Living in the Past: A Family History

We (EDC) never had a "grandma's house," the way some people do: One of our grandmas (Berneburg) lived with us, so her "house" was the bedroom next to Deb's and mine, and the other grandma (Ortman) lived far away, at 19 Cox Place in Brooklyn, New York:  Here's a Google satellite view   This is a view from a property website.  I did the best I could to erase their watermark. Grandma Mae (and Grandpa William John and their son, Grandpa Bill) lived in this railroad apartment on a short, dead-end street. What's a railroad apartment, you ask? Well, that's another photo I can't find, one that showed that at Grandma's house, you could stand in the living room doorway and look all the way to the other end of the house and out the kitchen window.  All the rooms were lined up:  Living room, bedroom, bedroom, kitchen (with bath) like they were railroad cars, and there was no hallway -- in order to get to the kitchen, you had to w

I wanted to get even a little something written today, but I was going about 100 mph all day, trying to get my classes done for the first day of school tomorrow.  It's 10:30 PM, and I have everything packed up and ready to go.  This will be the big test of my "Sleep Phones," the headband with speakers that has been making a *huge* difference for me in the past few weeks.  We'll see if it keeps me from tossing and turning all night. I did promise a recipe, though, and I'm keeping my word on that.  Yesterday I showed you a picture of the Christmas Market in Hannover.  The markets always have something called "Gluehwein" (pronounced, yes, "glue wine").   It's a nice warm drink, and if you live somewhere where the weather is still cold (we don't), you might want to try it.  There are many, many recipes, but this one looks good: Gluehwein / Gluhwein Servings: 6 Ingredients: 3/4 cup water (or orange juice) 3/4 cup white s

Just a quick post today -- Ancestry.com offers two views of your ancestors -- one is the standard family tree view, and the other is called the "pedigree" view, maybe the way you see a dog's pedigree? (Bentley's mom/dad, is this correct?)  So here's what we see when we look at the Siegler/Hug portion of the tree:   Klicken Sie, bitte! I'm able to go back 6 generations from me (on the left), all the way to 1742, when EDC's great-great-great-great grandfather, Antonius Bernauer was born (or the 6th GGF of 3ZW).  Kind of neat, right?  This is just a small portion of the family tree -- I have 497 people recorded at this point!  (Not all are Ortman/Berneburgs; some are Wormuths or Earthmans.  The Earthman family tree at this point goes back to the time of the Mayflower -- an Earthman ancestor arrived in Virginia just a couple years after the Mayflower landed in Plymouth.) Let's look at another part.  This is a smaller part of the pedigree above. 

 Well, I found one of the pictures: Klicken Sie, bitte! You need to help me figure out this mystery.  So here is obviously a big family gathering, I'm guessing around 1902.    Can you recognize anyone in this picture?  Click on it to see it bigger.  Look carefully. It's Grandma Sophie!   I'm guessing she's 16, maybe 18.  What do you think? So I'm trying to figure out the rest of the picture. Who are all these people, anyway? Klicken sie bitte, to see the large picture   The ones circled i n aqua, ove r to the left, I'm thinking are Grandma So phie and her two sisters, Hanni and Lina.  They are both younger than Grandma, by four (Hanni) and seven years (Lina).   So who else might be in this picture?  Look at the lady in black in the middle: Doesn't she look like the matriarch?  She's clearly the oldest person in the picture.  Is that Sophie, Hanni, and Lina's mother?  Honestly, I don't think

Here's my research assistant, the lovely Buttercup Wormuth, helping me with my photo search: Thank you, Buttercup -- you've helped me enough! She likes to get in the box and help me by scratching at all the pictures. Stay tuned for a "Which Baby Am I?" contest, coming up!  As I was going through the photo boxes, I kept finding baby pictures of family members.  I don't have everyone, I'm sure, but I'm going to go through again and get as many as I can.  Then you can look through all the pictures and figure out which one you are!  I'm thinking of a good prize . . . See you next time!

Let me give you all a little tip:  When you take something out of a drawer or closet, put it back where you found it!!  A couple of years ago, I took some old, old photos out of my storage box, scanned them, and then did not put them back where they belonged.  I have been searching high and low all day, everywhere I can think of, but have come up with nothing.  Nada.  Niente.  Nichts.  And the hard drive the scans were on has long since had a total meltdown.  Any language you can say it in -- I'm an idiot. Why is it so important?  Missing are pictures of Grandma Sophie's family when she was a young woman, Grandpa Berneburg as a sailing man, and most important of all, a picture of Grandma Sophie with her sisters, Lina and Hanni, standing in front of the church where they were all confirmed.  If I could find that, I could send it to the FamNord list, and someone would be able to recognize it, I'm sure, and then I would know where to write for information . . . Would anyone

Hey everyone -- while digging through the past is fun (and a great sinkhole of time), it can also be mighty frustrating.  I'll give you an example. I'm trying to find information on Grandma Sophie's parents, Max Langer and Wilhelmina Schulze.  In order to do this, I begin with searching on ancestry.com, where you can all look at the family tree (if I haven't sent you a guest invitation, let me know). So when you put Max Langer into the search box, here's what you get: As always, click to see the whole picture We get three Max Langers, none of whom could be our Max Langer, because all of those sources are based in the United States (NY passenger lists, 1900 US census), and Great-grandpa Max never came to the United States.  Notice that up at the top of the picture, there's a line that says, "Matches 1-20 of 48,363"  Yikes!!  Do I have to go through all that ??  Same thing happens with Wilhelmina Schulze, except that there's one possibili

The Ortmans and Berneburgs have a long history with Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ozone Park, Queens, New York.  Here's a map on which I've marked a bunch of family history:   Click to see everything! Here's the church as it first was, in 1880.  This is where in 1895 Grandma Ortman was baptized with the name Maria Siegler (though she was also known as Mary, Marie, and Mae, which makes things confusing!), parents George Siegler and Mathilde Hug Siegler.  Probably the Sieglers were the only family members going to church here until the late 1920's, when the formerly Catholic William John Ortman and the Berneburgs get into the picture. There's one mysterious thing I don't have much information on.  When ancestry.com gave me hints on Maria Siegler, it connected me with historical documents that said she was married at the age of 21, in 1916, to someone named Frank Schnack and that they had a daughter.  Frank passed away in 1918, and since he h