Bollenbacher – GenealogyAtHeart.com

Finding Family at Genealogy Conferences

It’s definitely a small world and I have to blog about my newfound cousin, Gerhard. I didn’t even realize that the man in the background in the photo, Roland, was in this shot until I uploaded seconds ago. He’s a part of this story, too. Warning you, this is one of my weird genealogy encounters. . .

Last December I was applying to the Society of Indiana Pioneers (SIP) and needed a German translation of a newspaper record I found for my Leininger family. Husband was stumped by the script used and some of the words; the translation wasn’t making sense and online translation programs weren’t helping, either. I posted a request for help on a Facebook page and the Transitional Genealogy Forum (TGF). Roland responded and saved the day. A few weeks later, I was accepted into the SIP and Roland posted about the upcoming International German Genealogy Partnership (IGGP) that was to be held in Ft. Wayne June 9-11.

I have German ethnicity on my paternal side and have never attended a conference specifically for ethnicity. Since I now live in the greater Ft. Wayne area, I was saving time and money on travel, hotel, and meals. I decided the price, date, and location were perfect for me so I signed up with no expectations.

The conference used the WHOVA app which I used for the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) conference last year. I wasn’t too active on the app last year as I was in the process of moving and had limited time. I highly recommend using whatever social media is available pre and during a conference to get the most out of the experience. Go back after the conference and save links/chats from the app as it is usually only available for a limited time period.

I set up pre-meetings virtually (the conference was hybrid) based on family surnames – Leininger, Kettering, Kable, and Kuhn. Gerhard recognized the surname Kuhn and messaged me that he had information he wanted to share with me in person. We agreed to meet between conference presentations. The message arrived a few minutes after I left Kessler Cemetery where I had just cleaned graves for these ancestors. Weird, I thought.

We met up on Saturday and he brought with him a transcription of military records and a copy of my 4th great-grandparent’s marriage registration. The 4gg’s were the immigrants and are buried in Kessler. I’m a member of the Daughters of Union Vets of the Civil War based on one of their son, Henry’s, service. For my long-time readers, Henry married Maria Duer, daughter of John who is buried in Kessler with no surviving marker.

Gerhard looked up from the table we were at and recognized one of my cousins, who I had never met, passing by. He called her over:

We had messaged each other on the app earlier but her immigrants settled in a different part of Ohio and we weren’t sure we were related. Gerhard knew that we were and explained how. I brought up my family tree and she recognized another line we share, the Anstatts.

Gerhard also informed me that another one of my German families that I hadn’t even thought to include in my surname post was having a 200-year immigration reunion in Brazil next summer. Evidently, my Bollenbacher ancestors left Germany, my line settled in Ohio and a brother went to South America. Who knew? Gerhard, thankfully!

This brings me to point out the value of doing surname studies and/or chasing all of your lines’ immigration routes, including their siblings. I have done that with many of my Great Britain families and my Croatian lines but not my French/German. That’s now on my to-do list.

Excluding my three first cousins, I have never met anyone related to most of my French-German lines. Although Gerhard and Renee are not close genetically, we do share a common 4-5th great-grandparent.

I have connected with relatives through DNA matches, online family trees, and the Roots Tech app but I never met with anyone face-to-face at a conference. It is an extra special occasion. My husband and I are now planning a trip next year to tour the region my ancestors and his came from on our way to Sweden to follow in his family’s footsteps. BTW, my husband’s Harbaughs are from a village close to where my Leininger family originated – probably even knew each other back in the 1600s. Yep, small world!

As if that wasn’t enough, here’s another reason to attend an ethnic-oriented genealogy conference – I found information on my British and Croatian lines, too. My Daniel Hollingshead purportedly served in the British military and fought in the Battle of Blenheim where one of his brothers was killed. No info anywhere in Great Britain because neither brother was an officer. I asked for help and was given several sources in Germany to research. Hoping I find a Hollingshead buried there.

I had no expectations I would find any information on my Croatia relatives at a German conference. It didn’t dawn on me that dear old Napolean would have made that connection. Croatia was once part of Austria-Hungary and we all know what Napolean did to that area and what is now Germany. My biggest mystery after researching in Croatia remained to find my great grandfather Josip Kos’ military records. Croatia says they were sent to Vienna; the Austrian State Archives says they are all on FamilySearch. I can’t find them there and haven’t gotten an answer from FamilySearch on where they reside or if they are ever going to be available online. A researcher who attended the conference and is familiar with the records is checking for me in Vienna. Hopefully, I will one day discover the truth behind the family story of why Josip separated from the Calvary.

By attending IGGP and using the Whova app, I was able to get hints for further research on all of my ethnic origins and meet relatives I didn’t know existed. The reasonable fee to attend was priceless!

IGGP has a conference every two years and I plan to attend in Columbus, Ohio in 2015. Perhaps you’ll join me. At the last conference, Hank Z. Jones was honored and I’ve blogged about his books previously. Yes, this was definitely a Psychic Roots encounter.

MyHeritage SuperSearch Update

For a number of years, Ancestry.com has provided users with the ability to add their input regarding incorrect info on record indexes. Recently, MyHeritage has devised a similar feature that will allow for corrections of spellings or transcription errors.

Simply click “Suggest Alternatives” and add your info. You’ll need to type the first and last name of the individual to be corrected, use the drop down menu to select the reason and add your two cents in the comments. If you’re like me, your ancestor’s names were never recorded the same as some of them were doozy’s to spell – Leininger, Bollenbacher, and even short ones like Duer seem to have been problematic for those enumerators.

Here’s an additional tip – keep a list of all the many, varied and unusual surname spellings that you find as that could help you in the future when you’re stuck. I add them to an Excel spreadsheet with tabs for my preferred spelling of the surname and a column where I found the name spelled differently. Happy Hunting!

Amazing Info Found – The Net As a Beginning Tool

Life has returned to semi-normal after the recent hurricanes. By semi, I mean the county still hasn’t collected the debris, milk and gas aren’t available everywhere and several parks remain closed due to damage. When our power was out for several days, I limited my internet usage to conserve my cell phone battery. It wasn’t until I went to clean my spam filter for my website, Genealogyatheart, that I discovered a message from a distant cousin. He had discovered my site and our connection through our great grandfather by simply Googling the last name.
I replied to his comment and he included one of his nieces on our messages. Between the 3 of us, family puzzles began to be solved quickly. In the past week, I discovered that my paternal grandparents had hosted a small family reunion at their farm in the 1960’s. My parent’s divorce was finalized by that time so my mom knew nothing of the event. Without my cousins input, I wouldn’t have known about it, either.
That got my brain going about unidentified people on an old movie I had inherited from my father. Hubby and I have had all our 8 mm films and VHS tapes professionally saved to a DVD. (Side note: If you think your VHS tapes aren’t so old they need to be saved, think again. The oldest VHS tape from 1984 was fading away while some of the 1950 movies looked as good as new). The DVD contains still photos of some of the movies so hubby took those of the mystery people, along with another CD we had made of all the old family photos we had scanned years ago, and sent them off to both cousins for help in identifying these unknown folks.
We’re fairly certain that the picture above is of my grandmother, Lola, and her older brother, Stanley. Why? I have the photo and they have the photo. They are descended from Stanley and it was in their box of photos of his family. My step mother had placed all the old photos in one box so I was never sure who any of my unlabeled people were. Were they a Leininger, Landfair, Kuhn, Kable, Kettering, Bollenbacher, Adams or Duer? I had tried the old Google Picassa facial recognition feature and it helped somewhat but I didn’t have enough identified photos to have it match effectively.
These cousins sent me a few other photos electronically over the past week to see if it would help but Picassa is no longer supported by Google and it kept freezing so no answers there! I’m hopeful they’ll be able to match some of the photos on the CD to photos in their box so at least we can categorize by surname.
The cousin who initially contacted me stated their tale is that the family originated from Ireland and not Bavaria as my line recalled. I tend to believe them for several reasons. I’ve had another family member misidentified’s country of origin as Germany instead of being born in the U.S. Maria Duer Kuhn’s death certificate states she was born in Germany but she was born in Ohio. Her son was the informant. Her husband was the one born in Germany. It seems like my Great British ancestors assumed the German culture of those they married in Ohio. Additional support for their story is that my DNA has a much higher likelihood of Great Britain then it does of German. Further, Landfair is not a German surname. When I questioned that years ago I was told that it probably had been changed from Lamphere. Could be but no proof of that was ever discovered.
One of the cousins also has a copy of my great grandfather’s funeral program which she will send me. I’ve blogged about him previously – he’s the gentleman who “accidentally fell from a platform” and there was a followup investigation a few months after his death resulting in additional paperwork after the death certificate. The lesson there was make sure you get the complete records you request.
This gets me to the point of today’s blog – there remains A LOT of additional information about your ancestors out there – in attics, basements and the brains of the living who recall the unrecorded stories past down. The internet can help you get to those that hold the key you need but alone, the internet is not enough. Reach out to long lost family and you just might discover the info you seek. Happy Hunting!

Education Across State Lines

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 20 Aug 2015.

Education was extremely important to my Leininger lines and I have an interesting story to share about my gateway 3 times great grandparents, Jean “John” (20 Nov 1801-1 Dec 1868) and Margueritte “Margaret” Gasse (27 Jan 1801-4 Apr 1886) Leininger who emigrated from Endenhoffr, Alsace-Lorraine, then Germany to America in 1827. Previously, I’ve blogged about what a difficult trip it must have been for the family but the following story illustrates how quickly they acclimated to the “rules” of America and bent them for the benefit of their children.

The family emigrated with 2 sons – Theobald and John George. Settling in Stark County, Ohio the family grew, adding sons John and Jacob. In 1835, the family relocated to Mercer County, Ohio. GGGgrandpa opted for a career change from blacksmithing to farming. Sons Henry and Samuel were born after the move. On July 1, 1839, John purchased 128.60 acres of land in Wabash Township, Jay County, Indiana with an additional 8 acres of land on the adjoining Ohio side. John then built a home across the state line. This benefited the family greatly as they could easily relocate from Ohio to Indiana and back to Ohio without ever leaving their home. They simply moved their furniture from one side of the house to the other. Why would someone do this? Family lore says it’s because of the variation in educational opportunities. When the school teacher left Mercer, the children could easily continue schooling in Jay, and vice versa. Personally, I think this was ingenious and says so much about how the family valued education. They were in the forefront of the School Choice movement!

I’d love to visit the home but it was destroyed by fire in 1970.

My dad pulled the same stunt in the 1960’s. His farm was on the county lines of both Lake and Porter in Indiana. He preferred the Porter County school district so my step sibs were sent to Porter County schools. Technically, the house was built on the Lake County side so I’m not sure how he got away with it.

My great great grandfather, Jacob Leininger (11 Nov 1832-Jul 1908), served as town trustee and a long term school board member in Mercer County, Ohio. I guess he preferred the Ohio to the Indiana schools after he grew up!

My great grandmother, Emma Kuhn Landfair (20 Jun 1864-21 Feb 1914) and grandmother, Lola Landfair Leininger (27 Apr 1891-30 Jan 1964) were teachers for a short time before their marriages. School must have been important to them as they saved their remembrance cards and all of my dad’s report cards.

john-d-kable

The above school Souvenir was for my grandmother Lola’s 1st grade year. Her teacher, John D. Kable, would become her 2nd cousin through her marriage to my grandfather, Edwin Leininger. Edwin’s parents were Theobald Leininger, son of Jacob the School Board member and Caroline Kable. Caroline’s brother, John, had a son, John, who was the teacher at Wild Cat School (above).

My grandparents were in the same class – Eddie Leininger (1st column # 1) and Lola misspelled as Lora (2nd column #16):

eddie-leininger

My husband and I are high school sweethearts. It’s an awesome thought to think that my grandparents were grade school sweethearts!

leininger-landfair-wedding

All grown and graduated, Eddie and Lola (above) married in 1914.

The Bakers-Kuhns-Landfairs-Leiningers all intermarried for several generations so many of the classmates were also related.

wm-kuhn

In 1904, William Kuhn was on the School Board:

William Kuhn was my grandmother, Lola Landfair Leininger’s uncle.

Below, School Board member Henry Bollenbacher was another relative – he was my grandfather Edwin’s 2nd cousin:

henry-bollenbacher

It’s an amazing thought to reflect on the amount of impact the Leininger line had on education at the turn of the last century!