Mystery Kenfolk Case #1: The Düwels

Posted on by K Trantham

Friedrich and Catherine (Springmeyer) Düwel are 3rd great grandparents on my father’s side. They are one of several genealogical “cold cases” I am currently working. Some branches of the family tree are more difficult to research than others.

Essentially, I know the middle of their story but not the beginning or ending.

I’ve been able to determine from German church records that they married October 4, 1840 in Bockhorst, Westfalen, Prussia. A daughter was born to them in 1842 according to baptismal records from the same church. Her story ends there. Friedrich and Catherine immigrated to the U.S. after she was born and made their way to Hickory Grove, Missouri which is near modern-day Warrenton in Warren County. He became a United States citizen in 1854. Three years earlier he’d applied for citizenship at age 41. His 3rd daughter, Friedericka, would become my 2nd great grandmother. It is from her 1915 death certificate that I first learned of her parent’s names – “Fritz” and Catherine.

Fritz and Catherine appear in the Warren County census records of 1850, 1860 and 1870 and then vanish along with the three youngest children: Fred, Samuel and Anna. The oldest surviving daughter “Mina” married Gottlieb Koelling with whom she raised ten children until her untimely death in 1889. Friedericka, or “Reka”, married Henry Simon Düsenberg in 1870. Their granddaughter, Mildred, is my paternal grandmother.

The surname Düwel has many spelling variations which adds to the challenge. One variation is “Teufel” which translates to “devil”. That’s fitting because I had a “Teufel” of a time locating them in the census. After weeks of not finding a single shred of evidence of their existence beyond the death certificate, I decided to scan the entire 1850 census of Warren County, Missouri and review every male named “Fritz” or “Fred” and every female named “Catherine”, “Cathy” etc. How hard could that be?

I eventually found them listed as Fred and Catherine “Devil”. In retrospect, the lesson I learned here was to research the last name first. That might have led me to them faster had I known I had a little devil in me which my mother always suspected.

In September, I am making a trip back to Missouri. On the agenda is a stop at the Warren County courthouse to see if I can figure out what happened to the Düwels after 1870.

More to come. (I hope.)

Kenfolk: Tranthams
Relation: Paternal 3rd great grandparents
Common ancestors: Many

Cousins marrying cousins

Posted on by K Trantham

Gedmatch.com is a website where you can upload your raw DNA data from other websites and analyze it in fun and interesting ways. Thanks to Gedmatch.com I know conclusively that my parents are not cousins.

However, this might have been a more meaningful conclusion had it not predicted the color of my eyes as puce. They are more of a greenish puce.

My mother’s family and my paternal grandmother’s family (which is also my father’s family) both hailed from the eastern and central parts of Missouri. Not surprisingly I’ve found five of my mother’s 2nd+ cousins married to five of my father’s 1st+ cousins. As far as I can tell, these folks are related to me but not to each other.

From left to right, mom’s relative, then dad’s, with my relationship to each of them in brackets:

  1. Florence Schwartz (2nd cousin, 2x removed) married Edna Duesenberg (1st cousin, 2x removed)
  2. Irene Rohlfing (3rd cousin,1x removed) married Herbert Biesemeyer (1st cousin, 2x removed)
  3. Dwayne Kersten (2nd cousin, 1x removed) married Celeste Sprick (3rd cousin, 1x removed)
  4. Patricia Kersten (2nd cousin, 1x removed) married Glenn Bolm (4th cousin)
  5. Brenda Schroeder (3rd cousin) married Shane Bunge (4th cousin)

It occurred to me that my DNA and the DNA of their children would be very interesting to examine more closely on Gedmatch.com. It’s possible that we might actually share more DNA than your typical 3rd or 4th cousins might normally share because of how our family trees overlap. I’ll have to work on that.

Kenfolk: Both sides
Relations: Lots of them
Common ancestors: With me, yes. With each other, I don’t think so.

Pancake Wisdom

Posted on by K Trantham

Wishing my dearest Aunt Jodi the happiest of birthdays today! I believe aunts and uncles play important roles in our lives. While our parents focus on the big stuff like knowing the difference between right and wrong, playing nice with others, and “hey, don’t touch that it’s hot”, our aunts and uncles are responsible for imparting little gems of wisdom that might otherwise have been overlooked.

Somewhere in the backwoods of Oklahoma at a campground that has a name I’ve long forgotten, my Aunt Jodi taught me a very important life skill – how to cook pancakes. While she hovered over a camping stove and I her, I learned the following Pancake Principles:

  1. Pancakes cannot be rushed.
  2. The pancake batter cannot be too thick or too thin.
  3. If your griddle is too hot, your pancakes will burn.
  4. Wait for the bubbles to pop before you turn them.

Thank you, Aunt Jodi. Happy Birthday.

Aunt Jodi

Kenfolk: Tranthams
Relation: Paternal aunt
Common Ancestors: Basil and Mildred (Duesenberg) Trantham, my paternal grandparents

Peachy Keen Kenfolk

Posted on by K Trantham

The South Side of Boston

Bill Peach, born William Strickland Peach, is an accomplished author, philosopher, blogger, social activist, entrepreneur and preacher so sayeth the various biographies I found online. All true, I believe. But his day job for many, many years was that of a men’s clothier. He and his wife, Emily, owned the Pigg & Peach men’s clothing store which is located in the Historic Downtown part of Franklin, Tennessee.

The South Side of Boston is the second book of five he’s written according to his publisher’s website. It’s a charming childhood memoir of an eight-year-old Bill, set against the backdrop of rural Tennessee in the 1940s. One of my favorite passages – and there were many of them – is below.

“You can’t always tell when Mammy [his grandmother] is wondering and when she is thinking. She doesn’t talk much. Most of the time you have to listen to her with your eyes. She said you learned things when you were thinking, but when you were wondering you were thinking about things that maybe you weren’t supposed to know.”

The book is out of print but I was able to find it easily from used booksellers on Amazon.com.

I would not have known of Bill Peach, our common ancestry or his books had it not been for another Peachy cousin, John Harding Peach, a genealogist extraordinaire. But, I’ll save John Harding’s story for another entry.

Kenfolk: Tranthams
Relation: 5th cousin, 1x removed
Common ancestors: Bill is a descendant of John Peach and Sealey Trantham, a sister to my 4th great grandfather, Jesse Trantham (or Trentham if you live in Tennessee).

References:
Peach, B. (1995). The South Side of Boston. Franklin, TN: Hillsboro Press.

Wrap it up, Mr. Reynolds

Posted on by K Trantham

Elisha B. Reynolds, born October 10, 1836, served three terms in the Indiana House of Representatives. He was an adamant supporter of prohibition and was much sought after as a speaker. In fact, when the citizens of Kanas approved its prohibition amendment in 1880, Kansas Governor John St. John reportedly gave much of the credit to Elisha. Kansas remained a “dry” state until 1948.

In 1897 he was appointed “Special Agent” of the Indian Affairs Office for which he received a salary of $2,000 a year. Tasked with settling disputes in Indian Territories, he determined, for example, that the Indians “fired the first shot” in one of the earliest cases he settled in Routt County, Colorado.

The Evening Star newspaper of Franklin, Indiana covered his funeral when he died in 1915 at the age of 78. Reverend Sylvester Billheimer delivered the sermon and the eulogy which consisted of sixteen typewritten pages Elisha had prepared himself.

Somewhere around page ten I’m guessing more than a few folks thought Elisha might have been the only fortunate person to have attended the funeral that day.

Kenfolk: Utlauts
Relation: 3rd cousin, 4x removed
Common ancestors: John and Ann (Jones) Chamness, my 7th great grandparents

References:
Henson, Z. (ed.) (1922). History and Genealogy of the American Descendants of John and Ann Chamness of London, England. n. p.
Personal and General. (31 Jul 1897). The Cincinnati Enquirer, p. 1.
Special Agent Reynolds Says the Recent Fight in Colorado Was Due to Them. (1915, February 27). The Sun New York, New York, p. 1.
John Pierce St. John Papers, 1859-1917 (https://www.kshs.org/p/john-pierce-st-john-papers-1859-1917/14120#bio)
Wrote His Own Funeral Sermon. (1915, February 27). The Evening Star, p. 1.

My first post

Posted on by K Trantham

Welcome to my blog. If you’re not interested in genealogy, my family tree or the identity of my 4th cousin 6 times removed, then you’re not going to get much out of this blog.

Six months ago I had no interest in genealogy whatsoever. That all changed when I saw one of those banner ads for the ethnicity DNA tests offered by Ancestry.com. Having a parent, grandparents and great-grandparents with surnames like Utlaut, Duesenberg, Biesemeyer, Duewel, Wessel, etc., my German heritage was not going to be much of a surprise.

One tablespoon of saliva and five weeks later, my DNA results revealed that I was indeed mostly German. But the rest of “me” was unexpected. Despite my English or Welsh last name “Trantham”, I had not one drop of Great Britain in me but instead found Scandinavia, followed by the Iberian Peninsula and then Irish — plus a trace of Africa North, Italy/Greece and Middle Eastern. Scandinavia?

Faced with my new ethnic reality, I contemplated changing my name to something that better reflected my multiple heritages: Dietrich Olaf Joaquin O’Trantham, or perhaps D.O.J.O. as a nickname.

But instead I became very distracted by my DNA matches — my genetic cousins — who’d also taken the DNA test on Ancestry.com but whose identities were hidden behind user names like “H.H.” and “bmwpower9”. Other than my dad’s first cousin, who I recognized immediately as “lmills369” I naturally didn’t know any of the others. But I wanted to know all of them. (They may not want to know me, but that’s beside the point!) Who are all these people who share my DNA???

So I dug out the two exhaustive family histories my mother created after she retired and got to work building out my family tree on Ancestry.com. She did a phenomenal job of telling me who my ancestors were and that’s helped me positively identify 62 of my DNA matches who have the same ancestors. We know how we are related because our family trees intersect at the same people. I can only imagine what my mom would have accomplished if she’d had the DNA test when she was conducting her research!

I have about 11,000 relatives in my family tree now. Every now and then, I come across someone interesting, noteworthy or infamous who is a distant cousin. Instead of posting the information on Facebook or sending it around in an email, I now have a place to share the information with my (known) family and my (new) family.

So, here we go.