Too Many John and Adam Thielens

The 1890 census is the bane of my existence. If it existed, I might have a better idea which John Thielen and which Adam Thielen belong to my family tree.

Adam Thielen is the uncle of my great-grandfather, John Thielen. However there are several John Thielens and Adam Thielens in Stearns County between 1880 and 1900. Because John and Adam were common names? Or can some of them be consolidated? There’s an Adam Thielen buried in the Richmond cemetery, which I assume is the uncle. But there’s another Adam Thielen buried in the Eden Valley cemetery (the next town down the road).

There’s a John Thielen buried in Eden Valley, too. But I know my great grandfather is in the Richmond cemetery. I think I’ll need to make a trip up to Stearns County to dig through the church and land plats, if next trip to the MN Historical Society Newspaper Archives don’t give me a clue.

Update from Fort Wayne

My good friend Karen is in Fort Wayne for a reunion.  I had hoped to tag along with her because I wanted to visit the Allen County library.  The library has a copy of an out-of-print book The Current Family History & Genealogy, written by John Russell May that I’ve been wanting to look at.  But, it wasn’t in the finances to make a trip.

Karen decided to visit the library for me — she was intrigued by the place.  She didn’t find the May book, but she did find a copy of The Current Family in Minnesota.  She had more than 40 pictures of pages from the book relating to my part of the family.  She sent a couple pictures, and they are copies of some existing documentation I have — but much clearer.  One of the photographs is of James Current III and his wife Mary Powers Current, the couple who moved to Minnesota from Indiana.

Karen noted that there are some pages missing.  The missing pages are from my branch of the Current family, once they merge with the Kuelbs family.  I wonder what the story is behind that.

I am really lucky that I have such a good friend!  She is insisting that we take a trip out to Fort Wayne together just to do a research trip.  I’ll start saving my dimes, and maybe it could happen next year.  In the meantime, I’ll treasure the images she’ll share with me when she gets back to Minnesota next week.

Too Hot to Research

It’s been just beastly hot and humid the last couple of days, sucking the energy right out of me.  Consequently, I don’t have much of anything to report.

I’ve been going into MyHeritage and checking SmartMatches.  I’ll confirm everything again through Ancestry — that’s my double-check for now.

That’s it for this week.

Odd Internet Find

I took a little time off earlier this month, but I’m back doing research.  I keep looking for information on my Grandpa Weiss’s family, but like him, they seem to be very quiet as in not much comes up.

I did find this one weird site where someone was sending out a lot of hate and anguish about people who are somehow related to a Weiss family.  None of the people mentioned on the site have the last name of Weiss.  I think I’d rather not dig any further on that angle of research.  But I do wish the site author can find peace.

And it’s back to Google for me.

New Information on Franz Arnold

I found some unexpected information in a record “hinted” to me by Ancestry.com — my great-great-grandfather Franz Arnold’s obituary.  It was printed in the local newspaper, and had all kinds of juicy tidbits that I had never seen before.

The first Willenbring to come to America, was Franz Joseph, Franz Arnold’s father.  He wound up in Dyersville, Iowa Territory in 1844.  He requested his wife Maria and children come, but died the week before they arrived in Dyersville in the Fall of 1844.

The obituary stated Franz Arnold moved to Stearns County, Minnesota Territory in 1853 and farmed near Richmond (probably in Munson township).  The next interesting piece was that Franz Arnold, after retiring from farming, took up making clothes and rugs in Richmond.

The last tidbit was that Franz Arnold was survived by his brother Joseph and a half-brother, John Drier.  There are records that Maria Willenbring married Johannes Dreier in 1949 in New Vienna, Iowa.  Both Maria and Johannes died in 1853, presumably before Franz Arnold moved to Minnesota Territory.

Now I have some questions to research:

  • What happened in 1853 that both Maria and Johannes died?
  • Is John the son of Maria and Johannes? or Johannes’s son from a previous marriage?
  • What happened to John and where did he go?  He was still alive in 1919 when Franz Arnold died, that much I know.

That’s my project for next week.

3-2-1 Strategy

In my previous post about my laptop meltdown, I mentioned I had a good system for backing up my files.  Let me introduce you to the 3-2-1 back-up strategy.  Or better yet, let this article introduce you to it. I’m not a Carbonite user — it doesn’t fit some of the requirements I have for recover-ability — but they did a great job explaining the concept.

When my computer crashed, I was immediately able to check my back-ups on another device (my tablet).  It eased any doubt that I was missing large chunks of data; the peace of mind was priceless.

When the new laptop arrived, I could jump right in and get everything going again.  I just finished it all last night.  There may be a program or two I have to purchase to reinstall, but the data is all there.

I’ve started my first set of back-ups on the new laptop, and will be working over the weekend to get the second set started.  The third is automatic and had run the minute I plugged in the new computer.

I strongly recommend that you follow the 3-2-1 strategy, if you don’t have a back-up strategy.  There is a small cost (under $300) to implement this strategy, and some time invested to set-up and check on it periodically.  It will all be worth it on that day that your computer finally fails.

Getting Back Online

I had a computer crash almost two weeks ago.  Totally unexpected.

Fortunately, I have a good back-up system.  I am still downloading data, but I have 100% confidence I will get everything back. The gap I noticed has to do with software, as in, nothing is on CD anymore.

I’ve had to re-purchase Family Tree Maker 2014 because it was a download file, and I did not keep a copy of the download.  There are a couple of other pieces of software that I think I will need to repurchase, or learn to do without.  Lesson Learned:  archive your software purchases, especially downloads, like you’d archive your photos and data.

Resetting the Relatives

I was listening to some old Family Tree Magazine podcasts today. One of the topics was incorrect information in family trees.  It struck me, because one night I went willy-nilly adding people from Ancestry onto my tree, based on “leaves”.

The added ancestors were from the United Kingdom.  Those ancestors triggered record matches in my My Heritage tree, and I was adding information again.  Not verified information, either.

While I will probably never get as detailed in my documentation as some prefer, I had the realization today that maybe I should kick those undocumented relatives off my tree.  So off went the Welsh minor royals in my family tree, and a bunch of random English folk.  Until I get some DNA puzzles solved, I’m going to stay on this continent, and finish filling out the trees.  I have plenty of research to do without jumping the pond.

A Misspelled Life

As a rookie genealogist, one of the big frustrations I am running across is the spelling of last names.  My family is predominantly German/Prussian, so the phonetics of the language present challenges.  Two examples:

A family name of Kolesky (the most recent spelling) shows up in census or vital records as Koleskie, Koleski, Koleski, and Kolleskey.  My grandmother’s maiden name (Kuelbs) shows up as Kelbs, Kulp, Kelp, and a few others.

I am not alone in my spelling frustration, per the speaker at this morning’s beginners session.  His main advice was to look for the variations, and relax.

I am lucky that my Greatgrandparents’ families lived in the same small township; I can find census records for the family with a common last name, then look through all the records for records to find possible variations to match the other family.

 

Hello world!

I’ve been searching my family history for 20 years, off and on, mostly off.  I started up again when I took at DNA test at 23andme.com and one woman came forward to say her mother is my 4th cousin.  We don’t know how, but we keep looking for connections.

The family names I am researching right now are:

Paternal side:  Weiss, Kuelbs, Current, Reese, Schissel, Kolesky

Maternal side:  Willenbring, Thielen, Thyen, Meyer, Lemm, Kolles

I have other names, too, but this is my main search path to try to find my connection to my 4th cousin.

I found another 4th cousin – once removed living in my home town! That connection was easy to find because a lot is written about that side of the family, much of which he generously shared.  I am grateful to both of my 4th cousins for helping me get re-started on my search.