52 Ancestors 2018 #2

Favorite Photo

Ok, so these probably aren't my most favorite photos of an ancestor, but I do like them a lot. My great-grandfather, Thomas Edwards, was a coal miner in Utah. He died fairly young, in a mining accident. I find these old photos of his life in that mining town very interesting. The area was in Spring Canyon, Utah. The city was names Storrs and people only lived there a short time. It's now just a few piles of stone foundations and wilderness. But when my family lived there it was a town full of life.

For comparison, here is what it looks like now (taken in 2016)

And some of my relatives who still live in the area helped put up this memorial. My grandfather's name is on the right-most column.

52 Ancestors 2018 #1

A few years ago I did the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge and enjoyed it a lot. I liked learning about my ancestors and writing down their stories. I was excited to see that the challenge would be going on again this year. Since I have already done posts on many of my direct ancestors the last time I did the challenge I will be doing things a little different this time.

I have a couple ideas about what I want to do with this challenge. The first is a continuation of a project I started last year: finding as many descendants of one of my ancestors. I went back several generations to an ancestor that had 19 children (between two wives, and 1 illegitimate child). I am only on his 5th child, but have found so many descendants. I want to continue this project, so some of my posts might be about these newly found cousins.

Another idea I had was to work on my 'ancestor score'. I found an interesting table online that showed how many ancestors you should have for each generation, then a column for how many you have identified in your own family tree. Going back 10 generations you should have 1023 direct ancestors. I have found 222, which puts me at a 21.7% filled out family tree. I know all my ancestors back 6 generations, and most of them in the 7th, but I only know half of my 8th generation and I only know 12 of my ancestors 10 generations back (out of 512 possible). I want to fill out those generations further back, which I know is a difficult thing because of how old those records would be. Some of my weeks might be information on these missing ancestors.

The first week's prompt is "start". I'm going to start off with my 4x great-grandfather John Butler. He was born about 1799 in Ireland. When he was about 25 he married Margaret Dorn. They had 2 children before immigrating to the United States. They came through New York in July 1828. They spent a few years in the New York/New Jersey area before moving on the Ohio where they eventually settled for good.
Margaret died in 1841 leaving behind 6 children. Around 2 years later John married Elizabeth Hughes, who was also an Irish immigrant to Ohio. Elizabeth was about 25 years younger than John and they had 11 children together. Their youngest was not quite 3 when John died April 1870. As far as I have found Elizabeth never remarried.
In researching John Butler I thought this was all of his family, but then I came across his will. In it I found out that he had an illegitimate child named William Eller, whom he left some money to when he died. I still don't know who the mother is, or exactly where in the age-order pf children he fits. One more thing to add to my research plans.

Breaking Through My Brick Wall

One of my most frustrating brick walls has been my 2x great-grandfather Dietrich Heinrich Hasemeyer. I knew he was born in Germany, went to Illinois, then on to Colorado (where he married my 2x great-grandmother), and died in Utah. But I didn't know much about his family, where he came from, or how/when he came to America.

You would think there would be a record of his coming to America, since it would have been around 1880. His Naturalization papers don't give any specifics, just a signed oath of allegiance. I just couldn't figure it out.

Then I remembered that his obituary mentioned his family. His obituary in Utah, 1925, stated that he had 3 brothers living in Illinois. This was the key.

One thing I like about Ancestry.com is the ability to make multiple trees, private ones, and it gives record hints even when the person has no death date listed (potentially living people). I made a Hasemeyer tree just for this investigation.

I looked up the 1920 census and found everyone named Hasemeyer (and other various spellings of the name), and put them all into a tree together. I knew many would not actually be related, but this was just to help keep track of/find other records for them.

I discovered that 3 of the Hasemeyer men I found were brothers, living in the same county in Illinois in 1920. And they all had birth records in Germany, that were searchable! They had the same parents (that's how I know they were brothers and not just people with the same last name).

From there I looked up the parents, to find all the children they had in those German records. Low and behold, they had a son named Heinrich Diedrich Ferdinand Haesemeier, with the exact same birth day as my Dietrich Heinrich Hasemeyer! I know that (in this family at least) the people went by their 2nd given name rather than their 1st given name, so Heinrich Diedrich would have gone by Diedrich/Dietrich most of the time. I had found my family!

All I had left to do was copy the information for my newly found family members from my private Hasemeyer tree onto my regular tree, and attach the sources.

All the other Hasemeyers in Illinois were totally wrong to be my family, the years and places didn't add up at all.

It pays to look up the FAN club of your ancestor and not just the person you are actually looking for (FAN stands for Family, Associates, and Neighbors). Now I am climbing this branch of the tree, finding cousins and grandparents, and so excited to finally break through that brick wall.

Update Mar 11:
I have a DNA match with another Hasemeyer, confirming that I found the right Hasemeyer family!

I saw that I had 2 matches through AncestryDNA with the name Hasemeyer in their family trees. One was related to my known Hasemeyer ancestor, and the other had a private tree. I messaged them, and they responded, confirming that they are directly descended from my ancestors brother. Looks like I have a new cousin (3rd cousin once removed for those who want to know)!

Testing my DNA

I finally pulled the trigger and bought a DNA testing kit. I took advantage of a sale at AncestryDNA and gave them my spit. It took about a month to get the results. It was very exciting.

The results themselves were not at all surprising. I am pretty darn white, and my DNA reflects that. Also, having learned about European history, and how different parts of your DNA can come from pretty far back, nothing in the tests came as a surprise, even the 'trace regions'.

What I was most excited about, however, was the DNA matches. This is really the best part of doing the Ancestry test. It says I have 90 people that are 4th cousins or closer who have all taken the test. That is awesome! 4th cousins still share enough DNA for the test to be fairly reliable, which means most (if not all) of those people are actually related.

One of those people is my 1st cousin, so I know right off that we are related without having to do any research. Most of the people who use AncestryDNA have at least a small family tree online for you to look through and find matching names. I love seeing how you are related to other people.
I haven't contacted anyone yet, but I am slowly going through my list and trying to find how we are related. I am trying to be as thorough as possible, since some aren't as obvious at first.

Also, now that I have done the AncestryDNA test, I am going to try and transfer the results to Family Tree DNA to find where I fit over there. So far, the transfer thing isn't working for me (i've heard it's because AncestryDNA recently changed up their test and FTDNA hasn't caught up with it yet), but I am hopeful they will fix the problem soon. My dad took their test years ago, so I have access to his information, and it's pretty interesting how they separate the groups and find common ancestors.

The next time my husband is home for R&R I will have him take a test, I am really curious to see if he has any matches on Ancestry.

For more information on DNA and genealogy I recommend you go to The Genetic Genealogist, and the International Society of Genetic Genealogy

My First Trip to the Family History Library

My family went on a big roadtrip for almost 3 weeks. Along the way we stopped by 2 different cities my ancestors lived, and I got 6 hours at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. My kids weren't as interested in doing genealogy on vacation, but they did like walking around the cemetery at little. And while I was in the library, they went with their father to see temple square and things, so they were sufficiently entertained while I worked.

Anyway, it was my very first time going into the Family History Library. Some things I think I did right, and others I didn't. Here is a summary of my trip, which is hopefully helpful for your first trip there as well.

What I did right:

1. I had a plan. I knew exactly who and what I was looking for, which information I wanted to fill in, and approximately where to find it. I was focusing on my husband's family, which were all in one country, and I knew the records were all in microfilm (thanks to the British, there were pretty good records).

2. I wrote down the film numbers. I had a list of microfilm numbers, and what was in them, so I could go straight to the film and start researching. It's pretty easy to look at the catalog online from home and make a list. You can write down your own list, or make a 'catalog print list' right on the FamilySearch website and simply press print when your ready. Luckily my research was all on one floor of the building, no need to move around too much.

3. I brought my computer, notebook, and cell phone. I was able to take a quick cell phone shot of the indexes for the records (for reference while looking for the record itself), write things down, and even input things directly into my computer genealogy software. It's great to have access to technology while you are there, and to be able to record things in multiple ways. I happen to have a backpack with a place for my laptop, so it wasn't a big deal to carry it all in.

What did wrong:

1. didn't pay attention to where exactly the microfilm was located. Some was in the regular files, some was in the high density stacks (needing a worker to go get it for me), some was restricted (needing me to surrender my drivers license to view it), and some was in the Granite Vaults (needing to be ordered ahead of time). 

For the Fijian records I was looking at, most of the indexes were in the regular files, so I could go and look up people and find record numbers or dates. But then, the records themselves were in the Granite Vault, so I couldn't access it that day (and didn't have another day to come back). I also had a long list of restricted film to look through, but it requires you to give them your drivers license or ID before they go get it for you. I only had time for 2 rolls, and hope to be able to go back some day and see the rest.

If I had been a little more diligent in my prep before hand I could have had the Granite Vault films ordered and waiting for me when I got there.

2. Not giving enough time. 6 hours may seem like a lot, but when you are elbow deep in microfilm and research, is there ever really enough time? We were visiting friends and family in the area, so I wasn't able to carve out any more time, but next time I will try to wrangle a second day out of the trip.

Overall the trip was a success. I know I can order the granite vault films to be delivered to my local genealogy library ($7 per film), so I'm not too bummed that I didn't get to see it there. I loved being there in the library surrounded by so many other genealogists doing work, and even better, finally seeing more people my own age and younger doing genealogy (I am often the odd man out in the age department).

Can't wait until I make time to go back!