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.

Family and travel...

As I am heading out to Salt Lake City for my annual research trip tomorrow, I thought today's post would be most appropriate. It is about family and travel. Hence the title.

Frieda Isserstedt, born 1882.

Frieda Isserstedt is my 1st cousin 3 times removed. Or to be less confusing, she is the daughter of my gg grandmother Amelia Isserstedt Hamm's brother, Fritz. I hope that helps. She was a graduate of the University of Chicago and was a teacher. From all accounts a very much respected one too. According to her students no one could stump her on a historical event date.

In 1929 Frieda decided to take a European tour.

This article is from the Sheboygan Press.

That sounds like quite a trip, she never visited the family's hometown, but it looks like she might not have had time.

Here is the Olympic, the ship she sailed home on:

A postcard version of the ship. As you can see it is a White Star Line ship, the same as the Titanic, and no, the ship made it home just fine.

This is the passenger list for the Olympic, Frieda is number 8 on the list.

My trip won't be as exotic. But I do hope to have a good time. At least the restaurants are usually excellent. I can't wait to head to my favorite sushi stop, way better than anything we get here.

I won't be posting anything next week. Unless I have a really big find, but I have my doubts about that. So until the next post, stay cool. Aloha.

Another generation...

I had a surprising email waiting for me this last weekend. It was a notification from ancestry.com that someone had left a messsage for me with my account. As it has been quite a while since anyone has contacted me through Ancestry I was eager to see what it was about.

A gentleman from Germany was asking me if I was still interested in information on my Isserstedts in Hassleben, Germany. My first thought was, 'hell yeah!'

Friedrike is German and has been helping out folks with ancestors from Hassleben, because he has an ancestor from there. He has photographed all the pages from the St. Michael's church books and sends them out to folks who are in need of copies. As the Mormon Church hasn't microfilmed any of these church records, this was an excellent opportunity to get those church records.

Unfortunately, the book earlier than 1798 was burned in a fire and the one between 1824ish and 1843 was stolen, but as least there was one record he could send me:

Whole page of church book with Friedrich Carl Isserstedt entry.

Close up of Fred's church entry, 1822, p231

Here Friedrich, my German acquaintance, translated the information so I would be sure to know what it means.

The translation (with a few grammatical corrections to read easier):

5. Friedrich Karl, Mister Johann Heinrich Isserstedt and his wife Magdalene Regina (born Grosse) 4th child, was born the 26th of February [1822] and baptized the 3rd of March through his godfathers 1. Johann Felix Mälzer Chirurgus = doctor 2. Adelgunde Sophie Grimmer wife of Johann Nicol Grimmer in Werningshausen [is a small town some miles north of Hassleben].

In case you haven't figured it out by now this is Fred Isserstedt's birth record from Germany. According to the church record Fred had three siblings and I am hoping to get their names. I don't know if I will be able to find out much more on his parents as the church books needed are missing. Not having done much research with records still in Germany, it will be interesting to see if I will be able to find anything else about the family.

In remembrance of things past...

As today is Memorial Day, I thought it only appropriate to share this. It is a wonderful little find from last week.

In preparation for my trip to SLC this coming Saturday - yes, it is coming up fast - I was going over my game plan to make sure I was properly prepared. One of the surnames I will be researching this time is SMITH, this SMITH line will be Susanna Smith Shepard's. I know her parents names and most of her siblings. One of her brothers was a gentleman named Kinzey Smith. Because of the more unique nature of the name I was checking to see if I could find anything online about him.

One of the hits in my search was FindAGrave, an excellent resource. There was a Kinsman "Kinzey" Smith listed, whose date of birth matched what I had in my records. So when I clicked on the link, up popped his entry, which included a picture of two men.

Here's the kicker.

One of the men in the picture, looked exactly like one of the Shepard pictures I had scanned a few years ago and uploaded to Flickr. Not similar, exactly. So a read of the caption told me that this was a picture of brothers Charles and Kinzey Smith, both veterans of the Civil War. Charles had fought for the Union side, Kinzey joined the Confederates.

One can only image the family conversations on that subject. I haven't done any research on either man yet. But in honor of their service I present them to you.

Charles is on the left and Kinzey is on the right. You will notice Kinzey has a hand missing, the result of a Fourth of July celebration gone wrong. You know what they say about playing with fire-crackers.

Here is the image that our family has had passed down to us:

I had thought that maybe this was Hartley Shepard, but now I know different.

And now I have pictures of three of the Smith family. Here's Susanna my ggg grandmother:

This was pulled off the Deem Family website. It is an extremely bad copy, but the best I can do.

Have an excellent Memorial Day. We plan on ribs and great weather.

Pencils, protractors and rulers, oh my...

When you are researching land records in this country there are generally two kinds of property descriptions you will run into 'metes and bounds' and ‘rectangular survey’

The latter type is pretty easy to understand, everything is divided into squares or rectangles with specific acreages in wholes, halves, quarters. But metes and bounds is a whole other animal. 

Below is an example of each of property type. The first was owned by GEORGEs (Virginia/West Virginia) and the second was owned by CONNELLYs (Wisconsin):

BEGINNING at a beech and sugar tree on the south bank of McClery’s fork, and running thence
S45 degrees E55 poles to a hickory on a ridge
E344 poles to a white oak on the side of a hill
N100 poles to a black oak on the side of a point
N53 degrees, W180 poles to a stone on a hill near some white oaks
S82 degrees W184 poles to a white oak in a narrows, and thence
S20 degrees, W160 poles to the BEGINNING

and

sw1/4 sw1/4  s23  t18  r19 (translated this means - the southwest quarter of the southwest quarter of section 23, township 18, range 19.)

I made the metes and bounds property description easier to read by separating each description, normally you would see it as one long paragraph. You can also see the difference between the two methods in the description of each. The rectangular survey method is much easier to read and figure out.

So while I have understood for many years how to figure out what sections look like on a map. I had never tackled metes and bounds, until a few weeks ago, at which time I decided it was time to learn something new by practicing with my GEORGE family deeds. These deeds are all located in Tyler County, West Virginia.

Here is my first attempt:

This one came out pretty close, the poor quality of my tools affected the outcome.

The second one:

The trick is pretty simple, you need a protractor or something with degrees on it, a pencil, and a ruler. Put a dot on your paper center the dot on your protractor mark the first degree in the proper direction, then measure out the poles or rods. Next. Well, I won’t go into any more detail, after all it is actually something you have to do to understand better and once you learn the procedure, it is pretty easy and fun.

Once you start drawing out these property descriptions you also start finding out where the errors are in the surveyors measurements or the register of deeds copying talents, because over time errors do appear, as can be seen in this property I drew out:

Something is definitely wrong with the deed in the above drawing, now I just have to figure out where the mistake is. The squiggly line on the bottom is in fact a 'meander', this line actually follows a creek.

Here is another example of a bad deed. The numbers were very hard to read on this one and I believe the clerk writing it out made a couple of mistakes. I have drawn four versions of what the property looks like in this one drawing, none of them line up properly. I was going by what the numbers could be in the deed.

Guess I have some more work to do in Salt Lake City.