MY DIFFICULT RESEARCH INTO A PENNSYLVANIA GERMAN IMMIGRANT FAMILY: STEP FOURTEEN : POST #10

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!

Posts in this series will be brought up using the label PA-GERM research path

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MY DIFFICULT RESEARCH INTO A PENNSYLVANIA GERMAN IMMIGRANT FAMILY : STEP ELEVEN : POST #7

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...

Posts in this series will be brought up using the label PA-GERM research path

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FILBYS PASSENGER LISTS - STILL GOOD - STILL AVAILABLE ALWAYS ADDED TO! BUT NOT FINDABLE ON ANCESTRY TM DATABASES BY THAT NAME

Before there were databases that attached to original ship manifests... there was FILBY's.  Well Filby's still exists. Covering immigrants to the U.S. and Canada, the 1500's forwards to the 1970's, every calendar year it's supplemented with more information. Many big city libraries, colleges, and genealogy specialty archives, have the entire binder set, a vast number of volumes. 

Filby's best use is for finding those who came before the 1820's, before there was any lawful requirement that such records be kept. The immigrants on sail ships trickled in well before the steamship era, sometimes just a few at a time on a ship intended to transport cargo. Information in these books comes from a variety of first resources including family diaries, naturalization documents, even indentured servant lists.  An important source was also the passenger lists that were published in newspapers.

The places referenced do not always equate to a port or port city. The place might be a destination city or the first place the person appeared in a public record.

The information in Filby's can and should be cross referenced with other documents.  For instance, I would attempt to cross reference based on lists for Philadelphia or Boston of incoming passengers.

Primarily, it is a way for people with ancestors who arrived in the United States, the colonies, and territories, to move to finding the location they left and potentially records held in other countries.

However, I recently went looking for some German immigrants who came to Pennsylvania some time between 1795 and 1820, most likely closer to the 1820.

The person I sought did not come up on Ancestry TM, the popular database in a general search.  So I headed to Los Angeles, the Central Library in downtown LA, where there is a genealogy and history floor. The Filby's book set there was not entirely complete or undated and the wonderful and earnest genealogy librarian there said to me "Filbys is on Ancestry TM now." We went onto Ancestry TM from there, and using the card catalog (which is confusingly called New Collections on the main page of Ancestry TM) and tried again. No - Searching for Filbys did not bring it up.  But there are numerous other databases that bring up early America arrivals on sail ships.  I individually searched through these and up came a few names.

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HOW THE COLONIAL AMERICANS KEPT WARM IN THE WINTER? HARDLY!

Loved this article!  NOVA PARKS PDF FILE On COLONIAL AMERICANS IN WINTER

It's part of the Carlyle Connection newsletter.

Items in the house frozen solid?  Closing the shutters?  As you contemplate a winter of unaffordible heating, consider...

that

"In addition to keeping active, people wore thick layers of woolen clothing and often slept in them along with flannel night shirts and caps on the coldest nights.  Most people, including the wealthy, went to bed in unheated bed chambers."

****

Wear your beanie cap to bed.  Most of the heat in your body goes out through your head!

MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION : WOMEN VOTED FOR THE REVOLUTION - THEN LOST THE VOTE!

MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION   Explore how women VOTED for the American Revolution, then lost the vote... 

TERRIFIC INTERACTIVES on this and many other subjects, so you can learn more about the historyu of the United States!

GERMAN ANCESTRY? COULD IT BE FROM THE HESSIAN SOLDIERS WHO CAME TO THE US TO FIGHT ON THE SIDE OF BRITAIN ?

From David McCullough's JOHN ADAMS
Published 2001
Copyright the author,
pages 139-140


"The ships flying the Union Jack that arrived off New York at the end of June 1776 - the fleet from Halifax that one eyewitness described as looking like "all London afloat" - had been only the start of an overwhelming show of British might come to settle the fate of the new United States of America.

By July 3rd, 9,000 troops led by General William Howe had landed on Staten Island, where hundreds of Tories were on hand to welcome them. Howe himself had gone ashore on July 2, the very day that Congress had voted for Independence, and in the days following, up the Narrows between Staten island and Long Island, came ever more British sails, including an armada of 130 warships and transports from England under command of the General's brother, Admiral Richard Lord Howe. By mid-August 32,000 fully equipped, highly trained, thoroughly professional British and German (Hessian) soldiers - more that the entire population of Philadelphia were ashore on Staten Island, supported by ten ships-of-the-line and twenty frigates, making in all the largest, most costly British overseas deployment ever until that time.

By contrast , the American army faltered in defense of New York, digging in on Manhattan and Long Island, was optimistically thought to number 20,000 troops. These nearly all poorly equipped amateurs led by Washington, who in his year as commander-in-chief had yet to fight a battle...

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