Ida Wolf Bushu in Colorado: Tale of the photos

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 little essay is about a small set of personal photos that were taken when Ida Wolf Bushu 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 probate, and this is patently false; Pauline and Herb were in the will; they were to get the family home after Eva passed. Instead, mother got a picture. I don't know what Herbert got. Somehow part of the will's instructions didn't get followed. 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. And 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, 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 to be, I think it’s likely that Mayme was dying or dead 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.

In the fall of 2014, Susan and I went to Colorado Springs in an effort to get more information about Camp Stratton. That was a failure; whatever Camp Stratton was, it isn’t there now and there don’t appear to be any historical references to it. 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. But Camp Stratton? Not a clue. But we did discover that there was at least one other Wolf with Ida: her sister Elizabeth. And it’s possible that Frank, Ida and Elizabeth’s father, was there as well. It’s reassuring to know that people who loved Ida were there, helping her in her quest to get well.

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 the genealogist’s gift to the future.

Why I do genealogy

I made a decision a few days ago that Maria Ana Muller, daughter of Johanes Muller and Anna Herholzer, was almost surely the Mary Ann Miller that married great-great grandfather Morand Bushu in 1838.  That decision prompted me to begin a search for the Herholzers; they could be ancestors.

The good news is the name is unusual enough that I don't get a bazillion hits when I run searches. There are, of course, several ways to spell it; in America, those several ways become many ways.  But for the moment, I'm just interested in seeing what's out there.

And the bad news is: Not much. Geneanet has too many hits for me to determine if someone is working on this family, but the ones I've traced are in the wrong place. I'll need to find a way to narrow down the search, probably by date. Ancestry has two public trees that include Joseph and his wife. Neither tree provides any information about Joseph or Helena's families (and there seem to be many errors although I don't know all the dynamics yet, so I could be wrong). And there are just two German records to be found for Joseph, and one of them isn't about our guy.

But one is: Joseph Herholzer married Helena Rheinhart on 16 Apr., 1798 in Birndorf, Waldshut, Baden. He is 24. There is no information other than the fact they were Catholic. (Earlier I obtained baptism records for some of their children, so there's enough official note of them that we know they're real.)

But the Herholzers arrived and planted themselves in the social fabric of their new world; the Herholzers in America made their mark. They were mentioned lots in the Catholic records of Perry County as they and their relatives and friends were baptized and married (and died). Something about them made their neighbors like them enough to have them as sponsors of kids. I like these people, from the little I know of them, and that has not been my universal experience when meeting ancestors. (Some of them are not nice; I accept that one doesn't choose ancestors, but bumping into ones you like is pretty fortunate.) But I'm disappointed that there is so little evidence of others researching the family (although there's a man in California, a descendant of Elizabeth Herholzer Rudy, who has gathered material about her).

And this brings me to the point of this short blog:

One purpose of doing genealogy, at least for me, is to honor family. If you're famous, or have famous relatives/ancestors, there's lots of information about you. But if you're Joseph Herholzer, who could only afford 15 acres when he brought his family (wife and 5 children) to the US in 1817 or so, whether anyone cares now who you were is a crapshoot. Not exactly a profound observation, probably not at all unique. But I think a lot of people wonder why genealogy is so popular.

Maybe it's just to keep ordinary people from being forgotten.

Bushu: Johannes Müller's will

This is my transcription of the German text and my translation. At the end is another translation by a German in 1899. 

Im Namen des Herr ! Amen

Ich Johannes Müller gebohren in der Stadt Göppingen, im Würtemberg Europa ??? den 9ten Januar 1797, ein Sohn von Johan Leonhardt Müller und dessen wert……??? Ehefrau Eva Maria, eine gebohrene Otter, und erzogen durch Herrn Ludwig Schäfer, Gerichts Verwalter, wohnhaft in besagter Stadt Gözzingen, durch dessen Verwilligung Ich im Jahr 1817 Im Monat März nach Nord-Amerika auswanderte, der ich gegenwärtig am Leibe sehr Schwach und Elend bin, danoch aber mit meinem Verstandt und Gedächnis mich gesund und Wie ein gesunder Mensch befriede, dem Herrn say es gedankt. Mache hiermit meinen letzten Willen und Testament, auf folgende Weise nehmlich.

​Erstens ist es mein Wille, dass man meinen entseelten Leichnahm auf eine ordentliche Weise, des Christlichen Kirche gemäss der kühlen Ruhestätte übergebe.

​Zweitens ist es mein Wille und letztes Testament, dass mein einziges Kind nehmlich Maria-Ana welches meinen Schwieger-Eltern, bis auf ihre älte??? verbunden ist , nehmlich Joseph Hierholzer und Frau Helena alle meine Hinterlassenschaft in … fuvoza ??? zum Eigenthum werden soll. Besagte Hinterlassenschaft ist eine Pflegshaft die von obben…??? Herrn Ludwig
Schäffer in Besitz hat und von meinem Vater herkomt.

​Drittens und leztens bestime ich hierdurch Herrn Georg Bauman und Herrn Andréeas Chantal, als meine gesetzmässigen Executoren.

Unterzeichnet, versiegelt und erklärt mein letzter Wille und Testament zu saÿn
Diesen 3ten Tag September im Jahr unsers Herrn 1822.

In der Gegenwart von Bernhard Bauman Peter Baumann Johannes Müller

[end]

I am the son of Johann Leonardt (or Bernardt or Leopold) Müller and Eva Maria Otter/Oller/Aller, born in Göppingen, Wurtemberg, Europe, on the 9th of January, 1797, and brought up by Ludwig Schafer in Göppingen in Wurtemberg, Europe. During the destruction? of Göppingen, I emigrated to North America. At present I am very weak and miserable but healthy in mind and body, satisfying the men who attest such and I thank them [that last bit is taking liberties]. And now I make my last will and testament.

First it is my will that my body be laid to rest in peace with a Christian church service

Second, it is my will and last testament that my only child, namely Maria Ana
form an alliance with my parents-in-law Joseph Hierholzer and Helena until her adulthood. Said legacy is a guardianship of my inheritance from my father and managed by Ludwig Schafer.

Third and finally, I decide hereby Mr. George Bauman and Mr. Andreas
Chantal, as my lawful executors.

Signed, Sealed and explained my last will and testament to Being
This 3rd day of September in the year of our Lord 1822nd.

In the presence of Bernard Bauman, Peter Baumann, Johannes Müller


But let's just add to the muddle. After I was given Johannes' will by Sue Saylor in Perry County and laboriously translated it, this turned up: an 1899 translation of Johannes' will in the Perry County OGS newsletter. It was submitted by Sue Saylor. Herr Kubach's translation is close to mine. Note that Herr Kubach's understanding of Maria Ann's inheritance is quite specific and different from my very naive view. If in fact, Johannes' legacy was for him in his lifetime, presumably his daughter would get nothing. His inheritance would revert to his siblings or whomever.

From the newsletter of Perry County OGS. 

Agatha Burkey Bushu's Bible

Recently I met with Martha Burtschi Cavanaugh, daughter of Eloise Thorpe Burtschi who is the daughter of Myrtle Bushu Thorpe, the sister of my grandfather, Herbert Bushu. Two years ago, Fr. Blaine Burkey mentioned to me in an email that he heard Agatha Burkey had a bible, and he thought one of her daughters's children had it.

Agatha Burkey Bushu had two daughters who were candidates as bible-holders: Ellen Etta and Myrtle. I contacted the names Fr. Burkey supplied and eventually determined that Myrtle had taken possession of her mom's bible, and it was now in the hands of her daughter, Martha. I contacted Martha, who married James Cavanaugh, who said that upon her mother's death, one of Martha's son's had claimed the bible. She said she would try to get it back so I could see it.

A year passed and then I got a voicemail message from Martha saying she had the bible. We made arrangements for me to visit her in Decatur, IL  to photograph the bible.

Of course I made that trip. The bible itself is a stunner, massive with serious metal latches that don't quite keep it closed any longer but are lovely to behold. The bible, with a substantial embossed cross on its cover, is personalized with the names of Francis and Agatha Bushu and the section between the Old and New Testaments contains family records. I took photos of everything and Martha gave me a handwritten note listing persons and dates.

This bible was printed after 1878, when Pope Pious XIII was elected Pope, so the entries for sacraments before that date are not contemporaneous. There was no indication of when the bible  purchased. However, the first eight births listed appear to have been written with the same pen at the same time. But the last birth, that of John in 1888, while with the same hand, seems to be written with a different pen. I'm guessing the bible was purchased between 1885, the date of the last of the similar entries, and 1888, the year of John's birth. But that's a big guess.

At present, Martha's daughter, Judith Cavanaugh Clark, is keeping the bible for her brother. But I took photos of the recorded sacraments and of the bible itself. It was quite humbling yet satisfying to touch the pages that Agatha had written in 140 or so years ago. She bore 9 children, seven of whom survived. And she watched, as we mothers do, as her own children suffered huge losses: Otho's sight, Herbert's wife, Melvin himself. I have no sense of Agatha, but in the bible itself were a ribbon, a receipt for a donation for a memorial to Sr. Bernadine (Gertrude, Francis's sister) and what looks like a "holy card."

Now to me, holy cards (mass cards) were issued when someone died. But this card is smaller than the Mass card I know, and its inscription is in German and French. On the back, in pencil, someone has written "Herbert." I have no idea what it is or what it means. Did they commemorate baptisms with cards? Is this card associated with some sacrament of our grandfather? Or is this a random piece of paper on which someone wrote "Herbert?" Who knows?

I like to imagine Francis and Agatha, the children of immigrants, ordering this bible and, upon its arrival, Agatha carefully inscribing the pages with the important moments of their lives. And I see Agatha sliding into the pages these small remnants of lives lived, people who mattered. Those small acts -- probably incidental in her challenging world -- resonate with me; I don't know her, but I think I'm pleased we share genes.

Seraphim Wolf: Consorting with Angels

Seraphim Wolf: Consorting with angels

The story

Well, it’s been ages since I bored you with what I’m learning about our Wolf ancestors. It’s about time I gave you some more sleep-inducing material. So here’s a new saga. It’s born from a four-day trip I took to SW Indiana quite a while ago to immerse myself in Wolf roots. I had a wonderful time, learned a lot/little, depending upon how you weigh these finds. I have a TON of data to sort out and make sense of, and the story that follows is the first I’ve considered. It wasn’t supposed to be about a woman, but, of course, it is. Women are the soul of genealogy.








Let’s recap. Our great-great grandfather Martin Wolf came to the US from Alsace in 1837, bought land in Indiana in 1842, got married in 1847 and started having kids, eight of them. This is about my quest to find the eldest, Seraphim, mainly because he has such a cool name.








[By the way, the area I’m talking about is at the southwestern-most point of Indiana. Mt. Vernon, where some of these early records are kept, is on the Ohio, just past the juncture with the Wabash. If you went north on the Wabash instead of east on the Ohio, you’d go right past Mt. Carmel, Illinois. The rest of the area I’ll talk about is a little north and east of Mt. Vernon, really pretty country. If it weren’t Indiana, I’d move there.]

I first discovered Seraphim in the 1860 census that called him Sarafene, making him sound like a girl and confusing the hell out of me when I learned otherwise. I struggled hard to figure out if the name could be some bastardization of a familiar name, like Xavier (okay, maybe not Xavier; but what?). When I finally saw his baptismal record, I learned that his godfather was Seraphim Weber, and I’ve been told (and seen demonstrated) that Germans like to name their children after their godparents. Why Herr Weber was named Seraphim is a question I won’t try to answer; maybe HE had a godfather Seraphim. Regardless, we have a great-great-great uncle who’s an angel!

Seraphim was born in 1848 while Martin and Mary Ann were still farming in Marrs township, Posey County, Indiana. In 1860, when Seraphim was twelve, his dad sold their 160 acres for $3500 and bought another 80 acres for $3680 a bit north and east, outside a tiny German community called Haubstadt. It’s possible that in making this move Martin went from crop farming to livestock; I make this guess because of the nature of the land in the area and the presence of some serious meat-packing and slaughtering operations that started up around that time. If that’s true, then that would explain why Seraphim became a blacksmith; he liked livestock. In any case, in 1870, Seraphim, 22, was living in a boarding house in Evansville and working as a blacksmith. And then, on November 3, 1870, he married Magdalena Lamey (the Lameys are one of the principal families in the Haubstadt area where Seraphim was raised) and they started a family. William was born in 1871, Mary in 1873, and Rosa Josephine in 1875. Then things turned bad. In Nov. of 1879 they lost an infant daughter, Sara Louisa, and in Oct of 1880, another infant died, Maria. And there’s more: Sometime before June of 1880, in between the loss of these two baby girls, Seraphim, too, died. He was 28 and he left behind a wife and three little children.

The1880 census, taken in the case of Magdalena on June 2, says that in her establishment there were three children and five boarders. Since I don't know when Seraphim died, I don't know if the boarder arrangement was born of desperation, or if she and Seraphim were already managing a boarding house. I also don't know just how much boarders were a part of their lives. He was a blacksmith, which suggests stables. Did they have space they just let out, or were they running a serious boarding operation? Whatever the case, Magdalena kept the family together, at least partly by letting rooms to men, and on October 2, 1883, she did the smart thing and married Henry Klaser, with whom she had at least two more children: two daughters, Elka Elizabeth and Stella. And then she, too, died, at age 42, in 1893.

If you're paying close attention, we've just witnessed our great-great-great uncle's kids (cousins of some sort) lose their dad in 1880, get a stepfather in 1883, and lose mom in 1893. For their sake, it appears that Henry was pretty resourceful as well; he was at that point responsible for his and Magdalena's own children (at least the two daughters I know of) and Seraphim’s youngest, Rosa Josephine who was 18 and didn’t marry and get out of his hair until 1913. (I’m guessing the other two children, William and Mary, were grown and gone, but I could be wrong here). Henry waited eight years before marrying again, this time to Helena Kraus, 51, who reported in the 1910 census that she had born nine children, five of whom were alive in 1910, a grim reminder, in case we needed one, that life was hard in the 1800s. Henry and Helen had two boys, Henry and Fred, and then life got even harder. In 1913, Henry died and left Helen alone, again, with two teenage boys, 18 and 16, to raise.

I don’t know what happened to Helen. I have my hands full figuring out where our own folks are. Magdalena is buried in Old St. James Catholic Cemetery in Haubstadt, IN., along with her baby girls. I still don’t know where Seraphim is buried; perhaps angels don't get buried. It took some digging, but I found Magdalena Wolf Klaser (Lena Klaser on her headstone) buried in the old section of St. James cemetery near Haubstadt, In. Since so many headstones are gone (hers is still there), I don’t know for sure, but I wonder if she’s buried with her baby daughters. I also wonder what possessed Henry Klaser to bury her there. But that’s a question I should probably let go.

One final comment here: Two of the major places that one searches for genealogical information are FamilySearch and Ancestry. Both sites maintain family trees submitted by anyone who wants to upload his or her tree. (I won’t do that, just so you know.) There are millions of these trees, some with 15,000 people in them, and they are searchable. That means that I can search for Seraphim Wolf among countless family trees that track millions of people. And you know what? He doesn’t come up anywhere. Nor does Martin Wolf or for that matter his brother Peter. Frank Wolf, Eva Hertling, the Bushus, the Burkeys, all of them have thousands of descendents trying to find their roots and posting their trees on line. But apparently Martin Wolf produced progeny with little curiosity about their origins. Should we then blame the curiosity that consumes Susan and me on the Rivers or the Cahills, or both?

The detective work

So this is the part you don’t have to read, but it’s the part I love: the search. How does someone piece together a story this convoluted when dealing with 19th century records? It wasn’t easy, but it was fun.

I started with Seraphim (once I had that baptismal record that gave me his real name) and found a Seraphim Wolf in the 1870 census living in Evansville in a boarding house; he was a blacksmith. Now, ask yourself: Just how many Seraphim Wolfs, born in 1848 in Indiana, can there be? I remained open to the fact that he might be a doppelganger, but much of what happened later fell together in such ways that I’m sure the story I just told is true.

Next, in the 1880 census I found a Magdalena Wolf, widow, in Evansville, with children whose names resonated, especially Rosa Josephine. And there I stalled. Maybe a blacksmith in Evansville, and perhaps, just perhaps, a wife and kids. I turned my attention elsewhere.

And then I took this trip. On it, I got Seraphim’s father Martin’s will, and learned that in 1882, when Martin made his will, Seraphim had a) died and b) had heirs. (Martin apparently had begun distributing his estate before he died in 1893, and Seraphim had gotten his share, so he was to get $5 when his dad died.) It got lots harder to imagine that there was another Seraphim Wolf born in 1848 in Indiana who had married and had children and then died before 1882 (when Martin made his will). That 1870 census for Seraphim Wolf in Evansville and the 1880 census for Magdalena Wolf were looking better.

And add to this one heart-breaking cemetery. St. James Church, outside Haubstadt, IN., is old. It's the church some of our ancestors attended and it’s quite lovely. It hosts two cemeteries, an old one that apparently fell into ruin for a time (most markers are gone), and a new one, markers intact. In the old one, they’ve established a moving memorial to the 500+ people buried there with five marble slabs engraved with their names. (There’s a small booklet that also provides this information that the wonderful office manager gave me. Danke!) There on the marble are recorded the names of the infant daughters of Seraphim and Magdalena Wolf. So now I’ve got a another link between Seraphim and Magdalena and the family; this is home for both the Wolfs and the Lameys. Martin Wolf is buried here as well, so the connections among the family are very powerful.

Now I was very curious and I searched for Magdalena Wolf on Ancestry, and found her as mother of the bride for three marriages: Rosa Josephine Wolf, who was included in the 1880 census when Magdalena was a widow, and two other women, Elke Elizabeth Klaser and Stella Klaser. Father of the Klaser brides was Henri Klaser.

Huh! The data made it clear the same woman was mother to all three brides so I investigated if Magdalena had married Henry Klaser. In a 1910 census, I found a Henry Klaser in Evansville, Indiana married to Helen Klaser, and for a time I thought maybe “Magdalena” had been transmuted to “Helen,” but that was a leap of faith I was reluctant to make. But meanwhile, on another search, I found a data card (I can't begin to explain what this is or why we should trust its information, but we should) that listed Henry Klaser with a wife, Helen, a son, Henry (who was in the 1910 census with Henry and Helen) and three daughters: Mrs. Anna Klaser, Mrs. Earl Edmundson and Mrs. Toni Aschoff. These last two were the names of the spouses listed with Magdalena as mother of the bride. So now I had Henry, I had him in Evansville, I had him with Helen, I had him connected to Magdalena and I had him connected to Seraphim’s daughters. To add icing to the cake, the Evansville 1875 city directory has two listings for Seraphim: one for his blacksmith operation (says he shoes horses and makes wagons) and one for his home, listing his occupation as “horse shooer.”



But was Helen another name for Magadalena? I uncovered one last document that produced an alternate name for our Magdalena: Lena. I searched for Lena Klaser and found her; she had married Henry Klaser, died in 1893 and was buried in Old St. James Cemetery.

From there it got easy. I found a marriage record for Henry when he married Helen Kraus in 1901 and another for Henry when he married Lena in 1883. Voila! The pieces fit.

And then, because of a lengthy conversation with the archivist at Sts. Peter and Paul, Kim Goedde, I found Seraphim’s marriage record. And why couldn’t I find it before? Because the name on it is Terafin Wolf. I found it by searching for Magdalena Lamey, the woman at the center of it all. Of course.

How certain am I of all this? Very. Do I have all the proof? Nope; until I have the full marriage record for Seraphim and Magdalena providing me with his parents’ names, there is still a slight possibility that the Seraphim Wolf of this saga and our great-great-great uncle are two different men (In other words, maybe there’s a Seraphim Wolf who was a blacksmith, married Magdalena Lamey, had kids and died who ISN’T related to us). Imaginative as I am I cannot imagine a scenario in which that is the case, but I cannot in good conscience say we have definitive proof. But we're close. I suspect I'll nail it in the coming months.

And there you have it, part whatever of the saga of the Wolf family.

Stay tuned.

Scanner Pro: a great document printer for the iPad

IPad workaround: Printing a photo in letter size

I love my iPad, for all the reasons that any genealogist using one can name.  But one task has frustrated the daylights out of me.  I'd take a screenshot of a document or site. Or I'd have a photo of a document that I shot at a courthouse. And I'd want to print it. But I don't want a 4x6 print of a 8.5 x 11 document and as yet there's no way to change the default paper size. One workaround was to copy the photo, paste it into Pages, enlarge it, and then print.

There's a quicker way: use Scanner Pro as a photo printer.

After taking the screenshot or photo, open Scanner Pro, select 'photo' rather than 'camera' and then pick the image you want from "My camera." Scanner pro converts it to black and white (if so desired), and cleans it up. You can crop the image if you want. Then simply select print, and voila! A very clean letter size copy.

(I have to mention that what Scanner Pro will do to an old, discolored, faint record is amazing. I have a 200 year old will written faintly on blue paper. Scanner Pro converted it to black and white, enhanced the contrast, and made it 1000% more legible.)


Scanner Pro is a paid app, but it is probably one of my top apps for genealogy (the others include Evernote and Dropbox.)

How many ways can you spell Bushu?

At least 42, and not one is the European spelling. The European variations are fewer, just three, although there was a short period when the family used BURGER, the German form of BOURGEOIS. (The spelling that appears on the transcribed passenger list of 1827 is yet again different from all the others.) Lester Bushue transcribed the various spellings of the name that appear in the early American records. The full list can be seen in the third edition of “The Bushue Family Tree.”

It’s easy to see how the variability occurred. The French pronunciation of BOURGEOIS is BOO, followed by a swallowed R ending in sort of a ZHWAA sound, with the accent on the second syllable. I have no idea how it would have sounded with a German accent, a likely scenario since the family spoke German, not French. Imagine the various clerks, priests, court officials, and transcribers as they tried to record the name. Early Perry County was home to immigrants from Alsace, Prussia, Ireland, and France (and other places), and while German may have been a reasonably common language, its use, accent, and dialect would have varied by region. 

And those making records were using English and the English style alphabet rather than the old German Fraktur. Most of the records look as though the recorders were comfortable with English, but we are still left with the mental image of a man knowledgable of English, perhaps raised in a German or Irish household, trying to accurately record a name spoken with a strong accent that may have been unfamiliar. Certainly the name was unknown until our ancestors arrived in 1827. Michael BOURGEOIS was literate, but he may have been hard to understand if he tried to spell the name. And as we all know, standardized spelling of anything is a pretty recent phenomenon. The bottom line is that early records of marriages, births, land transactions, wills, headstones, and such use spellings that are all over the map. 

This made sorting everyone out very difficult, especially since it appears that three Michaels and three Morands settled for a while in Perry County. There was also a Mirod whose name was spelled pretty creatively early on in ways that make it easy to confuse him with the various Morands. Thankfully, Lester Bushue did the early research, and he painstakingly sorted out those he was certain of. I sorted out most of the rest. We still have one old couple who are a mystery and likely to remain so. 

I am boring you with this little lecture because early on I made an executive decision about this blog and names. Generally if I’m referring to the American family, I use the spellings that the families seem to have settled on: BUSHU (Morand’s descendents which include Herbert Bushu), BUSHUE (Mirod’s descendents, including Lester), and BUSHUR (Michael Sr.’s cousin Morand).  I use the European spelling of BOURGEOIS when referring to the family in Europe. I also use the spelling MORAND, MIROD, and MICHAEL.  For the reader, this means that if you go to the original records upon which this is based, take your imagination with you.