Entry #49 I am winding down the year now with my blog posts for the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks blog challenge. I cannot finish the year without talking about my grandmother, Alma Maier Lindner. Alma Maier was the grandmother that I never knew – my mother’s mother. My mother barely knew her either, since…
Author: Cheryl Biermann Hartley
Margaret “Maggie” Miranda Walton – Our Link to Founding Colonial Families – 52 Ancestors #48
Entry #48 My mother-in-law is the one with the deep Colonial American ancestry. It took me years of research (due to several errors in a family tree compiled by one of her aunts) to tap into these lines. My mother-in-law’s great-grandmother was NOT Margaret Amelia Walton, but Margaret “Maggie” Miranda Walton. Maggie Walton’s husband, Theodore…
Katharina Von Bora – My 11x Great Grandmother Was a Runaway Nun – 52 Ancestors #47
Entry #47 My 11x great-grandmother was Katharina von Bora. In week 13, I blogged about how it was part of my heritage, even as a child, to know that I was descended from Martin Luther. While I did not know very much about Katharina von Bora, my grandpa did tell me that she had been…
Friederike Emilie Haehnert – A Secret Kept for 156 Years – 52 Ancestors #46
Entry #46 In entry #45, I alluded to a bombshell discovered within the marriage certificate of my great grandfather, Emil Heirich Max Lindner. I was expecting to see Christiane Charlotte Püschel listed as my great grandfather’s mother; but, she was not. Here is the top half of the marriage record with the translation below: The…
Unknown Kessler 2x Great-Grandfather – Name Found! – 52 Ancestors #45
Entry #45 I was so surprised to learn that Ancestry.com had made available a collection of birth and marriage records from Saxony, Germany. I was under the impression that most records in Dresden were destroyed. My great-grandmother, Anna Maria Kessler Linder, was killed during the fire-bombing of Dresden and I blogged about her in week…
James Burton Evans – A Teen Stabbed on the Street in Philadelphia – 52 Ancestors #44
Entry #44 I have three historic newspaper subscriptions, and I try to search for ancestors and their offspring in the appropriate collections. Sometimes the news is disturbing. In the case of 15-year-old James Burton Evans, who was the son of Abner James Evans and Mary E. Brown Evans, it was fatal. The family tragedy of…
Andrew Miller (Müller) – Proud of his Civil War Service -52 Ancestors #43
Entry #43 My dad has never been able to tell me much about our ancestors. For the most part his knowledge was limited to the family that he knew growing up. Sometimes he will even tell me that he never knew that a cousin of his was a relative, so he certainly can’t tell me…
Jochen Hinrich Schoof – Did He and His Wife Die Together? 52 Ancestors #42
Entry #42 After nearly three weeks traveling in China, this will be a brief catch-up post. It is based on a question I had while researching my Ruwolt family. Anna Maria Schoof (born October 1764, in Satow, Doberan, Mecklenburg) married Jochen Hinrich Hans “Schwieger Hinrich” Ruwoldt (born April 1760 in Satow). Anna Maria was the…
Christian Ruwolt – My Intertwined Mecklenburg Ruwolts – 52 Ancestors #41
Entry #41 Christian Ruwolt is now my most distant Mecklenburg ancestor. Earlier this year I was able to confirm that Friederica Catharina Diederica Ruwolt and Friedrich David Schatz were the parents of my great, great grandfather, John Schatz. There was a very lively discussion about my Ruwolt relatives in the 1819 census for Satow, Bad…
Johann Hans Michel Sigmund – The Ordeal of the Love and Unity – 52 Ancestors #40
Entry #40 It is not my intention to write the definitive history of Johann Michael Sigmund. My mother-in-law’s cousin, Nancy Schanes has done most of the research on the Sigmund family, and I gratefully acknowledge her work. I met Nancy this past summer and I immediately felt the bond that can develop between two people…