One of my reasons for choosing today’s birthday girl is that an unexpected guest walked through the doors of our museum a few days ago. His surname was Winter, and his father and I taught in nearby schools in Memphis several years ago. His Winter family tree includes some Winter’s who have appeared on this … More Another Branch of the Winter Tree
The Gospel of Luke tells the story of Zacharias (King James Version spelling of his name) and his wife, Elizabeth who had a son named John. We often refer to him as John the Baptist. In the case of John the Baptist, he was the only son of Zacharias and Elizabeth. Today, I will tell … More The Son of Zacharias
Today, I am going to return to a story that has already been written on this blog. I wrote the story two years ago on January 27, 2017. It was titled, Intersecting Exoduses. The story was told about how the steamboat, Knickerbocker, had to stop for repairs at the small Illinois village of Hamburg to … More First Sighting of Perry County
Once again, I’m writing a post a night before it will be published. We will be on the road again tomorrow, this time trying to outrun a snowstorm. We want to get ahead of it before it dumps a half-foot of snow on the ground. Then they are also forecasting temperatures in the -20’s in … More The Muddy Ohio
Two male first names that I so often see when I look in our German Family Tree are Heinrich and Herman. Although I did not refer to his full name yesterday, the main character in that post was Heinrich Herman Rauss. Today, it just so happens that I found another Heinrich Herman who was born … More Another Heinrich Herman
I am a little frustrated this morning. My efforts to find a good story to write for this blog today were rather fruitless. Because I am not in Altenburg, I look for a type of story that does not rely heavily on documents that we have in our research library. Instead, I look for a … More A Very Short Note from the Teacher
I actually wrote this post yesterday. That’s because I will be on the road almost all day today without a chance to write a story for January 23rd. Actually, my wife and I will be sort of replicating the trip made by my Schmidt ancestors 180 years ago aboard the Knickerbocker. We will be traveling … More Schmidts Traveling Upriver
