I've been doing genealogy for about two years now, pretty seriously, and I guess I'm moving from being a brand-new beginner to a category like "experienced beginner" or "thinks she knows her way around but still has a lot to learn." Along with the elation I've felt when something clicks into place -- I find my great-grandmother's actual birth surname -- I've experienced many other emotions along the way. Do any seem familiar to you other semi-new researchers? 1) Frustration : You know there's got to be a record of your grandfather's mother somewhere. She existed, why can't you find any kind of record? Your great-grandfather lived in one city, but died about 130 miles away -- what was he doing there? Why did he die there, not at home? Unlike a brand new researcher, you know where to look, you have multiple places to look, and you come up with nothing. Just one example of the many, many ways you'll feel frustrated. My mothe...
I've written about my great-grandmother, Annie Schwietering Ortmann, here and here . Today, I've been working on my book (German research for newbies, essentially), and I did an exhaustive search on the Big Three (Ancestry, MyHeritage, and Family Search) for the Ortmann family. I found some interesting things. First, we know that as researchers, we have to deal with variations in spelling. If your ancestor is named Smith or Jones, this might not be much of an issue. But if your great-grandmother's name was Schwietering, well, here are the variations I've found so far: Annie Sweder Schiewfering Schwictering Schnrifering Schwieterina Schueitering Schweitering If I'm being very conscientious, I'll search for all of these variations any time I search for Annie. Can you say "tedious"? More important is that in my searches, I found birth and/or death records for Joseph Ortmann and Annie's children. Indulge me while I present you with a list: Anna, ...
. . . the skeletons will come marching out, whether you like it or not. I've solved the mystery of my great-grandfather, Maximilian Joseph Langer's illness and death. To read up on the history of the mystery, go here , here , here , here , here , and here . (Or search for Langer and read up from the bottom. Or just read this.) If you want to dig into your family history, you should be prepared to shovel up a few things that don't smell so nice. When I was a girl, I used to fantasize about my great-grandfather, Maximilian Langer, thinking that because of his name alone, there must have been something grand about him. Also, the fact that he was a chimney sweep enchanted me -- I clearly had no idea of what a chimney sweep's life was like, other than what I saw in Mary Poppins (it involved a lot of dancing and not all that much soot). I imagined him big, but he must have been small, otherwise he wouldn't have succeeded in that line of work. Well, the rea...
Comments
Post a Comment