisely what the name was nor her origin, that doesn't seem promising to me. But it wouldn't hurt to run some searches at eastern ports (Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia) between the years 1820 and 1829 on variations of her name.

And someone with some time on her hands could log onto newspapers.com (a paid site, but they offer one week trials for free) and see if she has an obituary in 1846. That's a long shot.

Finally, I'd keep returning to The Barquilla de Santa Maria (coldios.org). The current editor, Don Schlegel covers more than records in each newsletter, publishing journals, brief histories, news tidbits. Who knows what might show up?

I hope someone keeps looking. We may not know much about Mary, but we do know this: She married young, bore one son when she was 18, and 16 years after his birth she died, Aug 21, 1845, at age 34. Five months after her death, Myrod married again (Feb 3, 1846) and in July of 1846, Myrod's second wife, Rachel Musselman (who already had a daughter, Jane, father unnamed, born in 1842) gave birth to Mary Ann. It's easy to imagine that Jane's unnamed father was Myrod Bushue and probable that Rachel was pregnant with Mary Ann when she married. I have no clue what was in the hearts and minds of any of the involved parties, but it could well be that Mary Ann's life was not a happy one.

Bourgeois Immigration Tangle

When I first started looking for the Bushu immigrant ancestors, I went to the local library and searched all the volumes (20+) of PILI, Tepper's Passenger and Immigrant Lists Index. I found exactly one family that bore any resemblance to the family I knew had settled in Somerset Ohio in late 1827. There were, and are, multitudinous problems with the record.

First, the name is spelled Boursioe. That doesn't seem improbable now, given our knowledge of the correct name, but at the time I was looking, none of the 40+ spelling variations in the various US records included anything like this. Lester was adamant it wasn't our family. He was the expert and while I argued, I had to admit he knew lots more than I did. Still, the names and ages of the family members had enough similarity to ours that I didn't let go. And ultimately we determined that, imperfect as the record was, it was our family.

But Oh! those imperfections! They leave too many questions unanswered.

• Tepper's PILI is an index to passenger lists. In this case, however, the list's origin is a transcription of a passenger list, not from the original, which appears to be gone. 
• This list of passengers, available now on FamilySearch, was built from cards, one per passenger. Those cards are also on FamilySearch. But neither the list nor the cards provide information about departure port, or ship name. The cards are dated Sep 1, 1827, but I don't know if that's the arrival date or the date the card was completed. The list itself covers July 1 to Sept 30, 1827 and the Bourgeois family is on the 10th page of about 30 pages. If the list was compiled in order of arrival, the family arrived in late July, early August.
• The names and ages of the family members are garbled.

          Michael, 44, farmer and Anna M., 46 are fine.
          But Michael, 20, is wrong. Michael was 24 in 1827.
          Mary, 18, is also wrong. She was born in 1813, baptized Anne, and was 14 in 1827.
          Noma, 13 is probably Morand who in 1827 was 17.
          Anna M. 10, was born Marie Anne in 1819 so was 8 in 1827.
           Joseph, 9, was actually 12.

• These errors create some problems for us because one child is missing and it isn't clear who. The logical absent one is Meinrod (Myrod) who doesn't appear to be named here and who actually applied to emigrate with his family in France. That application doesn't give a departure date. 
• We assume that one of the sons left early and found land to buy; hence the extremely rapid trip from Baltimore to Somerset. (Michael Bourgeois bought land in Somerset Oct. 31, 1827.)
• In general, the oldest son would be the one to leave, in this case, Michael. Later family records suggest that Michael was challenged in some way, and if he suffered from something from childhood, departing on his own for the US would have been a bad idea. But we don't know what was wrong or when it started; we only know that he never married and needed some looking after. Given the inaccuracies of names and ages, perhaps Michael of the list was really Meinrad who was 21. [There is a Bourgeois male, 18,  who arrives in New Orleans on The Cecilia in 1822. Is this Michael, who then makes his way north, finds Somerset congenial, and sends for the family?] 
• I thought perhaps there was some advantage to mis-reporting ages, but there is no pattern to the age discrepencies: Joseph, Michael, and Morand's ages are too low while the girls are too high. It is the reported age for Mary that led Lester and I to consider that she was Meinrad's wife (in which case we'd be missing a little girl as well as an adult son). This is, of course, a possibility, although I'm reluctant to accept that somehow a little girl got missed. 
• There are 427 pages of images in this FamilySearch file. I would have to search all 427 to determine if one or two children from the family were listed elsewhere (or to determine if there were others from the Mertzen-Strueth area on board or to determine of Meinrad's wife -- future or otherwise -- was on the same ship).  I have searched from 273 to 317, covering April to September. I think it's unlikely anyone in the family came later, but earlier is a possibility. 

What I can say is that Meinrad Bourgeois applied to leave France with his family in 1827, destination "Sommerselle, near New York." I don't know why he applied rather than his father, but it does suggest he didn't leave before 1827. I can also say that seven of the eight (or nine, if you include a possible wife of Meinrad's) family members arrived in Baltimore, Maryland in the second half of 1827. Beyond that, it's all conjecture.

Mayfly

Mayfly


On January 15, 1787, in Fulleren, Haut Rhin, Alsace (near Mertzen), just before the French Revolution started, when bread cost a bazillion dollars, when everyone in France who wasn't clergy or Royal was suffering immeasurably, Joseph Hoff* and Anne Marie Koegler had a baby girl. It was eighteenth century France; having babies in the face of doom was what people did. Joseph and Anne Marie had married about 1782 and promptly proceeded to reproduce. Marie Eve was their second child and second daughter; as far as I can tell, they had no sons, which for a farming family in rural France was a shame.

Two years later France blew up, and ugly, ugly stuff happened. It's likely that the area around Fulleren didn't feel the full effects of the war, but the Reign of Terror was real; people gathered at markets to shop and gossip, and they would not have been immune to the stories of blood, greed, tragedy. They would have heard about the community of Hirsingue, where protesters cut down the Tree of Liberty and, in punishment, EVERY SINGLE PRIEST AND RABBI in the community was executed, the temple and church looted and destroyed. Sons would have been conscripted to serve in Napolean's disastrous effort to conquer the world, priests would have been watching over their shoulders, waiting to be betrayed, and everyone would have been hoarding food. During this frightening time, Marie Eve was growing up.

The family survived the war. But on May 26, 1805, Marie Eve, who was living with her uncle's family, had her own baby girl. Delivered by a midwife, Anne Marie Wallier,  Anne Marie Hoff arrived without benefit of a named, legal father. Four days later, she died. Since she was illegitimate, she was probably not given a Catholic funeral or burial.

Hers was not the only death in Fulleren that year; she was one of 25 deaths, in a town that generally lost 10-15 people a year. And tiny, doomed Anne Marie was one of nine small children to die that year. A scant nine years later, 3 days before her 27th birthday, still single and quite possibly marked for life, Marie Eve died.


You may be asking, why do I know this? Well, I was doing due diligence, trying to trace yet another woman who bore a child and vanished. I had decided I'd see if, by some chance, the woman was from the Bourgeois part of France. Examining the Fulleren records for Mary Moritz's name, I came upon Anne Marie Hoff in the 1805 index and got curious. The rest is what you see here.

Marie Eve has no descendants seeking her out, no one for whom her brief existence has any meaning. But she was a daughter, someone's lover, briefly, a mom, perhaps a pariah. So tonight I'm having a glass of wine in her honor. Yet another leaf on my family tree I hope to meet wherever we go after this.

* Joseph Hoff was the brother of my great-great-great grandfather, Jean Hoff 1755.

Dirty old man

You don't really want to think about Trump, or Brexit, or the stock market, do you? Instead, wrap your brain around this.

There's this guy, born about 1620, almost 400 years ago!!!, named Jean Hoff. Okay, currently we have 9 Jean Hoffs in our tree, if we count Joannis (and I do). But THIS Jean. He's something worth talking about.

With his first wife, Jacqueline Kempf, Jean sired Christophe Hoff who graciously contributed his genes to me and my sisters. Jacqueline #1 died in January of 1668, and Jean wasted no time finding a replacement. With his second wife, Jacqueline Soldermann, 27, whom he married in June of 1668, Jean doubled up on my genetic material via his son Jean Hoff (1673). And then, after Jacqueline #2 died in 1675, the man married AGAIN! This time it was his new wife, Agnes Raeber, whose genes were added to the pot pourri that is my genetic footprint, courtesy of her first husband Claude Gaetschene.

Before I chat more about this stud, let me emphasize that incest isn't an issue. There are 4 generations that intervene before Jean's descendants combine to produce Jean Adam Hoff, 1725, my great-great-great-great grandfather. It was the first thing I checked. Whew!

However, there are two things here that fascinate me, besides the implication that Jean was extremely desirable in some way, shape, or form. First, I keep returning to the notion that I am here and typing on my keyboard because every single one of my ancestors lived long enough to reproduce. That idea blows me away. And Jean clearly was on a mission to ensure the reproduction of his genes through time. Jean died when he was about 84, in 1704; I haven't counted all his children, but clearly the guy was a tough old randy bird, and I'm rather pleased someone this enduring is part of my heritage.

Second, nothing quite speaks to the intimacy of life in 17th century Alsace as the discovery that the same guy shows up in your family tree three times. Mortality rates were high, and connecting with desirable partners, for either sex, was a competitive industry. In small communities, men of means, as the Hoffs were, would choose women who could reproduce. And women who had attributes suggesting fecundity would be hot tickets. I realize there are folks out there who find it cool that they have links to Cleopatra. I find it really cool that there's this guy in my history who was pretty much a rock star, reproduction-wise. Sorry, I'm shallow that way.

And I know I said two things, but I have to get a little crazy here. Can you imagine the complexity of negotiating life in the 17th century? Think about it; it's a tiny town and a significant number of the kids roaming the streets are your step-sibs. And your father is step-dad to another batch of kids. Figuring out who you can marry without commiting incest would be a complex process. And who's doing what with whom has got to be a hot topic at the market. It had to better than reality TV. Really.

Hans Hertling

So this will be a little convoluted at first. Bear with me.

When I first started exploring our family ancestry, my sister and I headed to southern Illinois and met with a first cousin once removed on the Wolf side. This cousin, Bill, in turn, told us about a cousin in Germany whom Bill had met several times. This cousin, Hans Hertling, had done extensive research in Germany on the Hertling family; Eva Hertling, who married Frank Wolf, immigrated to the US with her family in the 19th century, and Hans, in pursuit of the family, had turned from ancestry to cousin finding. That search led him to Bill (and some others). Bill figured Susan and I should know about Hans. He was right.

So Bill shared some of Hans' work with us.  It was impressive, detailed, well-supported, so I, as the designated finder of this side of the family, checked off a family as found and turned my attention elsewhere. I figured I'd return to the Hertling side for verification when I'd finished with some other lost families. (Sounds sloppy doesn't it. But Hans was an archivist and historian, and his support looked first rate. I still plan to obtain his documentation, but I trust his conclusions. However, the Hertlings have not yet been included in my family tree.)

Then three years ago, Hans decided to return to the US with his wife; this would be his fourth or fifth trip but Christel's first. It was to be her birthday gift, and they needed places to stay. So, along with Bill and a cousin in Cincinnati, I volunteered my home.

The planning was elaborate. We had to coordinate getting Hans and Christel from point A to point B (and then to C and D), figure out what they might like to do, deal with the language issue. Hans was fairly fluent in English, Christel not at all. But we all sorted it out; We arranged to have a cell phone available while they were in the US, shuttle services from one place to another were arranged, we compiled lists of possible attractions and activities.

Hans and Christel were at our place for three days, and we had a lovely time. Hans and I had some time to talk genealogy, Christel and Jay bonded over food (the universal language), and we took them to some decidedly Midwestern America things: the prairie museum here, the Lincoln Museum, some gardens, a Bavarian restaurant, the Amish community south of here. Christel and I spent an afternoon together, teaching each other German and English and laughing. We all had fun.

A week after they left us, they headed to Cincinnati where we met up again and did more sightseeing sorts of things. Hans met Susan and another sister, we did another German restaurant, toured Cincinnati sights, and then I took them back to Evansville, Indiana, their point of departure for home.

Over the next few years, Hans and I emailed one another, a lot. I started learning German and so wrote in Deutsch; he lied and assured me I was totally comprehensible. We sent copies of documents back and forth, had discussions about the Wolf family (I'd switch from German to English and back, as vocabulary and syntax failed me), whose origins in Alsace I had just discovered. I sent a German birth record that he translated for me. We talked about how names might alter in Alsace depending on who "owned" the region. I searched for immigrants here for him; he translated for me.

In 2015, Jay and I went to Europe; our plan was to spend time in Provence with friends, a week in Alsace for genealogy, and then a couple of days in Stockstadt with Hans' family before we flew home.

It's that planning thing; don't trust it. In late winter, Hans got very ill, ended up hospitalized. When we arrived in France, we had no idea what his health was like. I corresponded with one of his stepdaughters, and reading between the lines filled me with dread. When we left Provence for Alsace, we learned that Hans was home, that he was dying, that he wanted to see us.

So that's what we did.

Six weeks later, he was gone.

It's been a year now (May 30), and I miss him. For a while I attributed this to my own inherent selfishness; I'd lost the man who helped me with the incomprehensibility of European research. But lately I realize that isn't fair to either one of us; it's a lot more than that. Hans adored the hunt as I do, and he loved teaching, being the expert. And I love learning. And we both loved the puzzle that is family research; turning a multicolored, oddly shaped piece in our hands and speculating about where it might fit. I have all our emails and when I reread them, I see a much deeper relationship, that of cousins, yes, but also of friends and collaborators. So, yeah, I miss him because he could help me puzzle out what a 17th century occupational name might be, but what I really miss is the discussion that would follow, the one we both would have loved. The one where we argue about which Johannes Leonhard Müller is MY Johannes, the one from Göppingen or the one from Hohenstaufen; the one that sorts out which of two implausible stories is less implausible; the one where we moan about deplorable handwriting, the lack of centralized records, the random gaps in documents; the one where we speculate about what might have driven my Alsatien ancestors to abandon settled lives for the uncertainty of 19th century Ohio/Indiana, a newly settled, wild, untamed part of America.

That's what I miss, when I miss Hans. Which is really, really often.

Ida Wolf Bushu in Colorado: The Tale of the photos

Ida in Colorado: Tale of the photos

The cast of characters: Three generations of Wolfs.

·      Frank Joseph Wolf  (1852-1927) m. Eva Marie Hertling (1853-1937)

o   Mayme (1876-1911) m. 1896 William Walter (1870-1901) and m. ~1910 Carl Miller

§  Oscar (1897-?)

§  Amelia (1899-1920)

o   Ottilia (1878-1968) m. 1903 Stuart Reinhard (1879-1959)

§  Franklin (1906-1993)

§  Francis (1911-?)

o   Ida (1880-1915) m. 1908  Herbert A. Bushu (1879-1957)

§  Pauline (1909-1988)

§  Herbert C (1910-1968)

o   Elizabeth (1883-1982) m. ~1926 Dennis Fitzpatrick

o   Henry (1885-1907)

o   Francis George (1887-1968) m. Nov. 1912 Mary Frances Grubb (1892-1979)

§  William R. (1925- living)

o   Rose Katherine (1890-1913) m. 1909 Clyde J. Phillips (1885-1945)

§  Clyde J (1910-1920)

§  Pauline (1912-2001)

o   Pauline (1893-1978) m. 1914 Melvin Bushu (1882-1928)

§  Elizabeth (1915-1987)

§  Marietta (1916-2000)

o   Ray (1897-1959) m. 1919 Marjorie Mullen (1900-1990)

§  Raymond T. (1920-2000)

§  Frank (Bud) (1922- living)

§  Thomas (1925-1997)

PREAMBLE

A friend has been helping me clean up a few very old pictures so that the faces are clear enough to identify. This isn't as easy a task as you'd think, and it's complicated by the fact that we have so few photos of the Wolf family, and none of the faces in them are identified. My initial interest was in three family pictures, two taken in front of Mame (Mary) Wolf Walters Miller's home, and one, taken in an unknown spot, of most of the adult family (Rose is missing). Each of the photos raises interesting questions, but that is another essay.

In an effort to identify the faces in THESE photos, I consulted other old photos in my possession, and as is so often the case, in looking at something with a different goal in mind, I saw new stuff. So this essay is about a small set of personal photos that were taken when Ida Wolf Bushu, my grandmother, was out west trying to be cured of "consumption." 

The photos from her time in the west are immensely sad. There are three that appear to have been taken the same day, and feature great-grandmother Eva and her 3-year-old granddaughter Pauline, another of three adult women with child Pauline, and a final one of two women, one in a coat, greeting one another on a porch. The back of this one says “Aunt Betty Denver Col.” All three pictures are taken in the same place, what appears to be the front of a rustic cabin. There is a fourth photo, but its association, if any, with the rest is unknown. This one is of two women on a porch or balcony, though probably not the same porch as the other three (but possibly at the same building).

I should mention that these photos, all but the one of four women, have identifying names on the back, written in mother’s distinctive handwriting. The problem is that it isn’t clear when Pauline made the notes: before or after the onset of Alzheimers. I’m pretty sure there is at least one error; I doubt the photos were taken in Denver, as mom claimed. But is this mistake made because that’s what she was told, or was she disabled enough that she no longer remembered? Regardless, this one error leaves open the possibility that she misidentified the few people she named. Despite evidence that I shouldn’t, I’ve decided to believe mother’s identifications.

BACKGROUND

Ida Wolf Bushu's story is tragic. Born in 1880, she married a bit late for her era, in 1908 when she was 28. She had two children quickly, Pauline in September of 1909 and Herbert C. in 1910, but then fell ill with what we know was tuberculosis. I was told family stories about how Ida went to Colorado to be cured, about how she slept on a cold porch because it was believed the cold air and high altitude would be good for her. But Ida didn't stay in Colorado, and she wasn't cured. She went home and died in Mt. Carmel (her obituary says at her parents' home) in March of 1915. 

That is an awfully skeletal story for the woman who gave her daughter and me her rotten eyesight, so I have been trying to learn more. But mother didn't talk much, Grandfather not at all, and the civil records are pretty slim.  I have her baptismal record and her appearance in the 1900 census. She was too young for the 1880 census, and the 1890 census is gone. The 1910 census showed her married and still living in Mt. Carmel, and then she's gone. 

[A quick diversion. Ida is the third child of Frank and Eva to become ill, and the first to be sent elsewhere for treatment. Cousin Bill Wolf said he thought (and I stress the thought part, because as we all know, what we remember may have a very loose relationship with the facts) that one reason Ida's children didn't inherit anything when Eva, Ida's mother, died was because her father paid for her treatment out west. I've seen great grandfather's will and this is patently false; Pauline and Herb were in the will. What happened to mother’s inheritance after her grandfather died is anyone’s guess. But my bet is great grandfather paid for Ida’s treatment out west because he'd already lost two children to TB (Mayme and Henry), and he and Eva were frantic to break the family curse. They failed. They would lose another daughter, Rose, to the disease and a granddaughter, Amelia Walters, Mayme's child.]

THE SEARCH

Back to our story. I have really wanted to make this lovely woman real to me. I probably should have tried tracking down her school records (I’ve done some of that) and such, but instead, I went looking for her in Colorado. And, well, that's impossible; how does one find one sick woman temporarily living in a big state? So, as almost everyone knows, instead I've been chasing down Wolf ancestors (and had more success than I thought possible).

But then, Erich the photographer brought me cleaned up versions of those two old photos of the family, and I sat down with magnifying lens to see if I could figure out what these ancestors looked like. I wish I could say this process was easy, but it wasn't.  Eva and Frank Wolf produced children who look like, well, each other. I'm not great with faces, and so I've spent a lot of time poring over these photos, trying to tell everyone apart. 

To help with my task, I dug out other photos -- including those Colorado pictures -- read what was on the back, and tried to use that knowledge to put names to faces. The Colorado photos are both easy and hard. Easy because by the time Ida is there, Mame is dead of TB, and Ottilia and Rose are married with children, narrowing down who the women in the pictures might be. Ida helped me; she posed with a distinctive cocked hip in the family pictures, and the woman in a black skirt is posed a bit like that. And the more I stare at her face in other pictures, the more the face in this one looks the same. So I think Black Skirt is Ida. Child Pauline is easy, as is grandmother Eva. So what about the other women? Not a clue. Both Elizabeth and Pauline were possible visitors, but the posing in the three-women-and-a-child photo is very odd. One woman is very much in the background.  And the picture of the woman in the coat and hat? It says “Aunt Betty,” so I have to assume Aunt Betts was in Colorado at this time.

Back to the photo of three women with child Pauline. I was pretty sure about Ida. But the other two? I turned to another photo in the collection, one that is identified in mother's handwriting as Mary Wolf and Pauline Wolf "at Stratton Park." There’s no date with the photo, and so there’s no way to know if it’s taken at the same time as the other photos, but I sensed that it was. Setting, clothes and people suggest that. 

The date of that photo is important: Was it taken around the time that Ida was taking the cure, or at some other time? In the photo, Pauline Wolf appears to be a young adult woman. Since she was born in 1893, I think it’s safe to assume this picture wasn’t taken before 1910 when she was 17, and probably later.

The other woman is identified as Mary Wolf, and if this is true, we have two candidates for her.  Mary (Mayme, Ida’s sister) was born in 1876, married in 1896, had two children and was widowed by 1901. She died of TB in 1911. Anything is possible, of course, but it’s hard to imagine that she went to Colorado as a widow with two kids. Given the age that Pauline appears, I think it’s likely that Mayme was dying or gone when this picture was taken.

The only other Mary Wolf is Frank Wolf's wife, Mary Grubb. They were married in November of 1912. To me it seems likely that the picture of Mary Wolf and Pauline Wolf was taken after 1910, perhaps after Nov. 1912. (Mother was inconsistent in her naming habits. Sometimes women who were single when a picture was taken were provided with their married names on the photos. But sometimes not. So the picture could have been taken before Frank and Mary were married or after.)

And it suddenly hit me that the Stratton Park thing might be a CLUE, so I headed back online, learned that Stratton Park is part of Colorado Springs, and that Colorado Springs was extremely popular for those trying to recover from "consumption."  

More traipsing around, this time googling the name Stratton. I found a story about William Stratton, gold miner, major philanthropist and founder of sanitoria in and around Colorado Springs. Okay, I say to myself. So Ida could well have been in Colorado Springs. How do I find out where? 

I read about the sanitoria of her day, and that didn't help. A couple were run by nuns, but I was reasonably sure Ida was in a cabin of some sort, and many of these places sounded more like hospitals. So I asked Jay how he felt about going to Colorado Springs, and he liked the idea until he asked why, and I told him, "um, maybe see if I can find records of my grandmother when she might have been living there temporarily sometime in 1913 . . . ."

So instead of going to Colorado Springs, I logged onto Ancestry.com and managed to work my way to the Colorado Springs City Directory lists. Finding that the directories stopped with 1912 was sobering. (As usual, that has changed; there’s now a directory for 1914 and some later ones, but they aren’t relevant here.) In the photos that include Pauline (born Sept, 1909), she looks about 3-4; I know Ida died in 1915. I feared 1912 was too early.

In order to put a city directory (or any book) on line, someone makes digital images (pictures) of each page, just as they are. Some books are searchable, meaning you can type in the name Bushu, and the program will look for that name.  But city directories aren't searchable, so it takes a while to find what you're looking for, if it's there. (At least they weren’t when I first located them; they are now, a scant two months later.)

But I didn't let this scare me off. I accessed the 1912 directory, located the index, figured out about where the residents' pages would begin, and started looking at the pages at 144. Ooh, way too early. Try 160.  Nope, still the As. But finally, page 194, I find her.

"Bushu, Herbert A. (Mrs. Ida K.) r. Camp Stratton."

I am unable to believe that this is anyone other than grandmother; the name, the place, the year? For there to be two Ida Bushus, married to Herbert A. Bushu, boggles the mind. (I will seek corroborating evidence.) So in 1912 she's living at Camp Stratton, which sounds a lot like a rustic place where one might be trying to get well. Her baby boy (born in December of 1910) is at home, I think, with his Bushu relatives. Mom is with Ida, though I don't know if it's temporary or permanent. Ida is sick enough to need, and be willing take, the cure, and it's a pretty rough one. And, of course, it doesn't work.

So there we have it. Here are the pictures. In the photo of the three woman, I think we have Ida on the left, Pauline Wolf on the right, and either Elizabeth Wolf or Mary Grubb Wolf (Frank's wife), in the rear. They're at Camp Stratton, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Comparing the photo I have of Mary Grubb Wolf to this one tells me that she is the woman in the background.

And why might Mary be there? Well, this is wild speculation but: Frank G. and Mary Grubb were married in November of 1912. I have a wonderful picture of them on horseback in what looks like the Rockies, exchanging a precarious kiss. I think they were there in Colorado, and Mary may have chosen to visit her new sister-in-law.

SUMMING UP

I'm not sure why working all this out is so satisfying. We have a lot of public records, enough to piece together our family story in a fair amount of factual detail.  We all knew that Ida spent time in Colorado, so determining where shouldn't be that momentous.

And yet for me it is, I think because the census and other records show the public face of our lives, and Ida's time in Colorado, trying to get well so she can raise her children and love her husband, is personal. The farther back in time we go, the fuzzier our picture will become. And the farther we advance into the future, the harder it will become to make these ancestors flesh and blood.  Giving substance and life to the people of our past is my gift to the future.

CODA

I’ve been trying to find out more about Camp Stratton, and I’ve hit a brick wall. It’s a real place; at least 25 people were living there in 1912. But it isn’t listed in the 1912 city directory as a street, a hotel, rooming house, boarding house, furnished rooms, hotel, hospital, or sanitarium.  There’s a Myron Stratton Home but it’s for the poor and destitute. There’s a Stratton Park, and in the 1914 directory, Camp Stratton (a street) ends near there. Recall that the picture of Pauline and Mary was taken at Stratton Park, so perhaps there was something residential there.

CODA #2

In the fall of 2014 Susan and I visited Colorado Springs in the hope of finding Camp Stratton. Despite serious research in libraries and historical societies and conversations with archivists, we found nothing that told us anything. We know the place existed – it’s named in a city directory – but it has vanished from time, place, and memory. However, we did determine that it's  possible Ida's parents were renting a house in the area. And it appears that Elizabeth was staying with Ida, at least part of the time. I am soothed by the notion she wasn't alone. 

Meanwhile, here are the pictures.

Back says, "Aunt Mary Wolf and Aunt Pauline, Stratton Park, CO."

  

The back of this one says “Grandmother Wolf and Pauline (Rivers),” in Pauline’s handwriting.

This one says “Aunt Betty Denver Col.” Pauline’s handwriting. 

Below clockwise: Mary (in back) Pauline Wolf, Pauline Bushu, and Ida Wolf Bushu.