Broken Wings: Finding George Remus

A few weeks ago, while attending a festival in my Mother's hometown, Falmouth, we stopped in to Riverside cemetery to "visit" with my grandparents. As we paid our respects, I realized it was just daylight enough to go scoundrel hunting. About a year ago, I was watching Ken Burns' series Prohibition. As the story unfolded, he covered a chapter of history I had only vaguely heard stories about: prohibition and the Cincinnati area. I knew the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area had been a hotbed of illegal activity that began with the prohibition era, but I had never heard of its king: George Remus. In a stunning footnote to history, it turns out George was buried in the same cemetery as my grandparents, despite his life and death in the Cincinnati/Covington areas. Burns also noted that locals remembered his stone because it contained angels, whose wings were ripped off shortly after he was buried there. This was something I had to see for myself.

In very short order, we found him. It wasn't hard at all since the cemetery isn't that large. Plus, I can count on one hand the number of stones that contain any type of statue. Based on the date of his death, I knew he had to be in the older portion of the cemetery, and with the "angels" clue, we found him within a few minutes of driving around. And sure enough, the wings were missing.

The stone itself marks a joint plot containing George, his third wife, Blanche Watson, and two individuals from Blanche's family: Belle and J. Taylor Watson. Based on the life dates of Belle and J. Taylor, I'm guessing this may be Blanche's parents (Belle: 1854-1938 & J. Taylor: 1846-1889)

So, looking at the stone as a joint product, I tried to link up a timeline of its construction. Based on the style of the stones, it was not something from the 1880s when J. Taylor died, nor did it appear to be contemporary to the 1950s when George died. However, taking the death date of Belle into consideration, I'm guessing the stone was nearer to her death date of 1938, when George and Blanche were already a married couple.

I also noticed that the individual burial locations based on gender had been switched. In most cases, the husband is planted first, on the left, and the wife on the right. Here we have George and Blanche correct, but Belle and J. Taylor are switched to place Belle and Blanche next to each other. This is not completely unheard of, but solidifies a close bond between the women. Ironically, in the newer part of the cemetery, my grandparents pulled the same switcheroo so my grandmother and her sister could be buried next to one another without displacing their spouses. Of course, even this switch is odd because if J. Taylor was the first to be interred in 1889, Blanche and George did not even know each other at the time. Perhaps the arrangement was made sentimentally at an earlier date? Conjecture on my part - but all things must be considered when analyzing burial placement. Of course, it goes without saying: wouldn't we also love to know who ripped the wings off? If it was done prior to Blanche's death in 1974, as the reports say, why didn't she have them repaired? Unless she knew that was a useless waste of money.

If the monument itself is a product of 1938, this speaks volumes as to George's last years. These years are something that has begun to intrigue me a bit. Of all the things written about George, his bootlegging, prison time, and murder of his second wife (without prison time for the murder), very little has been written of his years after prohibition. The last 20 years or so are relegated to postscripts - most concur that he attempted to rebuild his fortune, through business and liquor sales, etc., but they all conclude that he failed in his attempt and lived out the rest of his years in obscurity, dying at his home in Covington. But, how obscurely did he live, and to what extent did he really fail?

According to other reports, he had a nice real estate office in Cincinnati, and even owned stock in the Reds baseball team. From what I remember of Burns' production, it was the liquor part that failed on the second go round. I'm assuming the rest of his business was lucrative, at least to provide comfortable means. Let's just assume that the stone itself, in all its elaborate design serves as proof that George did have a decent size fortune. After all, the rest of Blanche's family plot does not match this opulence. The surrounding Watson stones are modest to say the least - very small indeed. Which brings me to the conclusion that the statue was a product of George's money, not Blanche's.

If you ever get the time, you should read up on George. It is a fascinating story. As a young German immigrant (age 5), he was later known as the King of the Bootleggers, and also got away with murder after shooting his second wife, Imogene, in cold blood up at Eden Park. Seriously, a rather twisted guy. Legend has it that Fitzgerald based his Great Gatsby character on Remus after meeting him at the Seelbach Hotel in Louisville (legend light on documentation) - but you get the idea about this guy's lavish and brazen lifestyle.

I also found it worth note that his change in professional venue from Chicago to Cincinnati, during the height of prohibition, was not just based on the overly crowded and protected territory under Capone, but on the German friendly population of Cincinnati that was already adept at producing a crap ton of liquor. Those family ties folks - remain strong in crime as well as genealogy.

As a postscript to my own family history - George's link to Falmouth has intrigued me even more. When I heard about the prolific nature of liquor production in Northern Kentucky, during and after prohibition, I suspected my great-grandfather's German immigrant family had a part in this profession. They were always listed as farmers in the census, but the family tradition of wine production is cemented with family artifacts related to said endeavor. One court record even relates the story of accused slander during a wine sale gone wrong - in Covington.

The family's wine production is a subject I hope to research more, but it's hard to research a profession purposefully veiled in secrecy. One clue that keeps me hot on the trail is a picture from 1935 - just after prohibition. My great aunt and uncle (brother and sister) sitting on the hoods of their matching brand new cars. By legal profession, he was a farmer, and she was a domestic servant in Cincinnati. During the depression, this was a highly unusual purchase for their legal circumstances. 1935 was during the time when Remus was trying to rebuild his liquor empire - with the Falmouth/German connection, did they know the Watson family and work for Remus? I highly doubt it - but Remus was known for a complex network of "connections" to supply his inventory - and he was well known for paying them quite handsomely. I guess I have some more research to do!

52 Ancestors #1: Aunt Rose

My first post in the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge belongs to my Great Great Aunt Rose Beyersdoerfer Pangburn. I never met Aunt Rose, but she holds a special place in my heart, which I will get to in a moment. For now, here is her profile:



Name: Rose A. Beyersdoerfer
Born: August 16, 1888
Died: ?
Father: John Beyersdoerfer Sr.
Mother: Emma Fleeman (Fliehmann)
Spouse: Emery Pangburn (1885-1976) - Married in 1914
Lived: Foster, Bracken County, Kentucky

What I know about Aunt Rose: I know she was the sibling of a pretty large family - about 7 siblings. She was the oldest daughter, but not the oldest child. The oldest child in the family was my Great Grandfather, John Jr. I know she was born in Bracken County and settled there with her husband Emery. I know she had at least two children: Elma and Virginia. I recently found out that her husband worked for the railroad and that she was listed as a homemaker.

What I don't know about Aunt Rose: Quite a lot. I was surprised to learn that I never recorded her death date. Nor am I quite sure where she is buried. I suspect she is buried in Lenoxburg Cemetery with many of her family members, but this gives me another person to look for when I head up there next time. She needs a good search just focused on her....many sibling lines get neglected too many times among my branches.

Anecdotes related to Aunt Rose:
The photo seen above is one of a tiny pair developed from a booth - an ancient selfie. The other side of the pair is this photo here with Aunt Rose in the back, with her younger sister Celia (called Ceely by family) in the lower right hand side, and a friend, Velma Morford (Mofford) on the left. According to family lore (My Great Grandmother Nellie Cox Beyersdoerfer), Velma was a dear family friend who was favored by the sisters to marry my Great Grandfather John Jr. - Therefore, Nellie couldn't stand her! Nellie got her man, but never forgot about Velma's favored place in the family - she even cut her photo out of a group shot one time - oooh, ancestor drama!!

The reason I feel a little drawn to Aunt Rose is this photo of her as a very young woman. It is probably my very favorite photo in the collection. The original is no bigger than a postage stamp, but I have enlarged it many times and have one such copy hanging in my office at KHS. The time frame is near to the sinking of the Titanic, and with the size of that hat, and the name Rose, I couldn't help thinking she looked as glamorous as the famous Rose of the movie Titanic. Even though she was a humble farmer's daughter, she certainly knew how to glam it up! I wish I knew what color the hat was as I'm sure it would rival any derby hat today!
Sure wish I could have known Aunt Rose, but I'm looking forward to learning more about her as my research grows.

The 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is a blogging prompt for each week of 2014 and created by Amy Johnson Crow of No Story Too Small.

Spreading the 1940 Census Hype!

I have been sorely remiss about fulfilling my 1940 Blog Ambassador duties, but I have an excuse.....I've been very busy filling that responsibility over at the History Burgoo blog site for KHS. As some of that activity tapers down to a slower pace, and as we all wait for April 2nd, I find myself mulling over some questions and tips that might be helpful as we get towards C-Day (Census Day).

1. Audience: I have been so focused on my genealogy friends and acquaintances, that I had been forgetting about my general friends and family. We all work or live in a world where you know the genealogically receptive people in your sphere, and usually censure your conversations accordingly - while I love to tell non-genealogists stories, I know their eyes will glaze over immediately if I slip into source citation or pedigree recitations. But recently, while attending a family funeral, I was checking myself, and letting the census info fly! It was kind of liberating, but we need to remember that the closer April 2nd gets here, the more we can hype this to our general friends and family! I am now making it a point to use this as a conversation starter regardless of the audience. Hopefully we'll snag some younger folks permanently into the world of genealogy/family history!

2. Questions: As excited as I am about this event, there are many questions that remain:

I'm not concerned about finding my family in the NARA images. I know which family units were rural and therefore easily findable. I also know which family units were young nomads in big cities, so I'm content with waiting on the index for them.

Some of us are concerned about image viewing on the 2nd - will it be able to support all of us? Word from Archives.com is that the system was designed to hold 25,000 viewers at one time. Ok, I guess this will test the volume of genealogy users - take note industry - this could be VERY interesting!

Then, how about the index? I am already signed up and have been indexing regular records as well the 1940 simulation batches to be prepared. But we are still not clear on how the batches will be released for the real 1940 census. On what date will the first batches be ready? Which batches will be ready first? At RootsTech, FamilySearch hinted that larger population states, such as New York would be released first.....but since so many things have changed since then, we're not sure if that is true anymore. If it is, what is the state release schedule going to be like? Also, I've had patrons ask if they can index their county - which would be great since FamilySearch was wanting "community experts" to be involved for the best accuracy possible - but we have not heard if county level batches will be available - somehow I doubt it.

Alternate indexing entities: So we know that Ancestry and MyHeritage are joining in the hype by advertising that they too will have an index. However, they have not revealed how or when this will happen. We know they will not have advance access to the images - they will get them the same time FamilySearch and the rest of the gang gets them to start our volunteer indexing projects. So who will index for Ancestry and MyHeritage? Since they have not called for volunteers and did not join up with the group that will be coordinating the massive nation-wide indexing project, I'm very curious as to how they will get this done, and who will be doing their indexing. FamilySearch advertised that they want community experts to volunteer so the interpretation of writing/surnames can be the most accurate. Yet, Ancestry and MyHeritage are not asking for any such thing. MyHeritage has even advertised that they will guarantee a 98% accuracy rate. Hmmmm, exactly how will that be achieved? As a company whose headquarters is across the ocean - I hope they will not be using non-US folks to do the indexing. The same goes for Ancestry - I hope these two companies are not planning on outsourcing their indexing just to get it done faster. I really think both companies should put out some disclosure on this aspect of their indexing model. Either way, I know who will be indexing through the community project - good ole local Americans who look at these records or hear these surnames everyday - which is why - the only index I'm going to trust once finished is the collaborative edition that we have all worked on together! (the1940census.com)

3. Homework: And so, I am still sorely behind on gathering my addresses for the people I want to find. I am not concerned about the rural farmers who lived in the same area for decades - they will be right where I left them in the 1930 census. But, since it is important to take a family inventory of who would have been alive in 1940, and narrow down our location to have the enumeration district numbers ready for April 2nd.....here are just a few of the people I will be looking for, and the challenges associated with each.

Uncle Myron and Aunt Anna Beyersdoerfer (brother and sister) - due to the questions raised by this photo in 1935, I will be VERY interested in their incomes listed and residences in 1935 versus 1940. Anna may be hard to find since she was listed in a few different residences in Cincinnati at the time - but I will find her eventually. For more info about why I am curious, see one of my earliest blog posts: Looking at Anna.

The Pace siblings: Nomadic group of brothers and sisters who did travel quite a bit in the Ohio and Kentucky areas due to work circumstances. Also, sisters all married, so need to find all the surnames, etc. This group alone will take some digging to have all of my info ready for searching each one.

The Pace childrens' Mama: Fannie Pace Cottle. I know roughly where she was living, but some of the supplemental answers on the Census will give me significant information about a woman I never had the pleasure of meeting.

My Paternal Grandparents: Charles and Bessie Daniels. Still living in the heart of downtown Cincinnati for 1940, but I need to ask my Dad where he thinks they were living at the time, because this side of the family, despite having moved around a lot over the years, still had this uncanny ability to point out every little spot they ever resided to proudly pass on that info to the next generation.

Speaking of Dad: He was born in 1939, so I think he would have looked just like this when the Census was taken :-)

Maternal Grandparents: Roy and Freida Watts: The boys in the middle here were not yet born, but the parents were fairly young newlyweds in 1940, possibly still living in Covington, since they hadn't fulfilled Pappa's dream of farm ownership until after the War. They might prove to be a bit elusive. 

Maternal Great Grandparents: John & Nellie Beyersdoerfer. On their Pendleton County farm in 1940 with probably only a couple of their kids still in the house.....but since "Ma" was known for feeding homeless ("hobos") men from the back porch during the depression, I will be interested to see what kind of income level a small family farm would have been bringing in at the time.

Anyway, these are the groups I'll be starting with - get busy everyone - it's almost here!

C

Here's a bit of fun from the Stooges as they take the 1940 Census :-) The first few minutes are priceless....."Are you married or happy?"

Sepia Saturday - Family Travels

For this week's Sepia Saturday, the theme of travel or place was a welcome suggestion. When deciding which photos to post, a family pattern emerged. It turns out that one side of my family has been very travel savvy over the generations, while the other side was full of home bodies. The photo to the left is typical of my mother's side of the family. Kentucky farmers who loved posing with the cars, but hated traveling very far away. These two young men (Roy Watts and Bill Beyersdoerfer - brothers-in-law) were quite the road devils in the 1930s. They loved racing around the curving hillsides of Pendleton County Kentucky and "driving up closely to the bumper of an old couple's car to honk" their horn for a good laugh. Throughout the rest of their lives, they maintained this close relationship to each other and the roads. Roy remained addicted to taking leisurely Sunday drives, just to "go" somewhere and view his neighbors crops, while Bill complained of the slowness of "old" drivers when he was in his advanced 80s. I can imagine these two still racing the roads of heaven together as they did when first forming their friendship so long ago. The remaining images are a sampling of family travels from my father's side of the family.

The woman on the right is my great grandmother, Ruth Elizabeth Schilling Daniels. I have no idea where this is or whether these ladies went up in the plane, but Ruth was from the Ohio/Indiana areas, so that will have to be our default location for the time being.

Here is another photo from the Klondike Gold Rush collection. Someone on the Daniels/Schilling side of the family must  have been enormously adventurous to travel this great distance for the small possibility of finding gold! This mode of travel in that area is also the subject of another interesting point of trivia. These boats were often dissected once arriving at their location to provide building material for the shacks that housed the miners.

Grandpa Charles Daniels traveled extensively while serving in the military. He not only served in both the Pacific and European theatres during WWII, but took his entire family with him to live in France while he was stationed there during the Korean War. This is a view of his corner of Paris during WWII.

Grandpa Charles, celebrating the end of WWII in Marseilles, France (Front right) - would love to have tasted that bottle of French Champagne!

A piece of travel ephemera from Charles' collection - his ship assignment from 1943.

Before and after the war, Charles worked for the Cincinnati Union Terminal. Perhaps working along-side so many travelers kept his travel bug strong and active. The photos above and below were taken after his retirement from railroad work, and at a time when the fate of the Terminal was very precarious. For another Sepia Saturday post about the terminal, please see the Lincoln Park blog post.

That about wraps it up for the older travel photos. Charles and Bessie were some of our biggest travelers. They spent their retirement years travelling to Hawaii, several other states, and down the Mississippi on the Delta Queen - so many times I cannot count. In turn, their children and grandchildren have taken on the tradition of globe trotting like travel pros. Me, I'm a bit more middle of the road: have not travelled too far, but can be happy either way. I love a good trip, but enjoy being a home body as well.
Safe and happy travels everyone!
C

Sepia Saturday - Tree Memories

Reuss-Beyersdoerfer Clan

The suggested Sepia Saturday theme for this week, trees, inspired me to look back on my own family tree memories, and what better way to celebrate genealogy than by honoring the image of the tree. I attempted to pull some sepia images from my family collection - but as other bloggers have learned today, there are not many "tree" photos in our collections. The family image that you see to the left is my favorite "tree" image. To see this family group, standing proudly in front of this equally proud tree that towers over them demonstrates a perfect blend of history and symbolism.

My other favorite family image that includes a tree is this one of the Cox family in Pendleton County Kentucky. Most family group images we have utilize a more family focused composition. In other words, close enough to only see the people. This family photographer took a little artistic license and let the trees be even more prominent than the human subjects - or perhaps they were so new at taking pictures that they forgot to get closer.....either way, we get to see the expansiveness of the trees on this property, and not just the expansiveness of the prolific family unit!

Within my other family memories, trees have played a prominent role. I spent a huge chunk of my youth and adolescence traipsing around, climbing, drawing and adoring trees. I was an outdoors kid all the way. Nature and all of its complexity was, and still is, a dear friend. This image is from my grandparents farm in Bourbon County Kentucky - an old walnut tree that sits between a small field and the vegetable garden. That farm was not only a source of spiritual and mental health for me, almost as necessary as oxygen, but it also embodied all of the love my grandparents bestowed upon us when visiting. And don't get me started on the adventures! So many I cannot count! As a side note, this farm in the far western part of the county was certified a few years ago as home to the second largest tree in the state of Kentucky! An amazing old burr oak tree that sits in a valley, just below one of the ponds. Each tree branch is the size of a large tree trunk.....awe inspiring.

I have always regarded genealogy as somewhat of a spiritual journey. There is nothing as humbling as looking back across the generations and realizing that you are merely one addition to the long string of people that have come before you. Soon, you too will be nothing more than someone's memory. But in this realization, it bolsters my belief in life eternal. Time is ever flowing. And yet, when I think of the spiritual realm, and perhaps the place where our ancestors reside, there is no time. This final tree was captured on "film" just this past June while hiking up to Laurel Falls in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. We all learned in school that the trees we see above the soil have a duplicate existence in size and proportion below the soil in the form of roots. I can remember thinking, as a child, that had to be a load of bunk.....they were asking us to believe in something we could not see. This is just another example of nature demonstrating to us that we only understand a small portion of the world we encounter. I've also heard it said that the spiritual realm is just as real as the world we can see with our eyes, like this tree and its roots - and if our roots are as important as most genealogists believe, our journey is never finite.

Tobacco Time

My parents have a beautiful view off of their deck in Scott County Kentucky. It overlooks several rolling hills of active fields and each year a different crop is planted. Over the years, we have watched the growth of soy beans, corn, hay, etc. But this year, for the first time, the farm owners decided to plant tobacco. Despite the controversy surrounding this staple of Kentucky farming, we enjoyed watching the different stages of development as the days of summer ticked by. At this point, the growth has slowed way down due to a lack of substantial rain in this part of the county. The plants appear to be stunted, and have started to bloom out way before the normal time. As my mother and I commented on its stunted growth and development, we realized that the farming traditions and experiences we had while growing up had indirectly taught us much about the tobacco growing process. Even though we were never farmers, we grew up visiting or living some of our lives on Kentucky farms. This meant helping to plant it, watching the little plants grow, watching the blooms appear at the top, watching the spray, followed by the turn of yellow leaves which marked the end of the summer season. As we looked at the leaves in her neighboring farm, we knew we were remembering loved ones in our past.

L-R: John, William (Bill) & Lawrence Beyersdoerfer

As it turns out, we also have several other tobacco farmers in our family tree. The family branches we were remembering came from the northern Kentucky region, on my Mother's side. Despite the steep rolling hills that presented severe challenges to farming anything, the farmers in this area embraced the tobacco crop. Within the Pendleton and Bracken Counties, we had family members in the Fliehmann(Fleeman), Beyersdoerfer, Cox and Watts branches that grew tobacco along with other crops. Ironically, we have several photographs from family or neighbor tobacco farmers posing with their crops proudly. Once my father married into the Watts family - a city boy from Cincinnati - his shutterbug tendencies went wild. The result was a wonderful treasure trove of photographs from the late 1960s - 70s that continues to enhance our family story. Regardless of which generation was being photographed, these farmers were very proud of their crops.

Of course, tobacco was not the only crop that provided sustainable income for these Kentucky farmers. With the German branches of our family near Foster Kentucky, their additional crops came in the forms of corn and grapevines. Bringing their Bavarian traditions to Kentucky in the mid-nineteenth centuries meant growing grapes and producing wine to sell in Covington. For our families in the Pendleton County area who were more from English/Irish ancestry, corn and dairy farming were their staples of choice. I hope to post more about the choices these farmers made as our family history collection has much to offer....but for now, tis the season of tobacco.....and despite any ill feelings toward this crop, for many it was just a way to survive. A way of life that is quickly fading.  

Inferential Genealogy Homework #1

During my previous post about Second Life, I mentioned the current course discussions being held in-world, and how they would require some homework blog posts. Before you non-SL people read this and rush off, this seminar is available online for anyone to complete. The only difference with my posting will be the connection to Second Life discussions. If you would like to utilize this free course on Inferential Genealogy by Dr. Tom Jones, offered through the free online courses by Family Search, here is the direct link: http://broadcast.lds.org/elearning/fhd/community/cbig/player.html

Also, here is the original post about the course and Second Life schedule from Dear Myrtle - the dear who has brought this to our attention and is willing to host discussions in-world!
http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/2011/05/inferential-genealogy-study-group-in.html

Our first post discussion assignment required us to write a blog post about our understanding of inferential genealogy at this stage of the course. Also, we are to include any examples we could think of from our own genealogical research.

As far as my understanding goes, inferential genealogy is the method of drawing kinship/relationship conclusions based on partial or piecemeal information. As genealogists we utilize all kinds of factual records - most are accurate, but many are flawed, or even wrong. Since no one document can give us the solid, complete facts about an individual, we must turn to many outside sources to confirm any conclusion we might draw. Dr. Jones describes it as putting together a puzzle. We only have the complete picture after we have put together all of the pieces.

Honestly, after viewing the introduction and reading the handout, I suddenly realized that this is always how I have conducted my research. Perhaps this is due to my past experience as a history major back in my undergrad days, when we learned to never really take history at factual face value. We were taught to check and double check multiple sources (primary sources) and then take the facts we learned and put them together in contextual perspective. In other words, we could only draw reasonable conclusions after multiple sources had confirmed the perceived information and as long as it fit within the context of the period from which it came. After learning this type of methodology I applied it to my genealogy research methods - thereby rendering almost ALL of my genealogy research into a state of limbo or suspicion.

I don't care if my great great aunt told me what her mother's maiden name was, I need multiple records confirming her information (and spelling) before I would conclude it to be fact. Does this mean I did not value the information that was given to me via an oral interview? On the contrary. I am a huge proponent of oral history and interviews. If you want to know where to begin your research journeys, oral interviews are the absolute best place to start - not to mention that at face value they are primary sources when wanting to understand a people, their perspective and cultural experiences. Plus, most of the time, those oral interviews are pretty darned accurate - I love them dearly, and in my opinion, they are more precious than the records, because they represent voices and impressions of the lives that came before me!

So, back to true inferential genealogy and how this has helped me. Since my research is never complete, any piece of information, however small or insignificant, is a puzzle piece that helps me paint a complete picture of an ancestor's life. Even if I have already confirmed in a few records the birth date of a person, by employing the strategies of inferential genealogy, I can put more flesh back on the bones per se. Dr. Jones outlines steps to using this method, and one of his steps involves broadening your research area and scope. Thereby studying the neighbors of your ancestors, community involvement of your ancestors, and migratory patterns that include a whole new set of broadened areas of research. But seriously, when I began my genealogy journey so many years ago, it wasn't the birth and death dates that got me hooked, it was the life led by my ancestors that inspired that passion. The life truly led can really only be found through inferential methodology.

To give a few examples of how I used this method within my own family research:

1. My great great Uncle Lanson Cox died as a young man in his 20s. The story of his death came from my great Grandmother - she mentioned that he died young and that she was very close to him, but never detailed the experience. I used death records to see his death date, cause of death and parents - plus tombstone and other records to confirm his birth/parents, etc. However, the experience of losing a brother at such a young age was the more complete picture. I used local newspaper gossip sections that detailed his lingering illness over the weeks and months. These not only gave me a better understanding of how long he was sick, but also allowed me to see how the community was handling the illness of a local. They detailed when his family members and neighbors visited, and how many local friends visited, always describing how well liked he was in his small community. Later, obituary notices helped detail and confirm some of the familial relationships mentioned earlier. This inference of family connection is a breadcrumb or puzzle piece that can help me later add more members to our family tree once the relationships are confirmed through more sources.

2. On my Beyersdoerfer side of the family, my 3rd great Grandfather was quite adept at alphabet soup. He was born Johann George and immigrated to America with his brothers in the mid 19th century. However, it seems he not only changed to John George once he landed, but also preferred the name George when dealing with some records (not all) due to the other local John Beyersdoerfers in the area. He therefore used the following given names/initials: J.G., John, John George, G.J., George, and even Johann George in his earliest records on American soil. By the time he died, he had G.J. listed on his tombstone. This man's life can ONLY be documented through inferential means. Due to the other Beyersdoerfer immigrants in the same surrounding counties, I can only count a record as truly being that of my Grandfather if other pieces within that record coincide or match details from other records. In many cases, I really can only count those with the same immediate familial relationships on the record to consider it his.....and even then, I double check birth dates of those family members due to a repeat of given names within this group of German settlers. Ugghhhh!!!

3. One last example from my 3rd great Grandfather Samuel Cox. He was married three times, and no one in the family can ever seem to get the names of the wives straight. Plus, two of the wives had the same given name and died within a few years of each other. Needless to say, I must rely on inferential info to confirm when I have a record about a specific wife. And don't get me started about those in the family who confused the son Samuel with the father....we soooo need a Cox family history do-over! Especially for what is lurking out there in the interwebs!

In conclusion, I really do not believe you can adequately paint a complete portrait of your ancestors, nor understand them, without using this method. It leaves no stone unturned, greatly reduces the chance for pedigree error, and broadens your understanding of the ancestor's life within a community. After all, we are studying relationships, and without exploring the relationships, our research is incomplete and in some cases, completely wrong. As researchers, we should always take pride in having correct research, not just a long pedigree. We all know how wrong the long trees can be.....we should use this method more to prune some of those monstrosities and document the correct information for future generations!

On to Case #1....as you follow the course, feel free to stop in Second Life for some lively discussions about what we learn! Next meeting is this Sunday the 5th at 5:15PM SLT (Second Life time is Pacific Time which is 8:15PM Eastern Time) at the Just Genealogy Fire Pit!

Advent Calendar - Ma's Cookies

Earlier in the year I wrote a lengthy post about Ma's (Nellie Cox Beyersdoerfer) sugar cookies. They have been an absolute favorite and permanent Christmas tradition for at least four generations. The recipe is simple but when cooked to proper perfection (done on the bottom but taken out before browning), they are light, soft and chewy, with a wonderfully light nutmeg and Cinnamon essence. The picture I have included is their traditional round form, but the various forms they can take are endless. With this round form, we have dressed them up for Christmas with red and green sugar sprinkled on top. However, it really wouldn't be Christmas if we didn't use some of our old cookie cutters to make things more festive. When shapes are used, we have added the tradition of a light confectioner's sugar icing on top - which can be tinted to any color you prefer. Uber delicious!

I have included the recipe again below. The image of that cook-stained original clipping from Ma's kitchen is one of those wonderful pieces of heritage genealogy that I adore most of all. In fact, it is so precious to the family, that whenever anyone gets married, we make a color copy on photographic paper and then frame it to give to the brides. A surefire way to implement an old tradition into a new household!

In my previous post I included a lot about Nellie and my memories of her cookies on the kitchen table, but since this cookie tradition was started in her home, I've decided to include some photos we have of the home place which was torn down just a few years ago.
This precious photo, as faded as it is, has a caption on the back: Christmas 1936. This was taken on the front porch of Nellie and John's home. All of their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren grew up visiting Ma here, and sneaking more than one cookie during their visit. Nellie is the woman center front. Travelling to the left is her mother, Oleva Ellen Mockbee Cox, and the young woman on the far left, trying to hide, is one of the daughters (my Grandmother), Freida Beyersdoerfer Watts. This is the house a few years fore they razed it.....but no one has lived in it for years, and with no indoor bathroom facilities (there's another memory I have from childhood!), I'm not very surprised. It sat on a hill in northeastern Pendleton County Kentucky. Each time we make these cookies, we picture this place, and the warm, loving woman inside working to make her family welcome and comfortable.

Be sure to give these cookies a try! You'll be glad you did!

CD

12/8/10

Ancestor Approved Award!

Just last week I was honored by receiving two nominations for the Ancestor Approved award! This is my little blog's first award, so I am both humbled and a little giddy....a sweet blog Christmas Present if ever I saw one! First, let me begin by thanking the two wonderful bloggers that selected Journeys Past for this award:

Alice Keesey Mecoy at John Brown Kin
&
Janny Lancelot at Are My Roots Showing?

The award comes with the requirement that you pay it forward in two ways.....the instructions are listed below:

1. List ten things that you have learned about your ancestors that surprised, humbled, or enlightened you.
2. Pass the award to ten other genealogy bloggers.

So here are my ten things:

1. After finding several skeletons in the closet (some of which I will list below), I have come to the conclusion that skeletons in our closets are merely proof that our ancestors were human just like us....boy were they!

2. As we grumble about getting older, my Grandmother always used to remind me to celebrate each birthday because at least you made it to another one, which I usually rolled my eyes at.......and then I discovered that my Great Grandmother on my Mom's side (Florence Warren Watts) died at the age of 26 from tuberculosis, just after giving birth to her third child. Since my Great Grandfather was handicapped, all three children were put up for adoption. The horrible things they lived through at such a tender age, and I grumble about nearing 40.

3. Surprise of a genealogical lifetime: discovering KKK rally photos in an old family album - from Ohio! After some outside research and good old fashioned asking, I found out that this family lived in Ohio and Indiana at the same time that the Klan had become a huge political movement in the north. Indiana was the capital of Klan activity in the 1920s and my Great Grandmother's family was heavily involved. No one ever talked about this skeleton at all until I found the photos. Involvement was actually denied, and explained away as "someone must have snuck through a fence to snap the photos". Which would have worked for me until I found a photo of Great Grandmother Ruth in a beautiful patriotic group photo - except for the Klan guy standing by a tree next to them! Then I asked the same questions again years later, and got the full confession - be tenacious about your family questions - if the answers don't make sense, dig further, ask others, or wait awhile and ask again!

4. Play on names - lunacy, and the in-laws! This one was discovered as I found a birth record that didn't make sense . My Great Grandmother (Nellie Cox Beyersdoerfer) was the granddaughter of Clarissa Hughbanks Cox. According to the Barton Papers (which I will blog about soon), an interview given by a neighbor about the Hughbanks sisters said that Clarissa and her sisters all died in their 40s after going crazy. One day, when I asked my Mother what Nellie's middle name was, she told me (Isabelle), but made me promise not to repeat that because Ma (Nellie) hated that name. I was shocked - it was so beautiful! But she said Nellie insisted that it was pronounced with a long I as in ice. So, back to the birth record: When Nellie gave birth to her first son at her in-law's farm, someone in the household went down to register the birth for the new parents, but listed Nellie's name as Icey. Obviously, they called her that to tease her about her middle name. However, later, I discovered that Clarissa also had a nickname: Ricey, which is so close to Icey. I suddenly realized that Nellie hated that middle name because her in-laws made fun of it and connected it to her "crazy" Grand Mother. I don't blame her in a way - how crude to use the nickname when reporting the actual birth record! Family politics and snarkiness - an age old problem! It taught me the lengths of detective work and serendipity that is so much a part of what we do!

5. Discovered another set of shocking photos among the family collection: a late 19th century trip to the Klondike! Still working on which ancestor they belong to, but after some outside research, have learned that this gold rush - made famous by Jack London - was the most photographed event of 19th century North America because Kodak gave the intrepid explorers (ahem, gold hunters) a large number of their new products as they went north: the portable camera.

6. One of my greatest enlightenments about our research: we search for facts, but if we are lucky we end up telling a story. Each one of those stories can serve as uplifting stories - re-discovering heroes to remember - or cautionary tales - exposing mistakes to avoid. All are pertinent as reflections on how we live our lives in the present.

7. Very surprised that people are astonished when you mention a connection to royalty or famous personalities. As researchers comb through Obama's family tree and make new announcements about his familial connection to another new celebrity, the reaction is usually amazement. As one of those "cousins" of Obama from the Duvall family, mathematically, this is not an astounding turn of events. It is estimated that over 35 million Americans are descendants of the Mayflower passengers. Of course, only 25,000 have proven that fact. Connections to the European royal families are even more common.....but be careful about spouting that fact unless you've researched it yourself. Might be a fun party factoid, but not something to rest your laurels on based on others' "online" research!

8. Always amazed at the reality of my ancestors' lives. I have been so guilty of researching them within a standard formula: birth, marriage, children, death. Sometimes forgetting that research outside the box is necessary to make a legitimate timeline. By taking time to think about motives behind life decisions I made startling discoveries about: divorces, illegitimacy, sexual abuse/incest, lost inheritances, law suits, public displays of drunkenness - you name it, our ancestors did it - sometimes just well hidden - which is where we come in.

9. Have become obsessed with the social or gossip sections of small local newspapers. By just pouring over them, I found an adorable post about the night my Great Grandparents eloped: "The bride was dressed in a blue serge coat suit with hat and gloves to match." 1915 Sometimes the daily events are as minor as one visiting another, or a single sentence to give a health report that "Lanson Cox is no better" (he died of Tuberculosis a few days later in 1911) - but each a precious fact to fill in some of their story.

10. Humbled by the fact that as much as we record, and think we know how something happened, each person's perspective of the same event can be entirely different. Have learned this through sibling interviews and descendant interviews. Each one remembered the same facts or events in slightly different ways. Trying to remind myself that as I interview loved ones, emotions can cloud or embellish or even cause pain after so many years. Each perception, even though different, is valuable as a life experience for the person telling the story - and should be recorded as told for future generations.

Ok, so here are my 10 new recipients of the Ancestor Approved Award!
1. Mary Jane's Genes

2. Villa Victoria Blog

3. Tomorrow's Memories

4. The Turning of Generations

5. The Wandering Vine

6. The Symbolic Past

7. The Pieces of My Past

8. The Misadventures of a Genealogist

9. Sharing Our Family's Memories

10. Samuel and Mary Clark Reed of Barnwell

Again - thanks for the honor!
CD 12/5/10

Wedding Déjà vu? Sort of....

Among the photographic heirlooms passed down from my Great Grandmother Nellie Cox Beyersdoerfer is this wedding portrait of my Great Great Aunt, Ada Beyersdoerfer Mueller. The first time I opened its folded enclosure I giggled - a lot. Despite the beautiful details in the photo's clarity, that veil looks like a lace monster that completely swallowed her head!

Beyond the giggle factor, I really do love this photo for its family historic purpose and beauty. As a farming family of little wealth, this formal portrait is the only one we have from the Beyersdoerfer side. Despite the birth of many girls, I haven't seen any other wedding portraits. (For those of you keeping track, Ada was Anna's sister from the Looking at Anna post)

As a special treat, a few years ago as I was studying the photo closer, I looked behind it, and found the wedding invitation perfectly preserved behind the happy couple!

The invitation reads:

Mr. and Mrs. John Beyersdoerfer request the honor of your presence at the marriage of their daughter Ada to Mr. Henry E. Mueller. Wednesday, the Twenty-seventh of September, nineteen hundred and twenty-two at eight o'clock A.M. St. Boniface Church, Northside, Cincinnati, O.

I grew up in Cincinnati, over on the west side, well above Northside geographically, but travelled through that city often on my backroads way to the University of Cincinnati as a college student. I had never seen this church from the main road down the center of town, but it was always on my radar to hunt down someday. When our family moved to Kentucky about 15 years ago, I still had this church on my to-do list, but it was far down the list, and I honestly doubted if I would ever get around to it.....until....

One of my younger cousins on my Dad's side of the family, still in Cincinnati, chose this same church as his wedding site just a few weeks ago. When I read where the wedding was to take place, I was thrilled! For the privacy of the living, I will not name names, but I will include some photos from my attendance....it turned out to be a stunningly beautiful church inside!! To attend the wedding of a cousin from Dad's side, while trying to imagine the 1922 wedding of an aunt from my Mom's side.....quite the Déjà vu moment!

Ok, that's sort of how it happened.....here's a tip....make sure you research places BEFORE you attend the events! I was wallowing in that family history moment, "documenting" the past and present with loads of photos. The photos were of course valuable for documenting the current family event, but after returning home, I remembered a conversation my Mother and I had while I was snapping photos outside.....we both thought the building didn't look too old....perhaps turn of the 20th century, but no older. So a quick Google search brought me to the official church website.

Turns out, the congregation dates back to 1853, but after several buildings, the current building dates from 1927. Ironically, my Mueller relatives got married the year after the congregation purchased this land in 1921 on the corner of Chase and Pitts Avenues, but they must have held their ceremony at the former building at the corners of Blue Rock and Lakerman Sts since this newer building was not yet constructed. Which means, I still need to go traipsing through Northside again to see if that older building still exists, so it returns to my to-do list.

As a post script of sorts, I was reading the church's official history, and it turned out to be more significant than I realized. Apparently, the first congregation was begun to accommodate the influx of Irish immigrants that were filling the surrounding Cincinnati areas very quickly. When the influx of German Catholics rapidly rose to match the numbers of local Irish Catholics, the congregation decided to split - ethnically. The Irish congregants split off to form St. Patricks and the Germans stayed to maintain St. Boniface. Which, of course, fits my German lineage on Mom's side.....the Mueller/Beyersdoerfer clan was part of the German half that kept St. Boniface. Ironically, the two halves that split reunited in 1991 under the St. Boniface parish due to dwindling numbers in both groups. That link above to the history of St. Boniface has a great slide show from the early days at the bottom of the page.

So, without further ado, here are some photos of the current St. Boniface church built in 1927:

Happy Sepia Saturday!

CD

11/20/10