Living in the Past: A Family History

On my way tomorrow to the IGGP 2023 Conference in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.  Since the last IGGP conference I attended was probably the best genealogy conference I'd ever been to, I'm excited!  Tomorrow morning I'll take Hugo to his wonderful dog sitter and hit the road, arriving in Ft. Wayne on Thursday afternoon.  A great deal of excitement has been generated around this conference, through the organizers' use of the app Whova.  Attendees have been able to ask questions, make contacts, post lists of locations and surnames -- so much has happened already.  I'm looking forward to meeting the people I've already been in touch with, including, ironically, folks from my local genealogical society.  Given the situation in the past few years, I haven't attended in-person events  and so haven't actually met the people I've been communicating with.  I hope to rectify that in Ft. Wayne! I'll try to post a little about each day's activities.  See you soon! ...

 This article was published in the Fall-Summer 2018 issue of the Germanic Genealogy Journal. In Search of Max Langer Elise Ann Wormuth My great-grandfather, Maximilian Langer, was a chimney sweep in Bremerhaven, Germany, in the late 1800s. As a child I found that delightful, as I imagined him dancing and singing on rooftops like in the original Mary Poppins movie. When I began pursuing genealogy, Max was one of the first ancestors I wanted to investigate, and doing so led me on a journey that I never would have imagined. It turned out to be far from delightful. My initial research revealed that Maximilian Joseph Langer was born in Oberglogau, Silesia, on 21 July 1840. At some point, he made his way from Oberglogau to Bremerhaven, where he married my great-grandmother, Wilhelmine Schulze — he was 44; she 25. Together, they had three daughters: Sophie, Hannah, and Lina. Then I came across a bit of information that puzzled me greatly: Maximilian Langer died not in Bremerhaven, where h...