Dear Ms. Keller,
Thanks so much for your reply to my inquiry. The Personnenregister database indicates there were several doctors of theology named Olearius associated with the formation of the Franckesche Stiftungen. Johann Georg Lubach lived to be eighty years old and could have known all of them. I am curious to know which one of them he might have eulogized.
There are several people named Lubach listed in the school's student and faculty database. Godofr(oy) Lubach from Wriezen was born in 1713 when Johann Georg was 41 years old. His father's occupation is listed as unknown.
Daniel Andreas Lubach was born in 1741. Gottfried Lubach was born in 1744. Both were born in Gartz an der Oder and are listed as Waisen and sons of a Cantor, a position apparently held at one time by Johann Georg Lubach, who was about 70 years old when Daniel and Gottfried were born. Place of birth and father's occupation suggest that they could have been brothers. Another Lubach, Gotthilf, is listed in another database, matriculating around 1796. He was probably born about 1780 when Daniel Andreas and Gottfried were not quite forty years old. This suggests to me the possibility of four generations of one family associated with the Orphan School at Halle.
Records indicate that my ancestor, Wilhelm Lubach, was born in 1827, although it's not clear yet where exactly he was born. He and his wife, Marie (Ebert) Lubach registered to emigrate to America in 1856 in a village called Wrechow east of the Oder. They were married on June 6, 1852 by a Reverend Melitz in nearby Zehden. The birthplace of their first son, Carl, appears on the Hamburg shipping manifest to have been a village called Carlshoff, less than five miles east of Wriezen. Both Wrechow and Wriezen are listed as Heimatort for a number of Waiseschule students.
My ancestor and his wife settled in Wisconsin with his wife's parents, two brothers, two sisters, a brother-in-law, a niece and a nephew. Marie's parents and her siblings emigrated in 1855. Wilhelm and Marie followed a year later, delaying their departure until after the birth of my great grandfather. Wilhelm died serving the Union army in 1865 during the American Civil War. Marie remarried two years later in 1867 at a church that was planned but not actually built until 1871. That church is still standing and in use. It was registered as a national landmark in 1987.
Wilhelm Lubach's grandson was ordained as a minister in 1916. He died in 1932 at the age of forty-eight when my father was five years old. Two of my grandfather's sisters, Emma and Louise, were schoolteachers in Wisconsin. A third sister, Elsie, taught school for a number of years in Alaska, long before it achieved statehood, and she later taught in California. It's not clear to me what if any training they ever received as teachers. Teaching seems to have been something innate with them; they simply understood how it was done as part of growing up on a family farm.
Both of my father's sisters married ministers and one of them also taught school for many years. My father holds a doctorate in clinical psychology, a field that for him represented a viable alternative end to an orthodox upbringing. He retired about fifteen years ago after a career that included government sponsored research, two decades pioneering the concept of community mental health, a stint as a college professor and more than a decade in private practice.
I've recently translated three Civil War poems written in German by the officer who organized and commanded the regiment in which my great great grandfather served during the war. Publishing poems-in-translation often requires a short statement regarding the translator's background. I'd like to make sure that I'm really qualified to translate poems about things that happened long before I was born.
Am I correct in assuming, from what I have seen in the online database, that Johann Georg Lubach may have been one of the original orphan school orphans? How much is known at this point about how the school functioned in those early days? Would it have been unusual for several generations of a family to attend the school? On what basis were prospective students selected from the many far flung towns and villages within the purview of the institution's outreach efforts? Was it seen as odd for children in Brandenburg to go away to Saxony Anhalt to attend school? How did this schooling differ from what they might have received otherwise? I guess those are the questions that come to mind for me.
When I first visited Germany seven years ago in November of 2002, I knew nothing of my father's family history beyond the fact that my grandfather had been a minister in Wisconsin who wrote sermons in both German and English and that his father was a farmer who had arrived in Wisconsin from Germany as a small child. I wasn't told until about two years ago that my great grandfather died in an industrial accident at a sawmill and that my grandfather had inherited his father's job at the sawmill when he was fourteen years old. He apparently finished high school after he had enrolled at the seminary. I learned that my great great grandfather died in the Civil War from bits and pieces of data I was able to glean from the internet during the past five years.
I think my great great grandfather was a blood relative of the Lubach family that attended and/or taught school at Halle in the 18th century, but I don't yet have conclusive proof for that assertion. The period from 1800 to 1830 was an era marked by playing host to Napoleon and his followers. The established order of things in that region underwent significant turmoil as a result. When the dust finally settled my ancestors were on a ship sailing from Hamburg to New York.
Earlier this year I visited the churchyard cemetery near Milwaukee where my great great grandmother is buried along with her second husband and her parents. Construction of the church was completed the year that her father died. My guess is that a few of the people who worship in that church today may know more than they are telling about who he was and that one of the secrets he took with him to his grave was the relation of his oldest daughter's first husband to a long and distinguished line of educators who devoted some small portion of their lives to an august institution, still standing and very much in use at the University of Halle.
Best Regards,
Craig Lubach,
Manila
----- Original Message -----
From: C.Keller
To: klfcel@pldtdsl.net
Sent: Monday, November 10, 2008 5:45 PM
Subject: WG: Lubach
Sehr geehrter Herr Lubach,
leider sind über Johann Georg Lubach keine weiteren Informationen in unserem Archiv zu finden. In unserem Bestand ist lediglich eine Handschrift von ihm vorhanden, in der er sich zu einer Predigt von einem Doktor Olearius äußert.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Carmela Keller
Diplomarchivarin
Franckesche Stiftungen
Studienzentrum August Hermann Francke
- Archiv -
Franckeplatz 1 / Haus 22-24
06110 Halle
Tel.: 0345 21 27 426
E-Mail: keller@francke-halle.de
homepage: http://www.francke-halle.de
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Bibbed
It came to my attention a month or so ago that my webpage has been cited as a reference in a recent online revision of an older scholarly article in print called The Story of Union Forces In South Texas During the Civil War. The article was revised by Norman Rozeff of the Cameron County Historical Commission in Texas for their website. My URL for my webpage is listed in the references at the end of the article as the online location of a document cited by Rozeff as 'Fredrich Buker. Memoirs of a Union Soldier.'
I'm not ordinarily the nitpicky sort. The fact is that the rules and conventions for citing online work are still pretty much up for grabs. Writings that are only available online can't really claim to have actually been published in anything but a virtual sense. Vast amounts of 'published' materials consist of information assembled or compiled by individuals and donated to local historical or genealogical societies. Many such documents are one of only a handful of copies made for the benefit of the dozen or so people in the world who might one day want access to that particular information. Sometimes the material is invaluable to the people to whom it pertains, but the chances of its finding a wider audience are so infinitesimal that there is no percentage in investing in publishing costs that won't ever be recouped.
The internet makes it much easier to 'publish' such material. All that's required is one hard copy, access to a scanner, a computer and a server address where the document's URL can be accessed online by remote computers. Anyone with a blog could put the entire content of most local historical societies' libraries online at very little expense beyond the time it takes to scan in the pages. What that means is that scholars, particularly historians, now have to contend with an exponential growth in the availability of primary historical sources.
The item Norman Rozeff referenced to my web address is actually only a 'dead link', one that a reader can find if they take the trouble to read through my entire webpage, a page that was written more than five years ago when the link was still current. Rozeff is actually referencing my summary of a translated memoir of a German-immigrant Union soldier who was in South Texas at the end of the Civil War.
A current link to Buker's translated memoir can be found in the sidebar of this blog under the heading Friedrich Buker. At some point during the past five years, probably less than a year ago, the State of Wisconsin took enough interest in Buker's diary to host the document on their own server and spare Buker's descendants the cost of paying a server to host the document.
I'm not convinced, based upon Rozeff's excellent and highly detailed and documented article, that he's ever actually seen Buker's translated memoir, a primary historical source. My summary of Buker's memoir is a secondary source and it should have been cited as a secondary source under the title of my webpage, Pinnacled Dim In The Intense Inane, which can also be found on my left margin sidebar.
As a memoirist Buker rambles a bit and he tends to assume that readers of his rendering are already well acquainted with the newspaper accounts of his regiment's activities. That may have been true in his time. The State of Wisconsin, for the benefit of 21st century readers, recently began hosting the online edition of an unpublished book by Mark Knipping, A History of the 27th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment During the War of the Rebellion. Summarizing Buker's memoir would have been far easier for me and required much less close reading if Mr. Knipping's book had been published online five years ago.
Nonetheless, I am deeply grateful and feel highly complimented that Mr. Rozeff took the trouble to acknowledge my work, however obliquely, for the online revision of his print article.
I'm not ordinarily the nitpicky sort. The fact is that the rules and conventions for citing online work are still pretty much up for grabs. Writings that are only available online can't really claim to have actually been published in anything but a virtual sense. Vast amounts of 'published' materials consist of information assembled or compiled by individuals and donated to local historical or genealogical societies. Many such documents are one of only a handful of copies made for the benefit of the dozen or so people in the world who might one day want access to that particular information. Sometimes the material is invaluable to the people to whom it pertains, but the chances of its finding a wider audience are so infinitesimal that there is no percentage in investing in publishing costs that won't ever be recouped.
The internet makes it much easier to 'publish' such material. All that's required is one hard copy, access to a scanner, a computer and a server address where the document's URL can be accessed online by remote computers. Anyone with a blog could put the entire content of most local historical societies' libraries online at very little expense beyond the time it takes to scan in the pages. What that means is that scholars, particularly historians, now have to contend with an exponential growth in the availability of primary historical sources.
The item Norman Rozeff referenced to my web address is actually only a 'dead link', one that a reader can find if they take the trouble to read through my entire webpage, a page that was written more than five years ago when the link was still current. Rozeff is actually referencing my summary of a translated memoir of a German-immigrant Union soldier who was in South Texas at the end of the Civil War.
A current link to Buker's translated memoir can be found in the sidebar of this blog under the heading Friedrich Buker. At some point during the past five years, probably less than a year ago, the State of Wisconsin took enough interest in Buker's diary to host the document on their own server and spare Buker's descendants the cost of paying a server to host the document.
I'm not convinced, based upon Rozeff's excellent and highly detailed and documented article, that he's ever actually seen Buker's translated memoir, a primary historical source. My summary of Buker's memoir is a secondary source and it should have been cited as a secondary source under the title of my webpage, Pinnacled Dim In The Intense Inane, which can also be found on my left margin sidebar.
As a memoirist Buker rambles a bit and he tends to assume that readers of his rendering are already well acquainted with the newspaper accounts of his regiment's activities. That may have been true in his time. The State of Wisconsin, for the benefit of 21st century readers, recently began hosting the online edition of an unpublished book by Mark Knipping, A History of the 27th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment During the War of the Rebellion. Summarizing Buker's memoir would have been far easier for me and required much less close reading if Mr. Knipping's book had been published online five years ago.
Nonetheless, I am deeply grateful and feel highly complimented that Mr. Rozeff took the trouble to acknowledge my work, however obliquely, for the online revision of his print article.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Fanmail
I received the following e-mail message about two weeks ago:
Sep 22
Thank you for all the info you have given me on my family. I have been searching for any clues to my family ties for years without finding anything. I just knew that my grandfather had a half brother Henry...period....no other names. I now know that Ludwig Backhaus was his father. I have gone to New Fane and found the grave. My grandfather was Charles Henry Backhaus born January 10, 1859 in the town of Scott. He died in Campbellsport Wisconsin January 8, 1951. I found more on Ancestry.com too. But your website has been a joy for me. I pieced a lot of things together to make my family tree.
Ruthie Stoffel
I sent a reply to this message and haven't heard back from Ruthie yet. But I'm hoping that I will. Her grandfather appears to have been my great grandfather's step-brother. Both of them had a half-brother named Henry. It was basically impossible to explain Henry's relationship to my great grandfather without also explaining his relationship to Ruthie's grandfather, Charles. I keep finding individual pieces of documentary evidence and posting them on my blog, but it really doesn't mean much until someone else comes along who can see that those pieces do add up to something and do make sense.
I believe Charles also had a younger brother, Edward, born in 1863. I think it's likely that their mother, Henrietta Backhaus, died giving birth to Edward and he was raised by my great great grandmother, Marie, who married her next door neighbor, Ludwig Backhaus, after her first husband, my great great grandfather, Wilhelm Lubach, died in July of 1865 while serving the Union Army in the Civil War. She declared for a widow's pension and benefits for her minor dependents, Carl, William, Louise and Edward, but wasn't processed until 1867 after she had married Ludwig Backhaus and the children had become his legal wards. Henry was born in 1868, a year after Marie married Ludwig.
My great grandfather, William Lubach, is listed in the 1870 census for Scott Township in Sheboygan County as William Backhaus. The age listed for him is 74, but he was actually only 14. His older brother, Carl, isn't listed in that census, but their sister, Louise, is listed as a Backhaus, age 12, born in Wisconsin, along with their half-brother, Henry, age 2, and their step-brothers, Edward, age 8, and Carl, age 11. Edward appears in the 1910 census listed as Edward Lubach, age 48. I believe he married a neighbor listed on the same page of the 1870 census, Catherine Anne Luhn.
The whereabouts of Edward Lubach are important to me because that's the name by which my grandfather was known. It was his middle name. Edward was a popular name in Wisconsin in 1863. It was the first name of Lieutenant Governor Edward Salomon, a Prussian army officer who became Acting Governor of Wisconsin when Governor Harvey drowned in the Tennessee River in 1862 while reviewing the Wisconsin troops who had survived the Battle of Shiloh.
Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln had a twelve year old son named William who died of pneumonia in 1862. William was the second of three Lincoln sons to die in childhood. The first was Edward, who died at age 4 in 1850, the year that William was born. Mary Todd Lincoln wrote a poem called Little Eddie about the loss of that son, which was no doubt revived to lament the loss of William shortly after the family moved into the White House. My father's middle name is Edward and so is mine.
Sometimes I'm just amazed at what a precise instrument the internet can be for finding those proverbial haystack needles. Theories based on hunches are all well and good, but they only become tangible when someone you've never met or even heard of provides that indispensable independent verification.
Thanks so much, Ruthie. I couldn't have done it without you.
Sep 22
Thank you for all the info you have given me on my family. I have been searching for any clues to my family ties for years without finding anything. I just knew that my grandfather had a half brother Henry...period....no other names. I now know that Ludwig Backhaus was his father. I have gone to New Fane and found the grave. My grandfather was Charles Henry Backhaus born January 10, 1859 in the town of Scott. He died in Campbellsport Wisconsin January 8, 1951. I found more on Ancestry.com too. But your website has been a joy for me. I pieced a lot of things together to make my family tree.
Ruthie Stoffel
I sent a reply to this message and haven't heard back from Ruthie yet. But I'm hoping that I will. Her grandfather appears to have been my great grandfather's step-brother. Both of them had a half-brother named Henry. It was basically impossible to explain Henry's relationship to my great grandfather without also explaining his relationship to Ruthie's grandfather, Charles. I keep finding individual pieces of documentary evidence and posting them on my blog, but it really doesn't mean much until someone else comes along who can see that those pieces do add up to something and do make sense.
I believe Charles also had a younger brother, Edward, born in 1863. I think it's likely that their mother, Henrietta Backhaus, died giving birth to Edward and he was raised by my great great grandmother, Marie, who married her next door neighbor, Ludwig Backhaus, after her first husband, my great great grandfather, Wilhelm Lubach, died in July of 1865 while serving the Union Army in the Civil War. She declared for a widow's pension and benefits for her minor dependents, Carl, William, Louise and Edward, but wasn't processed until 1867 after she had married Ludwig Backhaus and the children had become his legal wards. Henry was born in 1868, a year after Marie married Ludwig.
My great grandfather, William Lubach, is listed in the 1870 census for Scott Township in Sheboygan County as William Backhaus. The age listed for him is 74, but he was actually only 14. His older brother, Carl, isn't listed in that census, but their sister, Louise, is listed as a Backhaus, age 12, born in Wisconsin, along with their half-brother, Henry, age 2, and their step-brothers, Edward, age 8, and Carl, age 11. Edward appears in the 1910 census listed as Edward Lubach, age 48. I believe he married a neighbor listed on the same page of the 1870 census, Catherine Anne Luhn.
The whereabouts of Edward Lubach are important to me because that's the name by which my grandfather was known. It was his middle name. Edward was a popular name in Wisconsin in 1863. It was the first name of Lieutenant Governor Edward Salomon, a Prussian army officer who became Acting Governor of Wisconsin when Governor Harvey drowned in the Tennessee River in 1862 while reviewing the Wisconsin troops who had survived the Battle of Shiloh.
Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln had a twelve year old son named William who died of pneumonia in 1862. William was the second of three Lincoln sons to die in childhood. The first was Edward, who died at age 4 in 1850, the year that William was born. Mary Todd Lincoln wrote a poem called Little Eddie about the loss of that son, which was no doubt revived to lament the loss of William shortly after the family moved into the White House. My father's middle name is Edward and so is mine.
Sometimes I'm just amazed at what a precise instrument the internet can be for finding those proverbial haystack needles. Theories based on hunches are all well and good, but they only become tangible when someone you've never met or even heard of provides that indispensable independent verification.
Thanks so much, Ruthie. I couldn't have done it without you.
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Over The Rainbow
Merriman Sisters
If you click on the link my cousins, the Merriman sisters, should take you up where bluebirds fly in five part harmony. The last time I saw them in person was more than forty years ago and they were shorter then, but I'm pretty sure they're singing the same arrangement they learned from their father, Jack, a high school music teacher, who died of a heart attack before he was forty years old.
They have a younger brother, Steve, who hosts the Merriman's Playhouse in South Bend, Indiana. Steve plays drums, his wife plays stand-up bass and they apparently perform once a month, showcasing featured jazz performers who make a short detour from Chicago or Detroit to jam with them.
These cousins are the brood of my mother's younger sister, Mary Lou. They are all descended from Alexander and Lydia Ann Price who were the focus of my 1902 Price Family Reunion and subsequent posts. My cousin Kim in California is still quite intent on organizing a 21st century family reunion.
If you click on the link my cousins, the Merriman sisters, should take you up where bluebirds fly in five part harmony. The last time I saw them in person was more than forty years ago and they were shorter then, but I'm pretty sure they're singing the same arrangement they learned from their father, Jack, a high school music teacher, who died of a heart attack before he was forty years old.
They have a younger brother, Steve, who hosts the Merriman's Playhouse in South Bend, Indiana. Steve plays drums, his wife plays stand-up bass and they apparently perform once a month, showcasing featured jazz performers who make a short detour from Chicago or Detroit to jam with them.
These cousins are the brood of my mother's younger sister, Mary Lou. They are all descended from Alexander and Lydia Ann Price who were the focus of my 1902 Price Family Reunion and subsequent posts. My cousin Kim in California is still quite intent on organizing a 21st century family reunion.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Hamburg Manifest
I joined a newsserver called the Germany Passengers List about a year ago. The members of the list often go to great lengths to assist people looking for information about ancestors or relatives who emigrated by ship from what is now called Germany to other parts of the world.
A month or so ago the list ran a message from someone with a relative who made the crossing from Hamburg to New York on the Ann Washburn in the summer of 1856. The listowner, Ursula Adamson, replied to that message, indicating she has access to microfilm records of the Hamburg passenger manifest for that voyage. I sent a message to the list indicating that my ancestors were also aboard that ship. A week or so later I got an e-mail from the listowner with a record attached, a microfilm copy of the page on that manifest where my ancestors are listed.
If you click your mouse once on the manifest image above you can see the image in its actual size. And if you scroll to the bottom you can see that my great grandfather, Wilhelm, age 0, is listed on the 10th line from the bottom, directly below his brother Carl, age 2, his mother Marie, age 26, and his father Wilhelm, age 29.
After the Name column and before the Age (Alter) column there are three other columns, Geburts oder Wohnort (Birth or Home Village), Landes (Country), and Gewerbe (Occupation). In 1856 Landes referred to whichever of the many hundreds of small kingdoms, duchies and principalities that were eventually unified as Germany. An attempt had been made in 1848 to unite all of the many small kingdoms under the banner of a German state, but that effort failed. Greater Germany as a nation-state wasn't realized until 1871.
No birth or home village is listed for Wilhelm and Marie, but there is a locality listed for Carl. The handwriting isn't easy to decipher and it is in German, but it looks to me like what is written could be the name Carlsheim. I haven't been able to locate any villages by that name online, but I have found a literary reference.
Benedikte Naubert was a popular author in Leipzig at the beginning of the 19th century. She wrote more than fifty books, some of them fairy tales later adapted by the Brothers Grimm. Her works included a number of historical romances, some of which were translated into English by Matthew (Monk) Lewis shortly after their publication in German. One of those romance novels was entitled Feudal Tyrants: The Counts of Carlsheim and Sargans. The story was set near Zurich in Switzerland, probably so it wouldn't be confused with any actual places in what eventually became Germany.
I don't know if the emigration officials in Hamburg had a policy about passengers listing fictitious places for their points of origin. I suspect it was permissable if it came from a book they hadn't read. Marie listed what looks like Greufsen for her country. I've located a small town in Thuringia by that name, although now it seems to be spelled Greussen. Until fairly recently Thuringia was part of the former East Germany. The town is about 30 miles north of Erfurt and fifty miles west of Leipzig. Frederick von Hardenburg's poem Novalis seems to be associated in some way with this locality.
I haven't had much luck deciphering what Wilhelm and Marie listed for their occupations. I'm willing to entertain educated guesses.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Kettle Moraine
I don't know how many state parks come furnished with a house of worship that's an authentic national landmark, but I do know that the Northern Unit of the Kettle Moraine State Forest in Wisconsin has one for which I feel a certain affinity. Ordinarily my tendency is to worship nature out of doors and some of the best places for doing so can be found in state or national parks. The church in the picture, St. John's New Fane Lutheran, was built in 1872. The surrounding countryside wasn't made a state park until 1936.
A few weeks ago I just happened to be in the neighborhood, so I made a point of stopping in for a brief photo op. My wife and I were in Milwaukee in April to visit my mother-in-law who celebrated her 87th birthday on Mother's Day. She loves to drive her Dodge Caravan, so not much persuasion was required for a quick run up the freeway to Kewaskum and a little beyond. Last year I wrote a post indicating that I'd located a cemetery transcription online that placed several of my ancestors in the New Fane churchyard cemetery.
The church is apparently a national landmark due to the mode of its construction. It's what's known as a "gothic fieldstone" church. Many hundreds of them were built in the 19th century, but only a handful are still standing and in use. The soil of the Kettle Moraine is notoriously rocky because it marked the leading edge of a huge glacier that began retreating at the end of the latest ice age. German immigrant farmers like my ancestors, who settled in Wisconsin in 1856, had to first remove the stones from their fields in order to cultivate them.
My understanding is that the stained glass windows, four on each side and one at the back, were added at a much later date, probably well into the 20th century. My mother-in-law kept the engine revved while my wife and I did a quick survey of the cemetery. We found quite a few markers written in German, some that must have been from before the end of the 19th century, but none of them had legible inscriptions, so we weren't able to locate the graves of my great great grandmother, who died in 1893, or my great great great grandfather, who died in 1872.
But we did find the grave marker for someone I think was my great great grandmother's youngest brother. August Ebert died in 1924 at the age of 78. His wife, Mary, passed on at the ripe old age of 39. August had a brother two years older, William, who was just old enough to enlist in the Union army in 1864. William served only a few months before he was wounded at the Battle of Atlanta. He collected a Civil War disability pension for 50 years and died in 1916. William's pension records furnished the clue that led me to New Fane. He married his wife, Fredericke, at St. John's New Fane in 1866, six years before enough field stones had been collected to actually build the church. His older sister, Maria, married her second husband there in 1867. Her first husband, my great great grandfather, Wilhelm Lubach, died at Jefferson Barracks Hospital in St. Louis in July, 1865, while serving in the 27th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry.
I've scanned in part of a map of the Kettle Moraine State Forest for any readers interested in making the trek to New Fane. The town itself has only one street but many of the houses along it are fairly new. I suspect that the State Park imposes a few zoning restrictions on development, so the town probably won't get much bigger than it is right now. The Bridle Path runs a block west of the only street in town. One block to the east is where hikers pass through along the Ice Age National Scenic Trail. The town of Kewaskum can be seen in the lower left corner of the map about three miles southwest of New Fane. It has a number of excellent cafes and handy stores for loading up knapsacks for the thirty mile hike from one end of the forest to the other. I'm fairly sure that the land my ancestors homesteaded for most of the second half of the 19th century is situated a little more than a mile northeast of New Fane, near the junction of Brazelton Drive and Forest View Road. One click of the mouse on any of the pictures will enlarge the view.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
More Price Pictures
My third cousin, Kim in California, who I've only met online through my blog, has sent me more photos of our Price relatives from South Bend, Indiana. If you click on the photo you can see them in much greater detail. Kim said she thinks these four pictures were taken in 1927, roughly twenty-five years after the 1902 Price Family Reunion photo that appeared last year in a previous post.
The really great thing about the 1902 Reunion photo is that that picture has numbers on each of the individuals and names to go with the numbers on a separate page so it's fairly easy to identify almost all of the nearly fifty individuals in the photo. These four photos aren't numbered or coded, so to identify people you have to imagine how much different they would have looked twenty-five years later. Many of the adults in these photos were small children in 1902.
Kim asked me if I recognized any of the children in these photos. I can't really claim that I do, but I did point out to her that my mother was born in 1926 and her older brother was born in 1925. If you look carefully at the upper right photo, you'll see that it includes a woman standing in the middle row with a baby girl in her arms who looks to be perhaps a year old or a little less. Standing directly in front of that woman is a small boy who looks to be about two years old. I don't think Kim would have sent me this picture if she weren't fairly certain that the woman holding the baby was my grandmother, Carlie (Ruth) Steele. That would make the baby my mother, Carolyn, and her two year old brother my Uncle John.
The woman at the far left of the upper left photo was my great grandmother, Laura (Price) Steele, pictured with her six older sisters and three older brothers. The man at the far left of the lower left photo was my great grandfather, Ira Steele. I suspect that the man standing in the front row in that picture with a two year old boy in a sailor suit in front of him was my grandfather, Cleon Virgil Steele.
The three of them, Great Grandpa Ira, Grandpa Cleon and Uncle John, are sitting together in the front row in the photo on the lower right. Cleon is the one wearing the hat. I think Cleon is also the man on the far right in the upper right photo. Kim tells me that her mother and grandmother are also in these photos and that her mother was born the same year as my Uncle John.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Shipping News
I've been fortunate to find a little more information concerning the ships on which my father's family arrived in the United States in the decade preceding the American Civil War.
Mystic Seaport is a town in Connecticut with a maritime museum that has a great website. If you know the name of the ship and a good approximation of the year it arrived, go to Mystic Seaport. The site has online access to the New York Marine Register for 1857 and to its successor, the American Lloyd's Register of American and Foreign Shipping.
Up until 1857, passengers took their chances getting on board a ship. There was really no reliable way for emigrants to know if the vessel on which they had booked their passage was really seaworthy. Once they'd sold all of their possessions and traveled halfway or more across Europe to get to a major port like London or Hamburg, it was a little late at that point to arrive at the dock and decide that getting on board might not be such a great idea.
The New York Marine Register of 1857 eased that dilemma substantially. It was a publication financed by a number of underwriters who insured the ships on which cargo and passengers traveled. A listing on the register gave passengers a much better idea of what to expect when they arrived at the dock. All of the ships listed on the register were given a rating, ranging from A1+ to A3-. The rating indicated the quality of the construction of the ship and the adequacy of its equipment. Lloyd's of London adopted the system set up for the New York Marine Register of 1857 and within two years the annual publication was known as the American Lloyd's Register.
My great grandfather came to America as an infant with his parents and a two year old brother. They crossed from Hamburg to New York in 1856 on a ship called the Ann Washburn, departing on May 25th and arriving on July 12th after 46 days at sea. The ship was inspected and rated for the New York Register in August that year, presumably while it was still in port following that arrival. Its rating was A1 and 1/2-. The ship was listed at 861 tons and it had two decks. It was built in 1853 at Freeport, Maine, and owned in Boston by H. H. Stevens. It was a new ship, built of oak with copper plating and iron fittings.
My great grandfather's grandparents and their family arrived in New York a year earlier in 1855 on a ship called the London. Its rating or class was 2. The captain's name was Hubbard. The ship displaced 1,143 tons and it had 3 decks. It was built in 1847 in New York by someone named Webb and it was owned in New York by M. H. Grinnell, at that time one of the most prominent shipowners in New York. He is remembered for financing polar expeditions and public lectures by Abolitionist ministers. The London was listed on the American Lloyd's Registry up until 1870, but aside from the 1855 voyage on which my ancestors sailed there isn't much news about it posted online.
The Ann Washburn, however, appeared several times in a column called Marine Intelligence in the New York Times and also in the Times Picayune. The voyage on which my great grandfather arrived from Hamburg in 1856 was notable because a seaman named George Hickson fell overboard and drowned near Nova Scotia. An earlier voyage from Antwerp to New York in April,1854, became controversial because the ship carried Belgian paupers and convicts among its passengers. The ship's captain apparently adopted a policy of excluding such passengers in subsequent voyages.
The ship made the news again in 1858 when it was moored in New Orleans. A tornado touched down along the wharf during a hurricane, wreaking havoc among the ships tied there. Several seamen were flung overboard and the Ann Washburn snapped her bowsprit and sprung a mast. The damage may have not ever been fully repaired. The ship appears to have managed the return voyage to Boston, but a voyage from Boston to New Orleans in November later that year ended in shipwreck at Looe Key near Key West. A fee of $5,000 was paid to a salvage company, probably to recover some portion of the ship's cargo. After 1859 the Ann Washburn was no longer listed on the American Lloyd's Registry.
Mystic Seaport is a town in Connecticut with a maritime museum that has a great website. If you know the name of the ship and a good approximation of the year it arrived, go to Mystic Seaport. The site has online access to the New York Marine Register for 1857 and to its successor, the American Lloyd's Register of American and Foreign Shipping.
Up until 1857, passengers took their chances getting on board a ship. There was really no reliable way for emigrants to know if the vessel on which they had booked their passage was really seaworthy. Once they'd sold all of their possessions and traveled halfway or more across Europe to get to a major port like London or Hamburg, it was a little late at that point to arrive at the dock and decide that getting on board might not be such a great idea.
The New York Marine Register of 1857 eased that dilemma substantially. It was a publication financed by a number of underwriters who insured the ships on which cargo and passengers traveled. A listing on the register gave passengers a much better idea of what to expect when they arrived at the dock. All of the ships listed on the register were given a rating, ranging from A1+ to A3-. The rating indicated the quality of the construction of the ship and the adequacy of its equipment. Lloyd's of London adopted the system set up for the New York Marine Register of 1857 and within two years the annual publication was known as the American Lloyd's Register.
My great grandfather came to America as an infant with his parents and a two year old brother. They crossed from Hamburg to New York in 1856 on a ship called the Ann Washburn, departing on May 25th and arriving on July 12th after 46 days at sea. The ship was inspected and rated for the New York Register in August that year, presumably while it was still in port following that arrival. Its rating was A1 and 1/2-. The ship was listed at 861 tons and it had two decks. It was built in 1853 at Freeport, Maine, and owned in Boston by H. H. Stevens. It was a new ship, built of oak with copper plating and iron fittings.
My great grandfather's grandparents and their family arrived in New York a year earlier in 1855 on a ship called the London. Its rating or class was 2. The captain's name was Hubbard. The ship displaced 1,143 tons and it had 3 decks. It was built in 1847 in New York by someone named Webb and it was owned in New York by M. H. Grinnell, at that time one of the most prominent shipowners in New York. He is remembered for financing polar expeditions and public lectures by Abolitionist ministers. The London was listed on the American Lloyd's Registry up until 1870, but aside from the 1855 voyage on which my ancestors sailed there isn't much news about it posted online.
The Ann Washburn, however, appeared several times in a column called Marine Intelligence in the New York Times and also in the Times Picayune. The voyage on which my great grandfather arrived from Hamburg in 1856 was notable because a seaman named George Hickson fell overboard and drowned near Nova Scotia. An earlier voyage from Antwerp to New York in April,1854, became controversial because the ship carried Belgian paupers and convicts among its passengers. The ship's captain apparently adopted a policy of excluding such passengers in subsequent voyages.
The ship made the news again in 1858 when it was moored in New Orleans. A tornado touched down along the wharf during a hurricane, wreaking havoc among the ships tied there. Several seamen were flung overboard and the Ann Washburn snapped her bowsprit and sprung a mast. The damage may have not ever been fully repaired. The ship appears to have managed the return voyage to Boston, but a voyage from Boston to New Orleans in November later that year ended in shipwreck at Looe Key near Key West. A fee of $5,000 was paid to a salvage company, probably to recover some portion of the ship's cargo. After 1859 the Ann Washburn was no longer listed on the American Lloyd's Registry.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Castle Garden
I've located the ship manifests, posted online by Ancestry.com, for the ships on which my German ancestors arrived in America. My father's great grandparents, Wilhelm and Maria Lubach, arrived in New York at Castle Garden on July 12, 1856, on a ship called the 'Ann Washburn' which departed from Hamburg with more than 300 passengers on board, nearly all of them German, including my father's grandfather, Wilhelm, listed as an infant, and Wilhelm's brother, Carl, age 2. The family surname, Lubach, was transcribed online as Subach, which did not make finding the manifest any easier. The elder Wilhelm Lubach was 29 years old and his wife, Maria, was 26.
Maria Lubach's parents, Wilhelm and Dorothea Ebert, arrived a year earlier, July 9, 1855, on a ship called the 'London' which departed from London. They were accompanied by their children and by a son in law, August Heise, whose wife, Sophia, is listed twice on the manifest, once as the daughter of Wilhelm Ebert and a second time as the wife of August Heise. She was 22 years of age in both instances. The couple accompanied their two children, Carl, age 3, and Amelia, an infant.
There appears to have been possibly a third Ebert sister, Louisa, age 17, who is not listed as an Ebert in the 1860 census for Sheboygan County in Wisconsin. The brothers, Wilhelm, age 11, and August, age 9, are also listed on the ship's manifest as part of the Ebert family. The name of another female, age 19, listed by first name only as traveling with August and Sophia Heise and children, is difficult to read. The transcriber identified the name as Sabe. I would submit that this could have been August Heise's younger sister.
Castle Garden was a receiving station for immigrants at the tip of Manhattan Island, the predecessor to Ellis Island. It officially opened for business in August of 1855, a month and several days after the 'London' arrived, but the ship's manifest is maintained by NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) and transcribed as part of an effort to make the Castle Garden records available to the online public. Castle Garden is currently known by its original name, Fort Clinton. It's where visitors to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty buy tickets and board ferries for those destinations.
The elder Wilhelm Ebert's age was listed as 50 on the London's manifest which would make him two years younger than the Wilhelm Ebert buried at St. John's New Fane Cemetery, but the date of birth listed on his tombstone is July 9, the anniversary of his arrival in America.
Maria Lubach's parents, Wilhelm and Dorothea Ebert, arrived a year earlier, July 9, 1855, on a ship called the 'London' which departed from London. They were accompanied by their children and by a son in law, August Heise, whose wife, Sophia, is listed twice on the manifest, once as the daughter of Wilhelm Ebert and a second time as the wife of August Heise. She was 22 years of age in both instances. The couple accompanied their two children, Carl, age 3, and Amelia, an infant.
There appears to have been possibly a third Ebert sister, Louisa, age 17, who is not listed as an Ebert in the 1860 census for Sheboygan County in Wisconsin. The brothers, Wilhelm, age 11, and August, age 9, are also listed on the ship's manifest as part of the Ebert family. The name of another female, age 19, listed by first name only as traveling with August and Sophia Heise and children, is difficult to read. The transcriber identified the name as Sabe. I would submit that this could have been August Heise's younger sister.
Castle Garden was a receiving station for immigrants at the tip of Manhattan Island, the predecessor to Ellis Island. It officially opened for business in August of 1855, a month and several days after the 'London' arrived, but the ship's manifest is maintained by NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) and transcribed as part of an effort to make the Castle Garden records available to the online public. Castle Garden is currently known by its original name, Fort Clinton. It's where visitors to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty buy tickets and board ferries for those destinations.
The elder Wilhelm Ebert's age was listed as 50 on the London's manifest which would make him two years younger than the Wilhelm Ebert buried at St. John's New Fane Cemetery, but the date of birth listed on his tombstone is July 9, the anniversary of his arrival in America.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
New Fane
I've recently located an online transcription for a church cemetery in the southeasternmost corner of Fond du Lac County in Wisconsin. I believe that my great great grandmother and my great great great grandfather are buried in the St. John's New Fane cemetery in Auburn Township. I had not located their graves previously because census records indicate that they lived in Scott Township in Sheboygan County and that's where I had looked. It's clear now, however, that they lived on the county line and the nearest village was and still is New Fane in Fond du Lac County.
I've posted a link for the ">Scott Township Plat Map 1875. The link is an interactive plat map put online by the University of Wisconsin Digital Library. It's very high resolution with a moveable frame that allows for zooming in and out on quadrants, sections within quadrants and quadrants within sections of the map. You can see the name of the party to whom each lot was registered in each section, what portions of their lot were cleared or wooded and where any structures on their property were located. Click on Image Detail to resize the map from Medium to Extra Large and to access the Frame and Zoom functions.
It's helpful to compare the plat map with federal census listings. Thanks to Ancestry.com I am able to show how and where my ancestors were listed on the 1860 Census. The three images posted to the right show the names of the inhabitants of what became Section 30 in the order in which they were listed in 1860. One click on each image will enlarge it, making it much easier to read.
When you click the first image you will see that in 1860 Ludwig and Henrietta Backhaus had five sons and one daughter. The oldest son was 18 and the youngest a one year old. When you click the second image it's clear that their next door neighbors were Wilhelm and Maria Lubach, who had two sons and a daughter. The next household was that of Wilhelm and Maria D. Ebert and their sons Wilhelm and August. Next to them was the Heise or Heiser family, August and Sophia and their four children, two sons and two daughters. Beyond them is the Oeder family.
When you look at the plat map for 1875 it becomes clear that the census enumerator in 1860 was proceeding north to south along the county line from the top of Section 30, Ludwig Backhaus and family, to the bottom of Section 31, where Henry and Mary Oeder lived. The Ebert family is still in between them in 1875, but the Lubach and Heise or Heiser families have relocated. The village of New Fane is a little more than one mile west of Section 30. It was the nearest village to these farms.
Construction of St. John's Church at New Fane was begun around 1860 and completed in 1871. It is still in use and appears now very much as it did then. Wilhelm Ebert, who I believe was the father of Marie (Ebert) Lubach (my great great grandmother) and her sister, Sophia (Ebert) Heise, was buried in the New Fane Cemetery in 1872 at the age of 69.
Marie's first husband, Wilhelm Lubach, died in the Civil War on July 27, 1865, and was buried at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis. Marie married Ludwig Backhaus in 1867, allowing the couple to collect a Civil War pension for her four minor dependents. Ludwig's first wife, Henrietta, appears to have died between 1860 and 1867. My theory is that she died giving birth to a son, Edward, in January, 1863. She does not appear to have been buried in the St. John's New Fane cemetery. Her son, Edward, eventually took the name Lubach as his surname, apparently in honor of his stepmother's first husband. Edward was listed as a minor dependent on Marie's pension application, so it appears she may have been caring for Ludwig's youngest son before the couple married. Marie appears to have given birth to another son, Henry, a year after her marriage to Ludwig Backhaus.
Sophie's husband, August Heise, survived the war. The 1875 plat map indicates a farm belonging to A. Heyser in Section 20 of Scott Township, two miles from the county line and close to the village of Beechwood. Wilhelm Ebert's farm in 1875 in Section 30 appears to have been divided evenly between his sons, William and August.
Ludwig Backhaus may have played a central role in finding spouses for his second wife's pensionable minor dependents. Marie was buried at New Fane in 1893, the year that her oldest son Carl or Charles lost three sons to a diptheria epidemic in Findlay, Ohio. Ludwig was buried at New Fane in 1897, the same year that Marie's second son, William, died at the age of 41 in a sawmill accident in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Ludwig was 82 in 1897. The birthdate on his tombstone indicates that he celebrated his 50th birthday on the same day that my great great grandfather died at a military hospital in St. Louis.
I've posted a link for the ">Scott Township Plat Map 1875. The link is an interactive plat map put online by the University of Wisconsin Digital Library. It's very high resolution with a moveable frame that allows for zooming in and out on quadrants, sections within quadrants and quadrants within sections of the map. You can see the name of the party to whom each lot was registered in each section, what portions of their lot were cleared or wooded and where any structures on their property were located. Click on Image Detail to resize the map from Medium to Extra Large and to access the Frame and Zoom functions.
It's helpful to compare the plat map with federal census listings. Thanks to Ancestry.com I am able to show how and where my ancestors were listed on the 1860 Census. The three images posted to the right show the names of the inhabitants of what became Section 30 in the order in which they were listed in 1860. One click on each image will enlarge it, making it much easier to read.
When you click the first image you will see that in 1860 Ludwig and Henrietta Backhaus had five sons and one daughter. The oldest son was 18 and the youngest a one year old. When you click the second image it's clear that their next door neighbors were Wilhelm and Maria Lubach, who had two sons and a daughter. The next household was that of Wilhelm and Maria D. Ebert and their sons Wilhelm and August. Next to them was the Heise or Heiser family, August and Sophia and their four children, two sons and two daughters. Beyond them is the Oeder family.
When you look at the plat map for 1875 it becomes clear that the census enumerator in 1860 was proceeding north to south along the county line from the top of Section 30, Ludwig Backhaus and family, to the bottom of Section 31, where Henry and Mary Oeder lived. The Ebert family is still in between them in 1875, but the Lubach and Heise or Heiser families have relocated. The village of New Fane is a little more than one mile west of Section 30. It was the nearest village to these farms.
Construction of St. John's Church at New Fane was begun around 1860 and completed in 1871. It is still in use and appears now very much as it did then. Wilhelm Ebert, who I believe was the father of Marie (Ebert) Lubach (my great great grandmother) and her sister, Sophia (Ebert) Heise, was buried in the New Fane Cemetery in 1872 at the age of 69.
Marie's first husband, Wilhelm Lubach, died in the Civil War on July 27, 1865, and was buried at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis. Marie married Ludwig Backhaus in 1867, allowing the couple to collect a Civil War pension for her four minor dependents. Ludwig's first wife, Henrietta, appears to have died between 1860 and 1867. My theory is that she died giving birth to a son, Edward, in January, 1863. She does not appear to have been buried in the St. John's New Fane cemetery. Her son, Edward, eventually took the name Lubach as his surname, apparently in honor of his stepmother's first husband. Edward was listed as a minor dependent on Marie's pension application, so it appears she may have been caring for Ludwig's youngest son before the couple married. Marie appears to have given birth to another son, Henry, a year after her marriage to Ludwig Backhaus.
Sophie's husband, August Heise, survived the war. The 1875 plat map indicates a farm belonging to A. Heyser in Section 20 of Scott Township, two miles from the county line and close to the village of Beechwood. Wilhelm Ebert's farm in 1875 in Section 30 appears to have been divided evenly between his sons, William and August.
Ludwig Backhaus may have played a central role in finding spouses for his second wife's pensionable minor dependents. Marie was buried at New Fane in 1893, the year that her oldest son Carl or Charles lost three sons to a diptheria epidemic in Findlay, Ohio. Ludwig was buried at New Fane in 1897, the same year that Marie's second son, William, died at the age of 41 in a sawmill accident in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Ludwig was 82 in 1897. The birthdate on his tombstone indicates that he celebrated his 50th birthday on the same day that my great great grandfather died at a military hospital in St. Louis.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Leggett's Hill
I mentioned in a post several months ago that I visited Atlanta in 2001. I spent most of my time there at a highrise hotel in North Atlanta that was hosting a meeting my wife was attending, but I did find time for a round of golf, for an afternoon at the Stone Mountain Monument and also for a visit to one of my wife's colleagues who works at Emory University and lives in East Atlanta.
The visit to Stone Mountain awakened in me a slumbering interest in the Civil War. I knew at that time that a brother of my mother's great grandfather from Ohio had died at Andersonville Prison, but I wasn't aware then that any of my father's ancestors or inlaws in Wisconsin had even participated in the Civil War. I've since learned that the same Confederate general, Patrick Cleburne, whose men captured my mother's great uncle in Chattanooga, also commanded the men who shot my dad's great grandmother's brother in Atlanta.
During the past five years, using almost exclusively information freely available on the internet, I've discovered that my dad's great grandfather died in the Civil War, that he served in the same unit with a man married to his wife's sister, and that his wife's younger brother, William, enlisted in the 12th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry on February 22, 1864. William Ebert fought and was wounded in the Battle of Atlanta on July 21st and was discharged in January 1865, after convalescing for nearly six months at an army hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. He received his "red badge of courage" when he was 21 years old, a gunshot wound to his upper left arm. He sailed across the Atlantic from Prussia to Wisconsin at age 11.
The last time I posted about him I began wondering if I might have passed anywhere near the scene of that historic battle on my visit to Atlanta. We rented a car while we were there and, thanks to Dave Buckhout and his site, Tracking the Battle of Atlanta Today, I now know that I actually passed, more than once, through the battlefield where my great great uncle was shot.
Bald Hill was renamed Leggett's Hill as a direct result of that battle. General Mortimer Leggett commanded the brigade that included both the 12th and the 16th Wisconsin infantry regiments. His orders from Sherman on the 21st were to take that hill and to hold it. He did. And the Battle for Atlanta on the 22nd involved the unsuccessful efforts of the Confederate army to dislodge him from that strategic location. Nearly 12,000 men were killed, wounded or taken prisoner in that battle. It was the decisive battle in what became the Siege of Atlanta.
Abraham Lincoln was in the middle of a heated election campaign that summer, running for reelection against his Democratic challenger, General George McClellan. Soldiers who favored the challenger were disparaged and shunned as "copperheads", men who thought that the war was a catastrophic standoff that could only be resolved through a negotiated compromise.
When Atlanta fell, burned to the ground in September, and when Sherman's March to the Sea in October was well underweigh, it became clear that the war was indeed winnable. Lincoln won the election in a landslide. If General Patrick Cleburne's men had reclaimed control of the trenches on Bald Hill on July 22nd, Atlanta could easily have been a hopeless stalemate on election day and Lincoln might only have had until January to win the war.
Present day pictures of Bald or Leggett's Hill and vicinity, more than fifty of them, can be seen at Dave Buckhout's Inheritage website. Many of the pictures indicate the location of plaques that tell the story of the many different incidents and events that were part of the battle. The hill itself was leveled quite some time ago and is now a twelve-lane freeway.
A bridge crosses the freeway at Moreland Avenue, the street we took to visit our friend who works at Emory University. The view from the Moreland Avenue overpass is essentially the same view that the men in the trenches had from the brow of Bald Hill. Cleburne's men mounted their valiant attempt to reclaim the hill from an area now under construction that will soon be a large shopping mall.
The visit to Stone Mountain awakened in me a slumbering interest in the Civil War. I knew at that time that a brother of my mother's great grandfather from Ohio had died at Andersonville Prison, but I wasn't aware then that any of my father's ancestors or inlaws in Wisconsin had even participated in the Civil War. I've since learned that the same Confederate general, Patrick Cleburne, whose men captured my mother's great uncle in Chattanooga, also commanded the men who shot my dad's great grandmother's brother in Atlanta.
During the past five years, using almost exclusively information freely available on the internet, I've discovered that my dad's great grandfather died in the Civil War, that he served in the same unit with a man married to his wife's sister, and that his wife's younger brother, William, enlisted in the 12th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry on February 22, 1864. William Ebert fought and was wounded in the Battle of Atlanta on July 21st and was discharged in January 1865, after convalescing for nearly six months at an army hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. He received his "red badge of courage" when he was 21 years old, a gunshot wound to his upper left arm. He sailed across the Atlantic from Prussia to Wisconsin at age 11.
The last time I posted about him I began wondering if I might have passed anywhere near the scene of that historic battle on my visit to Atlanta. We rented a car while we were there and, thanks to Dave Buckhout and his site, Tracking the Battle of Atlanta Today, I now know that I actually passed, more than once, through the battlefield where my great great uncle was shot.
Bald Hill was renamed Leggett's Hill as a direct result of that battle. General Mortimer Leggett commanded the brigade that included both the 12th and the 16th Wisconsin infantry regiments. His orders from Sherman on the 21st were to take that hill and to hold it. He did. And the Battle for Atlanta on the 22nd involved the unsuccessful efforts of the Confederate army to dislodge him from that strategic location. Nearly 12,000 men were killed, wounded or taken prisoner in that battle. It was the decisive battle in what became the Siege of Atlanta.
Abraham Lincoln was in the middle of a heated election campaign that summer, running for reelection against his Democratic challenger, General George McClellan. Soldiers who favored the challenger were disparaged and shunned as "copperheads", men who thought that the war was a catastrophic standoff that could only be resolved through a negotiated compromise.
When Atlanta fell, burned to the ground in September, and when Sherman's March to the Sea in October was well underweigh, it became clear that the war was indeed winnable. Lincoln won the election in a landslide. If General Patrick Cleburne's men had reclaimed control of the trenches on Bald Hill on July 22nd, Atlanta could easily have been a hopeless stalemate on election day and Lincoln might only have had until January to win the war.
Present day pictures of Bald or Leggett's Hill and vicinity, more than fifty of them, can be seen at Dave Buckhout's Inheritage website. Many of the pictures indicate the location of plaques that tell the story of the many different incidents and events that were part of the battle. The hill itself was leveled quite some time ago and is now a twelve-lane freeway.
A bridge crosses the freeway at Moreland Avenue, the street we took to visit our friend who works at Emory University. The view from the Moreland Avenue overpass is essentially the same view that the men in the trenches had from the brow of Bald Hill. Cleburne's men mounted their valiant attempt to reclaim the hill from an area now under construction that will soon be a large shopping mall.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
You're Invited
Descendants of any of the people pictured in the photo above are cordially invited to attend a family reunion hosted by my third cousin, Kim, in California. Actually she wants to have the reunion in North Liberty Township in South Bend, Indiana, where the picture was taken more than a hundred years ago. My mother was born and raised in South Bend. She bore a striking resemblance to her grandmother.
A firm date has not yet been set, and the venue is still up for grabs. I alone have two aunts, three sisters, two brothers, two nephews, two nieces and eleven first cousins, all of whom are eligible to attend. I'm sure Kim must have at least that many, as well, and she tells me she's contacted at least one other cousin.
The elderly couple seated in the rocking chairs are Alexander H. and Lydia Anne Price. My great grandmother, Laura (Price) Steele, the youngest of their ten children, is seated between them. Her youngest sisters, Manerva Hively and Emeline Gushwa, are seated in front beside Alexander and Lydia Anne. Standing behind them left to right are Mary Freeman, Lorenzo Price, Angeline Knepp, Albert Price, Margaret Krieger, Frank Price and Elzira Klopfer. Elzira was my cousin Kim's great grandmother.
Alexander and Lydia Anne moved to South Bend from Ohio in 1864 during the American Civil War. Frank was the first of the children born in Indiana. The first five were all born in Ohio during or before the war. An obituary for Alexander indicates that Alexander and Lydia Anne belonged to a church that was part of what was called the Evangelical Association. He and his family apparently lived in what was called the Preacher's House. My great grandfather, Ira Steele, Laura's husband, was ordained as an Evangelical minister in 1909, ten years after my grandfather was born.
Lydia Anne's father, Nathan Cordray, was born around 1800 in Upper Old Town in Allegany County Maryland near the headwaters of the Potomac River. Upper Old Town had been a fort used by George Washington as a headquarters when he and General Braddock politely asked the French to abandon their forts in Ohio during the French and Indian War. Nathan's father, Isaac Cordray, was born in Upper Old Town in 1769 near the end of Chief Pontiac's Rebellion.
It's not clear exactly when Nathan and his wife, Mary, moved to Ohio, but Lydia Anne was born in Ohio around 1834. Her mother reported on census records that she was born in Ohio in 1803, so it seems likely that she and Nathan met somewhere in Ohio.
Ohio achieved statehood in 1803, but the vast majority of those people born in Ohio in 1803 were referred to as Indians. Very few of them had family ties in Delhi, Calcutta or Bombay.
Nathan Cordray served as the enumerator of the 1860 Census for the five townships in Coshocton County along the Tuscarawas River. His job was to count all of the white people living in those townships.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Little Rock
As far as I know, Konrad Krez only published three poems about his experiences commanding a Union regiment in the Civil War. None of those poems, to my knowledge, have been translated into English except on this blog.
Unlike 'New Orleans, February 1865' and 'Heimchen Brazos Santiago', written about locales where his unit was stationed for only a week or two, 'Little Rock' is about the place where he and his men were assigned for a year and a half, fully half of the three years that the 27th Wisconsin was involved in the war.
My great great grandfather, as a replacement troop, joined up with the regiment at the end of January, 1865, a few days before the unit was transferred by boat to Mobile by way of New Orleans.
Little Rock
Where, as from the emerald gates
A stream of silver, the Arkansas
From forested hills down into the flat land
Flows, and you crown the plain,
The river's long course from far distant
Rocks spills at last its flood.
Beloved of the South, the North
Kisses the sweat from your brow;
Underground springs that never run dry
Replenish your cool waters.
February brings you its buds,
Leaves in full array decorate your March,
And with the flowers' fragrance filling
The air, your blossoms bring in April.
On far away mountains the snow in May melts,
Delivering refreshing floods to your feet
To soften your summer nights.
Storms douse your hot autumn,
And in November the first frost comes
To kill your last roses
And the leaves on your trees turn colors.
Your eaves shiver with the light snow
In January, often coating your ponds
With thin ice, and more often,
Ornamenting your trees with icicles,
That hang with the rainbow's splendor
From your pine needles, covering
Every bough with glittering jewels.
Mild is your winter, and indeed cold enough,
That with the comfort of a chimney
One enjoys the warmth of a good fire.
How fortuitously mixed your heaven of warm and cold!
In which a foreigner, coming from hot
Or cold lands, always encounters old friends,
For your Germans are your wild vines,
And your oaks, as lovely and large
As those of the Spessarts, are like
A piece of his old Fatherland.
In your garden an apple tree stands
Beside pear, plum and fig plants,
And all of the familiar flowers
That with our species go wandering.
A rock, like the Lorelei on the Rhine,
Nearby to you in your highlands,
Looks out over the plain, where your corn's
Full cobs grow higher than
A man on horseback, standing in his stirrups,
Can reach with his outstretched arms.
There grows the barley and there the rye
In heavy sheaves, richly turned out;
There fly the bursting shells of cotton about,
Where the white fleece, like balls of snow,
Hangs from green stalks.
Generous, as your fertile soil,
Are your hospitable people,
Who know no poverty
And make thrift their virtue.
Welcome is the foreigner, for whom
A ready chair is found at every table.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Juneteenth
I finished high school, quite a few years ago, in Galveston, Texas, and started college in Houston. One of my first college reading assignments was a book called 'Invisible Man'. It was for a course called Existential Literature or something along that line. We read Malraux, Sartre, Camus, Beckett and a few others as well. I have fairly distinct recollections of most of those writers, but I think Ralph Ellison's first novel was probably the most challenging and eye-opening work in that lot. Perhaps it was because I was attending school in inner city Houston and exposed for the first time in my life to a community in which people of color were the norm and not just a novelty.
I remember reading about Ellison's death a few years ago and noting that a long awaited second novel called 'Juneteenth' was expected to be published posthumously. I haven't latched onto a copy of it yet, but I'm sure I will as it was finally published about two years ago and the preface in that edition was written by a professor, Charles Johnson, in whose graduate seminar I was a student. I'll buy the book on that account alone.
It's only in reading about Ellison's second novel online that I've become aware of the title's historical significance. Juneteenth refers to June 19, 1865, the day on which the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation was officially fulfilled once the outcome of the Civil War had been determined. It's a black or African-American holiday that was first celebrated on that date in Galveston when Union forces took possession of that city a few weeks after the war had officially ended. Texas was the last of the Confederate States of America to reenter the Union.
I mention it here because it's only quite recently that I've been able to determine where my great great grandfather was on that date. I still don't know precisely where he was, but I feel as though I've got it pretty well narrowed down. On June 6, 1865, he disembarked at Brazos Santiago from a ship called the Clinton with quite a few other Union soldiers who had steamed there in less than a week from Mobile, Alabama. He was hospitalized on June 8, 1865. His unit, the 27th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment, marched from the island of Brazos Santiago to a camp on the Texas mainland north of the Rio Grande near a small town called Clarksville on the 13th. Their unit was part of a quite substantial force that was sent to take possession of Brownsville which they did in the first week of August.
A handful of soldiers in Galveston on June 19th, declaring themselves in charge of Texas, is one thing. A whole lot of soldiers, several brigades if not an entire division or two, occupying Brownsville on August 8th, is another. Brownsville was where whole shiploads of cotton came into the hands of British, French, Spanish and German merchants. Cotton was king in the Confederate States of America. And as long as the cotton grown in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama could be safely transported to Brownsville, the Confederate States of America were economically viable. That trade ended, not on June 19, but in August when Union forces took control of that city. Officially, the war ended in May, but the fat lady didn't actually sing until the first week of August.
It's not yet clear on what day my great great grandfather arrived at the hospital at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, but I would guess that arrangements were made for his transport when it became clear that he was not fit for the march to Clarksville on the 13th. I doubt that he would have been sent off before that date as it would have been hoped that he might recuperate enough to make the march and stay with his unit. Hospital beds would have been needed for other units arriving as part of the buildup for the march on Brownsville, so I would guess he was put on a ship within two or three days or a week at most after his unit had moved out. On June 19th he was probably on a ship on the Gulf of Mexico headed north to the mouth of the Mississippi.
My great great grandfather died of pneumonia in the hospital at Jefferson Barracks on July 27, 1865, and is buried in the National Cemetery there. He was a Prussian. He may have learned a little English during his ten years as an immigrant, but probably not very much. Roughly a third of the men in his regiment spoke German, but one of them was his commanding officer, Brigadier General Konrad Krez. Throughout most of the war Colonel Krez took his orders from another German, Adolph Engelman, and Engelman got his orders from a Prussian, Frederick Salomon, a brother of the then acting governor of Wisconsin, Edward Salomon. These were men who had formal military training as officers in an army that had bested Napoleon at the Battle of Mockern somewhat prior to his encounter with Wellington at Waterloo.
I lived on the Texas gulf coast for about four years. Mostly those years seem like a short vacation from the rest of my life, but there are times when my sojourn in the southlands does seem to have played a role in shaping my identity. My recollection is that, at least in the summer, the Gulf stream water was even warmer than the Sulu Sea. Happy Juneteenth.
I remember reading about Ellison's death a few years ago and noting that a long awaited second novel called 'Juneteenth' was expected to be published posthumously. I haven't latched onto a copy of it yet, but I'm sure I will as it was finally published about two years ago and the preface in that edition was written by a professor, Charles Johnson, in whose graduate seminar I was a student. I'll buy the book on that account alone.
It's only in reading about Ellison's second novel online that I've become aware of the title's historical significance. Juneteenth refers to June 19, 1865, the day on which the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation was officially fulfilled once the outcome of the Civil War had been determined. It's a black or African-American holiday that was first celebrated on that date in Galveston when Union forces took possession of that city a few weeks after the war had officially ended. Texas was the last of the Confederate States of America to reenter the Union.
I mention it here because it's only quite recently that I've been able to determine where my great great grandfather was on that date. I still don't know precisely where he was, but I feel as though I've got it pretty well narrowed down. On June 6, 1865, he disembarked at Brazos Santiago from a ship called the Clinton with quite a few other Union soldiers who had steamed there in less than a week from Mobile, Alabama. He was hospitalized on June 8, 1865. His unit, the 27th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment, marched from the island of Brazos Santiago to a camp on the Texas mainland north of the Rio Grande near a small town called Clarksville on the 13th. Their unit was part of a quite substantial force that was sent to take possession of Brownsville which they did in the first week of August.
A handful of soldiers in Galveston on June 19th, declaring themselves in charge of Texas, is one thing. A whole lot of soldiers, several brigades if not an entire division or two, occupying Brownsville on August 8th, is another. Brownsville was where whole shiploads of cotton came into the hands of British, French, Spanish and German merchants. Cotton was king in the Confederate States of America. And as long as the cotton grown in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama could be safely transported to Brownsville, the Confederate States of America were economically viable. That trade ended, not on June 19, but in August when Union forces took control of that city. Officially, the war ended in May, but the fat lady didn't actually sing until the first week of August.
It's not yet clear on what day my great great grandfather arrived at the hospital at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, but I would guess that arrangements were made for his transport when it became clear that he was not fit for the march to Clarksville on the 13th. I doubt that he would have been sent off before that date as it would have been hoped that he might recuperate enough to make the march and stay with his unit. Hospital beds would have been needed for other units arriving as part of the buildup for the march on Brownsville, so I would guess he was put on a ship within two or three days or a week at most after his unit had moved out. On June 19th he was probably on a ship on the Gulf of Mexico headed north to the mouth of the Mississippi.
My great great grandfather died of pneumonia in the hospital at Jefferson Barracks on July 27, 1865, and is buried in the National Cemetery there. He was a Prussian. He may have learned a little English during his ten years as an immigrant, but probably not very much. Roughly a third of the men in his regiment spoke German, but one of them was his commanding officer, Brigadier General Konrad Krez. Throughout most of the war Colonel Krez took his orders from another German, Adolph Engelman, and Engelman got his orders from a Prussian, Frederick Salomon, a brother of the then acting governor of Wisconsin, Edward Salomon. These were men who had formal military training as officers in an army that had bested Napoleon at the Battle of Mockern somewhat prior to his encounter with Wellington at Waterloo.
I lived on the Texas gulf coast for about four years. Mostly those years seem like a short vacation from the rest of my life, but there are times when my sojourn in the southlands does seem to have played a role in shaping my identity. My recollection is that, at least in the summer, the Gulf stream water was even warmer than the Sulu Sea. Happy Juneteenth.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Lizard Mounds
I had a chance to visit a county park near Milwaukee last month. It had actually been a state park in Wisconsin for a number of years until just a few years ago. The temperature was below freezing, but it was still a real nice day for a walk in the woods.My wife and I were visiting my mother-in-law who lives in Milwaukee. She's 86 years old, also of German stock, and quite accustomed to cold weather, but she stayed in the car while we took our stroll and snapped a few pictures.
Lizard Mounds is several miles north of West Bend in Washington County, and about ten or twelve miles south of the area where three generations of my dad's family lived for about two decades when they first arrived in America from Prussia, shortly before, during and after the American Civil War. The mounds were built as a burial ground by Native Americans around the time that King Arthur and the knights of his Round Table were conquering the southern portion of England. Most of the mounds were plowed up and turned into farmland by the early settlers in the 1850s, among them my ancestors, but a few of the mounds still remain, preserved in the Lizard Mounds park. It's called Lizard Mounds because many of the mounds were originally designed to resemble lizards, birds and other clan oriented creatures.
Six years ago my wife and I and her brother and his wife to be took my mother-in-law to Mackinac Island in Michigan to celebrate her 80th birthday. We had a great time there. Later that year, about a month after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, my wife and I went to Lynchburg, Virginia to visit some friends, the couple who introduced me to my wife. We went to Lynchburg by way of Atlanta because my wife had a meeting to attend there. We flew to Atlanta, then drove to Lynchburg and back by way of South Carolina and North Carolina, the same states, if not exactly the same route taken by General Sherman on his March to the Sea.While in Atlanta we visited the Stone Mountain monument, Dixie's Mt. Rushmore. Six years ago it had never really occurred to me to even wonder if I might have a Civil War ancestor. But visiting the monument turned out to be an awakening for me. It wasn't until more than a year later that I first found my great great grandfather's name on an online regimental roster. And it took two more years before I became fully convinced that the name on that roster actully was my great great grandfather. Two world wars waged against Germany served quite effectively to remind Americans of German descent to remember to forget that their ancestors took any part in that conflict. Part of it is because the biggest wave of German immigration took place after the Civil War.
It would never have occurred to me that one of my relatives took part in and was, in fact, wounded in the Battle of Atlanta on the bloodiest single day of that campaign. My great great grandmother's younger brother enlisted with the 12th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment in February, 1864. Two months later he marched from the Tennessee River across northern Alabama into Georgia and on July 21st he was shot in the left arm during the Battle of Leggett's Hill, also known as the Battle of Bald Hill. He was sent back to Wisconsin and convalesced in a military hospital in Madison, Wisconsin until he was discharged in January, 1865.Up until then my father's family had been relatively untouched by the war. They appear to have taken no part in the first three years of the war at all and by 1864 most of the bloodiest battles had already been fought. After Atlanta fell it was clear that the southern states had lost militarily and the only question was how much longer it would take to compel their capitulation.
My great great grandfather and the husband of his wife's sister both enlisted in October, 1864. It's not clear how much pressure was applied to get them to enlist, but my guess is that if they hadn't they would have been drafted. Draftees were not much different than prisoners of war except that prisoners of war weren't subject to that much forced labor. Both men were close to forty years old and had large families to feed. They joined their regiment, the 27th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, in Little Rock, Arkansas in late January a few days before the unit was sent down the Mississippi to New Orleans, Mobile and later to Brownsville, Texas.My great great grandfather's brother-in-law fell ill with dysentery before the unit reached Mobile. He was sent back to Wisconsin and remained in a military hospital in Madison, Wisconsin with chronic diarrhea for the next six months until he was discharged in August, 1865. He never re-joined his unit, which mustered out in Brownsville. He collected a monthly disability pension for his chronic diarrhea after the war. My great great grandfather took part in the Battle of Spanish Fort in early April, 1865, but fell ill on the ship when his unit was sent to Texas in early June. He was hospitalized at Brazos Santiago at the mouth of the Rio Grande and transferred to a hospital at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis where he died of pneumonia at the end of July. His wife re-married two years after the war.
While my wife and I were in Atlanta six years ago we visited one of my wife's colleagues, a woman who teaches at one of the schools my wife attended nearly thirty years ago. Her colleague lives in a sub-division on the east side of Atlanta. The house is in walking distance of Leggett's Hill, and the spot where my great great grandmother's brother took a bullet in the arm for the Union cause.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)