There's One in Every Family - COG 100th Edition

Jasia at Creative Gene suggested the above topic for the 100th Edition of Carnival of Genealogy. I love it. Our family has one, but which to choose?

1. Our family of course has an oldest child, who happens to be the only son. Some have referred to him as the Golden Child.

2. Our family has the oldest daughter, the princess. This one also happens to be our family's rebellious one.

3. Our family has two middle children. I am the older of the two middle children, and as a kid, I would have been classified as the sickly one. I was also the preemie.

4. The second middle child would be known as the quiet one. This one would go into a closet and cry in private. She's not so quiet now.

5. Our family has two surprise children - you know those that come long after the initial onslaught of baby-making. Number one surprise child was born when child number four was 7. Mom and dad had given away all the baby stuff, crib, playpen, etc shortly before mom announced she was expecting. This is our big baby - she weighed over 8 lbs and weighed a lot more than the usual 6 pounds mom delivered.

6. Surprise child two was also the baby. The one we had fun picking out names - seems like her middle name was always going to be Elizabeth. I can hardly remember if we even bothered picking out a boy's name at this point.

Copyright 2010, ACK for Gene Notes

A Pleasant Unlooked-For (Almost) Surprise

I love browsing new/updated databases. Last week, I chronicled the finding of a burial place for Joseph Pfeiffer when I found an update on Pennsylvania Veteran burials on ancestry.com.

Last Saturday, while browsing updated databases at Family Search, I found a real surprise - the marriage record of Michel Meyer, son of Jean Meyer & (Marie) Catherine Zimmeth (Zimmet) in Pfastatt, Haut-Rhin, France to Crescentia Schlienger. Michel was born in Roeschwoog, Bas-Rhin, France in 1843. His mother, Marie Catherine Zimmeth, is my first cousin, 3 times removed. Or she is a first cousin to my great-grandfather, August Zimmeth. August was the son of Josef Zimmeth and Catherine Boegler; Marie Catherine was the daughter of Josef's brother Sebastien. Sebastien's family seems to disappear from records and the only two children I don't have death records for are Marie Catherine and her brother Louis. Now, I knew that Marie Catherine had married Jean Meyer in Roeschwoog, but I had nothing more on their seven children other than birth dates and death dates of the three children that died young. So finding a marriage record for even one of them makes me quite happy. That made me feel brave and so I ventured into the birth records and found two children - Achille, a son, born in 1869; and a daughter, Emilie, born in 1870.  Ancestry also yielded a citizenship declaration in 1872 for Achille, Emilie, and Crescentia (Michel's wife) Meyer.

Oddly enough this is Meyer Family number two in my database. The other Meyer family is from Germany and is also related to the Zimmeth family. Kind of scary, but I'll take the record!

Copyright 2010, ACK for Gene Notes

Sympathy Saturday - Sarah Bohannon

As anyone who has researched their family history eventually finds out, infant mortality was very common due to many and varied causes. To lose a child due to an accident must have been devastating to this family.

 It was a very tragic death for toddler Sarah Bohannon. She somehow fell into a boiler of water. Unfortunately, too, is the fact that her burial place is unknown as the cemetery listed is either incorrect or defunct.


Copyright 2010, ACK for Gene Notes