Year: 2020

Posted on by — Leave a comment

The Butcher, Baker and Candlestick Maker

[Disclaimer: There is no candlestick maker involved in this story. It just sounded good.] I found out that I come from a long line  of bakers in Preuschdorf, France. (Four generations!) And just an FYI, the baker’s daughter married the butcher in Buffalo.

This post is actually about the Timeline Template I created in OneNote that I never use. Why don’t I use it? Mostly because I don’t like the tables in OneNote. I don’t like that I am unable to merge and split cells. I especially do not like how thin and light the lines are around the cells. (I have old eyeballs. Give me black lines around the cells, please.) I make my Timelines in MSWord and attach the file and a printout to the person’s Timeline page. I set the page orientation in Word to Landscape so I have more space across the page for all my columns. I have written about using timelines before. I will link to Anne Mitchell’s video again about how and why to create timelines  at the bottom of this post if you want to view it later. The problem with the previous timeline example is the person in the example is not my real paternal grandfather. (I like to refer to him as my faux grandfather.) Yes, that whole DNA tree implosion thing I hinted about before. That timeline annoys me since it is a reminder of how much time I spent researching the wrong surname.

I have a new Timeline example though. I went back to my Büsch / Cuntz line and created a Timeline from the records that I have gathered during my research over the last couple months. I posted about initial research I conducted and concluded on this line a few weeks ago and the next round of research I was going to conduct. I finished that research and then created a Family Timeline in Word for this couple.

I had decided (Once again! Since I have made this decision before…) a while back that I wanted to tackle one of my direct-line ancestral couples per week — getting all their sources gathered, downloaded, cited and uploaded to Ancestry and WikiTree. (Since I’m fairly certain I don’t have 25 more years left to spend on research, this is important to me.) While working on this couple, I realized that while a week might be long enough for a couple that has less than 10 records or a couple that much of the research is already done, it may not be enough for other couples in my lines that need more research. For Georg Heinrich Büsch and Catherina Barbara Cuntz, I now have 28 records, 16 that are in French; so a week was not going to be long enough to finish up everything I wanted to accomplish. I haven’t even looked at land and probate records yet, nor completed my searches in the Buffalo City Directories. (Which will be the plan for the next time I visit this couple. Hopefully the records aren’t going anywhere in the meantime.) The new plan is to work on one ancestral couple for as long as it takes to find the usual records I might not already have in my tree — birth, marriage, death and census — while not get totally sidetracked — and then move on to the next couple. I had a similar plan years ago but got lost in caregiver duties and never had enough time for research. (Regarding only spending a week on each couple… That also doesn’t take into account the time I need to spend on ongoing research on the dilemmas in my Research Quandaries notebook because continuing research on those has to continue as well. Then there is all the quilting and fiber art related projects. Let’s not forget the Rosetta Stone French lessons either. I almost forgot about the gardening on the patio! Who needs Netflix? I could hold an online class on how to stay busy at home during a pandemic.)

My stack of couples on scrap paper.

I had 50 couples with just some basic info on a scrap piece of paper to start. (There are 0 couples for my mother’s paternal line so the number would be higher if I knew my mother’s paternity.) Of course, I got sidetracked on the Büsch / Cuntz line. It’s inevitable. I did manage to not fall too far down the rabbit hole and to rein myself back in. Although I ended up going back two more generations, (Because rooting around in church records from the 1700s seemed like a fun challenge!) I didn’t get carried away researching all the children for the  new couples and then on down each of those lines. (You know I was tempted!) I found a few records for the new generations which then added three more couples to my pile and then went back to my original couple like a good little researcher. (In real life, I am in introvert and do not talk this much. Really. Truly.)

When I left off with this couple, I was going to go back through birth and death records searching for more children. I also looked for the death records for the deceased parents mentioned in the marriage record. The parents still living at the time of the marriage both died before Henry and Barbara emigrated so I added them to the timeline as well. Because the death records mention their parents names, I got started down the rabbit hole. (Who doesn’t want to go a few generations farther back when the names are right there?) When I was digging further into these lines, I just made some notes in the table I had created for Henry and Barbara’s marriage record. I have copied that table over to the Sections for both fathers on their Initial Research pages and made notes about the next generation back. The second Initial Research for Georg Heinrich Büsch page looked like this when I finished:

 

=====

The first page of the Georg Heinrich Büsch Family Timeline  in Word looks like this:

The citations for all the records I found are listed below the table. Here is a link to the PDF so you can view the whole thing.

 

=====

Once the Timeline is done, it can be attached to the Timeline page in the Person’s Section under > Insert > choose File Attachment > Insert Printout. A Word file icon appears at the top of the page and your Word pages are added as screenshots to the page.

You cannot edit the Word pages in OneNote. You must reopen the file in Word. To reopen the Timeline from OneNote, right click on the File Icon > choose Open. If you have made any changes to the Timeline in Word, you can refresh the printout (screenshots) in OneNote by right clicking on the file icon > choose Refresh Printout. (See below.)

 

=====

Georg Heinrich’s Section and all the other Sections I created for new family members as I needed them are now all neatly tucked back into the Buisch Surname Notebook where they belong. Note that Georg Heinrich’s new Initial Research page has a list of the next three items to research.

 

=====

I have added the sources to WikiTree.com for Georg Heinrich Büsch and Catherina Barbara Cuntz and I will be adding the citations and sources to Ancestry over the next few days and then it’s on to the next couple in the pile. I am not looking forward to doing the citations on Ancestry. I have contemplated uploading the Timeline PDF and calling it good but I won’t.  The Cuntz Cold Case Sub-Section of my Research Quandaries notebook is officially closed. I’m doing a genealogy happy dance. (In my head. Because: Introvert.) Oh, and in case you are wondering, the baker’s daughter, Eva Elisabeth Büsch, married the butcher, Wilhelm Friedrich Beidinger/Baitinger on 26 June 1845 in Buffalo, Erie, New York.1

Until next time,

~Erin

1 “New York, Church Records, 1660-1954,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPZJ-SYVS : 10 October 2019), Wilhelm Friedrick Baidinger and Elisabeth Büsch, 26 Jun 1845; citing multiple churches, Marriage, Erie, New York, United States.

Creating Timelines: A 15 minute tutorial by Anne Mitchell (AKA: Ancestry Anne)

Cite This Page:

Erin Williamson Klein, “The Butcher, Baker and Candlestick Maker.” My Family History Files, 22 May 2020, (https://myfamilyhistoryfiles.com/onenote/the-butcher-baker-and-candlestick-maker/ : [access date]).

Please do not copy without attribution and link back to this page.

 

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Genealogy Generosity and Gratitude

There is much in my life that I am grateful for — family, friends, everyone’s health and the fact that at least one person in all five of my family’s households currently has an income. But during this stressful time of uncertainty, I need to do more to keep my mind occupied with something rather than letting it drift. My mind wants to take the easy way out from all the news stories — getting lost in the latest book by a favorite author or binge-watching Netflix. I want to be a little more productive than I have been for the last five years, you know? I have my little patio garden. I have my gazillion quilting projects. However, when I’m working out a genealogical puzzle, it occupies my mind even when I’m not actively researching. The puzzle sits there taking up space in my brain. Even when I’m not actively engaged in researching the puzzle, ideas pop in and out, I make notes and plans, I research some more and on it goes, helping me steer clear of the disturbing and dire dirge in the news and fruitless fretting.

About a year ago in March or April, I received a message at Ancestry from a DNA match wanting to know if I knew anything about her direct ancestor, Jacob Zittel. At the time, there was no way I could focus enough to work out how we might be related through our Zittel lines. It was one thing to occasionally go online and check through Ancestry hints and attach a few sources here and there. But to do focused research over several days, sifting though sources and their details to make sense of the clues? Not happening. My caregiver duties were overwhelming me.

Towards the end of 2019, things were settling down more and more in my caregiver roles, so I started to spend a little more time on family history. In the last six months, these are some of the genealogical things that have happened that I am grateful for:

  • In November 2019, I had a breakthrough when I found an indexed record for the baptism of the sister of my great-grandfather, Henry G. Buisch. It names her parents, including her mother’s maiden name. I already knew the maiden name, but it was further proof that Margaret was Henry’s older sister and a Buisch, not a Bamberg. This is the only record I have for her existence except for an occasional census entry where she is enumerated as either Margaret Buisch or Margaret Bamberg. The church record was indexed and went online in October 2019. (There may have been a genealogical happy dance that was executed on that day…) I am grateful to the indexers.
  • In December, I heard from another Bamberg researcher who had copies of death certificates for Henry’s mom and step-father. The Bamberg Bramble is still under investigation and is going to take some time to sort out, but it was nice of my cousin to share his sources with me to further that research. I am grateful.
  • In February 2020, I decided to look into the Jacob Zittel inquiry from my DNA CousinB that was still sitting in my message inbox on Ancestry. I figured it would be fairly easy to find some New York records for Jacob. The Zittels are from Cleebourg in the Alsace region of France and I wanted to try to my hand at looking at French records online at the Bas-Rhin Archives as well. My searches were largely successful (we still don’t have Jacob’s death date) and I complied a bunch of sources for Jacob and his family. I am grateful there are records online in far off places.
  • After I sent all I had found about the Jacob Zittels — Senior and Junior — to CousinB in mid-February, I woke up the next morning with an epiphany on how to proceed to figure out where in France my Buisch line (3x-great-grandparents) came from. I planned to use the information about another Buisch line that settled in New York that my line didn’t connect to but perhaps they did in France. (Why hadn’t I thought of this before?) The unseen genealogical-powers-that-be must have decided I’d earned enough points helping CousinB with the Zittels to warrant a double brickwall breakthrough. I not only found out where in France they were from, but managed to find a marriage record that gave me my 3x-great-grandmother’s maiden name and the bride and groom’s parents’ names. (There was definitely a genealogical happy dance executed on that day!)
  • Several days after I ecstatically typed in the maiden name of my 3x-great-grandmother at Ancestry, another DNA cousin (CousinTS) got in touch with me. He had copies from a series of books available on film in their entirety only in several places; the Family History Library in Salt Lake City being the main one. CousinTS shared his copies with me that included details that took my 3x-great-grandmother’s paternal line back four(!!) more generations. And again, I am grateful.

One last thing… don’t give up hope that your DNA matches may never respond to queries. They just might surprise you someday out of the blue.

Until next time,

~Erin

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Intro to my Research Quandaries notebook

View on OneDrive

Research Quandaries Notebook

READ THIS FIRST

Let’s just dive right into the notebook. The Research Quandaries notebook you can see on OneDrive is not how mine currently looks. (Of course!) In the blank notebook, I have set up the first few Sections after the Inbox to show you examples of how to use those Sections as set up under the Section Group for each Quandary grouping. Clear as mud? Thought so…

The Sections titled Research Notes and Sources are actually found in each Research Quandary Section Group in the blank notebook. I added in a few example pages to show how you could use those Sections while doing research.

You might do broad searches at FamilySearch.com or Ancestry and copy and paste the results in the Research Notes Section to start. If you need to do a little research about what resources are available in the area you are searching (especially if it is a new area for you), you could add that information to the Research Notes section as well.

Once you start doing research and will need to keep links handy, use the Sources Section. See Bas-Rhin Sources and New York Sources Sections for examples.

Generally, I use the Inbox for sending information to OneNote that I clip when I am online. Sometimes you come across a record that is relevant to several people or families — marriage records, passenger lists, etc. I stick this in the Inbox and then sort it by copying it to the relevant people Sections later.

 

=====

My Research Quandaries notebook front section actually looks like this:

There is a Research Notes Section there because almost every immigrant family on my father’s side settled in New York. So the Naturalization Records link I have showing above, for example, pertains to the Zittel, Bamberg, Dermeyer and Jansen quandaries that I am working on. Rather than have it linked four times — once for each Section Group — I just have it in that first part of my notebook.

You can see I rename every Research Quandary Section Group for whatever surname I am working on, i.e.: Zittel, Bamberg, Cuntz, Dermeyer, Jansen. I use a number in Section Group names to keep them in the order I want them in, otherwise the default order is alphabetical.

I have a Section for Ancestry’s ThruLines™ because I am searching for clues to my mom’s paternity. Every time I check ThruLines™ I make a screenshot of any changes that show up. A change to someone’s tree on Ancestry could make changes to mom’s ThruLines.™ When I check it on occasion, I make screenshots of changes I’ve noticed and add them to that Section so I have a record of something that could change again overnight.

 

=====

The very first Section after the Inbox in my notebook is a table with all my Direct Line Ancestors listed — the ones that have DNA connections or reliable sources. I try not add anyone to my direct lines any more unless there is DNA evidence and/or record sources that make sense. The table is helping me keep track of important steps in the process of adding family groups to my (previously imploded) family tree and Surname notebooks.

 

=====

Notebook comparisons

I’m hoping that seeing these two screen clips side-by-side will help you see the differences between the blank Research Quandaries notebook and my Research Quandaries notebook rather than me drawing arrows and using circles to explain it all. The difference between the two notebooks shown above is partly due to the one on the left being a screen clip of the blank notebook from OneDrive and the one on the right being a screen clip from my Research Quandaries notebook open in the OneNote app on my laptop.

On the left, the blank notebook has a 01 Research Quandary Section Group. The front portion of that Section Group includes an Inbox, Research Notes, Sources 1 and Sources 2 Section. Inside the 01 Research Quandary Section Group itself are two other Section Groups — 01 Family Group and 02 Family Group. Each of those Section Groups has an Inbox and Sections for the people you are researching. They are just like a Surname notebook section except that I haven’t added in all the templates to each person’s section. You can do that as needed.

On the right, in My Research Quandaries notebook is the Zittel Zygology Section Group. You can see that I had to make three Family Groups in the Zittel Zygology quandary. Members of the Zittel, Hausauer and Ottman families emigrated together to Sheldon, New York in 1833. (Other members of each family came as well at different times and settled in different areas of New York, but that is a quandary for another time…) I have the Hausauer Family Group opened so you can see that the sections are labeled, just like in a Surname notebook, with the names of ancestors and family members.

=====

As you can imagine (or maybe you have firsthand experience?), trying to work with three family groups of multiple generations at once in a Surname notebook could result in a bit of a mess. Having this special place to make a mess and then clean it all up before entering everything into a Surname notebook, a genealogy program or an online tree makes my genealogy research so much easier.

Until next time,

~Erin

Cite This Page:

Erin Williamson Klein, “Intro to my Research Quandaries notebook.” My Family History Files, 10 April 2020. (https://myfamilyhistoryfiles.com/onenote/intro-to-my-research-quandaries-notebook/ : [access date]).

Please do not copy without attribution and link back to this page.