In the ON Templates Section of the Surname notebooks, there is a template for a Research Plan. (A special thank you to Christine Sisko Clause for letting me borrow heavily from her original template to create mine all those years ago.) It’s rather fancy-pants and I have used it on occasion. I like using it when I am trying to solve just one problem for a person or family group and will be presenting the information to others to view. I filled one out when I was researching the death date for a Zittel ancestor. Trees online at Ancestry have his death and burial in Sheldon, New York. But a change to his FindaGrave.com memorial put that information in doubt. I did some digging and found my answers. I detailed it in a Research Plan that I turned into a PDF to attach to his Ancestry profile. I’ll save for show-and-tell in another post.
What happens when I am doing research in most cases is everything is gathered onto a page at the top of the Section for the person or family group where I am doing research. I call the page Initial Research. Everything I find gets cited and linked to that page and I make notes to myself about my findings. Sometimes it begins to be a bit of a jumbled mess, and sometimes I can take it and rearrange it in chronological order so I can create a Timeline as the next step in my research. (I find timelines extremely helpful to show me what I know and what I still need to find out.) There have been a few times when I got a little carried away and just kept on adding research to the Initial Research page and all the details where getting lost and confusing. I have started to break down the Initial Research pages into smaller chunks of research starting with one main objective and a conclusion. I will then start a new page if I need to do more research.
I decided to do show-and-tell with one of the easier genealogical conundrums I’ve been working on. This one was solved when I broke through a brickwall for one of my paternal 3rd-great-grandfathers. [Easier isn’t the right word to use in the last sentence…] This brickwall has been standing for a long time. [A less involved conclusion to the genealogical conundrum might be better wording. Easier sounds better than “a less involved conclusion to the genealogical conundrum” though.] (Yes, I am talking to myself in my blog post. I’ve been locked away in my room for far too long!)
The day after I sent CousinB the information I had gathered for her Zittel line, I woke up with an epiphany on how to try to find the place in France that my Buisch line came from. From there, I was hoping to find a marriage record that would lead me to my 3x-great-grandmother’s maiden name.
A little back story:
When I first started researching in 1993, I concentrated on my dad’s lines. His (supposed) father’s line was from England and his mother’s line was from France. Back then you had to order films in to be viewed at your local family history library. You paid a fee to rent or purchase a copy for the library, waited for it to come in and then studied the heck out it to find everyone and everything you could — especially if you were just renting it. If you didn’t know where in the censuses to start searching, you used the Soundex Index films to give you some clues as to where to start your searches. (More Soundex info here.) From my Soundex search I found there were several Buisch families in the Lyons, Wayne, New York area. I never could connect my line to the families in Lyons. Years later a clue in the 1870 census marriage schedule about my great-grandfather’s marriage would lead me to Buffalo, Erie, New York where I finally found my family line.
Basic information from mid-February 2020:
I had managed to track my 3rd-great-grandparents through most of the Buffalo censuses and city directories. I had the ship manifest from their arrival here in the U.S from Havre. I had naturalization records confirming the family was from France. Buisch was sometimes spelled as Buesch, Büsch or Busch and Bisch or Bish (how it sounds when pronounced). I knew researchers on the Buisch line in Lyons, Wayne, New York had figured out where that line emigrated from. They came from Kutzenhausen, Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France. When I woke up that morning, I had the thought that even though I was never able to match my line to the families in Lyons, perhaps they met up some way in the same area in France.
Getting started on the Initial Research page — always start with what you know:
George Henry Buisch was born about 1778 in Alsace, France. He married Catherine Barbara (LNU) before 1815. He passed away in 1844 in Buffalo, Erie, New York.
Catherine Barbara (LNU) was born about 1789 in Alsace, France. She passed away between 1875 and 1880 probably in Buffalo, Erie, New York. I originally thought her given name might be Barbara Catherine.
George, who sometimes went by Henry, and Barbara, who rarely used the name Catherine, emigrated with five children all born in Alsace, France:
- Barbara, born about 1815
- Elizabeth, born about 1819
- Henry, born about 1823
- George, born about 1827
- Phillip, born about 1830
I copied — not moved — over the Sections for George Henry Buisch and Catherine Barbara Unknown from the Buisch Surname notebook to the Research Quandaries notebook. I did not need all the details from their lives, just the basics to start researching in French records. At the start of my research in the Research Quandaries notebook, my Initial Research page looked something like what you see above. I included the information about the Lyons Buisch family originating in Kutzenhausen.
=====
A side note about the image above: I usually get rid of the red squiggle under uncommon words, names, place names, etc., that show up on pages in OneNote. A right-click with the cursor on the word will bring up the spell checker. You can choose to Ignore spelling or Add to Dictionary. If the word is a place name, first name or surname that will be seen often in my genealogy notebooks, I use the Add to Dictionary option. Otherwise I just click to ignore the spelling because I don’t like seeing all those red squiggly lines on my pages.
=====
The Bas-Rhin Archives has ten-year indexed record books of births, marriages and deaths for the local communes. The ten-year indexes at the Bas-Rhin Archives for Kutzenhausen cover the years 1813 through 1932. I started searching for the youngest children first in the Kutenhausen records.
I looked first in the index for the years 1823-18321. Not even a matching name.
Next I looked in the index for the years 1813-18222. There were matching names (Henry and George), but the birth years were off. Just to cross all my T’s and dot all my I’s, I looked at the birth register for Henry’s birth in 1816. His parents are George Henry Bisch and Salome Eyer. I also looked up the birth of George born in 1820. His parents are the same couple. This is one of the Buisch lines that ended up in Lyons, New York. The second George Bisch, born in 1821, was born to Frederick and Dorothee Bisch. No match there either.
=====
So I didn’t find any promising leads with the children’s names and birth years in either the 1813-1822 index or the 1823-1832 index. Yep, I was kinda bummed. I thought I’d had such a great idea when I woke up. According to Wikipedia, there are 514 communes in Bas-Rhin. Even if I narrowed it down to the arrondissment of Wissembourg — where Kutzenhausen is located — there were still 68 possibilities. Too many to search through individually. But then I thought… what if I could search at FamilySearch.com for the Buisch surname only in Bas-Rhin, France and narrow down the search even more? I searched using the German spelling of the surname, Büsch and searched records only in Bas-Rhin, France.
Well, well. Preuschdorf looks promising, yes?
Oh, look. Preuschdorf is right next to Kutzenhausen on the map. Even better.
=====
With cautious optimism I went back to the Bas-Rhin Archives to search the Preuschdorf records. The Bas-Rhin Archives have the Preuschdorf ten-year indexes online from 1793 through 1932 with only one volume missing. Again I started with the ten-year index for births, marriages and deaths looking for the birth of the youngest son first — so the 1823-1832 BMD index3.
There are births for a Phillip in 1830 and a George in 1827 that look promising. I added those to my Initial Research page. There was no 1823 birth for Henry though. Next a look at the 1813-1822 BMD index.4 & 5
There are birth entries for the other three children, and except for Henry, the birth years are close enough matches to the dates I have that I was pretty sure I had found my family! I should mention that the only record I had at the time for Henry Buisch’s age is the ship’s manifest where it is unclear what the number written for his age is supposed to be. The second number is written over and difficult to make out. I guessed that his age in 1834 was eleven, estimating his birth year as 1823, based on the scribbled notation on that ship manifest. He was actually two years older. I added those children into a chart on the Initial Research page. Now all I had to do was look at the individual births in the yearly birth registers to double check the parents’ names and look for a marriage record for the parents. (Also needed to do a genealogy happy dance!)
=====
Here is the chart I added at the bottom of the Initial Research page for the births of the children from the ship’s manifest where I added in the source citations. After I found the marriage record for George Henry Büsch and Catherine Barbara Cuntz, I realized there might be other children born to them. I made a note to search through the decennial indexes again to search for children’s births in the gaps between their marriage and the birth of Barbara and the gaps in the years between Barbara and Elizabeth and George Henry and George’s births. There is information on the marriage record about the death of George Henry’s mother, Marie Margaret Pfeiffer and the death of Catherine Barbara’s father, George Heinrich Cuntz. These are things that will be noted on a new Initial Research page for the George Henry Buisch Section. This original Initial Research page now becomes Research Concluded 10 April 2020. I made a new note at the top of the page about what I was researching. You can see a PDF of the completed page here. (When I was checking the link to the PDF after I posted this blog, I realized I should have added some more information at the top of the page about where this PDF came from in case it gets copied to someone’s Ancestry tree or some such further down the line… So don’t forget to do that!)
=====
You’ll notice that the original Buisch Research Section is no more since I transferred the concluded research information to George Henry Buisch’s Section. I started a new Section for George Henry Cuntz to copy some of the research over to him on an Initial Research page. That’s what you are seeing above. There is information on the marriage record about the death of Catherine Barbara Cuntz’s father, George Henry Cuntz and I have information about her siblings from pages sent to me from Cousin TS. I kept the Section for Catherine Barbara Cuntz for now. She outlived her husband by more than 30 years and there are other records for her in Buffalo that I want to search through to see if I can narrow down the death date for her son, George Henry Buisch, my 2x-great-grandfather.
=====
The reason I decided to start new Initial Research pages rather than keep a running page of research was to keep the information more like you would see in a Research Report rather than a Research Log. I want the research page to have an initial research objective that is not too broad and something that is quantifiable so I know when my research can be concluded. I didn’t want my research pages to end up a long, confusing jumble of information. As witnessed by some of my blog posts, I tend to ramble and things can become a bit confusing so that is a distinct possibility! (LOL)
Until next time,
~Erin
1 “Kutzenhausen Decennial Birth, Marriage, Death Index 1823-1832” database with images, Departmental Archives of Bas-Rhin (http://archives.bas-rhin.fr/detail-document/ETAT-CIVIL-C253-P1-R162409#visio/page:ETAT-CIVIL-C253-P1-R162409-1042440 : accessed 9 April 2020), image 1 of 31 > Births for surname Bisch.
2 “Kutzenhausen Decennial Birth, Marriage, Death Index 1813-1822” database with images, Departmental Archives of Bas-Rhin (http://archives.bas-rhin.fr/detail-document/ETAT-CIVIL-C253-P1-R162407#visio/page:ETAT-CIVIL-C253-P1-R162407-1042417 : accessed 9 April 2020), image 2 of 24 > Births for surname Bisch.
3 “Preuschdorf Decennial Birth, Marriage, Death Index 1823-1832” database with images, Departmental Archives of Bas-Rhin http://archives.bas-rhin.fr/detail-document/ETAT-CIVIL-C375-P1-R219291#visio/page:ETAT-CIVIL-C375-P1-R219291-2414311 : accessed 9 April 2020), image 2 of 18 > Births for surname Büsch
4 “Preuschdorf Decennial Birth, Marriage, Death Index 1813-1822” database with images, Departmental Archives of Bas-Rhin (http://archives.bas-rhin.fr/detail-document/ETAT-CIVIL-C375-P1-R219289#visio/page:ETAT-CIVIL-C375-P1-R219289-2414295 : accessed 9 April 2020), image 1 of 13 > Births for surname Bisch.
5 “Preuschdorf Decennial Birth, Marriage, Death Index 1813-1822” database with images, Departmental Archives of Bas-Rhin (http://archives.bas-rhin.fr/detail-document/ETAT-CIVIL-C375-P1-R219289#visio/page:ETAT-CIVIL-C375-P1-R219289-2414297 : accessed 9 April 2020), image 2 of 13 > Births for surname Bisch.
Cite This Page:
Erin Williamson Klein, “Cuntz Closed Cold Case.” My Family History Files, 17 April 2020 (https://myfamilyhistoryfiles.com/research-plan/cuntz-closed-cold-case/ : [access date]).
Please do not copy without attribution and link back to this page.
[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.
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
Erin Williamson Klein
New York to Nevada
Started my research in 1993
November 2020 NanoWriMo
50,404 of 50,000 words written about my ancestors.
