Living in the Past: A Family History

Well, as I'm sure you noticed, I didn't post something every day in November.  Oh well.  But I did have lots of fun, especially going to England, and I hope you won't mind if I make a diversion and write a little about that. I'm working on my pictures.  I opted not to take my "big" camera and rather took a small point-and-shoot.  There were pluses and minuses to that decision, but I really didn't want to be burdened with the heavy camera, worried about losing it or having it stolen, etc.  Unfortunately, the little camera I got didn't take great pictures, especially in low light, so I didn't get the kinds of shots I wanted.  But here's an example of one that came out well: Linkup to Texture Tuesday This is Hampton Court, originally built in the 1500's by Cardinal Wolsey, and was later appropriated by Henry VIII.  We didn't get to go inside, but rather toured the gardens, early in the morning.  It's a beautiful place in a beautiful se...

A while back, a very nice woman who lives near York, England, contacted me to see if I knew anything about someone named Constantine Hug, who was born in Baden, Germany and who emigrated to Wales in the mid-1800's. I have many Hugs in the family tree, as you will know from previous posts, but when I looked, I saw no one with the name of Constantine.  I checked on Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com, and the only thing I came up with was a Konstantine Hug who was born in Nonnenbach, Germany, in 1831.  It says his parents were Sebastian Hug and Maria Dorer, and while I have several Sebastians in the family tree, I can't see where this Konstantine would fit in, especially since Nonnenbach is about 120 miles away from where the Hugs are centered in Heiligenzell or Lahr.  I sent the information along, nevertheless. The road to Nonnenbach by jenknox -- Nonnenbach is a small town on the border of Germany and Switzerland, a couple of miles from the Bodensee, a large lake.  In W...

Hello everyone -- it's been a while since I last posted, right before my knee replacement surgery.  I've been coming along fine, but recovery (along with my participation in Open Studios a couple of weeks ago) has taken quite a bit of my attention, and it's only now that I can begin to go back to much more interesting things, like genealogy.   I'm going to try to make it up to everyone by posting something every day of November, as part of BlogHer's "NaBloPoMo" challenge.  They're offering prizes!  How can I not try for an iPod Mini?  Let's see, where did we leave off?   Interesting Bremerhaven view, from amdolu  on flickr The Ortmann clan in Erkeln, Germany, is beginning to fill in, with the descendants of Stephan Hermann Ortmann, the brother of EDC's great-grandfather, Joseph Ortmann.  I won't go into details about them, in order to protect their privacy, but we do have quite a few relatives in that little town!  I'm hoping to hear b...

Well, dear readers, I'm off to the hospital tomorrow for knee replacement surgery. I'll probably be in the hospital for three days or so (until Sunday), but then I hope to be back and posting soon, because there's lots to tell you about.  Here are a couple of teasers: 1)  I heard from the webmaster of the Erkeln website!  He wrote me a long email with lots of interesting information and other people to contact.  Seems there are still a few Ortmanns connected to Erkeln and to us, no doubt.  I'll give all the details in a few days, I hope. 2)  We have a kind of Y-DNA mystery, maybe, that could be very significant.  It involves a possible "non-paternal event," and I'll leave you with the job of figuring out what that is, until I'm able to post again. 3)  I've gotten farther back in the Ortmann line; though it's not documented yet, we are into the 1600's!   4)  I've heard from a cousin in Erkeln!  Her name is Magdalena (last name n...

I woke up at 6AM today, "too exthited to thleep," as the little boy in the Disneyland commercial says, and of course I was thinking about Joseph Ortmann and Erkeln and Brakel and so on.  One thing I was contemplating was the names -- in looking for Joseph in various locations, I was paying attention to the first names I was seeing, because often children were named for grandparents or other relatives and so on.  Interestingly, though Joseph's father's name was Conrad (and he was named for his father, Conrad), none of Joseph's sons has Conrad as a first or middle name.  His first son was Augustus J. (J = Joseph, I assume), but I see no Augustus anywhere in the family trees.  The second was Joseph Bernard, and Bernard comes from both sides of the family -- Joseph had an uncle named Bernard, and Annie's father was Bernard.  His third son was Herman Henry -- don't know where the "Herman" came from, but Joseph had a brother named Heinrich (Henry) and ...

Well, the Joseph Ortmann story has suddenly broken wide open, everyone!  If you remember, I recently discovered the date and place of his death (June 10, 1911, in Union, New Jersey).  Having joined the Hudson County, New Jersey, Historical Society, I was advised by my new fellow researchers there to send away for his death certificate, in the hope that it would list his birthplace.  So I did, and it came today. I was so nervous as I opened it!  I forced myself to read it slowly, bit by bit, taking in the information.  We see that his birthdate is recorded as July 27, 1848, but if we look at the other evidence, for example, his enlistment in the Navy during the Civil War, this can't be right.  If he was born in 1848, then his enlistment papers should have said he was 16 years old, but the papers actually say he was 20.  In 1864, he was much closer to his birth age than he was in later years, so believing he was correct in stating his age as 20 at that ...

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...