Memory Tree Genealogy Journal

Welcome back!  Yes, that was self-directed.  The entire month of January - it seems - was a bit of a wash, due to our upcoming move, a kitty health "cat"-astrophe, and overall craziness after the Christmas holiday season.  Our home is packed and all belongings are on their way to Virginia from Sicily.  The day of the pack-out, the movers did a fantastic job...but I was sweating bullets over my large plastic tote of genealogical files.  Of course I have scanned copies of the critical documents - but the remainder of the files represent hours of digging, printing, browsing through old newspaper archives online.  Buried stories resurrected with care.  Please, oh please do not let anything happen to my box of treasures!  Yesterday, while the boys napped, I worked a bit on my #1 genealogical goal for 2015 - tracking down naturalization paperwork, passenger lists, and potential hometowns for my half-dozen "German" immigrant relatives.  For each f...

Matrilineal Monday - sharing photos, stories, or genealogical information about women in our family tree.  Today, I'm sharing a photo of my great-grandmother, Catherine Margaretha Miller.  What's not to love about this sweet photograph?  Taken at my great-grandparents' home in Samoht Ridge, Delhi, Hamilton County, Ohio, a copy of this photo was passed to me as part of a collection of family history information from my maternal grandfather.  Catherine passed away while my grandfather was bravely serving the United States abroad during World War II.  Some of the details I love most about the photograph include her beautiful outfit, lapel pin, and necklace, the fact that my hair appears so much like hers (I get my dark hair from both sides of the family, though!), the brickwork on the front facing of the home, and the family dog making a cameo in the back left.  Old photographs like this one really enable me to feel a personal connection to relatives I...

Over the past several weeks, my brain has been immersed in the surnames Smith - Mead - Curtis - Palmer.  Branches of my maternal grandfather's family who trekked from Massachusetts to Vermont to Ohio and finally to Michigan.  More detail than I possible could have imagined - learning about their births, marriages, deaths, estates, land transactions...the list goes on!  Truly fascinating research for a special project that has stretched my genealogical skills to the max. At one point, I felt like a private investigator calling obscure libraries in search of obscure, defunct local newspapers in teeny-tiny local libraries in parts of Michigan I've never even seen.  I owe a debt of gratitude to the power of genealogical serendipity (mentioned before HERE ).  One final, magical detail of this research project emerged last week in the form of a sweet librarian in Coopersville, Michigan who voluntarily found the following obituary on microfilm, scanned, and emai...

Ever since I received my AncestryDNA results and discovered my Turkish/Persian/Caucasus ethnicity and – even more surprising – my LACK of Central European ethnicity,   I’ve made a concerted effort to look further into the lives of my immigrant ancestors and their lives across the ocean.   Most of my time until recently has been tracing family roots on American soil; diving into international genealogy is a completely new ball game.   My first experience with international research was working through my husband’s Norwegian family history…and involved learning new terms in a new language (words like church, parish, baptism, marriage, death, etc.).   It also involved in-depth geography lessons, advancing my understanding of migration, patronymic naming systems, and even digging into common routes of immigration from Norway to the United States.   Thanks to Google Translator, I have been able to use the wonderfully-detailed Norwegian Archives website to lo...

Have you ever heard of the WWII-era  "Old Man's Draft"?  While it may be surprising to find draft registration for relatives who seemed too "old" to serve, these cards were required by the Selective Service in their fourth of six registration periods in April 1942 [1] According to a FamilySearch.org article on the World War II Draft Registration process, the fourth registration – or “Old Man’s Draft” – was specifically for men with birthdays “ from April 28, 1877 to February 16, 1897” (FamilySearch Wiki).   Like finding a WWI draft registration card, the WWII documents provide very helpful genealogical information…birthdate, next of kin, physical description, place of employment, etc.  Here - I have included the registration for my mother's grandfather, Mr. George Henry Ostholthoff.  Resident of Wyoming, Hamilton County, OH, he is listed in 1942 as being married to Mrs. Elizabeth Cecelia (Luden) Ostholthoff.  Place of employment - American Agri...

Instead of jumping right into the multi-generational tradition of service in the US Navy among my husband's relatives (would have been too obvious?  No?)...I'll kick off the first of my "Maritime Monday" posts with a nod at one of my several German immigrant ancestors.  Ship travel?  Check!   On 18 Septemer 1868, my 3rd great-grandfather Anselmus Ostholthoff arrived in New York aboard the German steam ship "Smidt" after a trans-Atlantic journey from Andervenne, Germany.  His traveling companions - wife Maria Anna (Toepke) Ostholthoff, their eldest son Johan Gerhard (2 years), and daughter Anna Maria (9 months). The following snippet from their arrival documentation [1] indicates that Anselmus ("Selmus") was a farmer from Andervenne.  His stated destination after New York: Virgina.  This is curious to me, because I have record of Anselmus living in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1870 [2] .  At this point, Mr. Ostholthoff is no longer working as a ...