A Quiet Life

             What’s a quiet life?  Is it living on a farm? Or is it a small community? Or is it in the big city?  Is it during peacetime?  Or war?  Is it somebody who lived a short life?  Or is it retirement?  Is it somebody who travels?  Or a stay at home person? Or is it an ancestor you haven’t researched?

I have over 7,000 names in my family tree; covering both my family and my husband’s family.  Maybe that’s the quiet life – researching your family tree.

Do I think I have a quiet life?  I have a very busy life.  So, I do need those “down” times.  I grew up on a farm.  Yes, it was quiet but it was work – pulling tansy so that it won’t get mixed in the hay or the cows won’t eat and get sick.  You had to get to it before it blossomed and went to seed.  It was hay season where  you had to stack the bales either on the truck or in the barn.  It was weeding the vegetable garden then harvesting it in the fall.  It was moving the cows from one field to another.  It was bringing them in to be treated for pink-eye.  It was feeding them hay in the winter months.  But there was a fun time!  In the winter when it snowed, we got to go sledding on our own property using an intertube.  In the summer, we rode our bikes to either the river or the neighbors to swim.  We had our quiet times too – camping, fishing, and hiking.

I started working for a living when I was 17.  At first, part-time as I was in school.  Then in 1979, I started working full-time for the State of Washington and going to school part-time to get my degree.  I did take vacations – like a trip to South Dakota to visit an old high school friend and a trip to Kentucky to meet family and do research.  I met my future husband at work.  We dated for a little over a year before getting married and having a family.  I still worked until 2021, when I retired.

When did genealogy come to play?  1980.  That Kentucky trip? – it was in 1982.  1984 was a trip to Iowa to meet and research my dad’s family.  After that it was just short road trips to local cemeteries, courthouses, and libraries until retirement.  My husband & I took a vacation in 2016 by flying to Virginia to visit our son who was stationed there.  We had rented a car and visited sites in the area before moving on to Washington DC area then on to Butler County, Pennsylvania.  It was in Pennsylvania that we did some research on my husband’s family.  Visited a cemetery, a community that was owned by an ancestor, and a courthouse.  We returned a few years later (2025).  In 2021, when we did our Route 66 road trip, we took some time to go to Wisconsin where my family had lived.  Wasn’t able to do as much research as desired.  Was going to do more when we were back in the area last year but that didn’t happen.

I’m looking forward to our next cruise for that quiet down time.  Yes, cruising is our quiet time.  We’ve done several since our first in 1995.  We’ve done Alaska (2x), Caribbean (2x), New England/Canada, Panama Canal, and now Hawaii this fall.  Another Caribbean cruise is planned for 2028 in the spring.

Unexpected

             There’s always something unexpected in life as well as in genealogy research.  I was looking up some newspaper articles today for my Reisner family in West Union, Iowa and ran across one for an uncle.  It was buried on page 2  in the Local and Other Items of the Feb 10, 1871 West Union Republic Gazette.  It started out saying “Suicide – We regret to announce a suicide in our midst.”  What a sad thing . . . I knew he had died young but didn’t realize it was because of unrequited love.

What’s really sad . . . this is the second known suicide in my paternal family line.  The other was a dad despondent over the death of his oldest son in 1945.

A Brick Wall Revisited

            I have a few brick walls of determining my 3x paternal great-grandparents.

I’ve broken one of those brick walls and talked about it in A Breakthrough Moment from earlier this year.  The one I’m currently working on I talked about in A Theory in Progress.

Have I made any progress . . . not really.  There is a family tree that indicates that the name I’m looking for is Christoff Wilhelm Georg Reisner, wife is Maria Christiana.  Hmmm . . . they have a document that may be of assistance – a burial record for Maria Christiana.  Now, to translate it from German.

 

Source:  Ancestry 

Source Citation

Landesarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt; Magdeburg, Deutschland; Lutherische Kirchenbücher, 1760-1890; Film Number: 1335145

Source Information

Ancestry.com. Saxony, Anhalt, Anhalt-Bernburg, Anhalt-Dessau and Anhalt-Köthen, Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1760-1890 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.

Original data: Lutherische Kirchenbücher, 1760-1890. Landesarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt, Magdeburg, Deutschland.

 

Nope . . . that doesn’t work.  It indicates she was born in 1814 and died in 1874 at age 60.  No way could she be the mother of my immigrant.  Well . . . let’s continue using DNA to break that wall.  And pray that the church records in Bavaria will be digitized.

A Family Pattern

           What can I talk about here?  We have naming patterns, occupation patterns, and schooling.  What have I already wrote about?

Earning a Living:  Farming, a Family Tradition – February 2024 I wrote about the Kludt family being saloon/inn keepers, farmers, and mechanics.

Naming patterns – I thought I had talked about that before but I’m not seeing it.  I have several examples of different types of naming patterns in both my family and my husband’s family.

One pattern is switching the first and middle names.  This started with my great-grandfather on my Dad’s side, William Edward Kludt.  Papa (or Grandpa) was named Edward William Kludt.  My Dad was William Edward Kludt.  The pattern ended with my brother, Edward William Kludt.

Another pattern is based on the Mennonite/Quaker faith.  Here, the middle name is the mother’s maiden name.  Discovered this in my husband’s paternal side.  It seemed to have started back in Pennsylvania with the Shontz family.  Both Jacob and his wife were born in Switzerland and 

immigrated to Pennsylvania.  Did they start the tradition?  I don’t know but it is possible that their son’s middle name was Erb.  The same appears to have happened with the Hunsberger and Tyson families.

 

It seemed to have ended with Abraham Shontz as none of his children appeared to have the Heckert name as their middle name.  Then it’s possible that they left the Mennonite faith.

We know it continues with the Heistand, Landis, Ziegler, Pawling, and DeWitt families.

 

 

Then we end up with a still different naming pattern – patronymic where the child’s last name is the father’s first name with an ending of “sen” or “datter”.

 

Then I have my German ancestors who like to add lots of names to the child.  They would repeat the same “first name” then add two to three more names before the Surname.  As an example, my immigrant was named Heinrich Johann Ludwig Kludt.  He went by the name Johann or John.  His wife was named Christina Maria Dorothea Ahrendt.  She was known as Dorothy or Dorothea or Dora.

They were also famous for renaming children when was passed away.

An Address with a Story

           

Zenkner Valley where I grew up.  It had many addresses – it first started out as a Rural Route with a Box number (Rte 2 Box 276).  Then it became an actual street address (21903/21904 Zenkner Vly Rd SW).

       Edward William Kludt and his wife, Bernice Swinehart, purchased the 120 acre farm on May 1, 1954 from Earl and Ann Shearer.   Description of the property:  NE quarter of the SE quarter of Section 20 and the north half of the SW quarter of Section 21, Township 15 North, Range 2 West, WM, excepting therefrom county roads known as McElfresh and Zenkner Roads, in Thurston County, Washington.[1]  They lived on the farm until 1957 when their son, my father, William Edward Kludt and his wife, Joycelyn Bea Keesee, took over the operations (not ownership).  

In 1962, Bill & Joyce purchased a dairy farm of their own in Rochester.  They sold it in August 1967 and returned to Zenkner Valley where they raised their children. They turned the farm into a beef instead of dairy.  In June 1975, Papa (Ed Kludt) passed away and the farm came under the ownership of my dad, Bill Kludt.

I left the farm in the Spring of 1979.  At that time, it still had the rural route address. By the end of 1979, it became known as 21903 Zenkner Valley Rd SW.  At the same time, the folks decided to build a new home across the road (address was 21904 Zenkner Valley Rd SW).  They moved in and sold the farm house and barns (total of 40 acres) in June 1980.  In 2005, they sold another portion of the acreage (no buildings) known as the back 40.

In 2020, the folks decided they could no longer take care of the remaining 40 acres that they lived on nor could they be in a two-story home.  So, they purchased a home on the prairie and sold the remaining property to the owners of 21903 Zenkner Valley Rd.  These same people had purchased a portion of the original back 40.  So, an original 120 acre farm that was sold in pieces is almost back together.

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[1] Various Deed Documents downloaded 4/23/26 from https://eagleweb.co.thurston.wa.us/thurstonrecorder/eagleweb/docSearchResults.jsp?searchId=3

 

A Turning Point

        This prompt was a little bit harder for me to think of an ancestor to write about.  So, I read some of the responses.  That brought me to think about my 2x great grandfather, Heinrich Johann Ludwig Kludt.

       I’ve written about him in the past. With the most recent being about Immigration in February 2024.  If I’m remembering my translation notes correctly, he came from a family of saloonkeepers.  This occupation followed him from Mecklenburg to Wisconsin. 

       When he moved to Iowa, his occupation changed to farmer.  I talked a little bit more about this being a family tradition as far as the United States is concerned in a different blog posting.

       I believe every move became a new turning point in the lives of my ancestors.

Changed my Thinking

        Genealogy has changed my thinking about history.  It’s important to know what is going on in the region that your ancestors are living whether that is in the United States, the Colonies, or in the “Old Country”.

       Have you looked at historical maps?  Checked out when various States were formed?  What about the counties within each state?  Sometimes you think your ancestor moved when in reality they stayed in the same spot but boundaries changed.

       To help put this all together, I create a timeline for each surname.  Since most of my work is US related, I start with my immigrant ancestor.  I indicate when they were born and where, when they immigrated, where did they land, did they have any children born (if so, when and where), when & where married, and when & where they died.  I also indicate land purchases, census entries (both state/territorial and federal), and directories. Then using a different color, I add historical events like the French & Indian War, the Revolutionary War, famous feuds like the Hatfields & McCoys, hurricanes, earthquakes, and famines.  Then using another color, I add the dates of boundary changes or formations.

       Here’s an example from my Kludt family.  I’ve included the country my immigrant ancestor was born and all the areas the family lived.  I document sources as footnotes, especially births, marriages, deaths, newspaper articles, and land documents.

       Here’s another example of a timeline for an individual using various colors to distinguish between historical events, boundary changes, and other family members.

       By doing these timelines, it helps distinguish between persons with the same name – are they the same age, are they living in the same area, was it boundary changes that caused the location changes, does their age appear to be too young or too old (especially if you are trying to determine if they fought in any wars).