I feel that by not really being able to fully read what is written in the church records, I may be missing some important clues. I think something that may help is to create my own "English-German" dictionary of the important words I come across, not just those that pertain to birth, marriage, and death, but those that might describe the time period my ancestors lived. I'm not sure if any journals or diaries exist for my family, but it would be interesting to know why my ancestors chose to come to America. I know generalizations can be made as to the reasons many Germans made that long hard journey, but I would like to know why my ancestors came.
I can see that now that I am really focusing on my German lines, it is going to take much longer. I need to find myself a good English-German dictionary. I have some lists of common German/Latin genealogical terms (those that relate to birth, marriage, and death), but I need to be able to read some old German script (thank goodness there are some pretty good tools out their that can help decipher that old script). Once I decipher what the text says, I am going to need to be able to translate the words. Most of the old script so far is limited to church records.
I feel that by not really being able to fully read what is written in the church records, I may be missing some important clues. I think something that may help is to create my own "English-German" dictionary of the important words I come across, not just those that pertain to birth, marriage, and death, but those that might describe the time period my ancestors lived. I'm not sure if any journals or diaries exist for my family, but it would be interesting to know why my ancestors chose to come to America. I know generalizations can be made as to the reasons many Germans made that long hard journey, but I would like to know why my ancestors came.
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When looking at my Cleff ancestors, I have to wonder, "why would a parent send three young children (13, 10, and 8 years old), apparently by themselves across the ocean to New York, and then on to Chicago." What happened to Helena Cleff's parents? I believe i have found Helena's father in the United States, but it will take a little more research to be sure I have the right person. Helena and two of her brothers Walter and Wilhelm immigrated in 1892, why not Otto, who would have been about 12. Otto and the younger brothers not making the journey in 1892 did not immigrate until the 1920s. Did their mother Helene remain behind with the other children? Had Helene died and the others remained behind with other relatives? Looking at the first and middle names of the children, I am wondering if Otto or Helene (the parents) had brothers with the names Wilhelm (used as a first name for one child and the middle name for another), Fredrick, Eugene or Alfred. My grandfather also talked about "Rudy." Was this an uncle or a cousin? My next project is to use the immigration records, what my grandfather told me, and any other information I may have already found and put Helena's siblings family groups together. By examining collateral lines, maybe I can find out who Otto and Helene (the parents) were and what happened to them. It's like being a detective!
I've been focusing on my German ancestors (I have many 8 of my great-great grandparents are of German descent - the remaining 8 are split between the British Isles and Norway). I faced my first major challenge while searching my German lines this weekend - most of the sites I am finding are written in German. Now I wish I kept up on my German :(. If there is a will, there's a way! I did a search on how to translate website text. One of the links was for an add-on to Firefox. As I have exclusively been using Firefox for the past couple of years, I downloaded the gtranslate add-on and tested it. It works wonderfully. You highlight the area to be translated, right click and you get a pop-up with the text translated. Being able to read German would be easier, but while I'm working on re-learning German, this will have to do.
I grew up in Addison, IL. Addison had a large population of Germans, so many Germans, there was a Kinderschule. Every week in addition to regular school from first through sixth grade, I attended Kinderschule. I was pretty fluent by the time we moved away. I didn't have the opportunity to practice my German for a few years, until I was able to take high school German. Some of it came back, but once I finished high school, I never got to use it again (and that's been a VERY long time - 36 years). Now that I am trying to go back to at least read German, hopefully all those years of German instruction will once again come back to me! As I've been searching my Blickhahn line, I did a search on GenealogyBank.com. Three of the articles I found were about my grandfather, Henry Adam Blickhahn I. He was a boxer in the Army (which I remembered being told years ago), but I remembered being told that he was a featherweight boxer. What I found out in these articles was he was a bantamweight boxer and his weigh-in showed him at 118 lbs. In the first article, he won his bout, the second he won by default. The third article was for the championship bouts. He was the bantamweight champion.
I was fairly young when my grandfather died (9 years old) and I don't remember much about him. Finding these tibits of information helps me to know him much better. After finding the articles, I emailed them to my dad, who told me, that my grandfather not only won boxing matches, but won the golden gloves for his weight. I also learned that he was only about 5'7". Isn't genealogy great? When I first started doing genealogy, my dad told me that when he was going through his intelligence clearance for the Army, the Army found an abnormality in my dad's lineage - someone had come to the US through Canada, and it wasn't properly documented. My dad told me his great-great grandparents on his mother's side were the culprits.
Last night I found the birth record for my grandfather (my dad's father). His ethnicity is shown as "Canadian." I know with certainty my grandfather was German (both his mother and father's immigrant ancestors came from Germany). I can't wait to get to Salt Lake to pull up the microfilm and see what the original document shows. |
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Author - Dr. Kathryn M. WattsI live in Orange, California with my husband Bill, and my service dog Timber. Genealogy is one of my favorite past times. Archives
May 2019
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