Sunday

I have been watching the postings from SNGF and the facial recognition software. I spend a lot of time taking pictures and realized I have very few of myself. I tried to do it with a picture of my sisters and I, but it only did one of my sisters. It will take a lot of searching to find one suitable for that project. Maybe I can do one with how I looked as a child.

I have been reading many more blogs by hitting the "Next Blog" option. It seems when I hit the next from my blog it takes me to blogs where people posted pictures of their children. I guess it recognized children and not the Genealogy title.

If I hit Next Blog from some of the other blogs I go to other Genealogy Blogs. I have yet to figure it out.

UPDATING THE FAMILY TREE

When I visited with my brother Bill at the beginning of  November I had told him about the work on the Family Tree.   He had requested that I would mail him my finds.    I had to go and update a lot of information on both my husbands and my tree, honestly it took the better of two hours.    Now I feel that I should do this on a more timely basis.  

I tried to upload a new tree from my Family Tree software, and the information said it had gone but it did not come up......I hope my relatives aren't floating out there in cyber space.

I made the copies and backed up what I had updated.   I just need to transfer the update to my flash drive.

ITS BEGINING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS

I am sitting here on Black Friday wondering about all the nuts out there shopping.   Last night my brother in law got called into work because one of the monitors in the ICU was not functioning.   Turns out it was "human error"  they were pushing the wrong buttons.......

On his way back home about 7 PM he said that people were camped out in front of Best Buy, one even had a pop up tent.   Wonder where the Port O Potty was located.      I have yet to find anything in my world that I would stand out in the cold weather and sleep in a tent waiting for the store to open. 

It is now snowing outside, I think it is too warm for it to stick on the roads or driveways, but the leaves are covered.

The picture above is a Remembrance of Christmas Past, when Henry climbed the tree and knocked it over.   Good thing we have plastic Christmas Ornaments....

Henry is a nice boy, not necessarily a good boy.   He is currently sitting beside me watching what I type....

I am trying to write in my Blogs on a daily basis, my worry (not loosing any sleep over it though)  is what will I write about every day??  Guess I will come up with something.

THANKSGIVING 2009

Just sitting here perusing the Internet because I am not cooking dinner today.   Last year I had Thanksgiving at our house with all the family.

I think Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, it is not religion specific and anyone can celebrate.   When I was a child I started wondering what I would be doing next Thanksgiving.   I have had the same thought ever since.   Sometimes I have been really surprised.

The first time that stands out is we were in Pennsylvania eating at one of our parents and a year later we were living in Korea.  My husbands job had taken us there.   I do remember my friend Ruth hosted the dinner,  sorry Ruth I don't remember the menu.    Finding western foods in an Asian country  was quite challenge.    They had the black market where you could find anything at a price.    Things like baked beans, cranberry sauce, peanut butter and any other things that were not on the Koreas diet.   I can imagine how much different it is there now.

The next time, it was 1977 I think.  We were in Yugoslavia and we ate our dinner in a castle.    There were two choices to dinner,   I remember that half of the diners got sick, and it was a food borne illness.   I did not get sick, but I just can't remember what was the culprit at that meal.     The castle was now a restaurant and the wall were covered with tapestry. 

There were all sort of castles in Europe, the built them on the top of hills and now they are in ruins, hotels or bed and breakfasts, or museums.   I have to dig out my old photos and scan them.    I will make that a project for the new year,  I do not think it warrants a resolution.

Today we are going to my brother Richard's five of the six live in Western PA.   My other brother in VA could not make it because his wife and daughter have to work at sometime this weekend.   My contribution is going to be the vegetables, which is better than my sister Shawnna, who is going to peal and cook 10 pounds of potatoes.   Sounds like a prison job to me.   I should not have said that, it may be my job next year.

TALKED TO AUNT EDNA.

I called Aunt Edna and she was so surprised, she had never heard from her Mother in law (Mary Stephens) that her mother Olive had remarried. I mailed Aunt Edna the documentation and she called me and said it was really her mother in laws family, and Mary had NEVER mentioned that fact.

She was going to call a great granddaughter of Mary Stephens sister Irene to see if she knew anything. Edna said she had not talked to Stella in a few years and she hoped she had remembered.

I hope so too, I told Edna that Mary Stephens sure could keep a secret.

TOMBSTONE TUESDAY

This was the first tombstone picture I had. It is of my great grandmother Maria Ann Johanna Korbach Bartels. She was born in Jena, Germany. I had enlarged the light gray stone, but still could not make out the dates.

I think she may have been living in Bremerhaven, which is o the North Sea.

I would like to find out exactly where it is located and if my great grandfather is buried there too.

BACK, AGAIN, TO MY OLIVE

Today, I called Aunt Edna and told her what I had found about Olive Bauser Stephens Rauhut. I mentioned that I found Olive in Salem OH but under her new married name. Aunt Edna was really surprised, she never knew that Olive had married again. Olive is buried in Grandview Cemetery, I have to find if she has a stone.....And, where is Oswald buried? So far, I have not found any children by this union. Olive and Oswald were both about 39 when they married, so this possibility does exist.

Then I mention on Oswald Rauhut immigration papers which I found in the Western District of Pennsylvania, it had listed the step children of the Stephens. Aunt Edna said her mother in law, Mary Stephens, had talked about her mother Olive, but NEVER mentioned her remarrying and having a step father.................Neither my husband or his brother remembered their grandmother taking about it either.

Do I sense a scandal brewing, or was it just something that Mary wanted to forget?? I may never know.

EVERY ANSWER BEGETS 20 QUESTIONS

I thought all had been discovered (I REALLY should have known better with that thought) about Olive Bauser Stephens.

But, I WAS WRONG. I subscribe to the PA Allegheny County Roots Web and they are the greatest and best bunch of fellow genealogist I have come across.

I had posted another query about Olive Stephen trying to find her in a census record and the name of her parents, of which I was having zero luck. I mention what I knew about Olive, DOB, died on Christmas Eve in Ohio, and the newly found maiden name Bauser.

A very kind woman on that Roots Web list send me a copy of an Ohio death certificate she had found. It listed a Olive Rauhut, with husband Oswald and date of death as 24 December 1923. Her father was Jacob Bowser and mother Mary UNK. I was really surprised.

Then I did a search on Ancestry for Oswald and came up with the family in Missouri in 1900 and Pittsburgh in 1910. They had lived in the same community, so now it explained where they had met, and I had been suspecting they met in Ohio.

But the biggest surprise was his application for Naturalization and it listed Olive as his wife and the four Stephens children (including grandmother Mary) as step children. Never once did I ever hear Mary mention she had a step father…I asked Chuck and he said he never remembered his grandmother talking about her side of the family at all.

So it seems that they got married in 1913, the year that Robert had died. Did a lot of women remarry because they had no means of supporting themselves and their children?

I was really surprised with this turn of events. I have to give Aunt Edna a call.

GOING THRU PAPERS RECENTLY FOUND.

I have been going thru the papers recently found in my father in laws metal strong box. He had a lot (90%) of receipts dealing with health insurance and regular insurance. That really does not have any significance, at least not at this time as far as I can determine.

However, it did have about four deeds and one was from the thirty's. On the dead it listed the distribution of land that was owned by Anton Sperl and Katharina Rauscher Sperl Nosseck. It also have the funeral expense listing for Katharina, her funeral cost about $350 in 1947.

The interesting thing was I have two little girls who Aunt Edna called Big Margaret and Little Margaret. I have been trying to figure out who these two Margarets were. MY THEORY is now that question has been solved. One Margaret was the daughter of Antons daughter Barbara Sperl Stich and the second Margaret was the daughter of Antons son Charles (Carl) Sperl.

Charles died in 1918, in a Railway accident, and Barbara died in 1926. I do not know what caused her death. I guess it is time to send for the record. Another sibling mention in the deed was their brother Joseph who died in 1920, This must had been unexpected, I found him the the 1920 census and he was employed and I found his WWI selective service record and no mention of being differed. The strange part is that they were all in their twenties when they died.

Sending for the records can be done now since I have the time of death.

TWO MARGARETS. One Margaret married a man names Ulrich and the other Margaret married Harry Sumner. More to investigate on that.

Today I am going to scan what I found and send it to my cousin Julie who is also researching this family.

Finding things like this is like Christmas Day for me.

OLIVE BAUSER STEPHENS

 

Sometimes the answer is in your basement.   For the past who knows how long, I have been looking for Olive Stephens maiden name.    I had mention to Chuck (pictured below) my angst in finding her name.

He mentioned that his dad had a metal box with some papers.   He remembered it from 1996 when Joseph had died and it was somewhere in our basement.

Today he found it and as I was going through mostly nothing important I came upon a copy of the Baptismal certificate of his grandmother Mary Irene Stephens.   There, listed was mother, was Olive Bauser.  Then Chuck decided that the Bauser name was familiar because he remembered in the family there was a Hauser and a Bauser.   He just did not know who the Bauser person was.

Yesterday I found the WWI draft card for Olive and Roberts first child, James.   It was dated 1917 and it had listed next of kin as his mother.   There was not name but as of 1917 Olive was still living.   

Things also in the metal box.   Pictures of the family, deeds, mortgage papers, and a list of the funeral expenses from his great grandmother Katharina Rauscher Sperl Nosseck.

I have to copy them and send them to my cousin Julie in New England.   Katharina was her great grandmother too.

VETERANS DAY

 

 

 

In honor of Veterans Day I would like to add this picture of the cute guy who caught my eye forty one years ago.

BACK FROM AN EDUCATIONAL MEETING:

Work related that is……

I have spent the past week at an educational meeting in Williamsburg VA.   Two good points of the meeting are number one:   it goes from 6:30 AM to about 12:30 and I have what is left of the afternoon to go out and about and explore the region.

Two:  I got to visit my brother and his family.   He has lived in the Tidewater are since he graduated from college, I guess about 25 or 30 years ago????    I will have to ask him….He and his wife were interested in what I have uncovered.   Tamara said that her mother had done some of her family genealogy but she has not looked at it for some time.     I offered to send her some forms and see if I can get her on her way for researching her side of the family.     Her mother grew up in WV and her father in TX.  

I told Bill I would send him what I have found but I am wondering what is the best format to send it to him.    I could send him a GEDCOM, but he would not have a clue about it…..

This requires some deciding on my part.    What would be the easiest for a non genealogist and also easies to understand???