Step Fourteen : Cemetery Records
As started, Find A Grave TM did not have postings for the immigrant nuclear family from Germany-Prussia who lived in Pennsylvania or died there. But something very important to remember is that such tombstone websites DO NOT HAVE ALL THE BURIALS IN A CEMETERY. No they do not. Back in the day the emphasis was not on expensive carved tombstones as there is today. In some cemeteries hundreds of burials never had tombstones or those tombstones were destroyed or removed.
Additionally in modern times the death certificate and the burial paperwork lean on each other. Team that up with an obituary from the newspaper or website and it's all good.
I researched German cemeteries in the city and and its vicinity and on the Internet up came a historical one. Some good souls had listed all the burials in that cemetery. And under yet another variation of the surname I found both the first female immigrant ancestor of my client and a man who is likely her husband, who lived into his 80's.
I've called that cemetery long distance three times and they NEVER get back to me. Don't you just hate messages that claim they will call right back? And there's no information on when someone is in the office - if ever.
I'll let you know. I'm praying that there is something on the burial about where these people came from. But the INDEX to the burial does not say!
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Dr. Oded Rechavi: Genes & the Inheritance of Memories Across Generations | Huberman Lab Podcast
What is the science behind the notion that our memories are not entirely about our own experience? Do the hopes and desires of our grandparents within us?
I'll admit that this requires attentive listening and is not on a 101 level of education, but if you're interested, give it a try!
Step thirteen : Deaths for the County in Pennsylvania where the Immigrant nuclear family lived. Checking Pennsylvania deaths.
If I had not found the naturalization for the 18 year old mentioned in the previous post, I would not have been able to do this next step.
Find A Grave TM is a web site I have very mixed feelings about. People are uploading death certificates and I think that is beyond tacky (defying the sensibility that the dead should be left in peace) but also a total privacy invasion. Sure, if you find out that some relatives of yours posted, you might be able to take it down, but it was up for the world to see, and that is disrespecting the living too.
As previously stated members of this clients family had gone so far in their research and some of the more modern ancestors generations from the immigrant nuclear family from Germany-Prussia, were on Find A Grave TM.
But one thing we should not forget is that Find A Grave is not the end-all. If this were a more modern family who lived at a time, as we do now, where people were forced to have Identification cards, and their birth, marriage, and death, were documented that would be an early research task. But these people lived in the - and the full names of family members did not appear until 1850.
Now that I knew that there was a possibility that the family used a different surname I was able to find the death of the first female immigrant ancestor from Prussia. She was not yet 40 and had died of TB.
TB usually takes some years to kill a person and it gives us the speculation that this hard-working family had a sick wife and mother that required attention.
Hold that thought!
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Step Twelve : Citizenship of the nuclear immigrant family.
Historical research is in order here because in Pennsylvania some people pledged to become citizens of the state early on, and then the requirements for becoming a citizen changed when it came to how many YEARS an immigrant had to wait. But one thing was certain and that is that when the head of household, a man, became a citizen, his wife and all his children who had not reached adulthood would also become citizens. The United States was looking for hard working and self supporting individuals who were also honorable and decent which means that they were not criminals. It helped to integrate into the community and make some friends and go to church. In this case, since we do not know when the family arrived exactly counting years forward isn't precise and then, of course, just because you had to wait a certain number of years does not mean that they didn't wait longer.
In this search I found something of terrific interest that would lead forward the research. Well sort of; it still would not lead to the goal of finding out where in Germany-Prussia our immigrant family came from. However.... I found the son of the immigrant family had walked in and sworn he had entered Pennsylvania / The United States before the age of 18 and that day he was sworn in.
Again let me remind you to do your historical research. For instance, while Pennsylvania was a British colony, anyone who immigrated from Britain was already a citizen. But not Germans.
The pledge this young man made stated the surname we had been looking for but (AMAZING) that he was going forward with a different surname!
Now, in fact he DID NOT go with a different surname when we find him on census forwards.
But at that moment he must have thought he might want to be perhaps more American. That surname was and is far more common and brings up challenges and possibilities.
But why would he have gotten his citizenship having reached the age of 18 by himself?
Maybe the immigrant parents never got their citizenship. Maybe they were dead!
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To recap: So far we've looked at actual books on shelves in an honored genealogy research library - the Los Angeles Public Library - for biographies and other information about the surname immigrant German-Prussian family in the city and county where they were found on the 1860 United States Census. The potential was there to be lead to important family members, perhaps participants in local history, to the ownership of land or businesses, as well as on those German - Prussians who came to America on sail ships.
We've looked at the United States census focusing on the County and City that family lived in 1850 and expanded out to other nearby counties in Eastern Pennsylvania.
We've looked at maps and land and property records,and the history of the area when it comes to waves of German Immigration. We are pretty sure this family came with the Second Wave of Immigrants who brought crafts and skills and were not land owning farmers.
We went back to Pre and Revolutionary War times and forward to the Civil War and there is some evidence that men with the same surname served but they cannot be linked to the immigrant nuclear family. If we do send money to the Pennsylvania Archive it may be speculative. We might find the name of a town in Prussia that is the origin of that soldier but that might now be a family member.
We went on a foray into Old German language newspapers on databases and got frustrated.
There is evidence of the surname in other counties in Eastern Pennsylvania but not connections to that immigrant nuclear family. There is no record of them being in the country earlier. What is next?
Step Eleven: Ship records for Sail Ships coming into Philadelphia or New York.
Sadly, these records are notoriously spotty. If this were an immigrant family who came through during the steamship era, this search would be a priority because of all the information collected on ship manifests.
There were some index type cards that might again be of members of an extended family but not the names on that 1850 census, and with near no information. A lot of people over many years have devoted themselves to these records, finding them and adding them to databases and so on. While there is always the possibility of more being found, nudda.
Back at Los Angeles Public Library I checked all their books (information that links to databases now) and found nothing new... but just in case there had been some indexing error...
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Step 10: Newspaper search
Ok I have to warn you all that this was the most hopeful and frustrating aspect of this research path. But here goes. Using a popular newspaper database (which I'll call database #1), and using the surname and a slight variant (removing the s at the end as the family currently spells it) and the State and City, up came some OLD GERMAN newspapers! But these databases usually have a way of getting you close to the article where the name appears by throwing a yellow tint where your search term appears. And that was not going to work since the newspaper was not in English (darn AI!). As newspapers go these were only a few pages each, but large. I could not get the larger paper to print, to download and open. So I reached out for help.
I reached out to FamilySearch volunteers but that went nowhere.
I reached out to the Historical Society in the very town where these newspapers had been printed in the 1840's. I felt that they might give the names of recent immigrants to the town, perhaps news of a baptism or church membership or - what I would love - the names of new citizens.
A volunteer from the Historical Society contacted me and I tried to send to him from the database to his e-mails the newspapers. But that didn't work either. Finally weeks later a person who volunteers there and said reading OLD GERMAN was easy for her and that she was willing to accept a donation, blessed us with heroic work. She went on another database (which I'll call database #2) and summoned up the same newspapers.
She got back to me and said she thought basically the surname had not really come up, that what it all was, was gibberish.
What a dissapointment!
However I had a third party in San Francisco who is certified to read OLD GERMAN documents go to a library there where yet another database was on their computers (which I'll call database #3) and same thing.
I may always wonder if I could print out these newspapers in the original size on that size paper and put them in the hands of an OLD GERMAN reader if indeed they would find the surname but enough time had been spent on this!
However, newspaper searches sometimes do pull up interesting and useful information so I can't tell you not to do them!
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Step nine : Looking for participation in the Civil War
Since the family was on the 1860 census I wondered if we might find relatives who fought in the Civil War who might have been part of the family in Germany-Prussia but did not appear to live in the same house as the immigrant nuclear family group. In other words, perhaps brothers of the head of household. Once again the focus is on discovering where in Germany-Prussia the immigrants left so that I could get into those records and go back further.
There were TWO, one in the same county, and one in a county over.
Using the National Archives and the State of Pennsylvania Archives as well as FamilySearch I was able to find the cards for these two men. The cards showed some basic information on them including that one of them filed for disabled status pension. The question was if there is more information held that these cards lead to and what information it might have. There was no way to prove that these two men who fought in the Civil War were relatives.
One must pay for this information, per name. I was told there was no way to tell what, if anything, of value might come up. Because this is speculative, the client is thinking about paying for it.
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THESE STEPS SHOW AN EXPANSION OF RESEARCH from the focus on the 1860 immigrant nuclear family in Berks.
Step 6 : Considering the formation of Counties (Philadelphia).
Philadephia County History from the Pennsylvania Historical Society
Looking for other families with the same surname in the larger, historical county and general area (Eastern Pennsylvania).
As the population grew and settlements grew, more cities were established and counties that were large were divided into smaller ones. Historical and map research - along with another check at census and in databases such as Ancestry TM and FamilySearch TM were in order.
For instance, someone might say that the ancestors lived in Philadelphia and you might think of the city as it is now, but they might have meant the county named Philadelphia that was cut into three: Philadelphia, Chester, and Bucks. So though my client's immigrant ancestors appear on the 1860 in Bucks, some family members might have been in Chester or Philadelphia Counties.
NOTE THAT DATABASES ARE NOT USING PRESENT TERMS BUT PAST TERMS. So when they lived there is important. What if a child's parents were living in Philadelphia County but when the child was born, that same area was Bucks?
Step 7: Looking at Plat maps of those counties that are available.
When it comes to map that show early land owners (usually farmers) sometimes the surname will relate to other documents held in an archive, sometimes not, such as land sales and purchases or transfers or wills. It would depend on when exactly that particular county kept these records and if they still exist. We are used to, in modern times, a certain exactitude and knowledge and obedience to the law that did not always exist back in the day when a handshake could be a contractual agreement. So though I might use a database first, what's on a Plat map might not link to what's in the database.
The term for this type of map is a Plat Map. It shows how land is divided into lots. Some maps will show early roads and other geographical features such as lakes and rivers which may bear the names of these early residents or pioneers. Some are housed in the National Archives of the United States.
Step 8 : Looking at the census for surrounding counties.
However on the census of 1850 in the county one over I did find the surname and it appeared that it might have been a school or some sort of skill based workshop. Why? Because the 1840 only records the head of household (assumed owner or renter of a building) and the statistical count - a group of males who are teenagers. I think a master and his apprentices were at that location!
Will there be any way to associate this particular man with the same surname with the family that settles in Berks? It shows the German surname in Eastern Pennsylvania at a time when it's possible that a family member was there but went uncounted. What if the boys are his sons? Well the ages are so close. What if one is a nephew or a son? A tantalizing possibility.
(Sadly, this went unproven but it is in the report given to the client.)
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Step three: Houses and Buildings Owned by the family
The next step was to see if there were property titles (houses or buildings) in the current county with some historical information of ownership. There is a current database that went back a ways and there were some properties under that surname but it appeared as if the descendants of the immigrants took a couple generations to own property. These people were once again known individuals and not the original immigrants.
However this, along with no building or land ownership in the family provided an important clue as to when they may have come to America.
Step four : Historical Research into the County
Because the immigrant family did not appear to own any land in Colonial Pennsylvania and did not seem to own any houses or other buildings until a couple generations after that 1870 census where the immigrant group appeared, it suggested that they were not of the earlier immigration of Germans that came to Pennsylvania and settled in the same County who could purchase land - the farmers. Local history posted on the Internet by the Historical Society showed that the city they lived in was known for its bakeries. This wave of German immigrants tended to be crafts persons bringing the skills they had in German that those farmers and the burgeoning population needed.
Looking at a web site for the city, I noted that there were some statues honoring the bakers.
Step five : Looking for family members who might have been in the Pennsylvania Militia or who served in the Revolutionary War, and/or who might be listed as members of the honorary societies such as the Sons of the American Revolution or the Daughters of the American Revolution.
The family was on the 1860 census but not the 1850 or the 1840 even though it is possible that some or all of them were in America to be counted. At the time sail ships were coming into Philadelphia and New York though they could have come in through another harbor or off-shore landing spot. But there is always the possibility that some relatives of theirs came earlier, providing them refuge or a start in America. The surname was NOT in the Pennsylvania Militia, the Revolutionary War, or in the Sons of the American Revolution or the Daughters of the American Revolution. So this thoroughness further confirmed they were of a later wave of German Immigrants.
This wave is called The Second Wave.
Why would they NOT be on the earlier census? Well, census' have never been 100% inclusive. (I myself was not counted on two census in modern times. At the time it didn't bother me in the least. I suspect the census taker could not get through our security.) These people were Germans adjusting to a new country. There might have also been some fear of being counted.
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Let's face it. We think Pennsylvania, one of the 13 original states, and we think Germans! So I want to tell you about a research problem I encountered and maybe you can learn from it.
My client has an illustrious American Historical figure on one side of her family. Heavily researched. Books written about. Historical house tours to go on. But her other side, her surname side, the side I researched, is simply not the same.
Step One : Census research and checking over what family had already done.
Within hours of beginning the research, though I do not go first to databases such as Ancestry TM or FamilySearch TM to see what others have come up with (too many errors and confusion) I was aware that others, likely her family members, had used those databases and posted... Basically between these databases and Find A Grave TM a lot was posted that I did not find inaccuracies with. Clearly they were all waiting for me to make the break through. I told her my goal was to try and find out where in Germany - Prussia they had come from so we could go back further, an idea she loved.
The original immigrants were on the 1850 but because a member said to be born in Prussia might have been about 2 years old when he came, calculating exactly when they came, or if they came together was up in the air. They are not on the 1840 or 1830 in any state. (Unless going page by page brings up horribly misspelled names. Time wise I couldn't bill her for that.)
Step Two : Finding out what might have been published in books held by a noteworthy genealogy library.
I went to the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, genealogy section, and spent two afternoons. I pulled every book in the Pennsylvania section that included the county and city. That first generation was on census in 1870 had settled in by then.
I looked in the books INDEXs for surnames exactly like and sounding like the German surname. THIRTY BOOKS and no mention of them.
I did find a family they had married with mentioned. That family was in the Pennsylvania reserves, in the War of Independence, and were landowners as well as - some of them - in Find A Grave. Also Germans.
If any of those 30 books had information, in particular a biography of a family member in it from the original group of immigrants, it might have been very valuable information.
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Woe! I had to go back in to repost a couple hours after the first post as some information got scrambled. Forgive me!
Committee for Yiddish YouTube Channel : A Gallery of Missing Husbands
On this video Jewish Community newspapers from the Great Immigration period of American history hold ads in which abandoned wives seek their husbands. Men overwhelmed with the realities of recent immigrant life sometimes disappeared out of shame or because they could not live up to the responsibilities of marriage and children. Wives desperate for reunion sought them publicly in ads. Sometimes this effort would later be used to prove they had tried when divorce - and remarriage - was the only answer.
Again, Committee for Yiddish is an excellent YouTube channel and if you go to the link you'll find lots else that is educational.
Committee is an excellent channel for learning about the Yiddish language and culture.
Jews have come to America since Colonial Times but in general most of those from Europe came during the Industrial Revolution from Central and Eastern Europe, that Great Immigration period from about 1880 - 1920. So for American Jews, the genealogy research starts with American records as it would for any other American.
Because of intermarriage between Jews and Christians there are Americans today who might not identify as Jewish or who acknowledge a Jewish ancestor - with many rumors of Jewishness as well - who do Holocaust Genealogy.
There are some special considerations in Jewish genealogy that make it a bit more difficult and that is dealing with Hebrew alphabet and translation, Yiddish language, naming conventions, and informal name changes.
I've stated it elsewhere on this blog but that officials at Ellis Island changed the names of immigrants coming through is a myth. They had no authority to do that and were also dealing with hundreds of incoming every time a steamship came into the port in New York. It's likely that sometimes an immigrant's name was written down phonetically but that's not the same as an authority changing a person's name.
However Jewish immigrants DID sometimes change their names, sometimes to a German version from a Polish or Russian one - since German Jews had an easier time of assimilation, sometimes to an English or American name, sometimes to make the name easier to spell or pronounce. These name changes were rarely done formally and legally. In many cases people were known by their Hebrew or Polish or other ethnic surname as well as their new name.
My suggestion is to do the usual genealogy research and perhaps on a marriage or a draft registration or other document the name change will be revealed. Find the marriage record kept at the temple, not just the civil one. Have tombstones translated and get the cemetery record as well as the death record. Remember that if something comes right up on a database that's a blessing but books, microfilms, newspapers, and writing to archives may still be necessary.
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YIDDISH BOOK CENTER - LINKS TO YIZKOR (MEMORY) BOOKS - HOLOCAUST
The New York Public Library - Yiddish Book Center Yizkor Book Collection includes 650 digitized Yizkor books from the collections of the two institutions.
You can search this online collection by title and by the name of the towns they commemorate, or browse the list on this website by country and community name. You can browse both the New York Public Library and Yiddish Book Center digital collections, along with links to ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS on the New York Public Library's Guide to Yizkor Books.
UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM
USHMM DATABASES - SURVIVORS - VICTIMS and MORE
A collection of 600 ID cards
'While there is no argument that Hitler abhorred the Jews and caused almost six million to be ruthlessly killed, often non-Jewish victims are tragically forgotten from Holocaust remembrances. Eleven million precious human lives were lost during the Holocaust. Five million of these were non-Jewish. Three million were Polish Christians and Catholics. It would be very sad to forget even one precious life extinguished so ruthlessly It wold be a tragedy to forget five million.
WHY REMEMBERING NON-JEWISH VICTIMS IS IMPORTANT TO US ALL.
Excerpt: We are familiar with the statistics : nearly 10,000 Jehovah Witnesses imprisoned and at least 2,000 admitted to Nazi concentration camps of which at least half were murdered, over 250 by beheading. What we do not know as well is the day-to-day existence of this extraordinary group of committed men, women, and children under the rule of National Socialist terror.
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This is not a database site but there's some excellent information on it.
Excerpt from Genocide of European Romani page: Roman were anong the groups that the Nazi regine (1933-1945) and its partner regimes singled our for persecution and murder before and during World War II. Roman are pejoratively referred to as Zigeuner in German and as Gypsies" in English.
(Just a note here. I'm not so sure the word gypsy is a pejorative, rather a misnomer, however people do understand when you use the word gypsy and less so when you use the word Roma or Romani. In my genealogy research I've found there are slang terms for these people in other languages and slang terms for many an ethnic group.) Drawing support from many non-Nazi Germans who harbored social prejudice towards Roman, the Nazis judged Roma to be "racially inferior." Under the Nazi regime, German authorities subjected Roman to arbitrary internment, sterilization, forced labor in concentration camps, denotation, and mass murder. German authorities murdered tens of thousands of Roman in the German occupied territories of the Soviet Union and Serbia and thousands more in the killing centers....
UNITED STATES MEMORIAL HOLOCAUST MUSEUM - START PAGE
USHMM - JEHOVAH WITNESSES - HOLOCAUST
YAD VASHAM ; THE WORLD HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE CENTER
Search by town, by person's name, or if you have it, where they died. But also a database of the Righteous Among Nations, testimonials, history - so very much. An excellent site to explore.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS - HOLOCAUST STUDIES
The following is just ONE of the portholes from this web page. 'The Archives Portal Europe is one of the milestones achieved by the participants of the APEnet Project supported by the European Commission in the eContentplus Programme. The project's consortium currently consists of twelve national archives/national archive administrations and five members.
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USC SHOAH FOUNDATION 'We are currently recording survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust. If you are a survivor or know someone who is, we would love to hear from you. We are also looking for interviewers.'
These newly recorded testimonies will be indexed and preserved in the Visual History Archive, along with the testimonies of 52,000 witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust, most of them recorded in the 1990's. The testimonies are used in educational materials, films, and other resources accessed by 35 million people annually.
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I've posted on Shoah Foundation in the past and so you may already know that you can use their archive for your personal research by appointment.
The Six Million. You've heard this term. I wonder if you know that it applies to the estimated Jewish victims of genocide by the Nazi's prior to and during World War II? The number is an estimate and based on reportage, concentration camp documents, and the like. However, another Five Million non-Jewish others were also murdered during the Nazi occupation. Though the years have gone by, though most of the holocaust survivors are now deceased, though there are holocaust deniers, to this day there are museums and memorials and foundations interested in collecting testimonials. They were the disabled, children who had African genetics, homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses.
This month in which the Holocaust Memorial Day is lodged, I'll be focusing on research and education opportunities about the Holocaust that began in 1939 and continued until the allies which included the United States defeated the Nazi's in Europe.
I recently met a man whose grandfather and uncle died being worked to death because they were Jehovah Witnesses. He had recently gone to Europe and toured the camps in Germany as well as Poland. As a result of doing some research for him, I decided to go forward with the plan to jam this month with information.
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