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 ...

Week four of the #52in52Ancestors prompt has been a difficult one for me.  Everyone is doing how far away their ancestors came from, and they all did; if you're American chances are your ancestors came from somewhere else, far across the ocean.  I thought about spinning a tale of that crossing, which I still may do one day, but not today.  While browsing some new features on my Ancestry app last night, I found this really cool section where it plots out where each of your ancestors were born and significant things in their lives happened.   It's super interesting to see it all out on that map, little dots spread out (in my case) all over Germany, England, and Scotland.  And then, all the way down in the bottom, are two little dots, far away from each other, in Italy.  One high in the Alps by Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia, and one far over towards France.  I actually never realized just how far away those two very important places were, until ...

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...

Holy wow, today's blog is super interesting!  The blog prompt is "At the Library" and this ancestor is perfect  for that.  You could go to any Library and search the Virginia Company, Jamestown, or the First American Colonies and I'd be willing to bet Cicely Jordan's name pops up somewhere.  Between being one of the first off the ships to her legal misadventures to her status usually only awarded to men, Cicely Jordan is famous in her own right. TECHNICALLY I'm not a direct ancestor, Cecily is the second wife of my 13th great grandfather, Captain Samuel Silas Jordan, of who I'm descended from his first wife Frances Anne Baker, who died in or shortly after childbirth in London in 1608.  I would have blogged on Captain Samuel, but there are SO MANY conflicting accounts and so few actual records I refuse to propagate misinformation.  Rather than spread rumor, I'll choose instead his much better known second wife Cecily, who was so interesting I just cou...

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...