Tag Archives: Location: US: Illinois

Week 34 Prompt: Tragedy This week’s 52 Ancestors theme is”Tragedy.” I wrote about this briefly ten years ago. Before writing this post, I set out to correlate all the information I had regarding the death of my great-grandfather George Rottman. Here’s what I’ve been able to glean. There were ten newspaper clippings related to his death in my family files—I also found four additional articles. The short story is that George “fell” off a streetcar, suffered skull fractures, and died hours later. But there are various versions of what really […]

Week 22 Prompt: At the Cemetery This week’s 52 Ancestors theme is “At the Cemetery.” I haven’t written about my Schwartz family in awhile, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to do so. Johann Schwartz and Margaretha Kremer are my second great-grandparents on my dad’s side. They, along with some of their children, are buried in Mt. Olivet in Aurora, Illinois. There is a large family stone, and each person has their own marker. Below are the photos of the markers I took back in 2011.

Week 12 Prompt: 12 This week’s 52 Ancestors theme is the number 12. My brain went to the year 1912, and I was curious to see who in my family died in 1912.

Week 11 Prompt: Large Family This week’s 52 Ancestors theme is “Large Family.”Coming from lines where the recent generations were small families, a “large family” to me is anything over three children! But I digress. When I saw this prompt, I immediately thought of one of my collateral families that I work with quite frequently. Since this is Week 11 of the challenge, the fact that this family consisted of 11 children is fitting.

Week 2 Prompt: Challenge This week’s 52 Ancestors theme is about challenges. Simple enough, I guess. But my challenge was figuring out which challenging ancestor to write about. I’ve decided to write about one ancestral couple, who I assumed would remain brick walls forever. Fortunately, with the few clues that I had and new databases on Ancestry, I was able to find this German couple’s origins and parents. Heinrich Karl “Charles” Stoffel and Anne Marie “Mary” Braun are second great-grandparents on my maternal side. They immigrated from Germany and settled […]

One would think that the information contained on the original vital record certificate and in the vital record register book for the same person and event would be identical. But is that always the case? As genealogists we understand that getting as close to the original record as possible is a necessity, but not always a possibility. We know that mistakes can be made in “copying” information from an original to a derivative. It is my understanding that in most places, if there are certificates and register books available concurrently, […]

Weekly column sharing genealogy-related things that I’ve found, such as new blogs, interesting posts/articles, useful websites and resources, and of course upcoming webinars.

Weekly column sharing genealogy-related things that I’ve found, such as new blogs, interesting posts/articles, useful websites and resources, and of course upcoming webinars.