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.

Francoise Schindler

One of these days, I'll find something funny to write about. But not today, alas. Today I've been organizing my Bourgeois documents prior to stowing them for safekeeping, which means double-checking dates and names, putting them in order, and creating an index so I can find what I want. So again, I am reading old documents. The process reminded me of one of my sadder discoveries.

Xavier Bourgeois was the great nephew of my great-great-great-great grandfather, Michel Bourgeois. We have no evidence that he emigrated with other family, and I have not looked at death records past about 1850 so I don't know his fate.

Xavier was born in 1791, and in late 1823, at 32 he married a woman named Francoise Schindler. Francoise was about 30 and the mother of an illegitimate infant daughter, Francoise, born in Fulleren in 1822. Xavier and Francoise had pretty a pretty depressing child-bearing experience. Their first child, Anne, born 12 months after the wedding, apparently died young, as they named a second daughter Anne*. Xavier and Marie are the next two children and then came an infant in May of 1830 who was stillborn. In August of 1830, young Francoise died; she was 8. Their last child, another Anne, was born in 1831. And then I lose track of the family.

Aside from the pain of losing, I think, three of six children, there's the coldness of the child Francoise's death report. In it, the officials declare she was illegitimate. That's true.  But what I found troubling is that the death report makes no mention of Xavier; Francoise, the mother, is a "journaliere" (laborer). Francoise died "dans la maison de Xavier Bourgeois," not in her mother's home. There is no mention made that Francoise and Xavier are married.

I suppose this is a good place to mention that sex before marriage was common in early 19th century France, to the great dismay of the Catholic church. The number of healthy, sturdy children born 5 or 6 months after a wedding was a scandal, and it wasn't that unusual for a couple to celebrate their betrothal with a bit more ardor than was seemly and then for him to depart -- for the army, for a job in the city -- or die. So Francoise's indiscretion wasn't the moral outrage it may have been in a different time or place. And obviously, Xavier had some reason to marry her, though it may have been that she'd already demonstrated fecundity. The Bourgeois family seems to have been highly regarded by their community, judging by the number of marriages that occur between various Bourgeois and other families of position. So I don't think Xavier married Francoise because he could do no better. I would like to believe he married her because he had some warm regard for her (marrying for love was an anomaly in the 19th century), but my guess is he had darker reasons.

The coldness of the death report makes me wonder about the lives of Francoise and her mother. My acquaintance in France tells me that men of that era often took in the illegitimate children of their wives, giving them their name, but not in this case. Xavier gave her (and her mother) a place to live, but it isn't clear he embraced them with warmth. I know nothing about this man, but I don't particularly like him. Interesting how a bare bones official document can arouse such intense emotion.


*It's also possible that this is another case where a child gets one name and then somehow ends up using another. But both Annes are simply Anne on their birth records.

ADDENDUM, 27 Feb. 2016.

A few days ago, I got a notice from Geneanet.org, where part of the family tree is posted, that a new Bourgeois entry had been found. When I checked it out, I was linked to a website called SteHelene.org. This site lists the names of hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen who were awarded the St. Helene Medal of Honor in 1857 for service in Napolean's army.

Xavier Bourgeois, born 3-Dec-1791, served with Napolean from 1811 to 1814. He’s one of only two relatives I could find who fought in the French Revolution.

Why I'm not applying for Pioneer Family status with Perry County

I'll start by saying that the Perry County branch of the OGS is awesome. The staff has been unbelievably helpful in all phases of my research, and I'm very grateful. I am not criticizing the organization but rather describing my own experience as a heads up to others who may want their families to be designated Pioneer Families.

My family were early settlers in Perry County; my 3rd grandfather, Michel Bourgeois, bought land and settled in Reading Township, Perry County, Ohio in Sept 1827. This meets the cutoff date of Dec. 31, 1830. So why am I not signing up?

Simply put, it's the challenge of meeting the standards for application. Part of the problem lies with the last name. The passenger list that documents the family's arrival in 1827 uses a pretty odd spelling (Boursioe), and the names and ages of the children listed do not quite match the facts. For instance, my own ancestor, Morand, born 26 Sept. 1810, is listed as Noma, age 14 (not 17).  There are many elements of the passenger list that have convinced me this is our family, but that conclusion was reached in conjunction with many other documents (French birth, marriage, and emigration records, and Michael's will). Standing alone, it's reasonable to have some small doubts.

To demonstrate the family is eligible for the Pioneer designation, we must show more than a land purchase. But during the early years that the family was in Perry, the name Bourgeois was spelled almost 40 different ways, none of them Bourgeois. We do have the family in the 1830 census, but the spelling of the name doesn't match that on the land records (or the passenger list). So while I know that Michael Burshee on the 1830 census is the same as Michael Burchuer who buys land 29 Sep 1827 as well as Michael Burscheur and Michael Burshue, who buy land in 1828, I can't easily prove it.

Because Michel and his wife arrived with all six of their children, we have no birth records that date prior to 1830. One of his sons, Meinrad, buys land in Nov. 1830, but he's not my direct ancestor. And again, buying land is not evidence that the pioneer lived on that land. So I have less than sterling evidence that the family was actually living in Perry in 1830.

Even if Perry County would accept my data as sufficient evidence that the family was living in Perry County in 1830, that doesn't solve other problems. One is that my mother's birth certificate is gone; a fire in Cairo, Illinois took that. The catholic church where she was baptized won't release baptism records. So I must use her marriage record and other documents to prove who her parents were. Of course, the marriage record is not a contemporaneous record, although there is good reason to consider it accurate. And I do not have her father's birth certificate though it is probably available, for a fee. I realize that it is remotely possible there is a hidden bomb waiting to be exploded (mother could be the daughter of the local priest rather than the man married to her mother), but I don't think her baptism certificate is going to reveal that. I'm convinced she is the daughter of Herbert Bushu, but I'm not sure I have unquestionable evidence of that.

The clincher, however, is the requirement that I get independent confirmation of the translations of the German, Latin, and French birth and marriage documents substantiating the lineage of the immigrant family.  I took French from grade school through two years of college; I took Latin for grade school and two years of high school. I spent an intense year learning German so I could translate the 100s of documents in my possession, and my translations have been informally substantiated by a German cousin who is now dead. I'm not fluent but I'm absolutely capable of translating simple documents. I'm not paying a translator beaucoup bucks to affirm the legitimacy of my translations. End of discussion.

I am not questioning the right of the society to make these demands; I assume they are consistent with the standards for the DAR and other pioneer societies. But these standards exceed those I have met to demonstrate incontrovertibly my ancestry. And so I've decided that I'd rather spend the money I would lay out to meet the society's demands on a genie trip, a book or magazine, or a conference. So the Bourgeois/Boursoie/Bursheur/Bushore/Bushu/Bushur/Bushue/Bursher families are pioneers, yes, but not Pioneers. Schade! Mais c'est la vie.