ROOTS & BRANCHES

After more than 30 years doing genealogy, you might think I have all the answers.

You’d not only be wrong, though, you’d way wrong—since I’ve come to the realization that in a lot of cases “answers” are merely vehicles for more questions.

And, in many cases, my role is not to actually know the answer, especially about a particular ancestor … but instead to know where or from whom to get the answer.

With springtime sprouting with conferences and webinars, the genealogy questions have flowed in. Katy Smith from Indiana asked, “What Pennsylvania sources might help me prove or disprove that one or both sisters of Gerhard Heinrich Schowe settled in Pittsburgh?”

Smith’s intuition was that this great-grandfather of hers came to Pittsburgh soon after his immigration because he had family there. She laid out the whole chronology of the siblings starting with their births in Düte, Westphalia, Prussia.

 I made a number of observations that might help her research, starting with realizing that when looking for the sisters, they could be found in any combination of their given names or nicknames.

I also suggested checking U.S. Censuses and city directories, looking for marriages, and tracing them through their lives to their obituaries (especially in German-language newspapers), which might say if they spent time in Pittsburgh.

Another well-organized person is Kimberly Mannisto of Michigan, the bulk of whose research is concentrated in the time periods before the1800s. 

“I’m looking to view an original marriage entry from the parish registers from 1761 of Christ Church in Philadelphia,” Mannisto wrote. She couldn’t find them on the Christ Church website and it was unclear whether the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s microfilm included original images. “I always search for original records, but in this case it’s particularly important because I’m trying to get further evidence that supports a theory that there was a change in the spelling of my ancestor’s name over time.”

Fortunately for Mannisto, I was on the webinar described in last week’s “Roots & Branches” column on church records preservation and found the answer for her since Christ Church’s archivist was part of that event and was able to steer me to the “Philadelphia Congregations Early Records” project that includes digital scans of what Mannisto’s seeking at the URL https://philadelphiacongregations.org/records.

An attendee on that same webinar was Gary Schlemmer from the Pittsburgh area, who was looking for church information relevant to his 1846 immigrant German families in the areas of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and adjacent Jefferson, Clearfield and Indiana counties.  

This is not an area of Pennsylvania that I know particularly well, but I renewed an acquaintance from some years ago who lives right smack dab in Jefferson County, and he promised to help.

In all these cases, I didn’t “solve a genealogical problem,” per se. But hopefully my knowledge and efforts did point some people in the right direction.