Possibilities

             I like the idea of writing about possible answers to a genealogy problem.  As mentioned in the past, I have several brick walls on my paternal line.

Week 4 about a Theory in Progress covers my Reisner brick wall.  I need to locate church records in Wisconsin as well as in Iowa.  Maybe they will open a window or door.  I could also hire somebody to look up information in Germany.

Week 7 about What the Census Suggests is not so much about a brick wall but does remind me of items I need to look at for an immigrant ancestor on my maternal line.   Some of the items listed there are also possibilities for my Reisner family above.

Haueisen brick wall – will have to research in Bavaria.  Same issue as I have with the Reisner family, no church records are available online.

Other surnames include Sparr, Secor, Tuttle, Davis, McKinney, and Morgan.  I’ll need to locate church, census, newspapers, land, and vital records.  I just need to work on one problem at a time and write up what I want to accomplish.

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.

A Theory in Progress

             I’m trying to determine who the parents are of my paternal 2x great grandparents that were from Bavaria.  I am trying to use DNA matches to see if any of the family members have determined the information.

       Roadblock:  Church records, especially Lutheran Evangelical, have not been digitized in Bavaria; unable to determine if there was a church in Wisconsin the family attended.

       Known information:  Location in Bavaria, immigration date, a couple of siblings that also immigrated.

       Currently, I’m working on Henry Reisner (Reissner/Risner).  I’ve written about this in the past – See March 2025 – Brick Walls in Family Research and January 2025 - Challenge.

Henry was born on the 19^th of Sept 1814 in Poppengrun (there’s an umlaut over the u).  He died the 19^th of Dec 1891 in West Union, Fayette Co, Iowa.  According to obituaries, he married Maria Margaret Haueisen circa 1847 in Poppengrun.  He then immigrated to the United States in 1848, arriving in New York.  He rented a place in Stoughton, Dane Co, Wisconsin before moving to Fayette Co, Iowa in 1859.

       Known timeline here in the United States based on Census records found.

·      1855 living in Dunkirk, Dane Co, Wisconsin (State Census)

·      1860 – West Union Twp, Fayette Co, Iowa (Fed Census)

·      1870 – same location

·      1880 – same location

·      1885 – West Union, Fayette Co, Iowa (State Census)

DNA analysis has been focusing on Henry’s known siblings – Christian & Adam.  So, I’ve been doing research and documenting their lives and their descendants here in the US. 

It appears I need to find some more immigration documentation like passenger lists and naturalization papers (except I thought I had that) for all three siblings.

 

Language

 Have I researched an ancestor who spoke a different language than me or dealt with records in another language?  Of course, GERMAN!  I wrote a brief blog entry on this same topic last year.

However, I feel better about doing research and I can actually read the documents based on things I have learned from various German Special Interest Groups and speakers who specialize in German.

Now, it’s to find those records so I can extend the family in their homelands.  Maybe I need to do a research trip to Germany.