Living in the Past: A Family History

A while ago, brother Chris had his DNA analyzed, to find the Y-DNA history in our family, that goes back through Grandpa Bill Ortman's line. (When I had mine done, it was mt-DNA, the line going back through Grandma Walli.)  All this stuff is very complex and (at my age :) difficult to understand, but I've been puzzling through it.  First, the basic stuff we learned.   Source:  familytreedna.com So much as it was with my chart, which started with "Mitochondrial Eve" in East Africa, this one starts with "Adam" (also in East Africa -- they had to be in the same neighborhood, right?) , and much as mine broke up into smaller groups with letters representing groups that went off in different directions, so does this one.  Our path (through Grandpa Bill) went from Adam following the A, B, F paths, then K, then P, and finally to R, third from the bottom, in the brown part of the chart.  We are R-M269, as a matter of fact, which is easier to remember than U4b1a1a1 o...

I've decided to make a pilgrimage to the LDS Library in Salt Lake City, toward the end of September, the mother lode in terms of doing genealogical research.  It's an 11 hour drive from where we are, which is less than I'd thought.  It's kind of frustrating to be searching for information and find out that what you want is only available on microfilm at the LDS library -- and I can only imagine how much I could accomplish in a couple of concentrated days on-site.     They say they have lots of people to assist you in your research, but just to be sure, I'm going to try to make an appointment with a professional genealogist to give me some direction, so I don't waste time heading off down the wrong road.  This is very exciting to me!  Maybe I can break through some of the "brick walls" that have been frustrating me. Another cool thing is that you can visit the Mormon Tabernacle and listen to the organist rehearse, every day at noon -- not a Mormon, not ...

So far, my attempts at finding more information on Joseph Ortmann (EDC's great-grandfather) have come up short.   I exchanged emails with a very nice man at the Jersey City Public Library, but he was unable to find any further information on Joseph's death.  He did say that obituaries were fairly uncommon until the mid-20th century.  He gave me information on how to order the death certificate, since I know the date and place; I'm going to do that and hope that it gives his place of birth. I also joined the Hudson County Genealogical Society, and conversed with some very nice people there.  I discovered that the webmaster of the HCGS site has a Joseph Ortmann in his family history, but we quickly figured out that they were not the same person :( So, I went back to familysearch.org and decided to take a kind of backwards approach -- since I'm pretty sure Joseph's father's name was Augustus, what could I find searching on Augustus Ortmann?  I found two possibiliti...

Hi everyone -- I've been away from blogging for a bit, but am raring to get going on it again.  I've been working hard on EDC's great-grandfather, Joseph Ortmann, but still not getting any information on his birthplace in Germany, which is keeping me from going farther back.  One of the books I have suggests that if you're stuck, you write everything you know about the person, telling their story.  So that's what I'll do here. Joseph's story brings in a state we haven't talked about -- New Jersey.  Grandpa Bill Ortman, despite having grown up in New York, was actually a "Jersey boy," since he was born in Union City, New Jersey.  Deb Ortman was born in New Jersey, too, since we lived there (Cedar Grove, suburb of Newark) before we moved to Minnesota.  So we Ortmans do have roots in that state. New Jersey, with our neck of the woods circled in green. Joseph Ortmann was born in 1848 (in July) in "Pommern," Germany.  Pomerania, or Pommern...

I'm at a genealogy conference in Sacramento, today and tomorrow.  After listening to one of the presentations, I upped my presence on My Heritage, and started searching some of the people in our family.  Here's something interesting I found -- I'm sure this is EDC's dad, Bill Ortman.  Unfortunately, the file came as a .pdf, so I can't reproduce it (it's not a .jpg). but here's what it says: "Among the tid-bits we have picked up about some Saturday NBC programs is that Colonel Goodbody and Judge Gordon will dedicate the 9:30 AM food program to Georgia and will embarrass the Atlantans by revealing that they chew 50 carloads of sugar cane annually and that a boy soprano, Billy Ortman, will be heard on the Keys to Happiness program at 10:45 a.m." This is from April 22, 1932.  Dad would have just turned seven. I'm surprised, because I thought Dad was exclusively on CBS, but here he is on NBC.  Oh, by the way, this is from a San Antonio, Texas, newsp...

23andme finally finished analyzing my DNA sample (the results have come in bit by bit), and gave me the ethnic/nationality composition.  This is the first one that makes sense to me: Northern European French and German 30.0% British and Irish 13.1% Scandinavian  11.1% Finnish <0.1% Nonspecific Northern European 38.0% Eastern European 3.5% Southern European Balkan 0.4% Nonspecific Southern European 0.1% Nonspecific European  3.7% This seems more reasonable, doesn't it, than the first one that said I was 38% British Isles or whatever?  I think they lump French and German together because the border has been fluid, and our Hug line is right on the border of France.  I don't know why there's such a large chunk of "Nonspecific Northern European," but I'll try to find out what's up with that.  It will be interesting to see how Chris's analysis matches up to this.

After I attended the German Genealogy conference last month, I was so excited that I ordered a microfilm from the big library in Salt Lake City -- this costs $8.99 for every film you order, and if you get no new information from it, well, say goodbye to your $8.99.  But I went ahead and ordered the " Kirchenbuch Katholische Kirche Wolfach" -- the church record book for the Catholic church in Wolfach, Germany.  I had tried asking for information from Wolfach on the email list of genealogists from Baden-Wuerttemberg, but got no response, so looking at the church records myself seemed like a good idea.  The Salt Lake City family history center sent the microfilm to my local family history center, housed in the local LDS temple. I looked through twenty-five years of entries, searching for our 5th great-grandfather, Blasius (or Blasy) Hug.  Here's what I came up with: from the Kirchenbuch Katholische Kirche, Wolfach, Germany The line that is of interest to us is second f...