Tag: genealogy

Genealogy

Perry meets His Great, Great Grandfather Schulze

And then there is Perry Schulze who is frequently insulted by the nefarious Rush Boys who call their esteemed cousin, the 6th Rush Boy.

As has been my wont of late, I was digging around in the genealogy at FamilySearch.org.  Perry obviously shares one side of his heritage with the aforementioned villainous Rush Boys, but I was curious to trace his father’s side.  I did not go back very far before I encountered his Great, Great Grandfather, Johann Ernst Schulz, Jr. with his second wife, Louise Schmidt, Perry’s Great, Great Grandmother in one of  those stiff, family photographs from the 1800s.  Someone had actually summed up his life up to his first marriage in a brief memory attached to his information at FamilySearch.

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Here is that story:

A Short History of Johann Ernst Schulz, Jr. ~~ Contributed By Lanell Rabner

John Ernst Schulze was born on 27 October 1826 in Anhalt-Dessau, Königreich Sachsen. He was the son of John Ernst Schulze, Sr. and Marie Dorothea Voigt, one of seven children, two brothers and five sisters. He was baptized on April 18, 1827.

In his youth, John Ernst followed the same occupation as his father, namely, cabinet making.

As was customary at the time, all young men had to serve in the military. When he came of age and entered the army, the March 1848 revolution broke out, seeking relief from heavy taxation and political censorship.The people wanted a constitution, social justice, and electoral reform. When the revolution failed, he fled to Tsaritsyn, Russia, which eventually became Stalingrad. During this time, many Germans left, immigrating to America from Wisconsin to Texas.

When the political turmoil settled down, he returned to Anhalt-Dessau and married Dorette Els, about 1853.

This is Lanell’s narrative end.

Looking at more detail on the FamilySearch listing, I discovered that he and Dorette had one child, Louise Marie Schulze, and Dorette died (reasons unknown) in 1860.  Sometime shortly after this he immigrated to the United States settling in Texas.  Wow, that took a lot of courage, desperation or maybe just unawareness of the conditions.  But to immigrate to this country, with a small child, during our Civil War or just after…

He married Louise Schmidt in 1867 in Texas, afterwards having a total of nine children. The nights must have been long and cold back in the day in Texas.

As I ignorantly stumble my way around the genealogy world, I have encountered some interesting stories, but I cannot help but think of how many other interesting stories have been lost forever.  How little do any of us know that as we lurch through life, just trying to get through each day the best we can, that we are making history.

Genealogy

My 11th Great Grandfather beheaded my 2nd cousin 13 times removed

Grab your salt shaker as all of this needs to taken with many, many grains of salt.

I have been playing around a lot in the genealogy at FamilySearch.org.  This is the genealogy sponsored by the Church of Latter-Day Saints aka Mormons.  While it is a crowd source genealogy, having just one common “family” tree that everyone contributes to. It is generally well thought of by genealogist.  It does have consistency issues at times, and third party software that accesses their database does not always agree with their site… such is genealogical research and crowd sourcing.  Of course, inconsistent results drive this long time programmer nuts.

As I was playing around with my lineage, I kept bumping into one English monarch or the other. Being the OLD retired Systems Analyst that I am, I decided to construct a spreadsheet to get a better picture of the relationships.  I began with a list of English monarchs, some vital stats on each of them, their FamilySearch ID.  I then added my relationship to them, through which grandparent, and my first ancestor of that line to step ashore in the New World.  I have a link to a Google docs spreadsheet below since probably most of you do not have Excel. The spreadsheet is a work in progress.

I have connections coming down through all four of my grandparents, Austin, Carr (through the Treadwells), Rush and Collings.

I say take all this with a grain of salt for several reasons.  Outside of being interesting, I am not sure what it signifies.  Another is the distance of most of these relationships.  For instance William the Conqueror is listed as my 24th Great Grandfather.  At this level of genealogy, my number of grandparents can be found by taking the number two to the 26th power.  So any “blood” relationship is very dilute.  I read an article that estimated that William the Conqueror has 5 million living descendants running around the planet currently, not an especially elite group of Homo sapiens.

Our genealogy is a treasure trove of information, probably for two reasons.  First is the connections to European nobility.  They were (and are) absolutely fanatical about lineage/blood lines. Because endogamic marriages were the norm, once you find that you are related to one, you are related to half the aristocracy. Second reason is that many branches of our family tree go back to the earliest European settlers to step foot on this continent.  Again there are many folks absolutely fanatical about tracing colonial genealogy. FamilySearch.org has three of my ancestors on the Mayflower, but I am not sure I am buying this one as there are multitude of issues with the lineage and folks arguing over which is correct. Again the number of Mayflower descendants is in the millions. While many of my ancestors were seeking religious freedom, I suspect more than a few were younger sons of noble families.  Due the practice of primogeniture, many had to seek their fortunes elsewhere.  The clergy and military were common outlets, then the New World opened up.

Put the two together and we have a genealogy going back more than a thousand years.

It would be interesting to see what a professional genealogist would make of all this, not that this tacaño would ever pay for such a thing.  I suspect I would have my semi-inflated bubble burst.

Here is the link to the spreadsheet I created: English Royalty and Our Genealogy

Oliver Cromwell

Oh the beheading… Not to bore you too much if you remember your English history, but there was a brief period (1649 to 1660) when they overthrew the monarchy in Britain and established a republic. Oliver Cromwell (11th great grandfather) was the head of the revolt and the republic.  He had the disposed king, Charles I (my 2nd cousin 13 times removed), beheaded.   Interestingly, when they overthrew the republic and Charles II (husband of my 2nd cousin ten times removed) assumed the monarchy, he had Oliver Cromwell’s body dug up and the corpse beheaded.

Of course, when I think of my personal genealogy I think of the picture of my mother’s grandfather, John Franklin Austin, and his family, including my grandmother, that is in the Oklahoma History Museum.  They had come down out of the Arkansas mountains (Pope County) for a better life sharecropping in Tom Joad country aka around Sallisaw, Oklahoma. A family legend I would like to verify is that my great grandfather Austin left Shelbyville, Illinois due to a shooting when he was discovered in the bed of a married woman.  I am not sure how to prove or disprove this tale. They must have been fairly well off in Shelbyville as his father has an impressive tombstone (for the times) in the Austin cemetery in Shelbyville.

John Franklin Austin and Family

Just as an aside, I am attempting to train my wife to address me as Sir David of Snottingham.

Genealogy

My 4th Great Grandfather pardoned of his crimes

John Pugh is my 4th Great Grandfather who lived from 1744 to 1819. His daughter was Peninah Pugh, whose daughter was Matilda B Nichols, whose son was John Franklin Austin, whose daughter was Minnie Mae Austin, whose daughter is Wilma Juanita Carr, whose son is me.

I forget what I was reading, but it mentioned the 1819 novel by Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe. I realized that I had not read this novel which was a little surprising as I love the literature of the 1800s. Two of my favorite authors, the Englishman, Charles Dickens, and the Russian, Fyodor Dostoevsky, wrote in this time period.

So I checked out the audio book, Ivanhoe, from the library and I have been listening to it. The novel is set in England after the Norman Conquest. As an aside, that conquest is the primary reason there are so many French words in a Germanic language like English. The novel has mentioned several times the English King, Alfred the Great, who lived from 849 to 899.

Out of curiosity, I hopped onto the FamilySearch.org website to see if I had some connection to this king.  The genealogy site is stating that he is my 26th great grandfather.  I take all this sort of thing with several grains of salt for a couple reasons.  First, while FamilySearch is very well thought of in genealogy circles, it is a crowd source site.  I have stumbled on to a few errors.  For a while it had me connected to Pocahontas, but that would come and go.  Two contributors are arguing about one individual in the chain of descendants.  One would put him in, the other would take him out.  The second reason is that at the 26th generational level everyone has 2 to the 28th power grandparents.  That is a big number.  I will let you grab your calculator.

I then started tracing the chain backwards from ancestors that I knew were right when I came across this statement on John Pugh’s record:

I for one, could not go on without learning more.  Attached to his FamilySearch record was this source document:

This document mentions the Hillsborough Riot, an episode of colonial history that I have never heard of. All this happened in North Carolina in 1770.  Essentially he was part of a political action group known as The Regulators.  For various reasons, they were protesting the local government when the protest got a bit out of hand.  A year later there was a “battle” between The Regulators and the colonial militia.

You can read about this interesting bit of side history here:

Hillsborough Riot (1770)

Battle of Alamance (1771)

Searching the genealogy/family history has me gleefully stumbling across all these gems.