ROOTS & BRANCHES

In last week’s “Roots & Branches” column, I made another return to the Daub family, which had been a major brick wall for starting in the 1980s, not long after I had been researching my genealogy.

It took a lot of indirect evidence to break the brick wall and I’m sure I’m neither the first nor last family historian to which this has happened: I became the clearinghouse for information relating to first the Lebanon County Daub family and then more generally to Daub families in America.

Over time, I was able to help not a few other solve their Daub brick walls (No one, however, was able to solve mine, of course!).

So I kicked things up another notch and became historian of the Daub Family Reunion in Lebanon County. We published a hardbound book on the family and with the help of generous donor Jean Daub erected a memorial stone to our immigrant ancestor Johann Daub.

At the time the memorial stone’s inscription was cut, I used an estimated date for Johann’s death because I had no reason to believe I’d ever find the exact date (we also guessed at the cemetery on which we put the stone, using St. Paul’s Klopp’s church cemetery since is youngest son was baptized there and it was reasonably close to his farm).

However, quite a while later, I came upon abstracts from the first newspaper of Lebanon County, the German-language publication Der Freymuthige Libanoner, and lo and behold the newspaper dated Aug. 19, 1807, reported (according to the abstract): “Died. On the 15^th of this month, of a lingering sickness, Mr. Johann Daub, of Bethel Township.”

Because this amount of information matched well with what is found in most obits of the time, I didn’t make looking for a copy of the original obituary, and that turned out to be a self-inflicted brick wall.

When I finally did get a copy of the original just recently, it gave me a stunning amount of new information.

The obituary read in full as follows: “Died the 15th of this month, from a long-term illness, Mr. Johan Daub, by Bethel Township, and on the 17th his dead body was buried in peace in the God’s acre of the so-called Clops churchyard, with the Rev. Mr. Pastor Hendel giving a proper funeral speech. He was aged 72 years, 5 months and five days. He was a kind, peaceful neighbor, and a careful housekeeper. Gently rest his ashes!”

It was gratifying to find that we had erected the memorial stone at the right cemetery!

It was also a little disconcerting that the age given does not jive with his birth date in German church records … but we’ll leave that and some other Daub tidbits for next week’s “Roots & Branches.”