Index of Labels

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Stuck on the Stuckis


I have been blogging mostly about my father's side of my family. I also have been working on the maternal side as well. This post will be about a document that I have had in my possession for quite a number of years. I initially tried to enter the data into a PAF file, but did not understand the relationships, so I put it aside. The document concerned the distribution of money to heirs of a widow in Switzerland. My mother and her siblings received a small amount of money. Thus the document was found in my parents file cabinet and came into my possession.

Since my great grandfather was dead as well as my grandfather Stucki, the inheritance fell to my mother and her living siblings as the remaining heirs.

Eliza Stucki, my great grandfather Stucki's sister and her son were also named in the document.

Eliza and her son Fred (Frederick) have a history in the book John Ulrich Stucki and his descendants. The birth dates were the same in both documents so I knew we had the same people. I added the history of Elisa and Fred as stories to their records.

Fred was born to an unmarried mother in Colmar Alsace Loraine and was later sealed to his grandparents posthumously.  In his patriarchal blessing the name of his biological father was named.  In Family Tree this name is missing and his grandparents are listed as his parents. This needs to be changed to reflect the real parents. I added the following as a discussion on Fred’s record.

This is a duplicate of K2HJ-Q8M and cannot be merged at this time. He was the illegitimate son of Elise Stucki and came to America with his mother. He was in the war and suffered "shell shock" and was hospitalized in the Veterans Hospital in American Lake, Washington and died there. He never married as far as I am aware.

I also added the following as discussion: Fred, her son, was born February 14, 1890, in Colmar, Alsace Lorraine, France/Germany[1]. Eliza never married, Fred's Patriarchal Blessing given in Paris, Idaho, December 23, 1898, by Patriarch Hugh Findaly lists his birthplace as Colmar, Alsace Lorraine, Germany, and his father as Jacob Thorni Stucki.

I also found Fred in the 1910, 1930 and 1940 US census and added these as sources to his record.

I need to remove the marriage of Maria Elisa Stucki to Hans Konrad Lichti since this was only a sealing and occurred after the death of Hans and before the death of Elisa.  This will then open up the parentage of Fred to allow Jacob Thorni Stucki to be added as his father with the explanation that the parents were never married.

In looking for a logical match for Jacob/Jakob Stucki there was a Jakob Stucki born 17 May 1859 in Neunforn, Thurgau, Switzerland.  This will require a lot of research to determine if this is the correct Jakob.  This Jakob is not listed as having any spouse and the date of death is not found.

I do have poor photos of Elisa and Fred that I will add to Family Tree.  I hope that someone can come up with some better ones.

Fred has two records, which can only be merged by Family Search.  This is my next project.

There are many more records which can be edited and families combined with the information found in the document from the bank in Switzerland now that I know how to read it.




[1]  From Wikipedia:”Under the German Empire of 1871-1918, the territory constituted the Reichsland or Imperial Province of Elsass-Lothringen. The area was administered directly by the imperial government in Berlin and was granted some measure of autonomy in 1911. This included its constitution and state assembly, its own flag, and the Elsässisches Fahnenlied as its anthem.”

The region is now (2013) in France and has been since it was taken away from Germany after they lost World War II.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Following the leads


Following the leads

In my last blog I gave a link to an Adventure in Family Tree.  I still have not fully resolved the situation, but it led me to do some things that I will document here. 

I decided to find Ginny Chestnut as she was the daughter of Alyce, my uncle’s second wife.  I vaguely remembered her name, but on Alyce’s obituary she is listed as living in Redding, California.  Ginny was the product of Alyce’s first marriage.  I went to Dexknows.com and hoped that I would find a phone number for her.  I was successful in my search and placed my call.  All I got was a voice mail.  I usually do not leave a message when calling people that I do not know, but in this case I did.  Ginny has a photography business, so when she got my voice mail she returned my call.  I introduced myself and she remembered my parents and my uncles and aunts.  I asked her if she knew of any one in her family by the name of Amy Lynn Schmidt and she responded that she did not know of any one by that name. 

We talked for a while and I got some information from her.  Alyce, her mother, was a product of a marriage that had ten children.  The mother (Gertrude) died 2 months after the death of her tenth child of a ruptured appendix and gall bladder.  Ginny also gave me her e-mail address so that we could correspond.  She also told me that all of Alyce’s siblings were dead. In addition she told me that the parents were born in Sweden and were of the servant class and that their name was Benard or Bernard or some other Swedish variant. 

Armed with this information, I decided to do a little searching of the records.  In the census records, I found August as a single young man in the household of William Nicholson in the 1900 census living in Nebraska where he is listed a Benard.  I found a marriage record in the Nebraska marriages where he is listed as Nels August Bernard.  If you do a search on one spelling of the name, you may not find who you are searching for.  Thus in my earlier searches I missed the record where he was listed as a single 19 year old, because I searched on Bernard.

From the marriage record, I learned that Gertrude Bernard’s maiden name was Johnson and she was born in Sweden.  In the 1920 census we find NA Bernard with his wife Gertrude and six children listed; Herbert, Hazel, Fern(e), Francis, Dorothy and Harold.  In the 1940 census only August is listed, because Gertrude died in 1923.  He was living in Omaha, Nebraska at the time, but in 1935 he was still in Rural, Knox, Nebraska and listed a N A Bernard. The children were not in the home.  I then looked for each of the children.  I found Ferne Bernard in the Social Security Death Index, I found Dorothy Benard in the 1940 census living with Carmen, Alice (note the spelling) and Herbert living in Omaha, Nebraska. From this information I was able to calculate approximate birth years for each of the children.  I still only had eight of the ten children.  I will have to ask Ginny who the others were.  I entered all the information in my descendants of Lysander Gee database.  From here I can move them to any database that I wish.

In my e-mail correspondence with Ginny I decided to share some histories that I had on my computer of my uncle Vernon.  I had one written by his brother Merrill and also one written by his mother. In addition I had histories of each of Vernon’s brothers written by their mother and I sent them as well.  Inasmuch as these histories were not posted as Stories on Family Tree, I added them to Family Tree.

This is not the end of the story.  Ginny told me that she had a cookbook with family history that she would share with me, but she was selling the family home and moving and that it might be some time before she could do that.

Stay tuned for further developments.


Tuesday, May 7, 2013

The case of the misplaced PIN

In my last post I commiserated with you about a problem that I had with a contributor to the ordinances for my uncles second wife. I wrote it up as an adventure in Family Tree.

Click Here for the Link

Friday, May 3, 2013

Every day a new thing to learn


I was looking at a record of my uncle’s second wife Alyce Virginian Bernard Chestnut Gee PIN LCRJ-THR.  She appeared as an “Opportunities” on my Temple tab.  Then in about a week it was gone.  I went to her record and found that someone had reserved her work to be done.  I did not reserve her work, because she had living children and was born after 1910. When I looked to see who had reserved the work, there was no name listed, only a PIN. · Contact Name MMVD-VT9.  I had never seen only a PIN number listed as a contributor.  Usually there is a name iwth not contact information, but a number? I did not know what was happening in this case, so I wrote an e-mail to Family Search to shed some light on what was happening.

I was concerned, because she was never a member of the church and I was not aware that any of her children were members of the church. Her baptism and confirmation were completed on 29 April in the Salt Lake temple and the individual temple ordinances were reserved, but not printed. The sealing to my uncle Vernon was Printed
30 April 2013
Reserved by MMVD-VT9
Shared with the Temple System
 
I asked Family Search Support, Could you please explain to me what is happening here? We will see what they respond.

If you can't do it, somone can

As you might remember, in my last post I ran across a duplicate record for my grandmother's sister Alta.  In trying to merge the two, I noted a warning that the records could not be merged at this time.  Today I received the following e-mail: 
"Dear Ivin Laurence Gee,
The duplicate membership record for Alta Anetta /Kerr/ will soon no longer appear in NewFamily Search.

Sincerely,

FamilySearch Data Administration"


If you have the correct information and documentation things can be changed in Family Tree. Unless we change it, it will not be changed.