The quote above has nothing to do with what I’m about to write. Not really, anyway. It’s just that I like Paul Simon and he happens to have a song about Graceland which happens to be the cemetery where my great-grandfather is buried. Do you like how I said that all nonchalantly like finding out THAT SORT of information was no different than discovering 5 bucks in my wallet I didn’t know I had? Moving on…
As is much documented here, I’ve always wondered where my great-grandfather, Bernhard Kramer, was buried. Actually, ‘wondered’ is not the proper word. How about ‘yearned’? Let’s go with that. I’ve always YEARNED to know where my great-grandfather was buried. I’ve always felt the NEED to know how it was he died — how old was he? Was he happy then? Was he remarried? Was he an asshole? I’ve searched for nearly 6 years and the answers to those questions were scant. I started with this: “Samantha, LOOK. I told you, I DON’T KNOW. He just never said. They lived in Chicago and he was German and I think he was a butcher. I don’t know, something about the stockyards up there.” Seriously, that was it. Now I know the following: birthplace (Augustfehn, Germany), date of birth (20 Sep 1883 – exactly 102 years after my own), parents (Bernhard and Hermine Fittje), his second wife’s name (Mary, didn’t know she existed), his burial place (Graceland Cemetery, Chicago), and the time of his death. 19-f’ing-61. I also know his favorite rock band — AC/DC. Just kidding people, we Kramer’s hate the AC/DC.
As mentioned in the last post [ED. Note: now removed. Potentially AWKWARD.], I took some time off to work on the genealogy of someone else. I obsessed over it as I would my own and it effectively cleared my brain. I’m gonna start charging people for Brick Wall Research and then I’m just gonna tell them to aggressively research the family of someone not related to them. Works. And as I predicted, as soon as I returned to my own research, there was a breakthrough. I took some time to read the emails from my dad’s long-lost cousin who I located only after cold-calling tons of people with her common name in the Wisconsin area. I was so excited to read what she was writing at the time that I figured it was likely I might have missed something. I read slow. Then, right there. Ben. He had never been called ‘Bernhard’. He was just Ben. One would think this would be obvious considering it’s the name given to my little brother but I’m nothing if not oblivious to the obvious.
So I searched for Ben. Ben Kramer. I resumed my process of ordering every birth certificate on the Cook County Clerk’s site, each one starting with the death year that seemed possible This is an issue I’ve had as there was really no way for me to get a grip on the man’s year of death. At first, I was sure it had been between 1920 and 1930 — after all, he wasn’t in the census with his family in 1930. That ‘fact’ was proven wrong and from there I began working my way to the present. 19-f’ing-61. As you can imagine, this was a fucking expensive operation.
It had never seemed even remotely likely to me that he had died after 1956, the year of my dad’s birth. My grandpa Ben (!) was active duty then and they lived in France for a good portion of my dad’s early childhood (by the way, I need to interject here: my dad is a trucker, man. He is not refined; his CB handle is BirdLegs for God’s sake. The fact that he ever resided in France, even for 97 seconds, it just hilarious to me). It might have made sense that he wasn’t in contact with his father for those years but what about when they moved back to the States? My dad was 5 years old when his grandpa died, the same age as Jude. I cannot imagine my child not knowing his grandfather.
I don’t know if that speaks to the fact that my grandpa was an asshole or to the incredibly odd and very harsh reality of my father’s family — they split, they went their own ways, and then no one else mattered.
From Ben’s death record I learned a couple interesting things. He died of pneumonia, a condition that apparently was common among those men who spent their lives in the Chicago Union Stockyards as he did. There’s a coalition of those that died in astounding numbers of kidney disease. Ben was 77 and he was still working as a butcher, though no doubt he had been kicked out his stockyard job at that age. If I learned anything from The Jungle, then I learned that. He was married. To a woman named Mary M. He lived on Orleans Street and he suffered in the hospital for a week before he finally died. And I learned that he was buried at Graceland Cemetery.
I immediately called the undertaker listed on the certificate. The woman (she was working on a Sunday. You work at a funeral home AND on a Sunday?! Your job sucks, nice lady. Just sayin’.) said that she would wander down to the basement later and take a gander. I was stoked! Then I received an email telling me that they don’t keep records. I bet that chick who took my call was just in a bad mood because she was WORKING AT A FUNERAL HOME ON A SUNDAY! I forgive her.
At any rate, I was still at a dead-end. I emailed the funeral home, hoping they might be able to give me Ben’s plot number and more details on his wife. This past Monday I got a fat package from them. Ben was cremated and his ashes were scattered near the Chapel. I imagine that his wife (who also worked at the Stockyards as a stenographer) hadn’t the money to pay for an elaborate burial with coffins and plots and whatnot. It’s incredibly sad really. I take comfort though in hoping that Ben is somewhere watching someone giving a shit about where he’s buried.
That’s the update. All of it, I think. I’ve got burial records for a Mary at the same cemetery that might be my lady so now I’m working on tracking her family. I’ve never seen a photograph of my great-grandfather and dammit, I want one. If anyone knows a Christine Richard (possibly married at some point to Hardin Probis) then have her give me a call. I need to talk to her about her sister.
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Many times I’ve started to post about the amazing and huge strides I’ve made in my research these last couple months…but life gets in the way. So I suppose a Surname Saturday post about my great-grandmother, Elizabeth Schulte (who I’ve mentioned here before) would be the easiest way to squeeze all that in.
In short, I’ve found family. Lots of family. Family that has sprung up from little buds on my tree into huge branches (just in time for Spring!). My first breakthrough came a few months back. My grandfather Ben had two TRUE siblings, Frank and Walter Kramer, and from what I knew when I started, they both lived in Chicago. Dad remembered that somehow they were involved with grocery stores so I began to look there. I found the Kramer Foods store, still located in Chicago (or rather, the suburb of Hinsdale) and contacted the current owners. I think I’ve mentioned it before but that gave me a lead on Frank’s daughters. I’ve spoken to some family of Wally’s before but both his children were adopted and have now passed on so that lead was all but dead. It seemed that locating Frank’s daughters would be my best bet. Seeing as how the girls would surely be around my dad’s age, I figured it was pointless to search for them as I didn’t have the married names I thought they should have. Just goes to show that making assumptions in genealogy just about the easiest way to create a brick wall for yourself — I found both girls and with their Kramer names intact! After three days of searching the deep web, so to speak, I locating one of Frank’s daughters and her insight was amazing! She knew very little about Ben but was able to tell me tons of information about Ben’s family and their lives as youngsters. It was amazing to find this woman — after 6 years of diligent daily searching I had found REAL family! My dad was beyond excited, something that never happens when it comes to my genealogy work. He had a cousin and she was great. They spoke on the phone and I’m so glad that through this research I was able to make that happen. We’re hoping to visit her soon and my dad can’t wait to get headed out on that trip…
Still though, there were so many questions still unanswered. Not just that but Frank’s daughter opened other questions — I had always been stumped by my great-grandpa’s second immigration record. This record states that he left the US, returned in just a few months, and with him was his wife Elisabeth and a son, Walter. Except Walter was already two years old. How had my grandfather, Bernhard, fathered a child in Germany when he was residing in Codington, South Dakota? It turns out that Bernhard wasn’t actually Frank’s dad, something that was never mentioned to me by Wally’s family and something I still don’t think they know. Here’s what I now know: Elisabeth was born 8 Aug 1890 in Wellingholzhausen, Germany. When she was a teenager, about 18 years or so, she was working as a housemaid for a wealthy family in the area. There was a romance between she and one of the son’s of this wealthy family and she became pregnant. In the early 1900s this was apparently not the best way to get in the good graces of the family and townspeople — proving that I could not have lived in that time 
— and she was disowned by her own family and her employers. Wally’s father’s name is not known. SOMEHOW, Elisabeth and Bernhard came together and he left America in 1912 to return to his homeland with a new child he’d agreed to raise as his own and a new wife that had been shunned by her community. The most odd thing about all this is that Bernhard and Elisabeth were from two completely different communities that sat hundreds of miles apart. How had they been hooked up? Had someone written Bernhard here and asked for his help? Were they ever legally married?
I’ve since been in contact with a distant cousin in Germany who is absolutely amazing. She has searched the archives and provided me with tons of information that I never would have been able to get on my own regarding Elisabeth’s family. Elisabeth’s mother’s name was Catherina Elisabeth Raude and her father Frederich Schulte. For quite some time the family has lived in the area of Wellingholzhausen and there’s still family there today in the small community of Borgloh. This is the sort of genealogy find that makes me giddy!
Unfortunately, there is no record within the churches of the area for the birth of my great-uncle Wally. There is a record for an unmarried Schulte but the dates and name don’t match so I’m out of luck. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t more to the story or that someday I’ll figure it all out.
**
A while back I was bothering my dad with yet more questions I knew he couldn’t answer about his family and a simple correction he made of my assumptions opened a HUGE door. In the mid-1920s my great-grandmother Elisabeth divorced and remarried. The man she married, Fred Wonderlin, had a son Henry. Henry was, in my mind, Ben’s step-brother and it never occurred to me to look at it any other way. He jumped in and declared that Ben NEVER called Henry his step-brother and only ever referred to him as ‘brother’. I decided that tracking down the family of a man who I didn’t consider really related might help me. I spent countless days searching for the family of Henry until there was a breakthrough. A search of the Chicago Tribune historical archives by a kind soul on the Ancestry message boards led me to one of Henry’s children. I tracked her for days before locating her and she was so incredibly pleasant. It seems that her Wonderlin family knows more about my Kramer family than we do! Henry and Ben were indeed close and she was able to fill in many blanks, especially concerning Ben’s first son, my dad’s half-brother he never knew, Robert.
And now, after 6 long, hard years of searching I have pictures to put to names. I started this journey with scant speculation — my great-grandparents were German and they lived in Chicago. My great-grandfather was a butcher at the stockyards. That’s all I knew — not a name, not a birthdate. Now there are family photos and family stories, things I would have never known had I not decided to obsess over something that just didn’t seem to want to be figured out. I have found family, both American and German. I’ve still got many mysteries to solve — Wally’s real father, Bernhard’s death, Ben’s war service and that of his brothers — but this means so much. My dad knows what his grandmother looked like and I feel like I know her now…
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Tags: borgloh, chicago, genealogy, Germany, Kramer, schulte, wellingholzhausen, wonderlin
This Tombstone Tuesday, I thought I’d post about my great-grandmother, Elizabeth Schulte Kramer. The road to her maiden name was long and paved with many an assumption but very little facts. When I started research on my dad’s side of the family, he didn’t even know his grandparent’s names. His father died in 1976 and he’d never met his grandparents, who lived in Chicago. He gave me scant little to go on — he knew they were German, they might have changed the spelling of Kramer that we now use, and his grandpa was a butcher at the Chicago Stockyards.
Pretty early on, census searching led me to Bernhard and Elizabeth. In 1920 they were living in Chicago with their three sons — Walter (born in Germany), Frank, and my grandpa, Bernard. By 1930, Elizabeth was remarried to a Fred Wonderlin and she had a new son, a step-son, Henry. For the longest time, I assumed my great-grandpa had died…but that’s another story.
I can’t remember why but it took me a good while to find Elizabeth’s maiden name. Long ago I’d stumbled across an immigration record for an Elizabeth Wonderlin that had the same birthdate as my Elizabeth…and her maiden name was Schulte. At the time I originally found it, I couldn’t prove it was my Elizabeth but I kept it in the back of my mind — it HAD to be her.
Late last year I finally found Elizabeth’s death certificate at the wonderful Cook County Genealogy site. For 15 bucks, I had proof of her maiden name…and her parent’s names! Her death certificate was an amazing wealth of information considering this is a woman I knew little to nothing about…
Elizabeth died 20 January 1952, just 6 days after leaving the home at 1844 Barry Ave that she’d resided in since she arrived in America, and venturing to the St. Elizabeth Hospital for an operation. She’d had rectal cancer for two years. Ultimately, that and heart disease were the cause of her death — she died on the operating table at 61 years old. My dad would be born in 4 more years.
Elizabeth was born 9 Aug 1890, in Wellingholzhausen Germany, to Frederick Schulte and his wife Katharine. Unfortunately, Katherine’s maiden name is hard to make out on the record but it looks to be “Raude”. A search of gedbas shows that Raude, Rande, Baude, and Bande were all surnames present in Germany so locating Katherine has proved tough. So has locating Frederick…but his name explains the prominence of Frederick as a middle name in my family.
Elizabeth is buried in Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois and one of my genealogical dreams is to one day make a trip to her plot. I was lucky enough to be very close to my great-grandmother on my mother’s side and she was a part of my life until I was 26 years old. She knew my son for 4 years before she died, so he remembers his great-great-grandmother. It seems so sad to me that I don’t even have a clue what my great-grandmother on my father’s side even looks like…
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Tags: Bernhard Kramer, cook county illinois, elizabeth kramer, frederick schulte, Germany, katherine raude, Kramer, Tombstone Tuesday, wonderlin
As is probably obvious by now, I’ve focused majority of my research for the past five or six years on the Kramer side of my family. It’s the name I carry and it’s a name I cherish — if I ever marry I will not drop my name and when my son was born I insisted on my son having my last name, despite the long line of Native American and Scottish heritage in my son’s father’s family. In short, my name means a lot to me and it’s not just the name, it’s the things behind that name.
My point is that in all these years of research, I’ve often neglected branches about which I know nothing. One of those branches that sits not too far from mine is my great-great-grandfather, Harlan Sanders.
My maternal grandfather, Larry Joe Sanders, died just this year, a few months ago and he, like my beloved great-granny, was a wealth of information. I’ll be honest, there were only a couple occasions on which I went over and sat just to talk about family history, but on those occasions he was full of stories and names. His family was born and raised not far from here in Hawkeye, Missouri. Giving Hawkeye it’s own place name makes it seem like it’s actually a place when in reality it’s more like a speck on the side of the road but that speck was an important part of my grandfather’s history. He’s buried down a long gravel road in Hawkeye, along with his mother and his grandparents. There are a little more than twenty graves in that beautiful private cemetery and one day, I imagine I’ll rest there too.
My grandpa Joe remembered his father well in the stories he told me but he knew nothing of his grandfather. Early in the little research I’ve done on my grandfather’s side of the tree, I realized that Papa’s dad, Claude Sanders, was raised for the most part by his own grandmother, Artimisia Pike. Papa told me of his uncle Harold and he remember Artimisia well. He knew Claude and Harold’s mom, Myrtle, but he knew nothing of their dad.
I dug and dug and never really found anything pertaining to Claude’s dad. Papa told me stories of Myrtle’s second husband, Roscoe Forgey, and how he’d been a policeman in Springfield, Missouri, and was once involved in some sort of shoot out (though I could find no newspaper record of that).
Just a couple short months ago, my Papa Joe died and he left instructions that let us know that he wanted no radio notice of his death, no obituary (awful for a genealogist to hear!), and no big funeral. He didn’t mind the immediate family gathering but he really didn’t mind if no one knew he had passed on. He had a strong Mormon faith, he felt he was right with God, and he wanted to rest next to his mother in that pretty little Hawkeye cemetery. My mother had a hard time reconciling what he wanted with what she thought appropriate but in the end, she obeyed his wishes. Amazingly, just as my parents, siblings, and one aunt and uncle stood next to his graveside, ready to recite a short prayer, cars started piling in. His classmates, all still remembering him fondly had banded together and made their way down a long out of the way road and to that plot in the woods. All in all, quite a few of his friends arrived and the farthest came from Oklahoma.
At Papa Joe’s funeral I met many a genealogy buff (that side of the family is Mormon so of course, it’s important to them) and I got acquainted with Papa Joe’s half brother, Russell. Russell and Papa Joe didn’t share the same mother but by some turn of events, Papa Joe’s mother raised Russell. He told me that he knew very little but that he knew that his dad’s dad’s name was Harland. Mystery solved!
I got home and immediately started researching Harland. Most people in this country have eaten at a local KFC, founded by none other than one Harland Sanders. But alas, there is no vast chicken fortune in my family tree.
I’m still researching Harland and thus far have found very little in the way of facts. I remember a story in about the names my Grandpa had picked out for my mom’s brother, his firstborn child, and one of them was Crutchfield. When I got into this side of the tree, that name stuck out. It HAD to be a family name — one doesn’t just cherry pick something that odd. Granted, Papa had a penchant for odd names (one of my aunt’s middle name is Cuffa) but still. I researched the name “Crutchfield Sanders” and only came up with one, a Tinsley Crutchfield Sanders, and though I couldn’t show a connection that name stayed with me. When I met Russell and got Harland’s first name, lo and behold, his father is Tinsley Crutchfield!
Harland was born 17 Jul 1869 in Arkansas, which jives with my grandpa telling me that his family had a long history in Arkansas, particularly the Eureka Springs area. His father, Tinsley, was born 2 Jul 1848 in Prarie County Arkansas and he married Nannie Basham, born 17 Mar 1856.
From that information, I was able to fill in a long sparse side of my tree and trace my grandpa’s roots back to Ireland and Scotland. Still yet…
I’ve yet to find death information for Harland. There is some conflicting information out there about Tinsley and the actual birthdate of Harland, but I’m still searching…
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Tags: Arkansas, Harland, Sanders, Tinsley Crutchfield
Only a few posts on this here blog and already, it’s consumed with talk to the Fittje’s. Obviously, the Fittje’s are dominating about 90% of my research at this point and it’s been that way for nearly a year now. It was a hellishly long road to make even one tiny connection to this family so I guess it’s best to expect that it will be an even longer and more winding journey if I’m to ever put it all together.
The Fittje’s in my tree came from Germany and thankfully, I’m one of those lucky people that got stuck with a surname that is so unusual. Ever met a Fittje? Yeah, me neither. In my research, it seems that Fittje’s either come from Germany (in fact, a very small area in Germany) or Norway and a distant cousin tells me that we are somehow connected to the Norway clan, though I’ve never dug in and researched that.
The first Fittje I discovered in my line was Henry Fittje, living in South Dakota in 1908. My ggrandfather, Bernhard Kramer, immigrated from Augustfehn in 1908 and his destination is shown as his uncle’s house in SD, one Henry Fittje. With this information I searched the hell out of Henry and eventually found that distant cousin I mentioned who was able to share a small amount of information on Henry’s life in the US, along with a picture or two. It was wonderful…but how did Henry fit into my tree? I assumed that he was most likely a relative of Bernhard’s mother’s but proving that was hard.
In my German research of the name Fittje, it seems that the only ones in that country were located in a few close together and very small towns. I initially searched in only Augustfehn but soon realized that Augustfehn, Vreschen-Bokel, Apen, Westerstede, and Edewecht are all very close in proximity and the few Fittje’s are spread among those towns. Eventually, I made contact with a man in Germany who is transcribing the church records of the Parish Apen. His transcriptions are not online and are held only by him. His help to me was invaluable — without him and barring a spur of the moment trip to the German countryside to read the records myself, I never would have been able to fill in my tree. From him, I was able to figure out that the Fittje side of my family is indeed, all related to my great-grandmother. great-Her maiden name was Fittje. This breakthrough, this crashing down of a so-called “brick wall” was probably the greatest day thus far in my family research.
My great-great grandmother’s name was Hermine Margarethe Fittje and she was born in Eversten on 27 Oct 1853. On 28 Oct 1876, she married my gg-grandfather Bernard Kramer in Apen. Between them they had 5 children: Bernhard (b. 1883), Weyhert (b. 1877 and d. 1878), Maria Wobina (b. 1879), Gesine Hermine (b. 1881), (b. 1886). You cannot imagine how great it was to finally see this connection and know my family names. It also furthered a chapter in our family history — my little brother is named Ben, after my grandfather Bernard Kramer. This name goes back all the way to the 1800s in our family, something my father did not know when he named my brother.
The friendly helper in Germany was able to give me a few generations of Kramer family births and marriages in Apen and the area, along with a few Fittje births and marriages. So far, researching this clan has been tough. People changed their names so frequently when they came to the States and birthdates given are so unreliable that I feel like I can never really be sure who’s who if I find them here. Even Henry is still a mystery — how exactly was he related to Hermine? Were they brother and sister? None of the birthdates of her siblings match to his but again, that’s an unreliable science.
Thus far, this is the information I have for the family in Germany. Keep in mind, all of these people were located in the same area of Germany. In my research I’ve found a few Fittje’s in German genealogy databases in this area and I’m sure, because of the uniqueness of the name and the smallness of the area’s in which they are located, we MUST be related but proving that has so far eluded me…
Hermine Margarethe Fittje was the daughter of Weyhert Fittje and Gesche Suhr. Weyhert was born 5 Jun 1827 in Vreschen-Bokel and his occupation in church records is shown as Schneidermeister and Grundheuermann. Their children were:
- Hermine
- Hermann Heinrich, b. 1851
- Johanne, b. 1858
- Anna Catharine, b. 1860
- Johann, b. 1863
Weyhert Fittje was the son of Wilke Fittje, born 25 Mar 1796 in Vreschen-Bokel and died 14 Apr 1864. His occupation was Heuermann. He married Antje Focken, born 15 Jun 1803. Their children were:
- Weyhert
- Brunke
- Johann Friedrich, b. 1830
- Tonjes Friedrich, b. 1837
- Johann Focken, b. 1837
- A baby girl, not named, who was born on Christmas Eve and died that same night.
Wilke was the son of Brunke Fittje, born2 Feb 1758 and died 15 Dec 1815. His occupation was also Heuermann. He married Anna Oltmanns, born 26 Aug 1769. Their children were:
- Wilke
- Oltmann, b. 1804
Of course, any information someone might have about the Fittje’s would be absolutely wonderful. Considering I don’t speak a lick of German, this research has been tough but I’m committed to it and the not knowing drives me. The thrill of making a connection rests in the back of my mind as I do this research.
Happy Surname Saturday all!
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Tags: Apen Germany, Augustfehn Germany, Bernhard Kramer, Codington County, fittje, genealogy, Germany, South Dakota, Vreschen-Bokel Germany
I spent the weekend that I planned to spend doing yard and house work instead by researching my Alexander branches. My beloved great-grandmother Dorothy was an Alexander and she was very proud of her name. She passed away last year but she left sets of wonderful journals and memories of an independent lady full of helpful anecdotes when you needed them most and stories of family and love. She really was amazing. She was the only older family member still living when I started researching our family tree and she was a wealth of remembered information.
When I was in 3rd or 4th grade I was in a gifted class in my elementary school and we were studying the Oregon Trail. I mentioned that my grandmother had traveled by covered wagon quite a bit and she was promptly invited to come speak to the class about her experiences. I remember when I walked her out that day I thought about what she’d seen and I almost cried. I was 10 or 12 years old people! But even then, the massive life she’d lead inspired me.
I could go to my Granny’s house and ask her about so-and-so in town and she’d remember. At different times in her life she was the old telephone operator here in town, the head cook at our high school (when both my mom and dad attended), and a cafe owner, the latter which gave her pride and meant that all the townspeople loved and adored her. She was the daughter in law of the last Sheriff our town had and she was the sister in law to the long-time town barber.
When talking over family with my Granny she always mentioned the man that went missing, left and never returned. His name was James Dorsey Alexander and he was born around 1911, probably right here in Pulaski County, as were his siblings. Her journal entries remind me that James “left his family March 16, 1935 and was never heard from again”. His children, I know from journal entries, were Bob, Shirley, and Dick, though I do not know his wife’s name.
My Granny always asked me to find James, who sometimes went by Dorsey. To be honest, while she was alive I never put my effort into that. I’m sure that occasionally I picked up his name and did a few quick searches but when someone wants to disappear, as it appears James did, they’re often hard to find, even with much more information than what I’ve got. That man could have went to one of any of our 50 states so finding him will be a chore.
The only information I could find yesterday was the 1930 census, which shows that in that year James (called Dorsey) was still living with his parents James L. and Nancy (Decker) Alexander in Laclede County, Auglaize Twnshp. Along with them lived his brothers, Barney and Emmett, and next door to them lived another brother, Ray, with his wife Floy (who my Granny loved and who I remember sitting on a proch swing with) and their children, Eunice, James, and Paul Alexander.
With just an approximate birthdate, I’m still searching for James Dorsey.
**
Another entry in my grandmother’s journals concerns the other side of her family, her mother’s side.
Tonty, his real name was John Carol, was born in Carrol County Arkansas. He told me he had a little brother to die on that trip from Tennessee and they buried him beside the road. Later he married Sidney Lawrence and they had five children. Jack died during the flu of WWI. Uncle Bob, John, Florence, and Virgie, who was my mother. Grandpa’s brothers were Lish, Perry, Hoston, Walter, Ed, Florence, and Green.
Grandma was a Lawrence. She had two brothers that left for Kansas and were never heard from again. She had a sister Nellie.
Granny had always asked me to see what I could find about these two men also. That’s my mission today. At one time I had their names but a quick census search should remind me.
Do you have missing family members? Are there any special tactics you used to find them? Has anyone ever had a happy ending to their missing ancestor story?
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Tags: alexander, genealogy, james dorsey, laclede county, lawrence, missouri, pulaski county
The other day I was reading an article in the Springfield News-Leader about a family researching their family history. The wife mentioned that in looking for our old ancestors everyone should remember that you’re bound to find that bad egg, the family member that no one wanted to talk about. I hate to admit this but without thinking too much in-depth about my own tree I sort of felt left out. I’ve done a lot of research over the years but honestly, I’ve never devoted too much time to any one person, with the exception of my German Kramer ancestors. I’ve been too engrossed in just filling in my branches. I’ve never just picked a name and researched that person to exhaustion. This is of course a goal, to fill in all those little branches with personal stories and biographies, but at this point, even after 5 years, my tree is still sparse.
I don’t have any outlaws I thought! But ah, I do! Not that this is a bragging point but it makes for a good story.
William Todd Power, better known as Bill, was the son of my gggg-grandfather, James Richard Powers. He was born in 1869 in the county in which I currently live and he was a famed member of the Dalton Gang.
{Check that fella out!}
The Dalton Gang is basically famous for a failed robbery of not one, but two banks. The members of the community surrounded and shot most of the gang members after the heist went bad and thus, they live on in Wild West history. Bill was shot and killed when the townspeople took up arms and was buried, along with Gratton and Robert Dalton, in Coffeyville, Kansas. Originally, no tombstone was allowed to be placed on the graves but later, one of the Dalton brothers placed a stone on the graves of the three.
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Tags: bill power, coffeyville, dalton gang, power, powers, william todd power
As I mentioned yesterday, there are many mysteries hidden in my family tree. There are the two relatives of my great-granny’s that left for Kansas and were never seen or heard from again. There is the question as to when and where my great-grandfather Bernhard died, even though I thought I’d had this one at least somewhat figured out for a good two or three years. And then there are larger mysteries. Not just twigs but whole branches with no beginning or end in my tree.
When I first started this genealogical journey I remember asking my dad about his father. He had never really talked about him before. His mother, my Granny Agnes was still alive but honestly, her sarcasm (which I now cherish) was hard for someone my age to understand and because of that we weren’t close. Plus, she obviously favored my sister . His father I’d never really heard about. There is but one picture of my grandfather Bernard in my parent’s home, a house full of walls of family photographs, lovingly framed and organized around the table in which we all now sit for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. I never got the impression that this was because Bernard, or Ben as he was called and for whom my brother was named after, was a bad man or a shitty father. It was just that Dad never talked about him. He died in 1976, when my dad was just 18, and it seemed like something he’d come to terms with long ago and maybe that my dad never understood him anyway. This made it all the more interesting to me of course and it gave me a way to connect with my dad.
I asked my dad for any information he could give me, a look at heirlooms and possessions of Ben’s, stories about him while my dad was growing up. My dad rolled his eyes no doubt and gave me very little for he has very little. There was the oh-so-mysterious Purple Heart, a hat my grandpa wore in the jungle during the war, and a few scant pictures. He remembered meeting my grandpa’s two brothers, Wally and Frank, at his dad’s funerals. But his grandpa and grandma’s names? Yeah right. He remembered that his grandpa was a butcher at the Chicago stockyards and that his family was German. This is what I got. It was all my dad knew.
While there are so many things I’ve learned from researching this side of my family, the most immediately pressing things I felt I should research was Ben’s military service. It was a huge part of my dad’s life — not only was his father a career military man, his mother was a lifelong civilian employee at the military hospital (we live very close to a large military base in the Midwest). At that point, I was certainly a novice but I started researching where I could.
The obvious best place to locate military records is the National Archives. Because we live in Missouri, this seemed easy to me considering that most of these records are house at the Archives in St Louis, just a few hours from my home. But as I wanted information pretty quick like and because I had no desire to travel that far with a small child who has a penchant for destroying my stacks of papers lying around with drawings, I used eVetrecs to request the records for my dad. Through my own fault of the fault of NARA, the records were not found through my initial 5 requests. Finally, after diligently requesting records for years, I got notice that NARA would be sending two gigantic envelopes with every record they had on my grandfather. The day they arrived was probably the greatest day of my research I’ve experienced yet. Pulling a giant envelope out of the mailbox, knowing what answers might lie inside, was absolutely exhilarating.
Little did I reckon, I can’t read a damn military record. As I’ve come to find out, even people who spent a lifetime in the military and study it as a pastime, have a hard time reading them as well. I frantically thumbed through the hundreds of pages of records looking for three things: mention of my grandfather’s Purple Heart, mention of where he might have served, and the names of my grandfather’s first son and his first wife.
The story I’d always been told (in bits and pieces) was this: my grandfather had served in WWII and Korea. In the latter war he was injured and a POW. He had a scar on his leg, evidence of a battle wound. It was said that he was either shot or had a stick of bamboo shoved through his leg. There was mention of the Bataan Death March but nobody knew for sure. During his early service my grandfather married and had a son — this was only mentioned ONCE and even then, my grandfather mentioned it while speaking to my dads 4th grade class. My dad had no idea he had an older half-brother but he never asked about it after that mention. My grandfather retired from his long career in the military on permanent disability due to his raging diabetes, something my grandmother always attributed to his time as a POW and his poor diet then.
These papers, however, did very little to answer my questions and in fact, only compounded them. There is mention of his first wife, Dorothy McKenna of Chicago, Illinois. There is mention of money being sent to his first son, Robert Neal Kramer, also of Chicago, even after my father was born in 1956, and even though my grandfather was then supporting my grandmother and five children. When my grandpa finally retired he received more than $2000 a month in pension from the VA.
But my questions about his service loomed large. There is but one mention of his Purple Heart — and it’s not mentioned on his official papers. There is mention of him being a military hospital for a while — the 229th General Hospital in Nagoya Japan — but really nothing else. The military sent along the medals to which he was entitled, medals my dad remembers from his childhood but did not possess. He remembers that at one time the Purple Heart, still in it’s original box, had “some other little pin with it” and that there was also a certificate. Those very necessary other bits have long since disappeared.
Military records are a maze of confusing terminology and dates and unit abbreviations. I’ve consulted with two different people who specialize in records and both were pretty mystified. The latter could find no indication that my grandfather had actually earned his Purple Heart or served in combat. I’ve searched for living Kramer family members who might remember something but the older ones directly related to my grandfather have passed away. His brother Walter died in a car crash in 1985 in Schaumburg Illinois and his other brother Frank died in Florida long ago. Both their wives have also passed. My grandfather’s mother, Elizabeth Wonderlin (the surname coming from her second marriage) died in 1952, before my dad was even born. I’ve spoken to Walter’s grandson but his mother was adopted and he knew nothing of my grandpa. I’ve looked for old war buddies but with such confusing unit assignments shown on the records it’s hard to pinpoint with whom he might have served. My grandfather helped to form what is now the American Legion Hall in my town (the men who started it each asked their wives for $100 a piece and raffled a donated car to build the building) and I’ve looked for men who were his friends here in town who might have a story or clue but only one is living — he remembers the Purple Heart and insists my grandpa earned it. Aside from that, my grandpa’s name does not turn up in NARA records for POWs (oddly, he was given three different serial numbers throughout his time in the service). In short, he is a phantom.
While I did not know my grandpa I know of his character through my father. That he would concoct a story about earning a Purple Heart and then deem it necessary to lie to the Army itself about said Purple Heart seems so very unlikely. I have no pictures of my grandfather in his uniform to verify he wore it — towards the end of his career he was an activities specialist, a SSgt at our base in Ft Leonard Wood, and most of the time dad says he didn’t wear clothing that resembled any sort of military garb. While my dad freely admits that he knows very little about his father and that it’s possible he might have embellished the story when he was little, all his brothers and sisters agree on the story. That a career military man, constantly roaming around bases and surrounding himself with other war veterans, would have the audacity to lie about such an honor seems impossible to me.
But at this point I have no proof, aside from the errant record listing the award. While there are so many mysteries in my tree, most of them concerning the Kramer side of my family, this is the one that haunts me the most.
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Tags: Kramer, military
Fairfax County, Virginia in 1760
I work at a local charity that supports, among other things, a domestic violence shelter and a food pantry. If ever one was granted their dream job, it is I. If someone had asked me to write up a job description for employment that would suit me perfectly, this is what I would have written:
Duties and responsibilities must include digging through boxes of possibly vintage and antique goods donated by grandchildren and great-grandchildren who, for some reason, have no attachment to the beautiful and meaningful things collected by their ancestors. Also, sorting through boxes of books deemed unneccessary by their previous owners.
That’s pretty much what I do. This is what I did before being hired for this job. I hit yard sales, I jumped in dumpsters (once, because I was too big to get in a dumpster my faithful charge, The Bug, got in for me a retrieved an old decorating book worth 80 bucks), I searched antique malls and flea markets, for goods to resale in an internet venue. I made an excellent happy living doing this. I’m amazed that was even possible. So you can imagine my amazement at finding out that someone, ANYONE, would HIRE me to do such a thing. Anyway, I digress…
Among the things that I sell is books on Amazon. From time to time I’m lucky enough to run across books that I probably wouldn’t ever buy because they don’t apply to my own research, but that are of some worth to others researching their families. Weird, hard to find books, most of the time. The other day I ran across Fairfax County, Virginia in 1760: An Interpretive Historical Map. Contained in the book are “maps” of the landholding and land-leasing residents of that historical county in 1760. For anyone with ancestors in this area, this would be a valuable resource. Let’s look at a Mr. Charles Broadwater. This book tells me Charles owned 1700 acres in Fairfax County and that he leased another 200 acres from Simon Pearson. He has 22 slaves in 1760. He owns three separate pieces of land, all of which he inherited. He has a tenant named William Harbin on 100 acres of this land. This book also contains information on ferries, mills, tobacco inspection warehouses, courthouses, and churches in this area.
If you’d like a lookup from this book, drop me a line. With all the lookups I’ve requested in Cook County, Chicago, and beyond, it’s only good genealogy karma for me to help…
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Tags: books, fairfax county, virginia
a post in which we meet…
I used to blog. Used to love it. But there was always a purpose. While I learned to sew not from a family member, but in high school, I only took up the past time as a way to connect with my roots and my great-grandmother. When that hobby took off as a business, the ol’ blog became a way to attract customers, keep people and friends up to date, blah blah blah. But as I let that business die, in favor of working instead for a non-profit, the blog died too. I’ve missed it but what I established and maintained for so long with that blog centered around something I was no longer doing so to change it around and make it something new seemed pointless. Plus, it’s nice to have something there that I can point to, examine whenever I like, and remember that part of my life.
Genealogy, particularly my own, is something that I only became interested in a few short years back. Actually, it feels like it was many many years ago but whatevs. What I’ve found since I started doing this more than five years ago now is that one, my family is mysterious and seemingly lived their lives in a way that would make it hard for obsessive complusive future generations to locate (hell, even NAME) them, and two, I’m the youngest person I know or have ever encountered that is interested in their personal heritage. The latter is not something I ever notice but it certainly makes having conversations with my friends about this hobby of mine that takes up such a large chunk of my free time, well…weird. There’s a glaze in their gaze when I go on and on about towns in Germany that no longer exist or ancestors that founded hot springs.
Over the past five or so years I’ve kept a log, a sort of genealogy journal, detailing things I find and want to write down for posterity so that one day when that old connection I no longer remember might solve a mystery. This here blog is my attempt at putting that out in the world, not only to connect with others so interested in heritage, but that hopefully one day, some distant relation will send me a thank you note for clearing up our ancestry and doing all the work for them. I wish someone had done that for me…
As I mentioned, my family is mysterious. On my mother’s side I am lucky enough to have the journals of my great-grandmother and her father. My Granny Dorothy, as she was always known to us, was alive until just a few short years ago and I was lucky enough to learn most of what I know about her family directly from the horse’s mouth. That woman was a wealth of knowledge when it came to not just our own family, but the families of so many that live in the town in which I reside and in which she grew up and never left. Her and my great-great-grandfather’s journals are an amazing repository of birthdates, historical happenings, weather news, and personal anecdotes about trips and the history of our region. It’s a truly amazing thing to have and it got me far when delving into that side of the family.
My father’s side…sweet Jesus, my dad’s side of the family. My dad’s dad was quiet I suppose. He was a career military man (who, by the way, never spoke of his war service) who moved around a lot in the service and didn’t keep close contact with his immediate family. Add to that that his parents and older brother immigrated to Chicago in 1912 from Germany, a country which I initially knew NOTHING about, and that adds up to a brick wall that would rival the shit they have in China. My dad’s father died during my dad’s senior year, long before I was born, and my dad never thought to ask questions. It took me 3 and a half years to finally get his service records (which I still suffer figuring out and translating). It took me four years to find his mother’s maiden name. It took me five years to discover how and when she died and finally, where she was buried. My father mentioned once that his dad made note of another son he’d had long before my dad was born…but never gave a name and never spoke of it again. I just found that half-brother a few months ago. And just a few days back, with the help of a lovely man who is translating the parish records of a church in the town in which my great-grandfather was born, I found a further generation to my dad’s family. A Kramer, born in 1856 in Ostfriesland Germany. It took me 4 years to find my dad’s two uncles, both deceased, and the closest thing he has to a cousin, who I was lucky enough to speak to on the phone.
Every once in a while I take a break from the German mysteries and delve into my mother’s side but the farther back I get I encounter brick after brick there as well. It’s been a journey…and one I feel I should write at the very least a little something about. I’m saving and planning for a trip to small towns in Germany, where my family came from. And little by little I’m learning German (Guten Abend!).
This consumes a large part of my time. My mother is interested in what I find occasionally and my father mostly looks at me with blank stares. Granted, he’s listened to me ramble since I was a wee lass and people, I ramble A LOT, so I don’t blame him. I get on kicks. I’ll get frustrated and give up for a month or so but more often that not, you can find me scouring any and all records I can in search of my ancestors, my kin as we’d call it where I’m from.
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Tags: family
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