Exploring the descendants of Robert Lang (1670-1763)

I'm off on my first genealogical research trip today. Just a short jaunt down from where we are vacationing to meet a cousin of hubby's maternal Grandmother. We will explore the descendants of Robert Lang (1670-1763). I'm so excited!

Anna Mae Haney Phillips (July 5, 1920 - June 19, 2013)

It's been a while, but I have something to share.

A few weeks ago during a visit with my husband's grandparents, I hit a genealogical gold mine of sorts. I took my iPad loaded with the Ancestry.com app, signed up for the 3 month trial membership that came with my Family Tree Maker program and got the chance to sit down each evening with Grandma and pick her brain. I'm not sure who had more fun, me or her. I truly came back with a treasure trove of information and many pictures! She had pictures that go back 2 or 3 generations after her, so we have at least 6 generations in pictures on that side of the family.

In our chats and searches, I "met" a lot of new ancestors. Perhaps most exciting was the report we found. It was sent by her cousin in 2007. His research seems to have been well documented from what I can tell based on the report and his emails. It included dates and family members of 6 generations starting with Grandma's parents. That means if we add on her descendants, I have information on a total of 10 generations including my son. What a treasure to be able to pass on to the future generations.

Sadly, this blog post is about one of those ancestors I "met" chatting with Grandma just a few weeks ago. Today Grandma shared the obituary for Anna Mae (Haney) Phillips (July 5, 1920 - June 19, 2013). To view the obituary, visit this link: Anna Mae Haney Phillips Obituary. Below is a copy of the text.

Anna Mae Phillips, age 92, formerly of 85 Country Lane, and widow of Hobert Phillips, died Wednesday June 19, 2013 at NHC of Clinton.
She was born in Avery County and was the daughter of Jeff Haney and Thula Haney Phillips.
Mrs. Phillips is survived by her son Reese (Gay) Phillips of Taylors; her daughter Wanda P. Babb (Steven) of Clinton; five grandchildren, and thirteen great-grandchildren.
She was predeceased by four brothers, Sherman Haney, Rosco Haney, Bill Haney, and Lee Haney; and two sisters, Amanda H. Painter, and Atlas H. Green.
Funeral Services will be held Saturday June 22nd, at 4:00 p.m. at the Gray Funeral Home Chapel with burial in Pinelawn Memory Gardens.

May she rest in peace! She'll forever live on in the hearts of those who knew her and in the family genealogy texts.

Back on the horse

It's been a while since I've made the time to sit down and write anything so while I'm killing time at work, I thought I'd see what I can come up with.

I always thought it was great to hear stories about the house my maternal grandparents lived in. They built it, and started out in what we now use as the garage. As many times as I've heard the stories and seen the garage, I still have a hard time picturing it. When we found a picture of the garage house in their belongings after they passed away, I still had a hard time placing the house on the property in my minds eye. It was so strange to see the garage without the rest of the house as I knew it.

As their family grew, they added on a living room which eventually became the breezeway. They had so many children and so little room that as the story goes, two kids would be put to bed in my grandparents bed and then moved to the living room when my grandparents were ready for bed every night. Eventually, they built the house I grew up visiting. The runing joke was always that it was still never finished even after they had lived there for many years. In fact, I don't remember the full story, but the upstairs bathroom was never in working order when I was a kid. Finally when I was in high school I think it got finished. And I don't think the trim ever got totally finished.

As a kid, I always wanted to live in the house when I grew up.

That's what I had time for. More later.

Family History Writing Challenge: Day 6 - Memories of Up North

My biggest challenge the past two days is being to exhausted to sit down and write by the time I actually have time in my day. Yesterday I'll be honest I didn't even think about the fact that I didn't write anything.

Today, I blame the lack of nap on my son's part. I'd have had an hour to write if he'd have slept like he usually does. Oh well... Here I sit, ignoring my poor husband downstairs, trying to get my 250 words done as fast as possible so I can end my day.

When in doubt, write about what you know, right? Well, here goes.

I love thinking back on my family's time up north. Spending summers up north where we didn't have running water or electricity were the best of times for me. I probably enjoyed the fact that we didn't have to shower everyday a little more than I should have, or than I should admit to publicly. My mom referred to our set up as "a step above camping." And she would know, because she grew up camping in a huge tent with her parents and 8 brothers and sisters. With that many kids, it was the only kind of vacation they could afford.

My brother and I had it a little better. We camped the first year after my parents bought the 80, but we didn't use the property all that much. It wasn't long before my parents had contacted a builder and the 24 x 40 pole barn with heavy duty rafters went up. The builder needed sand to level out the area my parents had picked for the barn, so the building of the barn led to "the sand pit" out off of the go-cart loop. That provided hours upon hours of entertainment for my brother, cousins and me over the years.

The barn had to have the heavy duty rafters because the top of the barn would be used as a loft. This is where we slept and played games and constructed puzzles on rainy days. My dad built bunk beds modeled after Mom's Uncle Bob's set-up which she slept on for many years and are still in use at his cabin today, some (I don't even know how long) years later.

Somewhere, my parents found some huge "walls" that we set up as a changing room so people would have some privacy in the large open communal bedroom. I'll never forget the paining those walls. My brother had a friend up with us and when my parents were in the process of painting the walls, one blew over and fell on my brother's friend. We had to take him to urgent care to have his ankle checked out as it was pretty swollen. Luckily, he turned out to be okay.

After a little while, maybe a few years, my dad and Uncle Joe converted the kitchen out of an RV to be suitable for use in the barn. In the bottom of the garage, they walled off the last 16 feet and that served as our kitchen until Mom and Dad bought the place on the lake. We had one light that ran off the car battery if it was parked out back and hooked up. That was the only light aside from flashlights and Coleman lanterns. The tiny RV oven ran off a propane tank (the size you would use for a barbecue grill) and cooked many a Stauffer's lasagna to feed our crowd. The water tank had to be filled regularly from the trash of hose water we brought up from the neighbor's house until my parents finally put in a well after we'd had the place a good fifteen years or so. The shower consisted of a ring with a showerhead mounted on the underside of the stairs. We connected a rubber hose to the "kitchen" sink and that was the water source. Our bathtub, half a blue barrel that normally one might fill with ice to keep a keg of beer cold. Oh, and about now, you’re probably wondering about the toilet part of the bathroom. That was down the trail a bit. An outhouse. Pretty fancy if you ask us, a two-hole-r (take a friend) complete with a moon in the door. I remember pre-building the outhouse at Aunt Louise and Uncle Bob's place. We have some great pictures which Mom now proudly displays in the bathroom at the lake house.

For some unknown reason, the house we lived in downstate when my parents bought the place up north had a wood burning stove in it so that got moved up to the 80 and heats the barn in the winter. There were a few winter nights Dad would over fill the stove and you might be in three layers of clothes when you went to bed, but would undoubtedly be down to a few pieces of clothing as possible because he'd have it over 90 in the middle of the night.

 

Word count: 730. I guess that makes up for not writting anything yesterday.   Total FHWC word count: 2423.

Family History Writing Challenge: Day 4

I really didn't feel like writing this evening and procrastinated by taking care of other computer related business for about 2 hours before I finally forced myself to get writing. My thoughts are not very clear tonight as I am tired, but I still managed to get 320 words down on paper. That brings my total after only four days of the challenge up to 1393 words.

Just like my treadmill this morning, I'm glad I sat down and wrote even though I really didn't feel like doing it.

~Morgan

Who came over on the boat? Bloink Edition

Word Count: 403 Today, 1373 Total

Who came over on the boat? Ahhh, the question that started it all. That was exactly what I wanted to know when I began this journey of family history research. Well, okay, that AND does my family have in its possession any of the trunks that came on the ships with my immigrant ancestors. I've long had a fascination with those trunks in which our immigrant ancestors packed their entire lives and most prized possessions to make the trip from the homeland to America. Oh, the stories those trunks and the artifacts could tell. Stories of the journey, yes. But also of who and what had to be left behind.

So far, I've yet to unearth a trunk in my family lines. My mother has never seen or heard of one. My grandparents never mentioned one, and being the pack rat family that we are, if one were around on that side, I'm reasonably sure we'd have found it by now. On my father's side, well, I haven't done as much research, but if one is around, it's likely that it was passed down through another branch of the family. We just don't seem to be as sentimental about things on that side of the family.

On to the ancestors for this post. Who immigrated on my maternal grandmother's side? (See the chart included below which shows the relationships)

As I was answering this question for my cousin recently, I was delighted to find that in my early days of researching and grabbing as many documents as I could reasonably assume were my relatives during my Ancestry.com trial I nabbed a passenger list that includes Franz and Katerina (Schmitz) Klaes with their 8 month old son, Heinrich. From that document, I know they left from Bremen, Germany and arrived in New York on 31 October 1884. Check out lines 50-52 on the passenger list below! How cool!

The next ancestor on this branch of the tree I assume immigrated is Catherine Bloink. I know her to have been born in Prussia in 1810 and found her in the 1860 census in the township of Hamtramck, Michigan. The census lists her living with who I assume is her son, John. He is listed as 13 years old. Check out the 1860 census below. Catherine and John are on lines 33 and 34.

This branch of the family has yet to reveal any other immigrants.

List of ancestors shown in the chart below: Conrad Joseph Rebandt (1926-2003), Margaret Ann Bloink (1929-2009), Frederick William Bloink (1881-1955), Anna Klaes (1896-1950), John Bloink (1846-1914), Maria Jacobs (1848-1918), Franz Klaes (1863-1946), Katherina Schmitz (1863-1926), Catherine Bloink (1810-?), Johann J Klaes (1833-?), Anna Marie Schneider (1831-?), Johann Schmitz, Christina Pitzen

Who came over on the boat? Rebandt edition

Word Count: 248 Today, 970 Total.

The question of which of my ancestors came to America from another country is the whole reason I got into family history research in the first place. Recently, a cousin asked me the same question. Since I have my notes handy from answering him, I thought I'd share the news with the rest of you as well. The chart pictured below shows the ancestors I'm referring to and how they are related to my more recent ancestors.

According to the 1900 US Census, Joseph Conrad Rebandt (b. 1850 d. 1910) arrived in 1874. In 1900 he was in Detroit, Michigan with his wife, Albertina. The two owned a dry goods store there which they later passed down to their son, Adam Boniface Rebandt (b. 1893 d. 1980). Albertina arrived in 1875 according to the same census. Joseph and Albertina were wed in 1880. Joseph and Albertina's great grand daughter recalls her father (their grandson) telling her the name of the store was "Mrs. A Rebandt's Dry Goods, Ladies & Gents Furnishings" on Junction and Buchanan in Detroit. Google map's panorama shows only one building remaining on this corner when searching the address of the store. Check it out here: https://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&layer=c&z=17&iwloc=A&sll=42.335144,-83.114613&cbp=13,102.8,0,0,0&cbll=42.335144,-83.114614&q=Junction+and+Buchanan,+Detroit,+Michigan&ei=vzFlUpbgIcbl4AP-oYGYAw&ved=0CCoQxB0wAA. 

Per the 1910 census, Joseph or George Girsch (b. 1873 d. 1966) arrived in 1880. In 1910 he was in Detroit, Michigan also. He married Mary Bosman (b. 1877 d. 1931).

Mary Bosman's parents, Rudolph Bosman (b. 1842 d. 1919) and Josefina Albertina Balk (b. 1852 d. 1915) arrived in 1870 according to the 1900 census. They were married in 1870. There is some discrepancy on the actual date that Rudolph arrived however. The 1910 census lists him as arriving in 1865. Obviously I have more research to do.

Truly, there is plenty more research to do on all of these ancestors and their families.

~Morgan

List of ancestors in the chart: Conrad Joseph Rebandt (1926-2003), Margaret Ann Bloink (1929-2009), Bernard J. Rebandt (1882-?), Adam Boniface Rebandt (1893-1980), Helen Cecilia Girsch (1905-1966), Joseph Conrad Rebandt (1850-1910), Albertina Bosman (1855-?), Joseph or George Girsch (1873-1932), Mary Bosman (1877-1931), John Bosman, Dorothyea Bosman, Mary Girsch (1824-?), Rudolph Bosman (1842-1919), Josefina Albertina Balk (1852-1915)