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Digital Sticky Notes

I have been working (almost daily for the last three months) on Zittel Zygology mentioned in this post. The idea of working on connecting family lines for two DNA matches has exploded to epic proportions. I am currently working on connecting lines for 20 known DNA matches to my Zittel line. It looks a bit like this…

Scapple chart of Zittel descendants
Descendants of Johannes Zittel and Elisabeth Stempfel

There are over 50 couples in the first five generations and more than 50 children (most with spouses and even more children) so far in the sixth and seventh generations. (Seventh generation not shown on chart.)

I’ve written and deleted several posts about how this is coming together in my Research Quandaries notebook. Maybe once I finish up trailing the descendants of the oldest son of Peter Zittel and Rosina Hauck (far left of chart), I will get something posted. In the meantime, can I just sing the praises of Sticky Notes? My (laptop) desktop looks like this…

The Sticky Notes app is another of those things that you might not know you have on your computer unless you hunt it down. Click on the magnifying glass next to the Windows icon and search “sticky notes.” Then open the Sticky Notes app. Clicking on the + sign opens a new note.

Click on the menu icon (the three dots). From there you can change the background color, see a list of all your notes, or delete the current note. The notes can be resized vertically and horizontally. The icons at the bottom of the note are to change the text of your note: Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough, and Bulleted List. The last icon is used to insert a picture into your note. Your notes are saved until you delete them. I usually close down the computer with my notes still open on the desktop and they are all there when I restart it.

I am using Sticky Notes to jot down the list of names from the indexes for the communes in Bas-Rhin where I need to then go and look up the original record in a different register. I also have a list of citations to copy and edit once I add the source to my OneNote pages for a person/couple. Extremely helpful! I only wish there was a way to permanently pin a note to stay on top of the browser window I am currently viewing.

I’d be drowning in paper if not for OneNote and Sticky Notes! (You’re welcome.)

Until the next time,
~Erin


Cite This Page:

Erin Williamson Klein, “Digital Sticky Notes.” My Family History Files, 11 December 2020 (https://myfamilyhistoryfiles.com/organization/digital-sticky-notes/ : [access date]).

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


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Research Plan for Johannes Zittel

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. If it’s more complicated, I end using the Initial Research Page that I described in my last post. I filled out a Research Plan for you as an example using the research I did for the death date and place for Johannes Zittel.

This is what the Blank Research Plan template looks like: Blank Research Plan PDF

Blank Research Plan Template

 

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On to the plan… Trees online at Ancestry had John Zittel’s death on 8 Oct 1847 and burial in St. John’s Cemetery in Sheldon, New York. But a change to the FindaGrave.com memorial I had attached to his death put that information in doubt. I did some digging and found my answers.

The template for a Blank Research Plan has some basic instructions and several different tables grouped together to complete the plan. Always start with what you know and give details from the sources you may already have acquired. I filled out the first table in the Research Plan with what I knew, the new, conflicting information and sources (documents) I got the information from.

Partial Johannes Zittel Research Plan

The example above shows the information I originally had and where I got it from as supporting the original conclusion. The next two lines (last line not shown in image above), detail the known conflicting information about Johannes Zittel’s death date. [As a side note: Originally the trees on Ancestry showed Johannes Zittel having the given name of “John” probably because of this FindaGrave.com memorial that is now in question. However, as I have researched more on this family in the last few months, I have discovered his given name to be Johannes.]

 

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The next three tables are for your Research Question, Clues / Hypothesis and Tasks / Places to Look (for new information).

Another portion of Johannes Zittel Research Plan

In my Research Plan, I wrote the specific information I was looking for as a Research Question. Then I detailed some thoughts about where to look for more records and other thoughts I had before I hypothesized that Johannes may have actually died in Cleebourg, France:

  • Given that his wife and several children traveled without him to New York.
  • The fact that I did not see him living close to family members in the 1840 US Census in Sheldon, New York.
  • There are no other apparent records for Johannes in what was then Genesee County, New York.

However, I did search methodically through the records as I outlined in my Clues / Hypothesis table rather than jumping right into the Cleebourg death records just to make sure I had not missed him.

 

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Given that the conclusion is fairly straight forward, I am not going to analyze the new sources (documents) using a Source Description Template nor did I use the table for the Research Log that is included on the Research Plan template. I just put images of the sources (documents) at the bottom of the page with their source citations. (For the most part, at least.)

Conclusion Johannes Zittel Research Plan

 

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Johannes Zittel died on 5 Jan 1819 in Cleebourg, Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France according to the death record I found there. To corroborate that this was indeed the right Johannes Zittel — the one married to Margaretha Motz — I then looked for their marriage record. The parents listed on the death record and marriage record for Johannes are the same so I concluded that the death record was his. A PDF of the completed Research Plan is here.

Cleebourg 1819 death record1

Death Record

Cleebourg 1798 marriage record2

Marriage Record

 

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No, I cannot read French nor German. Google Translate and I are becoming fast friends. Regarding the marriage record, I am trusting the person who listed the marriage date over at FamilySearch.org for Johannes Zittel’s profile. The year is correct judging by the volume I found the marriage record in, but I do not see at the top of the record where it says “vingt thermidor” which is the date of the French Republic Calendar for 7 August 17983. I am going to have someone who has more experience translating French and German records confirm the date for me.

Date calculation

 

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My original reason for using the Research Plan in a more formal way for that genealogical problem was to document my conclusions and turn it into a PDF that could be attached to Johannes Zittel’s profile in my Ancestry tree. Because the death information is pretty straight forward, I am going to add the information with a PDF of the death record from the Bas-Rhin Archives and the citation to his profile instead. Which I am going to attempt to go do right after I upload this blog post, because I have a tendency to skip that part while chasing after more bright shiny objects and falling down numerous other rabbit holes, etc.

Until the next time,

~Erin


1 “Cleebourg Death Register – 1819” database with images, Departmental Archives of Bas-Rhin (http://archives.bas-rhin.fr/detail-document/ETAT-CIVIL-C74-P1-R56411#visio/page:ETAT-CIVIL-C74-P1-R56411-3077231 : accessed 1 May 2020, image 2 of 9 > No. 1 > 5 Jan 1819 > Entry for Johannes Zittel.

2 “Cleebourg Marriage Register – Year VI” database with images, Departmental Archives of Bas-Rhin (http://archives.bas-rhin.fr/detail-document/ETAT-CIVIL-C74-P1-R56276#visio/page:ETAT-CIVIL-C74-P1-R56276-289673 : accessed 1 May 2020, image 3 of 5 > Entry for marriage of Johannes Zittel and Catherina Margaretha Motz.

3 “The Republican Calendar” date converter app. Napoleon.org (https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/the-republican-calendar/ : accessed 2 May 2020); converted > 7 August 1798 Gregorian calendar to French Republic calendar date of 20 thermidor an VI.


Cite This Page:

Erin Williamson Klein, “Research Plan for Johannes Zittel.” My Family History Files.com, 2 May 2020 (https://myfamilyhistoryfiles.com/research-plan/research-plan-for-johannes-zittel/ : [access date]).

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


 

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Cuntz Closed Cold Case

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:

  1. Barbara, born about 1815
  2. Elizabeth, born about 1819
  3. Henry, born about 1823
  4. George, born about 1827
  5. 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.

 

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Initial Research Page

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.

 

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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.

Kutzenhausen Birth Index

I looked first in the index for the years 1823-18321. Not even a matching name.

Kutzenhausen Birth Index

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.

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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.

Family Search image

Well, well. Preuschdorf looks promising, yes?

 

Open source map Alsace, France

Oh, look. Preuschdorf is right next to Kutzenhausen on the map. Even better.

 

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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.

Preuschdorf Birth Index

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

Preuschdorf Birth Index

Preuschdorf Birth Index

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!)

 

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Updated Initial Research page

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!)

 

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New Initial Research page

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.

 

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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.