Hunting History - Finding Family

 When my husband's daughter was young, she did a family history project at school.  She came home and proudly told us "I'm descended from an Indian princess!" To which we scoffed, because literally everyone born and raised in America is fed that tail. Well, yesterday I was following my husbands line up from his mother, a Woolsey, to the Hendersons, and started working on the Reno side. 'That's interesting,' I thought, as I followed the trail, 'they're French.'  Then, when I got to my husband's 9th great grandfather, things got REALLY interesting.  He was a man named Martin Chartier, and I was not prepared for what I found! Martin Chartier was born June 1, 1650 in Poitiers (St-Jean-de-Montierneuf), Poitou, France to Rene' Chartier and Madeleine Rangier. from France to Quebec in 1667 when he was 17, joining his paternal grandfather and uncle in Canada, but he wouldn't stay there long.  At age 22, in 1672 Martin and his brother Pierre ...

With almost 2000 images in my Ancestry gallery, and another large personal family album full of old photos I'd inherited and scanned when my Nona passed, you'd think that the challenge of "Favorite Photo" would be a difficult one, but it wasn't.  As soon as I heard it, I knew exactly which photo I'd use.  So this will be a much shorter post, as these are people I've certainly blogged about many times before, and I'm going to focus a little more on them and a little less on the genealogy this time. Mary & Frank on their wedding day - 7/7/43 Hands down, this is my favorite photo ever.  There are so many things I love about it; including the people.  This is my Grandma Mary "Nona" Barra on the day she married Grandpa Frank Anthony Heigert, July 7th 1943 in Staunton IL.  This was taken at the farmhouse where Frank grew up, a big old home that's still there, unfortunately not still in the family, it was donated before I came along...

"The first Weller to immigrate to America came from Germany, and the first Weller to live in South Palmyra township was Thomas Jefferson Weller.  Born May 1, 1808 in Kentucky, he married Eliza Ann Conlee October 13, 1831.  Family history states  the young couple walked into S Palmyra township with packs on their backs and proceeded to hew a home out of the wilderness.  The story is told that they built a log cabin on the South side of the road somewhere between present-day Concord Church and the East corner of it.  Their thirteenth child was also named Thomas Jefferson, and (I am) his direct descendant.  He lived his entire life less than a mile from his birthplace, and the home he built is now occupied by his great-grandson (my grandfather) Lawrence." -A Brief History of the Ancestors of Ralph Weller Almost all the way up until my grandparent's children, most of my Weller family has been on the same adjoining plots of land since it was purchased ...

I'm going to try and do a better job with the #52in52 this year, I think I wrote maybe a dozen last year, but we had some good ones, and hey, quality over quantity, right? Anywho, this year's first theme is "Fresh Start."  I actually wasn't sure who I was going to write about this week, until I opened ancestry just a little bit ago, followed a few leaves, and opened my 1st cousin 2x removed, Hilda Ida Berkel.  I actually thought the record hints I was viewing were incorrect at first, but after a few verification checks, I saw what an amazing life Hilda eventually lived.  Not only that, but she absolutely fits the Fresh Start theme for this week: Born to first generation German American parents (and a bit of a scandalous father) Hilda moved from poor rural Midwest to New York, only to marry very rich and live out the rest of her days in luxury.  A fresh start, indeed. My second great-grandparents, Benedict and Pauline Heigert, emigrated from Waldulm, Baden-Wurt...

Last week I started researching my Aunt Carolyn's side of the family. I've pretty well brick-walled myself on all the line's I'm actively researching, including my husbands side.  Occasionally I like to start a new line just to break away from the same names I'm so used to seeing.  Carolyn's maiden name is Chilovich, and it was really straightforward to find her parents and grandparents. Unfortunately, that's where it quit getting easy.  Good thing I love a challenge. Nicholas Chilovich was born 12 September 1875 in Yugoslavia, Austria, or Croatia, depending on the year you were asking him (census records.) This miffed me a little at first, but apparently during this time the borders kept changing, and without knowing the EXACT town he was from I'm not sure how accurate any of these places are, but he speaks Croatian as his first language, which he indicated on all censuses, and that helps.  He married Anna Pintar, also from Yugoslavia, sometime before...

I chose William Henry Etter as this week's 52 in 52 challenge, "Unusual Name."  While I have much more unusual names in my tree (Docia Ann White, Margarete Gertraudt Althaus, Leonardas Barker...the list goes on) I ended up choosing William because Etter to me is an unusual last name, and has several meanings; the South German/Swiss is a topographical name, meaning someone who lived near the boundary fence of a village, from the German word "eter" meaning a 'woven boundary fence.'   In High German and Dutch speaking countries "eter" means 'cousin' or 'uncle.'  In 1724, Johannes Hans Etter and wife Anna Marie Siegrist emigrated from Bern, Switzerland to Lancaster county, Virginia, what was then Colonial America.  Three generations later his great grandson, and my 5th great grandfather, William Henry Etter, was born May 6th, 1800, the son of Daniel Etter and Mary Magdalena Reihm, in Evansham, Wythe, Virginia. William Henry was ...

For my third installment of 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks, we're looking at my second great grandmother, Christine Wilhelmine Aschebrok.  This week's prompt is "I'd like to meet."  I maybe should have saved Angela Nardin for this one, even without knowing the prompts ahead of time I knew eventually it would be coming, but I am almost equally enchanted with my Heigert/Brockman side, in fact I'm super proud of my German heritage.  Christine went through a lot (as you'll read) and I bet she was an amazing woman.  It takes a lot of strength to handle what she did in her lifetime and not be hardened by it.  Christine was born to Johann Heinrich Gerhard Aschebrok and Anna Christine Elizabeth Steingeweg Oct 12th, 1849 in Holne, Lengerich, Steinfurt, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, just over 100 miles from Hanover.  She was Christened in the Evangelical Church Oct 26th, 1849. At 22 Christine had a son, Ernst Gerhard Bernhard Aschebrok with an unknown father.  ...

I knew this ancestor spotlight would come sooner rather than later, and I didn't have to think real hard for this weeks 52 in 52 submission, which the prompt is "Challenge."  Eventually, I will probably compile all my facts and write a book about great grandma Angela (Which will be a challenge in and of itself, I'm just a hobby novelist) but for now a spotlight blog will do.  Angela is perfect for the "Challenge" prompt, as you'll see when you read about her life, she was faced with one challenge after another, but she always rose above.  I can only image the strength this woman had. I never got to meet her, but I bet I would have loved her.  As the mother of one of my favorite people in the world (my Nona Mary) I expect them to be very much alike.  Nona always said she spoke "very broken English," as of course Italian would have been her first language.  Nona never said she herself  knew Italian, she certainly never spoke it and had no accen...

It's been a while! I know I don't post often enough, I certainly haven;t been researching enough!  To help remedy both of those things, I've joined an online challenge: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.  So, the goal is to highlight one ancestor per week until the end of the year (I have enough in my tree I could go for several years, ha!) My original Idea was to choose each week's ancestor at random, so my process was this: Go to my ancestry list of people. Choose a random letter (L) Choose a random page (3) But then I looked.  And in looking, I chose.  But not randomly. Joseph Ferreira Lomelino is my first week's ancestor, although at last for me the term ancestor isn't just loose, it's incorrect.  I not only plot my own family, but also my husbands within my own tree.  This is done for our children, so they can see the entire family as one.  In doing so, I have also researched his first wife's family, as she is not only my friend, but my stepchildr...

This past week Ancestry has, quite controversially (at least in my Italian Genealogy Group) "updated" our DNA story.  I have previously done a blog entry about mine, but to compare here the old analysis: Great Britain: 69% Southern Europe: 10% Scandinavia: 7% Western England: 3% Caucasus: 1% Ireland >1% Russia >1% And the new analysis: England, Wales, Northern Europe: 77% Ireland/Scotland: 11% Sweden: 9% Germanic Europe 3% Now, at first glance this actually does seem to fit my own research better.  But there's something really important missing, and that's my Northern Italian DNA.  Before, it was in there, you just had to expand on the tabs a bit, but that 10% Southern Europe is my Northern Italian.  Now, it's gone.  Many in the group have said their previous Italian DNA matches have been replaced with French.  Now luckily I didn't have that happen, but just disappearing altogether isn't much of a consolation prize. If you're inte...

My maiden name is Heigert, (in English; Hi-gert, in German; Hee-kert) and on that side I am a third generation American.  I feel pretty strongly about immigrants, if we hadn't been allowed in I wouldn't be here, although both my Italian and German immigrant ancestors came here via Ellis Island.  I won't get into the political debate, that's not what this blog is about.  Instead, lets get into my immigrant's stories. My great grandfather, Roman Heigert was born 8th of August 1867 in Waldulm, Baden-Wurttemburg, Germany to 27 year old Benedict Heigert and 22 year old Paulina Schmelzle.  Benedict and Paulina had married the 29th of May 1865 in Waldulm, and had one child before Roman, brother Gottfried Frederick born in 1866.   Benedict & Pauina's Marriage Bann Roman's Birth Record I won't even pretend to know how someone from Alton Illinois got in touch with the Heigert's in Waldulm, but family record has it that the Springman Distri...

I once asked Nona if we had any mobsters in our family. I was young, and all I knew about Italians where what I saw in the movies, and I was all about the 20's.  Mobsters were cool.  We lived in the Midwest, Al Capone had his hands all over our state, even in our little part of it.  We had the "Moo-tel" and the Coliseum.  We had rum runner tunnels under the town streets.  I would have loved to have a member of the family be a member of a family. She told me that she was told that "Uncle Tony" wasn't necessarily a mob member, but that she'd heard quite the story about him.  Tony lived in Detroit, and the story I was told was that there was a parade, and Tony reached out an touched an American flag and was shot for it by an officer or a guard of some kind.  Cousin Louis Barra (fellow researcher) remarked that Tony was a "very fancy dresser" and a "strong member of the Italian-American society" in Detroit.  Truth? We didn't know.  ...