A hell of a haul…

My great grandfather, Fred Hamm, had many wives and relationships, in fact I am sure there are some we know nothing about. His second and third wives were both named Emma, although he didn’t marry his third wife until many years after they had been living together. He divorced his second wife in 1918, so the article below could be about his second wife Emma Steinbach Fischer, or his third girlfriend/wife Emma Paugel Hamm. They were all still in International Falls, Minnesota at the time this incident occurred.

Duluth News Tribune, 4/15/1920, vol. 51, issue 335, page 1.

I don’t know what would have been worse, the illness or the trip to the hospital. This just makes me very thankful for our modern conveniences.

Baseball, hotdogs, apple pie...

We have a couple of pictures in our family of my grandfather, Clarence John, that are a pretty classic American theme:

Clarence John, sometime between 1916-1928 in Wisconsin.

He is clearly wearing a Chicago White Sox uniform. Family rumor had it he played for a farm team for a short while. Unfortunately, I can find no record of Clarence playing for a farm team or for the White Sox. I checked with the Baseball Hall of Fame. It is possible he played for a local team that took on the name of the White Sox. Although I find that idea, passed on to me by an acquaintance, not very likely.

He does look cute in his uniform though.

On the same theme here is a Shepard relative with his baseball team, this one is in West Virginia:

One of the Shepard boys with his ball team, he is front row second from left. It could be my great-grandfather William Shepard, Sr., but I would have to confer with Mother about that.

A work in progress...

When I arrived in Salt Lake City on the 31st of last month, I still had about two hours of research time I could indulge in at the library before it closed at 5:00pm.

I decided to just look at the bygdebøk for Amund's side of the family, as I can't seem to get the book inter-library loaned at home. I spent the first half hour just trying to make heads or tails of the information and where I needed to start to find Amund himself.

Then, finally found him.

Now I could start working my way backwards, of course I also only had about an hour left to research. Here is his entry, [this digital image has been annotated by me for my own reference]:

Notice that his name in this publication is spelled Oddmund. I believe the church record of his birth has a similar spelling.

Unfortunately over the week that I was in SLC I only had short spurts of time I could spend looking through the book, so I never actually finished my research on Amund, but I was able to go back to the 1600s in several line's as I could for Jorgina's family.

Looks like I will have to go to the Madison Norwegian research center. I hear they are great.

Google maps has a 'live' view of the area of Norway that Amund lived so I am including two shots of each side of the road where Amunds' family came from. After looking at these images I can imagine the appeal of living in Duluth for Amund, and working on the docks, he had water in his veins.

I have indicated 'Here' on the map to show the side of the fjord/inlet where Amund's family came from, they lived up and down this waterway.

Fred's sibs...

I had a humorous and slightly embarrassing email from Freiderike this week - as she informed me she wasn't a guy! I knew I should have been a better student of German, I would have realized the 'e' at the end of her name was significant.

But all is better now and the confusion is cleared up. The 'lady' who has been so kind as to assist me in my Isserstedt research sent me records for 4 of Fred's brothers and sisters, which may be all he had.

They were:

1. Johann Heinrich Isserstedt, 1812?
2. Carl Friedrich Gottlieb Isserstedt, 1812? (died 3 June 1897) 
3. Marie Sophia Isserstedt, 1816
4. Johanna Maria Christiana Isserstedt, 1824?

Here are the images. Can you figure out which one is which?

Talk about snail mail...

In September of last year I sent a letter to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington, Vermont regarding a marriage between a Samuel Johnson and Elizabeth Fox. The reason for the request was I wanted to find out if this Samuel was a brother of Almyra Johnson Brooks.

Well, nine months later I finally got a response. Samuel Johnson was the son of John Johnson and Margaret Fing. So, no he is not Almyra's brother. Now he has been relegated to a possible cousin.

Great, this means I have to add another line of research to my Johnson quest, hopefully it won't lead to another brick wall.

Back to my old tricks...

Well, it has been almost a week since I came back from my exhausting trip to Salt Lake City. When Mary told me she took about 40 pictures of documents during her research, I just blinked and said "Really, I think I took about 400". I was close, 448. That's just with my camera, that doesn't count the 30 or more I took with my iPhone.

I have pretty much recovered, although not from the weather shock. I really miss my 80 degree days.

Over the next few weeks I will be posting a few items from my trip, but it is going to take me a while to assess the haul. As of right now I am not quite sure if I have anything of significance, as I don't have time to read the material, just find and photograph it.

But, I do have something to share that wasn't from my trip.

Friederike, my new German acquaintance, has sent me something even better than Friederick Karl Isserstedt's birth record, he has found his parent's marriage record.

This is the marriage record of Fred Isserstedt's parents.

They were married in St. Michael's Church in Hassleben, Germany.

"The 16th of October [1811] bachelor Mister Johann Heinrich Isserstedt ?? citizen and linen weaver of this town, [son of] Mister Johann Carl Isserstedt ?? citizen and linen weaver of this town ??  born in marriage [meaning legitimate], with Magdaline Regine Gross, [daughter of] Johann Nicolaus Gross ?? citizen and neighbor of this town, oldest born in marriage ?? ?? of this town, were married."

The question marks are items that Friedrike was unable to translate or transcribe. He also sent me the records of all the siblings, or at least the ones from the church records, I do not know if there were more. I will post those next week.

Now thanks to Friedrike's help I have gone back two generations, although I am missing the women's names from the marriage record. Of course. I am extremely grateful for Friedrike's help, otherwise I would probably never have gotten these records, as they have not been filmed by the Family History Library. Friedrike tells me that he does this to help other genealogists who have relatives from Hessleben, as that is where one of his ancestors also came from, his RAGK.