www.WilliamsHawkins.com

I finally got my family history site up where I have the tree posted.  I have it password protected so if you would like to check it out please click the "register" link and I'll get you hooked up. I have over 4,000 people in there and am working on getting the media (documents, photos, etc...) uploaded but please be patient while I work on it. If you have additional information you would like to add or you see something that isn't correct please let me know and I'll update the tree. :)

www.WilliamsHawkins.com

Letter From Little GM

In the last post I mentioned a letter Little GM gave my dad before his trip to Norway.  First, here's a photo of Little GM.  She was a sweet and wonderful grandma and is missed by all who knew her.



Dellablanche Fausch 1908-2009

Next, here's the letter she gave him.  There's very interesting information about the family.  Some I've been able to verify and some I haven't yet but I will keep everyone updated as I know more.

My grandfather, Jacob Stensan Urdahl, born March 19, 1830 at Ryflyke, in Voss or Vadts, Norway emigrated to America before 1866 and my grandmother Mari Rugtvedt, born July 21, 1836 at Etne in Storalen, Norway where married in Nevada, Iowa on Jan 24, 1871.  Mari Rugtvedt was the daughter of Gunter Rugtvedt and Margaret Stole whose 5 children where Seri (died in Norway), Ingeri (1832-1913, emigrated to America 1869-70), Mari (1836-1918), Osmund and Marthe (died in Norway).  Margaret Stole was the daughter of Osmund Stole and Martha Urdahl (other children's names not known.)

From hereon in tracing back we do not have specific names or dates.  My grandparents were second cousins and they were both 5th generation direct descendants of King Erling Skakke Stole.  There was some intermarriage along the line.  The rest of the information that we have is that King Erling Skakke Stole had a daughter named Engebarg who married a minister by the name of Orback nd a daughter of theirs married a Sjur Soreim.

My grandmother, Mari Rugtvedt Urdahl, had some Rugtvedt uncles who owned quite a bit of land.  Some of the Rugtvedt farms were supposedly covered by landslides.

According to one cousin we are also supposed to be descended from a Scottish king, that would probably be a Viking ancestor that helped or established some of the trading centers like Dublin, etc. and settled there for awhile.  We don't have any other information on this so far.

In reading about Norway in some library books I found one list of Norwegian kings an it listed a Erling Skakke reigning in 1161 and his son Magnus was crowned in Nidaros (now Trondheim) Cathedral in 1163.  In reading some of these books there seemed to be quite a few kings and it could be that in the early days there were many small kingdoms.

Etne (or Etna) and Ryflyke (where my grandparent were born) are fairly close, about 25 or 30 air miles apart and both are closer to Stavanger than Bergen.

I have circled in red on the enclosed map the towns of Etne (or Etna) and Ryflyke where my grandparents were born.

I have circled in green the two closest Stave churches - Roldal Stave Church is around 25 miles or so from Etne - Eidsborg Stave Church (56 miles from Roldal) is next closest.

Mike, if you could get a photo or picture postcard of either church or both.  I would be forever grateful!  But if it is not on your itinerary, I don' want you to take the time - you will be busy seeing all that beautiful scenery and we don't want to take your time away from that.  We understand that you may not be able to go to the places where my grandparents were born but the information about them that I'm sending you is for you to keep and as I find out any more later on I'll send it to you and eventually to all of our grandchildren.

Have fun in the land of our Viking ancestors!

Love to you and Mary and Angie and all the rest!
    Grandma and Grandpa W.

P.S. I have started taking Norwegian Rosemaling classes once a month.  Grandma

Verena Neuenschwander

My last post talked a bit about a "Brick Wall" in genealogy.  One such dead end for me was my 3rd GGrandmother Verena Neuenschwander .

The mystery of Verena began with a letter from my GGrandmother Dellablanche Fausch Williams.  Several years ago Little GM (as we called Dellablanche) sent my dad a letter prior to a visit to Norway outlining our Norwegian family and mentioning a few places he might want to visit while there.  Verena is Swiss but her son (David Fausch) married Anna Urdahl who was Norwegian so she was included in the tree.  Little GM actually mentioned her as "Veronica" Neuenschwander.  I searched for this Veronica Neuenschwander for years never finding a clue to explain who she could have been.  

As the popularity of Ancestry.com increased and more people had searchable tree's online I kept finding David Fausch listed as the son of Mary Sherer.  Everyone had the correct father as John Christian Fausch but almost all of them listed Mary as the mother.  I couldn't understand why Little GM listed her as Veronica Neuenschwander. 

The answer came as the result of two discoveries.  One, Verena was a fairly popular name for Scandinavian people at that time and most of them liked to use multiple nicknames.  Veronica was one of those nicknames.  

The second discovery was figuring out why and how people associated Mary Sherer with Verena's children.  It turns out that Verena had a bunch of kids in a pretty short amount of time.  Her first child Anna Fausch was born in 1866 (Verena was 23).  Within 11 years Verena gave birth to 7 children (Anna, Clara, John, David, Rose, Edward and Vrena).  This poor exhausted woman unfortunately died due to complications with the birth of her 7th child.  As you can imagine the children were very young when she died.  Her widow, John C Fausch, quickly married another woman to help raise them.  That woman was Mary Sherer.  

If you've never seen a census report this is what they look like:

1880 Census report for John C. Fausch and family living in Polk County Iowa.

The head of the house is listed first followed by the spouse and children.  Once John C. Fausch remarried, Mary was listed as his wife and everyone assumed she was the mother of all the children.  

Note on Mary Sherer: This is from the webpage http://www.timpefamily.com/Scherer_and_Sherer.htm about her family.

     "Mary Sherer married John C. Fausch. Mary Zeman writes "They had five children, and lost them all on the same day to black diptheria. He took her on a trip around the world, which was not commonly done in those days, and they did have three more children." Their three children were Lydia (married Arnold Riedesel), Lenoir (married Weis) and Mae (married Dickinson)."

Once the mystery of her name and her children was solved I could focus on who her parents were.  The tricky nickname thing played a hand in my struggles with this as well.  Evidently another nickname for Verena is "Fanny."  I found a Fanny Neuenschwander in a census report but didn't connect the two until I knew that. I was then able to find out that her fathers name was John B. Neuenschwander.  

This is were it gets very interesting. Digging through the books in the KEO-MAH Genealogical Society in Oskaloosa, Iowa I found a book that looked like this:

 I figured I'd give it a glance out of curiosity and guess what I found.  

The Mennonites in Iowa by Melvin Gingerich, Chapter XIII Mennonites In Polk And Page Counties, 

Page 146-147

"Preacher Joseph Schroeder of Polk County has been referred to several times.  He was the preacher in charge of a small Mennonite church organized in 1858, at the home of John B. Neuenschwander of Polk City, Iowa. [...]

First to come to the Polk City community were the Neuenschwanders and Nussbaums, who moved there from Putnam County, Ohio, in 1849. [...]

These families spoke the German language, having emigrated to Ohio from Switzerland about twenty years earlier. John B. Neuenschwander had come to Ohio in  1823 and married there eleven years later.  By 1856 he had twelve children and two more were born later.  His family was prominent in the affairs of the community, he being the deacon of the church and the father-in-law of Preacher Joseph Schroeder. [...] In 1868 Neuenschwander moved to Moniteau County, Missouri, and from that place his descendants scattered to other counties of Missouri and other States."

John B. and Anna Neuenschwander

That was a major breakthrough in my research.  Mennonites!? What?! I had no idea although after speaking to my Aunt Ann I guess she had always heard there was a Mennonite connection but didn't know how it all fit in.  Those few pages in that book really opened up a flood gate of information about the Neuenschwanders.  I then found a website (http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/N483ME.html) that gave even more information.  

"Neuenschwander, a family name, means a man from Neuenschwand, a place near Langnau, canton of Bern, Switzerland. The word Neuenschwand means a place where the forest was recently cleared. The first person of this family known to have been an Anabaptist was Uli Neuenschwander from Eggiwil, who appeared at the Bern disputation March 11-18, 1538. In 1551 Mathis Neuenschwander fled from his Emmental home because of his Anabaptist faith. Peter Neuenschwander and family left their home in Langnau in 1729 and settled at Cortébert in the Jura. A son Michael lived on the Münsterberg. The latter's son Michael moved to the Normanvillars settlement in France and in 1823 migrated to Wayne County, Ohio, becoming one of the first settlers in the Chippewa settlement. In 1833 the family moved to Putnam County, Ohio, to become the first Mennonite settlers there. A son, John B. Neuenschwander, founded the Mennonite settlement in Polk County, Iowa, by settling there in 1849. This family moved to Moniteau Co., Missouri, USA), in 1868, becoming one of the pioneer families in that settlement. Peter M. Neuenschwander was a bishop at Berne, IN. The Dutch Naamlijst of 1802 lists Ulrich Neuenschwander as an elder of the congregation at Boliou (?) in the county of Limousin, France; he was ordained in 1782.Another family that some claim were originally Neuenschwanders are the Newschwangers who first appeared in Lancaster County, PA, in the 18th century. Of this family Emmanual Newschwanger (1758-1846) ministered to the Diller congregation (Mennonite Church) near Newville, PA for many years. In Virginia, Abraham Nisewander (1774-1846) served in the Rockingham County Mennonite ministry for a number of years. In later generations the name became common in the Church of the Brethren. Other families of this name have been located in Ontario, Kansas and Oregon.A Neuschwander family immigrated to Oregon from Switzerland in the 1880s, eventually settling near Silverton."

As you can imagine I totally nerded out when I found this information. 

I'm still digging through and organizing everything we found on our trip to Iowa.  It was a hot, dusty week be we found great stuff that I know we wouldn't have found had we not gone.  Thanks to my dad and Aunt Ann for coming along and helping me dig.

Brick Walls

When researching your family tree you will inevitably come to a person or persons where no matter how hard you try the information just dries up.  Genealogists and archivists and librarians and regular folk are diligently scanning and sorting as fast as possible but the amount of documentation out there that still needs to be sorted through and added to the interwebs is staggering I'm sure.  These stopping points in your search are called a "Brick Wall."  The name pretty much says it all.  Sometimes it only takes one little clue to break through that wall but often you will be stuck there for years.  The times when you are able to find a clue that leads you over that wall are like solving a great mystery and this my friends is why genealogy is so addictive!!

The Road To Iowa Actually Is Paved In Corn

We're back!  We've actually been back for a few weeks but things have been so busy I haven't had a chance to do things like update everyone on what we found.  I'll need to break down our discoveries into several different posts. In this post I just really want to confirm the rumor that Iowa is made of corn.  They have corn like we have grapes up here in Wine Country.  Every inch of open land is covered in corn or soy.  We had a a great trip though and I was so happy to be able to do it with Dad and Aunt Ann.  We worked well as a team and I think we got just about as much as we could in the time we were given.  I am totally glad we made the trip and I can't wait to make others to discover even more of our history.

Almost time to go!

Getting packed and ready to head to Iowa for a week.  Aunt Ann and Dad will meet me in Kansas City then it's north to Des Moines!  I'm excited to get this show on the road.

Organization is hard

It really makes no difference what-so-ever how much I try to plan and organize for our trip to Iowa in August I never feel like it's enough. I've created a shared Google Calendar with the hours and locations of all research centers we'll be visiting.  I've contacted several people from various genealogical societies in the counties we're visiting.  I have a Google Spreadsheet with major questions we need to answer which is broken down by counties.  I have a huge binder that I'm not even going to go into how much information I've put in there all organized by surname.  My final step is to get my laptop ready to go.  I know I've done just about all I can but it still doesn't feel like enough.  How many times do you get an opportunity to spend a week researching the archives looking for answers to mysteries you've wondered about for years?  Not very often my friend and I don't want to blow this one.

New Beginnings

I'm starting this Blog partially to keep everyone updated on our family research and partially to serve as a kind of log of my research be it at home or somewhere else in the world.  Thanks for checking in and if you have questions please let me know. :)