What's in a Name, Part Two

In my previous entry on What's in a Name, I pondered the difficulties in identifying who your ancestors were when a John would go by Ray or a Jennie by Maude.  Eventually, I sorted things out and expanded things to search both names.  I have since been floundering my way through even more name difficulties, some of which I understand and some of which leave me totally perplexed and clueless. 

For example, I totally get families Americanizing their names when they immigrated here from other countries.  I have no problems seeing how a Wilhelm becomes William, Johan becomes John, or Jung becomes Young.  That all kind of makes sense to me.  I can also understand how someone might be listed in census forms under a nickname, especially children, making Wilhelmina into Minnie and Martha into Mattie.  Eventually, with persistance, you get enough information and things make sense.

My recent research, however, makes me wonder how certain decisions regarding names are made by those who possess them.  What makes one half of the family go one way and the other half go another?  I recently moved to working on a different branch of my family tree after I had gotten back 4-5 generations on the branch I was working on.  With the exception of some of the above mentioned name issues, typically resulting from nicknames or Americanizing names, I cruised along without any real issues. 

So I opened this new branch and imported from my main tree the relevant people and merged them.  Everything was nice and smooth through my paternal great-grandparents.  I mean, I was born and raised a Palmer, my dad was born and raised a Palmer, my grandpa was born and raised a Palmer, and I knew my great-grandmother, who became a Palmer upon her marriage to my great-grandfather (how she went from being Carolina to Lena, which is the name on her tombstone, is another matter entirely and one I still haven't a clue about.)  So I was pretty confident in my Palmerness.

Until I was trying to track down my great-great-grandparents, John and Sarah.  I have the information on their marriage (1850 in Indiana).  Only thing is, John is listed as John Parmer, not John Palmer.  But everything else is the same so I'm confident it's the right person.  And, sure enough, I find them living with John's parents in the 1850 census, taken less than a month after their marriage.  Listed, as I expected, as Palmers.  As are John's parents, Joseph and Ruth (although the hard to read census had Ruth transcribed as Auther). 

1860 has them listed as Parma (way off base and put down to a mistranscription of Parmer).  His 1863 Civil War Draft Registration lists both John and his brother Isaih as Palmer.  Still a Palmer in the 1870 and 1880 federal censuses, as well as the 1885 and 1895 Iowa censuses.  In fact, John and Sarah were both still listed as Palmers in 1900 and 1905.  They were rather elderly by then and when I couldn't find them anywhere in the 1910 census, I surmised that they died sometime between 1905 and 1910.  So why couldn't I find them in a cemetery anywhere around where they spent the last 30+ years of their life. 

Because they are buried as John and Sarah Parmer.  All of the information I have matches these tombstones, including birth and death dates.  It is also the local cemetery to the small town, Delmar, where they lived.  It is also the same cemetery where their son, my great-grandfather, is buried.  As a Palmer.  Some of their children are buried here as Palmers and some are buried here as Parmers.  Why the difference?  Why be listed in almost every place I've looked as Palmer (including the reference to Sarah's death in the Iowa death records for 1906, matching the date on her tombstone) and then have Parmer on your tombstone?

I'm still working on John's father, Joseph, who appears to be predominately listed as Parmer, with the odd listing as Palmer (as in the 1850 census).  I've managed to verify his identity and his wife, as well as the listing of their children, including John.  The locations all match, the dates all match, but that last name keeps bouncing around.  So I'll keep digging.  And wondering how half a family chose Palmer and the other half went with Parmer.

When my oldest sister read this, she sent me the following:  

"You know, it's interesting that you found that. I actually went to school with a Parmer and somehow that got mentioned to Dad and he told me that at one time, Parmer & Palmer were the same family and then it split off, one going with Palmer and the other with Parmer. I want to say it was originally Parmer but there was some dispute and someone went off and pouted, determined not to be associated with "that bunch", but that's all the detail he gave me (or that I remember). I'm guessing that a lot of it had to do with penmanship and the hand written records. The family starts as Parmer, but somewhere along the line someone took the r for an l and it stuck. Who knows. Regardless of how old I may be, that was WAY before my time."

Scandanavian? Who knew??

So I finally got the results of the Ancestry.com DNA test I did recently.  And I found the results to be quite interesting and not really what I expected at all.  Since what I have discovered during my research shows that 1) most branches of my family have been here in the US for generations; 2) most of those branches seem to have originated somewhere in the British Isles, predominantly England, with the odd Irish or Scottish ancestor; and 3) most of the branches that are not British in origin were Germanic, I was a little surprised by what the results revealed.

My results showed merely a 43% genetic British Isles ethnicity, which was lower than I expected.  What really surprised me was that following right behind that, with a 42% genetic ethnicity, was Scandanavian.  Huh?  Scandanavian?  What the heck?  I have not traced anyone to Scandanavian countries, at least not back the 200-300 years, I've mostly managed.  I did hit Switzerland once, but that's not Scandanavian.  However, it turns out that if your ancestors are from the British Isles, you are definitely likely to show Scandanavian ethnicity, thanks to those marauding Vikings, the wandering Goths (Sweden), and the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (Denmark).  Some, such as the Goths, Angles, and Saxons, made their way to England from Germany.

So I'm guessing that a combination of invasions by Scandanavians into Germanic regions, followed by later invasions of those peoples into the British Isles, and the original Viking and Jute invasions, lead to that large amount of Scandanavian ancestry that I had no idea about.  It also probably explains the lack of central European ethnicity I expected to find with the German ancestors I've identified.  I admit, however, that I am still a little perplexed by the 8% Southern European DNA identified, which indicates Italy, Spain, and Portugal.  I definitely haven't identified anyone to account for that.

If you've been adding up percentages, you'll find that there is still 7% that is unaccounted for.  Right now, it's listed as "Unknown".  Ancestry.com tells me that  "This means that small traces of a specific genetic population have been found in your DNA, but the probability levels were too low to pinpoint it to a specific ethnicity. This is not uncommon, and as more genetic signatures are discovered with a higher confidence level, we may be able to update this ‘uncertain’ percentage of your ethnicity over time."

I'm anxious to see how the results are updated as more and more people do the test.  I'd kind of like to know what my unknown portions are.  I am a bit disappointed that Ancestry hasn't found anyone more closely related to me than a 5th or 6th cousin at this point.  It would be interesting to discover an unknown relative or two.

Success!!!!

or I found them!!

I have been searching endlessly for my great-great-grandmother's family, who came to America from Germany when she was a baby.  I knew the approximate date (around 1859), I knew the Americanized versions of their names (her father was listed in an 1860 census as Christopher Young, his wife as Catherine), the names and approximate ages of the three children that they'd emigrated with but kept spinning my wheels and getting nowhere.  Using the transcribed ship's manifests of ships arriving in the US from Germany (http://immigrantships.net/bremenproj/bremenproject.html), I searched all the ships arriving from Germany in 1858 and 1859, all to no avail.

I don't know what made me give up on trying to locate the ship they came in on but after going through ship's manifests again tonight, I decided to take a different approach.  I went back to Family Search (https://familysearch.org/), and browsed through to the German resources.  It's easy to miss this option on the landing page because the search boxes are featured so prominantely but if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you can browse geographically.  Once I got to Germany, I selected the records for German births and took the name of my great-great-grandmother's brother as the least likely to have changed a lot.  Let's face it, Wilhelm may become William, but Phillip pretty much stays Phillip. 

Since I knew his approximate date of birth, I narrowed it down and almost immediately hit on Phillip Jung, born on Jan 1, 1856 (I had an approximate date of 1855) to Christoph Jung and Katharina Knauf.  I opened a new tab and searched with just the last name of Young with parents Christoph Jung and Katharina Knauf and there they all were.  Wilhelm, Phillip, and Elisabeth (who I had spelled Elizabeth), all born at pretty much when I had them in my records.  I had Elisabeth as being born on 15 Dec 1858 and her christening record listed 13 Dec 1957, which explains the discrepancy in her age in the 1860 census.  She was listed as being 2 and would have only been a year and a half if she had been born in December of 1858.  I also discovered that there had been an older brother, Andreas, born in Feb. 1849.  Since I knew he wasn't listed as being enumerated with the family in 1860, I did a search for him and discovered he died in Jan. 1850.  Poor little guy didn't even make his first birthday.

With this information, I was able to dig deeper and found the marriage date for Christoph and Katharina in 1847.  That information also netted me both sets of their parents - Konrad Jung and Anna Elisabetha Hofmann for Christoph and Jacob Knauf and Elisabetha Steiz for Katharina.  I was so happy and excited to find this information, I literally had tears of joy running down my face.  This particular branch on my tree had me completely blocked.  I had everyone else on that particular offshoot (my paternal grandmother's side) traced back a generation beyond Christopher and Catherine.  Now I've filled that in and feel like I can, once again, move forward.  I think I might be ready to tackle my paternal grandfather's side now!  My goal is to get all four grandparents to at least that level before continuing onward.

Battling Passenger Lists

I took time off today from indexing the 1940 US Census (mainly for Iowa, although I've done other states) and Ohio Marriage Records to scan through several hundreds of pages of New York Passenger Lists.  I'm still trying to locate when my 3rd great-grandfather and his family, including my 2nd great-grandmother, arrived in this country from Germany.  I know it was 1959, as my 2nd great-grandmother was born in 1858, in Germany, and I found them in the 1860 US census.  Since she was born in Dec., I decided to start at the end of 1859 and work backwards.  I've made it back to Nov. 12 without discovering them.  I did discover, however, that it seems like a lot of people from Ireland, Scotand, and Great Britain arrived between then and Dec. 31.

Searching various passenger lists by variations on the name Young (Jung, Junge, Yung, Yunge, etc.) for 1859 has thus far gotten me nowhere, which is why I've resorted to scanning the images.  I have basic ages and my research thus far has lead me to believe that they all emigrated together as a family.  So I'm scanning passenger lists, focusing on the ages of the passengers, looking for children under the age of 10, which is what the family group consisted of at that time.  Hopefully, I'll eventually be successful.  I now that not all immigrants came in through New York but the vast majority of them did so it seemed a logical starting point.

In other news, I find that I'm really enjoying the indexing I've been doing.  So far, I haven't come across anyone that I "know" but I'm finding it really interesting to see the various family groupings. The age differences in marriages can be fascinating.  Here's a couple where the husband is 15 years older than the wife and here's a couple where the wife is a decade older than the husband.  I also find it interesting when someone is listed as married but their spouse is not listed at the same address.  I've also encountered a couple of different "households" where the occupants were all listed as Partners, usually at least 3 or 4.  I haven't qute figured that one out yet.

Indexing

I guess I had just never looked carefull at the sites before but this weekend I discovered that you can volunteer and do indexing of records for both Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.com.  Maybe it's just the geek (and librarian?) in me that finds this so exciting!  And there's a small part of me, the one that's been looking at indexed documents to build my source files on my family tree and thinking "How on earth could someone have transcribed that information so poorly?", that is sure I can do better.  At any rate, I'm at least willing to give it a try.

I looked at all the projects FamilySearch had going, paying particular attention to what might be available for Iowa.  I was thrilled to note that the available projects included the 1940 US Federal Census for the state.  I downloaded the necessary software, all set to spend some of my Sunday indexing. Unfortunately, when I tried to install the downloaded  indexing software from FamilySearch, I couldn't get the installer to work.  Every time I tried to run it, it would go so far and then give me a white square with a red x in it and my only option was to click OK.  I fired off an email to them for assistance and then went over to Ancestry.com to see if they also used volunteers for indexing.

Sure enough, when I looked more closely under the Collaborate tab, I found out that they do.  I downloaded the necessary software (not a hitch with the downloading or installation of this one), read some help files, and then went to select a project to download a batch of files from.  Ancestry.com doesn't have as many open projects going as Family Search seems to (and none of the available were related to Iowa), so I picked United States, Spanish American War Volunteers, 1899-1927 and downloaded my first batch of records to transcribe.  This project is actually extremely easy, consisting of transcribing (or "keying" as they call it), the rank (and any other prefixes), first and surname, company, and regiment (might have those terms a little off since I don't have it available here on this computer), the state, and any aliases (mostly just variations in given or surname) for the individual.  Each record only contains one individual and a batch contains 10 records, so it moves very quickly.

I admit that I felt a thrill when I submitted my first batch of keyed records.  Who knows, maybe someday I'll find out that one of my relatives served in this war by searching the dataset once it's completely indexed.  I love the idea that I'm helping make valuable resources, the things that let us investigate and build the stories of the lives of our ancestors.  Again, I'm not sure if that's just my inner geek peeking through or the my inner (and outer) librarian rejoicing in the advancement of research resources!

After I'd done a few sets from the Spanish American war project, I decided I'd be daring and selected the "Select a project for me" link and let Ancestry determine what project I'd get a batch of records from.  The next thing I knew, I had a batch of records from the Kansas City and County Census, 1919 - 1978 before me.  Looking at these images, I immediately took back every negative thing I'd ever thought about someone transcribing census data and getting it wrong.  Because these records were *much* more difficult to read than the Spanish American war records had been.  Mostly due to the quality of the scanned images.  Luckily, the software allows you to do some manipulation of brightness and contrast, which helped in that regard.  Handwriting is another issue altogether!

I had already been known to comment that they should have made anyone who was going to do census enumeration take (and pass!) a handwriting exam.  Working with this batch of records did not change my opinion on that one whit!  Still, I reviewed the available information on reading handwriting and ventured forth.  As opposed to my Spanish American war records, each record in this set contained up to 20 lines with names and information to key in.  I hung in there and before I knew it, I'd completed all ten of my records for the township of Langdon, county of Reno, state of Kansas, from the 1 of March, 1948 (which I totally couldn't make out the ending year on the date and only discovered after I'd submitted my records that I'd dated them all wrong by using 1945 as the date).  Which is one reason why every record set is keyed by two different people and then goes through the arbitration process.

This morning, I was thrilled to discover that I had an email addressing the issue I had with the FamilySearch installation.  I followed the included instructions (essentially, I just needed to run the installer as administrator) and the installation went off without a hitch.  I then watched the introductory video that was available and read the indexing guidelines.  I have downloaded my first set of records (for the 1940 US Federal Census for Iowa) but had to leave for work before I'd had a chance to do more than transcribe the first line of the record.

So now I will be balancing my own researching with providing volunteer indexing at the above two sites.  I admit, I'm looking forward to having my records go through arbitration so I can see how accurate I am and where I need to improve! 

Reorganization

The other day I decided that my tree was getting very unwieldy as it continued to grow. So I made a decision to create a series of trees, each focusing on a different "branch" of the family, beginning each with a grandparent. Since I had no idea what I was doing when I started (and really, pretty much still don't'), I'm pretty much trying to start over and document everything. No more assuming that what I find on other people's trees at Ancestry.com has been researched and is accurate.

Doing this has led to a greater knowledge and appreciation of some of my great and great-great aunts and uncles. Yesterday I learned that my second great grand uncle (that is the relationship to me that Ancestry gives him. I would call him my great great uncle) was bludgeoned to death with a crowbar in 1949. Before I started this research, I had no idea that this man even existed, let alone that he'd been brutally murdered in his home when he was 75. As far as I've been able to find, the case was never solved. It was attributed to a robbery and although they once had two men in custody for it (including a "relative of the victim"), they were released when lie dectector tests cleared them.

Maybe I watch too many crime shows on tv because what really intrigued me when I was looking for newspaper stories was that fact that a "close friend" and neighbor of his was fished out of a river the day after great-great uncle Oscar was murdered. Part of me can't help wondering if the two are somehow related. Was the drowning also a result of foul play? Did the neighbor somehow see or witness something he shouldn't have? Was he somehow complicit in the attack on Oscar and couldn't live with himself afterwards? And the part that lives in 2012 and is well aware of the violence that can be perpetrated on people with alternative lifestyles even today wonders if Oscar, who never married, was perhaps gay.

Was the "close friend" perhaps a lover? He was missing from the time Oscar was beaten until his body was pulled from the river the day after Oscar died (three days after the attack). By all accounts, Oscar was fairly reclusive, retired to bed early and padlocked his door. The sheriff did not believe he would have opened the door for someone he didn't know. More disturbing, in my mind, is the fact that he was found wearing only a shirt and socks. What happened to the rest of his clothes? If this were TV, somehow I could have the case reopened by the cold case squad and they would have it solved by the end of the hour. I guess I just wonder about the absolute brutality that seems to be involved if it was nothing more than a simple robbery. But then, I guess you never know what might go awry in even the simplest of plans by thieves.

In any case, Uncle Oscar, I hope you had some enjoyment in your life before it was so brutally ended. If you were gay, I'm sorry you lived in a time where such things were kept hidden and deemed an embarassment. Everyone deserves love in their life, no matter where it comes from. So if you weren't gay, I hope you experienced love at some point.

What's In a Name?

In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet proclaims ""What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." While that might be true, names can complicate research when you're trying to track down family members in various official sources. I've come to find out that the names we know people by are not necessarily the names we're going to find them under.

Take my great-grandparents on my mother's side, for instance. John Jay and Jennie Maude are, evidently, the names they were given at birth. However, in records they are inevitably found as Jay and Maude. (In an aside, I spent years trying to figure out why someone named Jennie would go by Maude if given a choice. I'm now willing to bet it's because her mother was named Jennie and it was to avoid confusion.) My own grandfather, John Raymond, never went by anything other than Raymond. This name confusion can make people difficult to track down.

The issue becomes even more confusing if you find the same person listed in different years under different names. Trying to track down the above mentioned John Jay's brother, I have no idea if his name was actually Lewis Frederick or Frederick Lewis. I've found him as Lewis F, Fred L, and Frederick L. Once the person gets married or moves out of the family home, I've yet to determine how you're supposed to be certain you've found the right one.

So while a rose might smell as sweet no matter what you call it, if you're looking for Romeo in your family tree, it helps to know that he's a Montague. And that his parents sometimes called him Fred.