The Cat Ate my Homework

 

Why is it that no woebegone child told any teacher that the homework wasn't turned in on time because the cat ate it? Yet, here I am sitting at my work table after having cleaned up the mess left by our geriatric cat who, against all house rules, spent the night camped up on the table—on top of my notes for an upcoming seminar, mind you—leaving her mark wherever she sat.

Sigh. It's not that I can blame her. She's having a rough time lately. Actually, we all are having a tough time in this house lately, both cat and human population. After having lost my senior editor Luke earlier this summer, the oldest cat in our household finally came face to face with her outsized tumor and tried to do something about it herself. It was not a beautiful sight.

This is the kitten who, as the offspring of a feral farm cat, somehow beguiled her way indoors at the request of our daughter, who wanted a pet.

"You already have pets," my husband reminded her. "They're all outside."

Guess who won that round.

We named her Button, as in "cute as a...." Now, well into her teens, she isn't quite so cute. Cat years can put a lot of wear on a body. And I'm afraid her number's almost up.

On that pile of papers on the table was my roadmap of the Twelve Most Wanted ancestors from the past three years and projections onward through the end of this year. Somehow, that form escaped the camp-out catastrophe unscathed. I looked over the page to make sure I hadn't missed any spots requiring copying and disposal—and that's when my eyes fell on one particular detail I had missed.

You guessed it: I got something wrong with my homework for this month. But unlike the homework eaten by the dog, the cat's vice was getting the homework turned in early. Yep, my month's work on Theresa Blaising and her family was supposed to be my research project for September, not August.

Thankfully, we still have one more month to focus on goals for my father-in-law's ancestors, so we'll just switch positions and pick up with the August goal in September. Taking a look on the bright side, perhaps the month's delay will mean more resources appearing online for us now. Though we're heading back to Ireland for the coming month's research—a tough go for anyone seeking records before the famine years—perhaps that brief break from Irish research will bring us the fresh eyes needed to spot significant leads. After all, if cats can have nine lives, maybe the homework they mess with can gain the same benefit.

Frames of Reference

 

We may bemoan the fact that, despite our best efforts at research, we still don't really know that much about our ancestors—even our closer ancestors. In the case of the only grandmother my father-in-law ever knew, despite the personal connection, there still wasn't much to pass to the next generation about her family's story.

I gave that realization some thought today. Not that I'm the only one to face that difficulty—in the resources we've found this month, it appears I am in good company in my complaints about lack of detailed information. In a 2019 presentation to the Besancon Historical Society, the speaker discussed the "problem"—a sparse supply of "sketchy" stories. Over the generations, that bare-bones story of immigration was "either forgotten or more often simplified."

I am wondering whether that case of the vanishing immigration story might rather be due to the effect of frames of reference. In the speaker's case at the Historical Society, the example was given of simply saying one's ancestors were "from Paris," or even more generally, "from France." I am wondering whether that might be more of a factor of a speaker declining to explain details which would have been beyond the listener's frame of reference. Why go into detail when the detail would be meaningless to the listener?

An example from my own experience resonates. When I first moved to California from the New York City suburbs where I spent my high school years, I never answered the question, "Where are you from?" with a specific answer. I'd generally say New York and leave it at that. Only if I knew the person I was talking to was also from that area would I go into further detail. Otherwise, it would be extraneous information, easily discarded.

How were those ancestors to know that one day, we would have powerful computers with search engines able to ferret out the slightest details, not only of current events and locations, but also of now-nonexistent villages halfway around the world? How could they have even known that generations after them, people would have the time and inclination to dig up those details of the life they had left behind—and good riddance, as far as they were concerned in many cases.

People share information with their audience based on their perception of the listener's frame of reference. Imagine what you'd say to an inquisitive grandchild, after a long day of work in the field, in answer to the question, "Where did you come from?" The answer to Besancon's grandchildren in Indiana might likely be, "Oh, from far, far away, but in a little village much like this one here."

This puts a different spin on the usual complaint about not listening to our elders' stories until it was too late to ask them; if we did ask when we were younger, the answer might be framed for what was seen as appropriate for younger ears.

True, in many cases, we didn't stop and stay to hear any stories when we were younger, but we also might not have had the framework to build upon the references made in the telling of that tale. If all we know about France is that it is across the Atlantic Ocean and has a city named Paris, the clarity of details like "Besancon" might be lost on us. But then, how many of us have taken care to tell our own stories in the detail we wish we had received from our ancestors? Perhaps it is human nature to gloss over the details we think our listener would see as "TMI"—too much information.

In all the letters my father-in-law's family preserved from Theresa Blaising, their grandmother, it is evident that she was writing about happenings very much in the present. Perhaps, by that point as an elderly woman, she was the last one surviving of all her siblings. That immigration story was likely far from her mind—certainly much farther removed than a widow's concerns about living life alone, far from family, during a World War.

Perhaps we need to go more lightly on our ancestors when we complain about their lack of information about where they once lived or any of the other details we crave about our family's history. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to piece together the story—and sometimes we can be quite successful in such endeavors. It's just that, in Theresa Blaising's case, there wasn't much story to gather.

With the coming week, we'll be into a new month, pursuing a new ancestor. We'll set Theresa's story aside, noting what was gained from this month's search and drawing up a list of what is still needed to reach back to another generation in a future attempt. On Monday, we'll move to another ancestral puzzle from my father-in-law's Irish family.

Passenger Records: Finding the Proof

 

The Blaising brothers may have said they completed their immigrant voyage in New York City, but finding the proof in passenger records may be another question. Granted, dates of travel may have been estimated, but our ability now to search through digitized records using a date range should ease us around that search roadblock. However, I've yet to find any sign of Henry, Lawrence, John, Philip, Louis, or August, let alone their mother Mary or baby sister Theresa. One would think it rather difficult to hide a traveling family of that size.

The detail of their arrival—whether in 1866 or 1868—tells us that, if they did indeed arrive in New York City, their records would be part of the collection from Castle Garden, not Ellis Island. Castle Garden, also known as Castle Clinton—named after then-mayor of New York City and subsequent Governor of the state DeWitt Clinton—served to welcome immigrants on behalf of the state from 1855 until the opening of Ellis Island in 1892. Thus, whether the Blaising family arrived in 1866 or 1868, either way, if they came to New York City, they arrived through Castle Garden.

While we now think of immigration documentation as the domain of the federal government, at that time it was the state government which oversaw such a procedure. Thus, searching for immigrants in that time period depends on the laws of the time and the jurisdiction.

Though there are many resources for checking passenger lists during that time period in New York, unfortunately, I was unable to locate any sign of the Blaising brothers. In the process, I collected a list of spelling variations of that surname which far exceeded my expectations. Immigration officials were indeed quite creative in their spelling prowess. Even searching for the exact spelling of the surname on the Ellis Island Foundation website, which includes records for Castle Garden, didn't produce any promising results, nor did my attempt at MyHeritage.

While searching for the Blaising records may turn out to be a far more exhaustive search than I had originally envisioned, I also need to recall that, as the FamilySearch blog put it, these Castle Garden digitized resources represent the surviving records from that time period. And even if I do find them, it is likely, given that time period, that there might not be any further personal information given on the travelers than what I've been able to learn from the brothers' naturalization records. We can glean great amounts of information on our ancestors from historic records, but only to the extent which officials of that time period deemed necessary to know.

Their need to know and mine may not see eye to eye.

To Trace the Family's Route

 

Where to find pre-1906 American naturalization records? I go online, naturally. In the case of the Blaising family's arrival some time between 1866 and 1868—the two dates reported by some of Theresa Blaising's brothers in census records—their records could have been filed anywhere, as there was no central federal office overseeing the process then. If the Blaising family had traveled directly to Allen County, Indiana, where we have already found them by 1870, their naturalization records could have been filed at the county courthouse there, or at any of five different possible court systems within the state's jurisdiction. If they stopped somewhere else on the way to their ultimate destination in New Haven, Indiana, the paperwork could have been begun at that other location.

In order to trace the family's route from France—my goal in finding naturalization records—I might first have to trace their route after arriving from France. With that uncertainty, rather than hunt through records at FamilySearch.org or any of the genealogical companies with such digitized records, I took my search straight to a search engine, seeking naturalization records at the state level. I entered Indiana as my first choice, held my breath, and pressed enter.

Fortunately, a promising entry popped up at the top of the list at Google. It was a page from the Indiana GenWeb site for Allen County, which provided links for accessing the very items I was seeking. Taking my cue from that information, I followed the link to the Allen County Genealogical Society website, where an alphabetized index of naturalization records from the Indiana Archives and Records Administration provided clickable sub-headings. I clicked on "Bl" for Blaising, and presto, I was there, scrolling past eight entries for "Black" to reach the next surname, Blaising.

There, the record provided the person's name, age at time of filing, and the date of the document. A fourth column was labeled, "link."

I wasted no time getting to that next step.

On that new page, actually hosted on the Indiana Archives site, once again I was asked to enter the immigrant's first name and last name. There were also fields to fill in for keyword and organization name, which I left blank. I discovered that it was best to not enter the requested field for "search by county," as when I did enter Allen County, I'd get zero results, but if left blank, the person I was seeking would be served up, no questions asked.

At that point, if more than one person had filed with that same name, all possible entries would be shown, requiring me to make a selection. This might be helpful for reviewing all possibilities to avoid the risk of following the wrong name twin. In the case of one of the Blaising brothers, John, I ran into that case, though our John did include his middle initial.

Clicking on the name selected then produced a drop-down window with a transcription of the basic information. While I was happy to have found that with relatively little effort, I was disappointed that there wasn't further information. Besides the immigrant's name, age, and county of filing, the record gleaned the date of arrival and document date. In addition, the synopsis listed the country of origin: France.

Of course, I wanted more. Perhaps because of that disappointment, I felt placated to see under that perfunctory listing, a blue link with those welcome words, "More detail."

I clicked.

The result yielded a full page listing of that immigrant's record. In the case of the Blaising brothers, I was able to learn that each of them left from the port at Le Havre in northern France, and sailed to New York City. My next step, then, will be to search for passenger records there, though one interesting discovery was that some of the brothers reported different dates of arrival, suggesting the possibility of serial immigration.

In finding these excerpts from the naturalization records, the good news was that the full page entry included the URL to link with that immigrant's actual document, housed at FamilySearch.org. The bad news was that the accuracy of those links left something to be desired. Not to worry, a little hunt and peck effort quickly located each Blaising brother's own filed record among the Allen County naturalization documents. At least the link brought me to the correct record set.

While I was ecstatic to have so quickly found these particular naturalization records, only four of the brothers were identified in the process: John B. Blaising, who vouched for his sister Theresa's marriage to John Kelly Stevens; oldest brother Henry; and then the two brothers immediately older than Theresa, Louis and August. A fifth Blaising man, also named John, appeared in records, making me wonder whether, with a double given name beginning with "Jean" he might actually have been known in later life only as, say, Phillip or Lawrence. However, at this point, I'm presuming Phillip might have filed after moving to Ohio, and likewise Lawrence at his new home in Albany, New York. That will be a puzzle for another day.

With this information, I'll draw up a chart for easy reference, including each brother's stated date of arrival in New York. Whether that helps guide me to any of those passenger records, I can't say. Whether, upon finding them, they include any mention of the place in France each brother once called home is yet to be determined. But it's worth the look.

 

Wanted: French Immigrants

 

It may come as no surprise to those of us studying our ancestors' immigration to the United States that there were ads beckoning certain ethnic groups to cross the ocean to specific locations. Those businesses behind the organization of huge projects, such as the canals or, later, the railroads, placed ads in foreign newspapers to recruit needed workers. Apparently, we can add French immigrants to that list of wanted settlers.

In the case of the French who settled in Indiana, they may have been influenced by a specific publication circulated in the French regions of Franche-Comté—home of the original Besancon—and Lorraine. Commissioned in 1835 by a group of businessmen in Louisville, Kentucky, the circular was entitled, "Guide for French Emigrants to the States of Kentucky and Indiana," according to an article by historian Ralph Violette in the December 1996 edition of the Besancon Indiana Chronicles.  

Louisville, while in Kentucky rather than Indiana, was a city with a distinctive French ambience in the 1800s, making affinity with France a logical outreach target. Still, the issue of how those French immigrants would actually find their way to that central part of the United States of the mid-1800s was another question.

According to the Violette article, French immigrants could have arrived in Indiana by several possible routes. One suggestion was by way of Stark County, Ohio, which already boasted a known French settlement. Another possibility was directly crossing over the state line from Louisville, Kentucky. This, of course, meant arriving in Louisville most likely by the river route up from New Orleans on the Mississippi, then up the Ohio River.

While the New Orleans route points us to research passenger records specifically from that city, that may not have been the route our Blaising family members chose. Most immigrants to Indiana through New Orleans settled in the southern portions of the state, not in the more northern Allen County, where the Blaising family lived. And yet, the possible ports of entry for those immigrants headed first to Stark County, Ohio, would mean searching passenger records for multiple cities.

The Violette article did emphasize the role of Catholic priests in encouraging French immigration to the Fort Wayne area, but did not leave any details about just how those priests and their traveling companions—or those who followed in their footsteps afterwards—might have gotten there. While I can now envision so many more possibilities for how the Blaising family arrived in Allen County, I am still in as much of a loss as to explain the route as I was at the first—all the more reason to head next to naturalization records.

Where's John?

 

Digging into naturalization records, then looking further back to corresponding passenger records, can be a chore. That's the process I need to tackle next for the siblings of Theresa Blaising, third wife of John Kelly Stevens, and the only grandmother my father-in-law ever knew.

There is, however, one problem I faced before jumping into that task. When I listed the reported dates of immigration for Theresa and her siblings last week, I noted what I found on her brothers Henry, Lawrence, Phillip, Louis, and August, but where was John? He was clearly part of widow Mary Blaising's family in the 1870 census, but disappeared from enumerations after that point.

I could have assumed that, like many children during that time period, he died young, but there was one detail standing in the way of such an easy answer: his mother's obituary. There, in that June 13, 1907, entry in the Fort Wayne Evening Sentinel, included among Mary's seven surviving children was "John, of this city."

So he didn't die young—not, at least, before his fifty first birthday. Where was he during all those years since the 1870 census?

In a connect-the-dots moment, I found the answer. Using a different approach, I thought I'd go back to records I had found on John Kelly Stevens, Theresa Blaising's husband, to see if there were any mention of her relatives. It is unfortunate that John Kelly Stevens and Theresa Blaising never had any children in common, for I'd be curious to see who they might have named as godparents, which could have yielded a clue. But it turned out there was another document which provided some help: their marriage license.

Thankfully, preceding John and Theresa's June 14, 1887, wedding in Allen County, Indiana, their marriage license indicated that, upon "being duly sworn," another man stated that he was acquainted with both John K. Stevens and "Tresia" Blaising, the couple about to be married. That man was named John B. Blaising.

Even better, looking through the other marriage licenses in that register, the very next one listed the information for another couple married on that same day: none other than John B. Blaising and his bride, Mary Fisher. Reciprocally, John K. Stevens vouched for them.

So why, if John Blaising was there in Allen County all along, did I miss him in other records? I suspect confusion about the Blaising brothers may have been owing to a French naming tradition. While some research guides indicate that at that time, the French might give a child multiple given names, only one of those names would be used in daily life. Also, during that era in the mid-1800s when the Blaising children were born, names were typically drawn from the Roman Catholic Church, making each child the namesake of a Catholic saint. In some cases, those names took the form of compound names, such as Jean-Baptiste (John the Baptist).

I have often spotted examples of compound names as well as multiple given names, especially those beginning with Jean, or in English, John. This may have been the case for the Blaising family, for I've found indications that some of John's brothers actually were listed with an initial "J" in some American records. While that initial "J" would never have been found in the French tradition, I noted, for instance, John's brother Louis' death certificate and headstone listing him as "Louis J. Blaising," and brother Phillip Blaising showing in the 1930 census in Crestline, Ohio, as "John P. Blaising." Could each of these be revealing an original French version as Jean Louis or Jean Phillipe?

If this were the case, perhaps it is no wonder that, awash in a multitude of sons named Jean—or John in English—the American governmental record keepers became confused. And John B.—whatever that initial "B" might have stood for—became lost in the multitude of French given names.

But now, however, he's found, thanks to his inclusion in his brother-in-law's marriage license.

A Serendipitous Find

 

It might still be August—and well over ninety degrees each day around here last week while I was away, wandering through upstate New York—but rainy weather upon my return (not to mention pumpkin spice lattes on the autumn menu already at the coffee shop) put everyone in the mood to fast-forward to the next season. Perhaps that's why I found myself doing some fall cleaning yesterday.

From a folio still containing old notes, I pulled three slips of paper which could be called a serendipitous find. Each of those three slips was dated from June of 2005, and as receipts, each showed that I had paid $3.75 for the privilege of borrowing a microfilm of records from the Family History Library. The receipts clearly identified the records I was viewing: from Saint Patrick's Catholic Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

That particular parish happened to be the home church for my father-in-law's grandfather, John Kelly Stevens, whose third wife became the only grandmother my father-in-law ever knew. Now that I have the identifier for those three microfilms I used so many years ago, I can go back and review them in digitized format, this time in search of Theresa Blaising, rather than her husband.

Having the actual microfilm number so clearly printed on the receipt became a shortcut to finding the records on the current FamilySearch.org website. Of course, I could have looked them up in the catalog by location, then drilled down to the category—church records—and hope to find the right entry. Having found these old receipts, you can be sure I'll be saving the link to the online resources for ongoing research. This time, the perspective will be the other side of the family: finding another way to trace Theresa Blaising's own heritage. Perhaps the church records will tell us something more than what's been found on civil records.

That research, however, will have to be at a local Family History Center, for the digitized microfilms are not currently available online for viewing at home. That, however, is a small price to pay for the ongoing ability to glean information on that ever-expanding family history quest. 

What Makes You Wonder?

 

Wonder is a key necessity for those wanting to discover their family history. So much more than simply building a family tree, or "doing genealogy," exploring our ancestors' history calls for a sense of wonder.

In my case, what makes me wonder the most is how people in my family connected—not just through family relationships, but through time and place as well. Even though Theresa Blaising was not a blood relative of the Stevens family, I wondered just how she connected, how her path crossed with her future husband,  John Kelly Stevens. Even more so, I wondered how she traveled to Indiana at all, considering she was French-born and unlikely to have landed in a place like New Haven. Wonder presumes there is a story and seeks to uncover it.

There are other ways of connection I wonder about. Last week, my husband and I were traveling in upstate New York and had the chance to visit with the daughter of one of his Stevens cousins and her family. Since we had never traveled that way before, we were meeting the children for the first time—upon which opportunity my husband got the chance to explain to some eager young learners just what it meant to be a first cousin twice removed.

During that visit, I was struck with how similar some of the boys looked to the son of one of my husband's sisters, when he was that age. It immediately reminded me of what I've seen through DNA testing: how even a small amount of shared DNA could bring out such similar facial details or personality characteristics as to surprise us when we see them in distant relatives. Wonder propels us into areas of discovery we might not previously have expected to explore.

Those types of connections make me wonder. Even more so, they send me in pursuit of answers to those questions I'm wondering about. Wonder is a force propelling research further, providing tools to navigate the exploration.

Being there, wherever "there" is for your family's story, can awaken a form of wonder, too. When we flew in to Buffalo, the hotel where we spent our first night was actually in a nearby town which name I recognized from researching a collateral line in my own father's Polish immigrant family history. What brought that branch of the family to the opposite side of the state from where siblings had chosen to settle? Actually following those paths and being in those places, though decades or even centuries later, can awaken wonder about what that place held for our traveling ancestors. Wonder calls us to reach out and touch, to share the experience, to see an ancestor's life through their own eyes, if possible.

Each one of us, in our pursuit of our family's stories, may have a different "wonder" about the people we are researching. But whatever that "wonder" may be for you, I'm glad that the "wonder" is there. Wonder allows us to preserve that story of family through the generations, to pass it on to yet another generation removed—to give them a chance to wonder, as well. 

Recapping Reports

 

To zero in on arrival dates for the immigrant Blaising family—all the brothers and the mother of my father-in-law's step-grandmother Theresa Blaising Stevens—I went back to the reports contained in the U.S. Census records. There, line items in the 1900 census, as well as the 1910 and 1920 enumerations, revealed at least what was reported by each resident in the United States.

Reports, of course, can be misleading. First, we need to rely on the enumerator hearing answers correctly, then writing them legibly enough for us to read. We also must hope that the enumerator gleaned his or her information from the source, not the neighbor down the street who was filling in while the hoped-for interviewees were away on an extended trip. Above all, we need to hope that the individuals themselves remembered and reported the correct answer. Otherwise, we are depending on answers as true which might be otherwise.

With those constraints in mind, here is what I discovered in all three enumerations, for Theresa's mother (before her 1907 death), her siblings, and her own report. 

According to Mary, the widowed mother, in the 1900 census she—or someone in her stead—claimed that she had arrived in the United States in 1868. This, of course, is not what was claimed in her obituary only a few years afterwards, but we will see how that report played out among her children's own census entries. Since she died in 1907, she was not found in any subsequent enumerations.

Henry, apparently the oldest son, also reported a 1868 arrival in the 1900 census, and noted that he was naturalized. However, ten years later, the 1910 census saw him change that immigration date to the 1866 date maintained by the family in his mother's obituary back in 1907. Once again, he claimed that he had been naturalized. Hoping to drill down to more detail in the 1920 census, I was disappointed to see some scribbled entries, overwritten by a clear "unknown" for both the date of arrival and the date of naturalization. Thus, Henry's entry doesn't provide us much help.

Next son Lawrence, who moved from Indiana to Albany, New York, appeared in the 1900 census with no arrival date and no information on naturalization status. By 1910, though, he reported arrival in 1866, and that he had been naturalized. Unfortunately, he died in 1918, so there was no way to follow him further in census records.

For next son Phillip, we run into conflicting data, which I suspect was partially owing to his own reports. Phillip, it appears, was married once in Allen County, Indiana, where his family had settled, but divorced and moved to Ohio, where he subsequently married and raised a second family. However, in later census reports, his age given and statement that he was married only once would have made me doubt I had found the right person, except that his residence in Ohio was reported in his mother's obituary. Nevertheless, in 1910, he reported arriving in the U.S. in 1876, and in the 1920 census, he claimed arrival in 1870 and naturalization in 1880, despite also stating that he was born in 1869 (while the 1870 census showed his age then as eight).

Son Louis was another Blaising child whom I couldn't find in the 1900 census. However, in 1910, he claimed arrival in 1866, though no word about whether he had been naturalized. In the 1920 census, he again mentioned arrival in 1866, and naturalization in 1876. Considering that the 1870 census had shown him to have been born about 1861, I tend to doubt that date of naturalization.

Son August was found in all three census reports, though in the 1900 census, all immigration information was left entirely blank. In the 1910 census, he referred to that same arrival date as many of his brothers: 1866. He also reported having been naturalized. But in the 1920 census, he switched the arrival date to 1868, and claimed naturalization in 1886.

Theresa herself included some variations from those dates given by her brothers, but that could possibly be due to reports actually being provided to the enumerator by her husband. In the 1900 census, she gave her arrival date as 1867, though in the 1910 census, she revised that date to 1866; there was no report of naturalization, but depending on the timeline of naturalization requirements for women, her marriage to an American citizen may have obviated such a need. Yet in the 1920 census, while keeping the 1866 arrival date, there was an entry on naturalization given as 1876 which was overwritten, making it unclear.

With the exception of the one brother, Phillip, dates given for arrival vacillated from 1866 to 1868. We can see from the siblings' mother's original entry that perhaps everyone followed suit—or perhaps by the time of Mary's death, the family gathered together to rebuild the family history in agreement. Variance in naturalization dates would be due to each person's own date for going through the legal process. Some may have started as soon as possible; others might have waited to begin the multi-year process.

At any rate, those dates will form a "ballpark" range for the next steps in the process. While I will want to seek out naturalization records for each of the Blaising brothers to glean details to guide me to their home town in Europe, I will need to also find passenger records or some sign of how they arrived in the New World. For that, we'll need to revisit our work from earlier this week just one more time.  

People who Preserved the Past

 

It's a snap that I wouldn't have known how to answer my own question about the Blaising family's emigration from France to, of all places, Indiana if it hadn't been for people who made it their mission to preserve their ancestral story—in essence, to preserve their own family's past. In this case, it is mostly thanks to a small band of volunteers who formed the Besancon Historical Society and, in particular, one writer by the name of Ralph Violette, who edited the organization's collective findings in their quarterly newsletter and spearheaded the assembling of a database of genealogical information from Society members' collective stories.

It is one article written by this Ralph Violette which simultaneously provided me with so many answers yet made me wish I could barrage him with so many other questions. His article appeared in the December, 1996, edition of the Besancon Indiana Chronicles, beginning on page four, exploring "From France to Indiana." Exactly what I was questioning.

In pursuing that question, I found so many other online search results which referred to a writer with the same surname—Aurele Violette—and I wondered about the connection. Perhaps Ralph was son of Aurele? Though the older Violette might not still be alive, perhaps the son could explain more of this other researcher's discoveries.

I set out to find an answer to my question about the Violettes, not withstanding the possibility that this might simply be a case of surname coincidence. But searching for a name like Aurele Violette—or "Aurelle" as I had first found it online—yielded very little online. Digging deeper into the Internet—that marvel of modern research possibilities—I discovered scattered signs of his existence. A notice on college letterhead of an upcoming faculty election and subsequent confirmation of selected representatives clearly linked Aurele Violette to the history department of the branch of Purdue University at Indiana University in Fort Wayne. Online articles had mentioned his forthcoming publication, and a search led me to a 1996 book, Peopling Indiana—thankfully reprinted in 2010 by the Indiana Historical Society Press—which contained an article on French immigration there by the same history professor.

Moving forward with my search, my disappointing discovery was to find that one document which all genealogists seek for our ancestors: the Violette obituary. Sadly, Aurele Joseph Violette passed away only a couple years ago. In that discovery, I received my answer to my second search: that Aurele and Ralph Violette are one and the same person. Aurele often went by the nickname Ralph.

Small wonder. I can see why a given name like Aurele might cause a man some difficulties in current American culture, despite the fact that, as an Acadian descendant born in Maine, he was named after his own father, who likely carried that name from generations before him. I have a brother-in-law with a similar name—another ethnic variant of a name which surely was inspired by the Roman Emperor and philosopher, Marcus Aurelius—who, when golfing with visiting Asian businessmen, says, "Just call me Jack."

This Historical Society, in existence for over twenty years, was peopled by descendants of the original settlers to the Besancon farming community outside New Haven, Indiana, who worked hard to preserve their settlement's history. In the end, though, they too needed to make those final plans upon the realization that there was no one left to whom they could pass the baton. In their Winter 2019 issue of The Chronicles, one speaker at their meeting made the plea for a practical way to preserve all the hard work the organization had done to preserve those family stories.

In that plea (on page five), the author made one point clear which may be one faced by a multitude of other local historical or genealogical societies:

Here is a problem we have. Stories of Besancon might be told, but they were sketchy. The old immigrants were not story tellers, they were survivors. Their children were survivors doubly: they had to survive not only the fast-changing pace of American society, but also the hard-bitten life patterns of their immigrant parents, which often offered at best half-solutions for their own lives. Assimilation affected not only those branches of Besancon families who left the land. Those who stayed, within a generation or two, also became similar in almost all respects to any other small town farm settlement in America. French names were Anglicized in pronunciation, if not spelling. French language disappeared from households, as did devotion to French saints. The basic immigration story was either forgotten or more often simplified: one's grandparents simply came from "France" or even "Paris." Too little of the story has been preserved. Nevertheless, a clear shadow of the old immigrant community yet remains in this little area around Saint Louis Besancon Church today.

Generic responses: "They came from Paris." Reticence to share stories of their past in detail: "They were sketchy." They "were not story tellers" because of "the hard-bitten life patterns" of their forebears, who likely had been through much. These are likely the type of situational disappointments some of us face whether trying to coax out stories from the distant past, or merely of the World Wars from our own parents or grandparents; the trauma of the experience left them wanting to say little.

The work the Society did to try to piece together the story from what fragments of memory they could glean from members' family histories was further put at risk when the Society itself had to close its doors. Fortunately, the Society formed a constructive partnership with a nearby friend of such pursuits: the Allen County Public Library in nearby Fort Wayne, Indiana.

That institution—thankfully—has a reputation as the largest public repository of genealogical information in North America, and has made the assembled publications of the Besancon Historical Society freely available online. If it were not for that generosity, I likely would never have gotten close to any answer about my own connection to the Blaising family, the roots of my father-in-law's step-grandmother Theresa Blaising, who arrived in Allen County as a small child, moving there with her family.

Still, the Besancon story is not necessarily the story of the Blaising family. What that discovery does do, however, is show me that it was possible for a French immigrant family to find their way directly to a small town in Indiana. The next task, however, is to see if I can find any records showing me just how they got here.

Reminiscing and Reconstructing

 

"Come with me, it will only take a few minutes of your time," beguiled a brief family history on the front page of the Spring 2001 issue of the Besancon Indiana Chronicles, the newsletter of the Besancon Historical Society. That promise led to reminiscing about "a woman like many women you know" from the descendants of the original French settlers of the Besancon community in Allen County, Indiana. 

The writer guides you down a country road, with the church steeple of Saint Louis Catholic Church pointing the way through farmland outside New Haven to a community called Besancon. There, reminiscences about family life center around Gladys Nail Lomont, born in 1903. These tales provide a snapshot of what life was like for children and grandchildren of the immigrant settlers in Indiana from faraway France, the story culminating in Mrs. Lomont's efforts with a committee to register the Besancon community on the National Register of Historic places and reconstruct the identity of a settlement her ancestors once called home through establishment of the Besancon Historical Society.

Reading the historic district application, completed in 1994 and certified in 1995, provides some background on the likely origin of the immigrants peopling the Besancon settlement. Though by 1880, the population of Jefferson Township, where Besancon was located, was seventy percent French (National Register of Historic Places, section 8 page 9), its parish—and now historic district—was later identified as the only remaining one among several French settlements in Indiana still retaining the ambience of a place  "predominantly an agricultural parish whose ancestors came from France." (See section 8, page 9.)

According to researcher Aurele Violette, history professor at Indiana University-Purdue University in Fort Wayne, the settlers at Besancon parish originated in eastern France. The professor fingered the specific area of the Franche-Comté, or "free county" of eastern France. An embattled location, this place was occupied throughout history successively by the Gauls, then Germanic tribes, and eventually became the unwilling subject of a tussle between France and Spain. In addition, some of the immigrants to Besancon traveled from French-speaking cantons of Switzerland. But primarily, Dr. Violette noted, "most settlers" had originally belonged to the diocese of Besancon.

That diocese, if you've lost track, would be located at Besançon in France, for which the wandering immigrants made their Indiana settlement the homeland's namesake.

Whether our Theresa Blaising, the only grandmother my father-in-law ever knew, came to Indiana with her mother and nine other siblings from that specific region—another author in that same Besancon Indiana Chronicles mentioned immigrants from the neighboring provinces of Alsace and Lorraine—this information helps us understand why anyone migrating from France would decide to choose Indiana. Whether following Catholic priests ousted after the French Revolution due to political pressures, or coming to America during times of our relative economic upturns, the French did heed the news in letters from friends and family who went before them to America, to seek their own betterment in the same path as their fellow countrymen now resident in places like Allen County, Indiana.

When the Winter Wolves Howled Around Their Doors

 

Long before my father-in-law's immigrant grandmother Theresa Blaising settled in her childhood home in Indiana, a group of several immigrants from her homeland discovered a wilderness swamp in Indiana and decided to claim it as their new home. That beginning was hardly promising; an early history of the Fort Wayne area mentioned that Jefferson Township—location of that swamp land where these French immigrants built their first homes—was in the 1840s a place where "the winter wolves howled around their doors at night."

Though those French immigrants first arrived in Allen County, Indiana, around 1840, it wasn't until 1851 that their settlement established its first Catholic church there. That church, called Saint Louis Besancon Catholic Parish, is still in existence today, including its several buildings alongside the historic Lincoln Highway—which road, incidentally, post-dated the immigrants' arrival by several decades. Those buildings now form a historic district, and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

That settlement, originally called New France, was renamed Besancon upon the arrival of the church's new pastor, Father Adam, who was said to have been a French refugee—a "political refugee," as one other local history article represented him (see page 3). That such turmoil in France caused his ejection from his homeland in 1870 resonates with the puzzling stories we've found on Theresa Blaising's own (possible) father from that same time period.

Besancon, the French immigrant settlement in Allen County, Indiana, was not necessarily a place easily found in online information. For one thing, it was never incorporated as a separate entity, geo-politically. Even looking at the usual Wikipedia entries for American counties, which generally include mention of both incorporated cities and towns and unincorporated "census designated places" and communities, there is no mention of Besancon. Even though the Allen County entry at Wikipedia includes a listing of six "extinct" communities, Besancon is not included at all.

Despite little mention of the location, Besancon eventually boasted its own Historical Society which, at least through the 1990s, was busy working to preserve the settlement's history. Though the organization, despite desperate pleas for help, apparently did eventually close its doors, thankfully its members opted to pass on their research and findings to the Allen County Public Library, which provides access to that material, much of it accessible online. 

It is the roots of that village and parish which most piqued my interest, though, for the reason the parishioners opted to change the name of their settlement was a hat tip to the place in France where the first members of that community originated: a place in France also known as Besancon. We'll see what we can find about that community connection tomorrow. 

The French? In Indiana?

 

When thinking about migrating ancestors, one question I concern myself with is how they got from their old home to their new one. With this month's research focus on my father-in-law's step-grandmother Theresa Blaising, that was my big question. It might have made sense for a traveling family from Europe to cross the Atlantic, headed for a major port on the east coast—New York, Boston, maybe even to Philadelphia. But Indiana? 

One guideline with following ancestors from their homeland is the concept that residents from the same region often followed the path of those friends or family who crossed over before them. Thus, so many Irish ended up in Boston, for instance, or Dutch to New York, or Germans to Pennsylvania. But French? In Indiana?

If I had really thought through the history of the state, I might have recalled that I already know differently. Long before Indiana even became a state in 1816, the French were roaming over its territory—as early as 1679, in fact. French trappers and traders became familiar with the land, not only where Indiana now stands, but up and down the midwestern waterways from what is now Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. So why couldn't I imagine a French widow and her ten children deciding to leave their homeland in France—wherever it actually was—to travel straight to New Haven, Indiana?

It was a reasonable doubt on my part. After all, when Theresa Blaising appeared in her mother's household for the first time in the 1870 United States census, New Haven was a town of barely nine hundred people—hardly the size which could command international headlines. But apparently, the county in which New Haven is situated—Allen County—boasted from the start at least four different settlements which included French immigrants: the village of Maples, the town of Monroeville, Mary Blaising's home in New Haven, and a fascinating place called Besancon.

While at this point I don't know whether Mary Blaising ever settled in Besancon—I only have her residence listed for the 1870 census, though she and her family were said to have arrived in 1866—it may be helpful to learn more about the history of that nucleus of French life so far from home. We'll explore Besancon, Indiana, more tomorrow.

Playing Catch-Up

 

Weekends are for playing catch-up in my schedule. There are so many genealogical loose ends to tie up, and my default method is to tackle them over the quiet times at the end of the week. 

Mostly, the focus is on that multitude of DNA matches for the accounts I manage. Since I've been focusing on my in-laws' tree this month, on the weekends I've been pursuing some lines linked to a branch of the family through which I received an inquiry. "How do we connect?" can become the impetus for making that family tree just a bit bushier as we sketch out possible relationships with our mystery matches.

With DNA inquiries like that, it's no surprise to see that my in-laws' tree grew by 225 more documented family members in the past two weeks. And I still have a lot of unanswered questions! Over the years, that tree has grown to 36,509 people, mostly by adding descendant lines of all the third great-grandparents in this family line.

Since my research focus this month pertains to my father-in-law's ancestry, it's no surprise that my own tree had no additions whatsoever in the past two weeks. My tree is still set at 38,421 individuals, same as it was two weeks ago.

That, however, is not the case with new DNA matches. In the past two weeks at Ancestry.com alone, I gained eleven more matches, whereas my husband's match count goes up there by the much slower rate of about one to three matches in each biweekly check. Once I make the switch back to researching my own ancestry in the fall, hopefully those new DNA matches will guide me to some answers.

Of course, with this month's focus on the ancestry of Theresa Blaising, technically my father-in-law's step-grandmother, there will be no need to search for DNA matches. There will be, however, quite a bit of study in the local history of French settlements in Indiana yet to come this week.

What Energizes You?

 

That may seem to be a silly question for a family history blog; of course it's genealogy that keeps us up far too late in the evening, oblivious to the passage of time—or sometimes even to the people around us. But genealogy can be a solitary endeavor when we engage with online resources. Even messaging fellow researchers and working together online on elusive ancestors can still keeps us apart.

Reason I ask what energizes you: the other day I attended an event on a nearby college campus. The occasion was the social gathering to introduce the upcoming fall course offerings for our local OLLI program. I was there because I had been invited to teach once again this fall. The attendees filling the university ballroom came from all walks of life, but had one goal in common: remaining active and engaged through lifelong learning.

While I had a brief two minutes in the limelight to introduce my course topic, I had ample time before and after the program to meet other instructors, catch up on news with former coworkers and other friends, and talk with several people I'd otherwise probably never get to meet. 

Walking back to the parking lot afterwards, I realized I unexpectedly felt quite energized. And it wasn't simply because I was there to talk genealogy—it was just having the chance to talk about anything at all. There is something energizing about getting together with other people, whether we know them or not—or even whether we end up discussing our favorite topic.

That's the lifted spirit feeling I've noticed in our own genealogy society meetings, once we emerged from the isolation of the pandemic and started meeting face to face instead of computer to computer. The human touch can animate, energize, and enliven. Never forget that when thinking about whether to connect with others in an organized fashion over your favorite topics, genealogy or otherwise. We build on each other's energies.

Granted, that is what energizes me. Perhaps what brings that spark to you may be a totally different topic or encounter—but keep in mind that if you find yourself enlivened by it, there are others out there who feel the same. It's that element which, added to our society meetings, can become the actual draw to a meeting—not necessarily the bona fides of the featured speaker, or the popularity of the topic. Remember, we can hear great speakers' recordings through multiple online avenues now, and the Internet offers a wide array of subjects to select, even in such a specialized pursuit as family history. But we can seldom replicate the chemistry of coming together through technology the way we can by just simply getting together in person.

By all means, work hard to find great speakers for your organization, or survey your members for guidance on the latest hot topics. But it may also come in handy to ask society members, "What energizes you?" Ask them about the meetings which created the most buzz among members in after-session opportunities. That's what really will revive your organization.

It's a StAve Factory

 

If you look hard enough, you can find the answer to almost any question online. In my struggle to determine just why a French widow with ten children would leave her home on a journey not just to America, but to one specific tiny town in Indiana, I stumbled upon quite a bit of information. Being the rabbit-trail-prone creature that I am, this time my tendencies to become sidetracked stood me in good stead. Specifically, they led me to more than just one answer in my search to discover where the "stove" factory might have been located which employed two Blaising sons. I'm glad I kept looking. Not only was the place not a "stove" factory, but the resources I found along the way led me to the most likely reason why Mary Blaising chose to settle in New Haven, Indiana.

To start with, it was likely a stave factory, not a stove factory, where Henry and John Blaising worked in 1870.

I am apparently not the only one to have been misled by some hurried handwriting in census records. In my search for further information, I first found a written history of another family—the James Minerd family—which had moved to nearby Monroeville and, as the author noted from the 1880 census, the father and two of his sons worked in a "stove" factory.

Aha! Now I had another keyword to add to my search, and I was off, scouring the web for references to a "stove" factory in Monroeville. That misapplied search is where—thankfully—I stumbled upon a listing of French immigrant settlements in Allen County, Indiana, precisely the county where Mary Blaising and her children settled when they headed to New Haven.

Searching for that "stove" factory in Monroeville was the meandering route that led me to discover material recounting the history of Besancon, a French settlement and Catholic parish from 1846, long predating the Blaising family's arrival in Indiana. If I had known to look earlier—rather than prompted by a wild chase to find "stove" factories in the county—I might have spotted the brief mention of the place in the general Wikipedia entry on the topic of New Haven.

And there, in the pages I found, recounting the history of the Besancon settlement, I spotted the mention (on page four) of Monroeville and their factories for "the manufacture of barrel staves."

Regardless of whether Henry and John Blaising worked at a factory in Monroeville, I now have stumbled upon some helpful details of a French settlement which can guide me in answering the question of why immigrant Mary Blaising might have chosen to settle her family in, of all places, Indiana.

"A Most Remarkable Woman"

We all have stories—at least in the New World—of ancestors who arrived on American shores and settled into life, whether following the same routine or following a vastly different path than they were accustomed to in the "old world." It makes me wonder, though, just why an immigrant ancestor chose the specific place which came to be the family's adopted home.

In the case of Theresa Blaising's mother, Mary Blaising selected New Haven, Indiana, as the next home for her children. By the time of her death in 1907, she—or someone among her children—was well enough connected to the community to have a tribute published on the front page of the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette. Headlined as "A Most Remarkable Woman," Mary Ann Blaising, at her death, became subject of a flowery composition which stretched well beyond the fold line.

The article was written in the sentimental style of that time period, and basically contained the same information we've already seen in her obituary. What I had hoped for, however, was some clue as to why someone in far away France would know to head thousands of miles away, straight to a town which, at the time, boasted a population of barely nine hundred people.

My first thought was to check the 1870 census and search for any other potential family members sharing her married name, Blaising. Other than her own household, though, the only possible surname match was actually spelled Blessing, not Blaising. Each of the children in that other household was born in Indiana, but the parents—Catherine and Peter—were said to have been born specifically in Wurttemberg. On the census page where Mary's own household was included, only a few nearby homes included people born in France, but no sign of any possible fellow travelers that I could find in that 1870 census.

My next thought was to examine the names of others buried in the same church cemetery where Mary Blaising was laid to rest. Again, the only contemporaries sharing that surname seemed to be Mary's own children, their spouses, or their descendants.

Another approach, which indirectly led to further information, was to look at the occupations listed for Mary's sons in the 1870 census. At the time, only two of her children were listed as working outside the home: Henry and John. The entry for each of her eldest sons noted that they worked in a stove factory.

Well, that's a clue, so off I went to seek information on a stove factory in New Haven, Indiana. 

I was unsuccessful in my attempt.

Meanwhile, plying Google with every keyword variation I could conjure up, I ran across some other information. A lot of information, in fact. Enough to fill yet another day's post, if not more—and it's well worth the review, in case anyone else is stuck researching the same heritage.

My approach eventually led to the many nooks and crannies of the Internet where unknown-to-me organizations (or even individuals) had posted what was important to them about the place in Allen County, Indiana, called New Haven.

While I'll save the main points of that search for tomorrow, I'll cut to the chase on where Henry and John Blaising were employed in 1870. It likely wasn't a stove factory where they worked; it was a stave factory. 

It's Been One of Those Days

 

Here I was, intending to harvest links today for researching Theresa Blaising Stevens' parents records back in France. That was the plan, at least. But things turned out differently. Let's just say it's been one of those days...

My go-to place for learning more about how to research a new area in my family history is the FamilySearch wiki. However, I don't just go straight to the wiki; I first google the terms I'm seeking and designate the specific website where I want to search. To test the information I found the other day on Laurent Blaising, Theresa's supposed father, I looked for the wiki which would include a guide to researching Romelfing in Moselle.

While wandering through the choices served up in my Google search for wiki resources, I found a French Genealogical Word List—helpful indeed for someone whose memory of college French is quite faded.

Somewhere in all my searching—and selecting to open each discovery in a new tab—I ran across the same wiki page in English and French. Hmmm, I thought to myself, maybe I should cross-check these two and see if there is more information in the French version.

It was a great idea—and rather daring of me, considering my rusty French—but somehow there must have concurrently been a glitch in the ether as I made my fateful selection. Suddenly, every time I tried to look for something on the FamilySearch website, it offered up the page to me in French.

Quoi?

Did you know there is a way to switch languages while using FamilySearch? Of course, in retrospect, I can see how that would be useful for an organization which freely offers views of digitized records to people from around the world. But at the moment, I was panicking at the thought of being doomed to never view that website in English again. 

I realized there had been some other online glitches throughout the day—Ancestry.com, for instance, seemed to have its "hints" system unavailable for a few hours yesterday—but how was I suddenly assigned a language I couldn't speak?

Cool heads prevail when using computers, so I tried to contain my dismay and look for a reasonable answer. Well, forget the answer; I have no idea what happened. But for someone who learns how to use a program by clicking until I find the answer—I'm a hunt-and-peck student—I soon discovered the use of the "world" icon at the top of the page.

Despite that unexpected detour, I did find a wiki page on Moselle, the department in which Romelfing is located. And by using the catalog, I now have another item added to my to-do list for the next trip to Salt Lake City: the yet-to-be digitized microfilms of the civil registrations during the time period in which Laurent Blaising and his wife would have lived there.

No matter how crazy a day might turn out to be, at least if we take it step by step, we eventually can get something accomplished.

The Third Emperor

 

To understand the life of our ancestors, sometimes we cannot do so without understanding the history of the times in which they lived. Reading the obituary of Theresa Blaising Stevens' mother, it is plain to see a compelling story motivated her choice to move with her children to a new world. What actually happened—and when—in that bigger historical picture will help us form a timeline that either juxtaposes with our ancestor's lifespan, or doesn't.

Take that mention of "the third emperor" in the tale of what became of Mary Blaising's husband back in France. Who might that "third emperor" actually be? Since we already read that Mary brought her children to New Haven, Indiana, about 1866, one could presume that the emperor the obituary referred to was Napoleon. But a little fact checking reveals that the Napoleon in power at that time in France, while called Napoleon III, was technically France's second emperor, reigning as such from 1852 to 1870.

A key turning point in Napoleon III's reign did turn out to be that same year the Blaising family was said to have emigrated: 1866. At that point, tensions between neighboring Prussia and Austria caused the French emperor, through his foreign minister, to expect a long war ahead, precipitating Napoleon III's proposal the next year for a form of universal military service. 

Perhaps that period of uncertainty, at least for those already involved in the French military as Mary Blaising's husband supposedly was, could have been the impetus to send loved ones far from harm's way. It would make sense for someone in the military to use inside knowledge as a springboard for such decisions. But looking ahead in the timeline of France's history, we can see the emperor's military proposal failing—in fact, his overall political success waning. Napoleon III's reign came to an end not much afterwards; he was deposed in 1870.

Checking this timeline of France's history seems to correspond handily with the story the Blaising family offered for their mother's obituary in 1907. But if the Laurent Blaising whose 1882 death record we found in Paris was Mary's long-lost husband, why didn't he join his family after the war came to a close? Or did Mary only presume her husband, so far away after her arrival in Indiana, had died in battle?

Finding military records, or death records for any other French men by that same name will help sort out some of these questions. Whether I can access them online is a question still needing an answer. The story in the obituary seems plausible enough—but the fact that details in Laurent Blaising's death record don't align with the other end of the story is troubling.

  

Those French Records: They're all Greek to Me

 

I'd love to say it's all Greek to me, but unfortunately I can't; it's French, and the last time I studied that language...well, let's just say it's beyond my memory currently. But to gain any helpful details on a family member's roots, I'll try anything.

In this case, the possible family connection is to Theresa Blaising Stevens, technically my father-in-law's step-grandmother, but in reality, the only grandmother he ever knew. Theresa came to the United States as a young child—possibly a toddler or even an infant—sometime before she and her family showed up in Indiana for the 1870 census.

Her family, by the time of that 1870 census, was missing one person: Theresa's father, whoever he was. We've seen Theresa's mother Mary's obituary, which mentioned his name as Lawrence Blaising, but we've found two of her brothers' death certificates state their father's name as Henry. This past weekend, it was time for me to see what could be found on the man who supposedly died during wartime, back in France in the 1860s, no matter which given name he claimed.

Ancestry.com made the search rather easy, if the death record featured through their hints system is the right one. Logically—at least for someone whose death was in France—Theresa's father was listed as Laurent, rather than the Americanized Lawrence. That was a discrepancy easily accepted. But for the next detail translated from that block of French handwriting, I had my doubts. Either my French was far more rusty than I thought it was, or we have a problem with this death record.

I tried my hand at transcribing the words into Google Translate, just in case. Of course, what appears to me to be illegible text might, to a native speaker, be easily deciphered. Here is my best rendition of the basic details:

In the year 1882, January 4th at [?] hours in the morning, the death certificate of Laurent Blaising, aged 61, bus driver, born at Romelfing (Meurthe). Died yesterday at 1:00, [at his home at? or] Lived at 47 Chapelle Street. Son of Jean Blaising and Anne Marie Meiller, spouses [or couple?] deceased; married to Marie Hirschbeck aged 52, day laborer....

Whether I've managed to mangle the body of the text or not, there is one thing clear about this portion of the record's information: Mary Blaising did not leave France after this man died; she left long before his 1882 death.

Now, this Laurent Blaising may not be the right husband, notwithstanding the name of that man's wife matching up with what our Mary's name might have been in France ("Marie"). And of course there might be more than one Laurent Blaising with a wife named Marie in the whole of France—or even in their native region of Lorraine.

One thing, however, is certain: this puzzle will require further inspection.

Owning It

 

At many local genealogical organizations, summertime is break time. Members are traveling, or spending time with family, or celebrating holidays, wedding anniversaries, or birthdays. Summer is not the best time to expect a record-breaking turnout for society meetings.

There's only one problem with such a schedule: though based in reality, it puts the group's officers in a bind if the following season is time to nominate and elect candidates for the upcoming year's board of directors. Our local organization moved that schedule up a month to satisfy all the requirements of our bylaws—and to leave enough time for the nominating committee to adequately network among members and (who am I kidding here?) coax, cajole, and downright bribe potential candidates to step up and volunteer their services for the good of the society.

It was in beginning that nominations process last week that a thought struck me. Having served on our local board for (mumble mumble) years, I've noticed two types of volunteers who have done their part on the board. One group is comprised of those who have done just that: done "their part" in a perfunctory, to-the-letter manner. They have filled the slot on the roster, gotten the job done at least adequately, and then moved on.

Then there is the other group. The only way I can describe this group is to say when they stepped up to be installed in their position, they owned that position.

In talking with others about our genealogy organizations—no matter whether national, state, or local—I have sometimes heard people mention a particular board member as a "Type A" individual. I won't belabor the description of such a term; I think we all have a mental image of such a person. But I think that way of looking at such board members does all of us a disservice. 

I've worked in private business, for governmental agencies, and as an owner or partner in my own businesses over the years. From experience across multiple work environments, I think I can say there is a vast difference between those who see themselves as simply employees, just doing their job, and people who own their work. While it may be the employee's boss for whom that ubiquitous saying has been adopted—"the buck stops here"—for the self-employed, there is no one to whom that "buck" can be passed. They own the results and the results' consequences.

Now that I look back at all those conversations with friends about board members, I wonder if I got it all wrong. It may actually be that those "Type A" volunteers were the ones who owned their work. They owned their contributions to the organization in that they put their whole heart into the effort, and took responsibility for seeing the outcome through to the end.

If that's what "Type A" really means, perhaps it is a good thing that there are people out there willing to "own" their efforts, and "own" their outcome. We need more board members like that.

Playing Catch-Up

 

Can one ever play catch-up with genealogy?

This month, since I'm working on the family tree of a step-mother in my father-in-law's ancestry, there obviously won't be any DNA component to check; Theresa Blaising and the Stevens family are relatives by marriage only. There were no half-siblings descended from Theresa to blend in with her husband's previous children.

That was my inspiration for launching a different weekend project for the month of August: catch up on all the DNA matches backlogged from that side of the family. This may or may not work. Consider that the flow of new DNA matches has slowed to a trickle ever since the Golden State Killer mystery was solved—thanks to genetic genealogy—and that puts a different frame around the picture of my husband's newest DNA matches. 

Since the beginning of June, my husband has gained only fifteen new DNA matches—and that's only at Ancestry.com. I imagine the other testing sites have experienced the same slowdown. In the last month alone, my husband received only two new matches. Not much to work with in numbers that low.

Not to worry, though, for in total, my husband currently has 1,340 matches at just Ancestry alone. I'd say that's a lot of catch-up work to be done there, despite all the handy tools such as Ancestry's ThruLines program.

If I ever can catch up with that moving target—hopefully, there will be more matches added as the months roll on—there are other tasks to complete. Popping over to the various tree-building sites I've added over the years, I can work on updating the information on each month's Twelve Most Wanted as I dig further into their documentation. Working step-by-step and simultaneously in different programs may be just the way to catch up on workloads there.

Still, for all those promises, I sometimes wonder if there is even such a state as being "caught up." With each step backwards in time, we double the number of ancestors we are researching. At some point, that task will achieve a critical mass of impossibility—a reality we all need to face. I'm seeing that this year as I bang my head against that genealogical brick wall in a couple of my father-in-law's lines.

As the forward momentum staggers, perhaps the best resolution is to look sideways at the collateral lines for clues and DNA match connections, then finally to look backwards at all the organizational clean-up that still needs attention. In my in-laws' tree of well over thirty thousand, there certainly is a lot of cleaning to catch up on.

At the Corner of Sunrise and Sunset

 

Back roads can provide us with some unique scenery—and confounding concepts. The other day, an errand to a city two hour's drive north of my home put me on track to retrace my steps just as rush hour was beginning. Traveling with my daughter, who doesn't mind exploring options, we decided to avoid the traffic by returning home via some back roads. Curious to look around as we drove from one town to another on our impromptu route, while stopped at one traffic light, I spotted the street signs marking the intersection: the red light had us paused at the corner of Sunrise and Sunset.

Give that one a thought. Could that even be possible? Yet, here we were, accomplishing the impossible.

Later that evening, I reconsidered that little discovery: a spot in the universe where it was, indeed, possible to be at the nexus of absolute opposites. Here I was, opening my laptop that night, preparing to chase after Theresa Blaising Stevens' roots. And what did I find? Two brothers claiming their father was named Henry, while the rest of the brothers—if they acknowledged anyone at all—told their families their father's name was Lawrence.

Wait. Either he was, or he wasn't...unless we are at the corner of Sunrise and Sunset.

Such a tidy tale was presented in Theresa's mother's obituary. Perhaps in 1907, that was the way the world was: organized and orderly. The family lore said Mary Blaising's husband was Lawrence, so that was who he was. And that he died in Paris, in service to his native France, prompting his widowed wife's exodus in 1866—along with ten children—to America.

Perhaps that is more a romantic notion than a report of reality. One disrupting detail: there was a "Laurent" Blaising who died in Paris—but his death came sixteen years after the supposed precipitating event that propelled a desperate widow and her ten orphaned children to seek asylum in the United States.

But remember: we are at the corner of Sunrise and Sunset, where little oxymoronic details—dead? or alive? Schrödinger?—matter little. It is that romantic notion that plays well in those 1907 obituaries and in stories families repeat to themselves.

In the here and now of 1907, perhaps the stories the children repeated to themselves provided comfort. But for us in their future, at that corner of Sunrise and Sunset, we can look back through time—and several assembled digitized documents—and sort through the details. We can reconstruct historic timelines as well as personal and family timelines and see whether the plot lines can even intersect.

While my French may be a bit rusty, we'll take a look next week at what can be found about Mary Blaising's husband, whoever he might have been.

What the Records Say —If we Can Find Them

 

One way to confirm a relative's parents' names might be to view the subsequent death records of that relative's siblings. In our search to confirm the parents of Theresa Blaising Stevens, my father-in-law's grandmother, that is what we will attempt to do today—if we can find such records.

According to Theresa's mother's 1907 obituary, six brothers remained to her after their mother's passing. Fortunately, each of those named brothers was also identified by his current place of residence. Of course, I would have further appreciated any mention of each sibling's spouse's name as well, but I'll take what I can get.

For the first child mentioned in Mary Ann Blaising's obituary, Henry, his own death certificate didn't offer much help. Though Henry lived in the same town as his mother at the point of her death, by the time of his own passing in 1931, he was living in Texas. Those left to mourn the eighty two year old immigrant, however, were hard pressed to provide information for Henry's death certificate. For his father's name, a scrawling handwriting entered what looked like an abbreviation: "Hy." Henry? And for mother's maiden name, not even a guess, though she apparently outlived her husband by years. However, the informant, Henry's daughter Rose, did know that he had been born in Lorraine, France.

Well, what about the second of Theresa's siblings? August apparently remained in New Haven long after his mother's passing there. But when we look for his own records, we spot one detail which may cause us some research problems: he was listed as J. August Blaising. Could he have been born a Jean August? No matter, we can see from that certificate, thankfully entered in a very clear handwriting, that his father's name was given as Henry Blaising. August's mother, according to his death certificate, was listed as Mary Hershbeck.

The only problem with seeing the two brothers' father listed as Henry Blaising was that Mary's own obituary gave her husband's name as Lawrence. Since the third child mentioned in Mary's obituary was also named Lawrence, I looked to his residence in Albany, New York, for any clarification, but so far have found nothing—making that task a work still in progress.

On I went through each of the sons listed in Mary's obituary. With some, I encountered problems. For son Louis, his typewritten certificate simply provided a given name for his father, something that looked like Lauren, but for the mother, "unknown." But a record of Louis' application for a marriage license made up for that lack, providing the name of his father as Lawrence Blaising. And for his mother, an interesting twist: her name was given as Mary Hershbach.

Once again I spotted variations on the sons' own names. Like his brother August, Philip was buried with a telltale leading initial "J"—Jean Phillipe?

All that leads me to wonder: if that family were indeed from France, could it be possible that not only the given names like "Louis"—spelled "Lewis" in his marriage record—were Americanized, but could the same have happened to the very surname they were all known by? What if we approached a more phonetic rendition of the possible original surname? Could it actually have been something more like Blesin? Or if truly German, as some census records had indicated, could the name have originally looked like Blaessing or Bläsing?

At some point, we'll need to take a deep breath and attempt that flying leap across the void to the continent where the family originated. We'll let the romanticized version of the family's story from Mary's obituary help guide us, but we need to be open to other possibilities as we consider the documentation.

Theresa's Six Surviving Siblings

 

One way to confirm those doubtful listings of parents' names in a death certificate might be to compare what was given in a sibling's own record. Thankfully in our case, while seeking confirmation of Theresa Blaising Stevens' parents' names, we have at least six opportunities to do so: her six siblings still remaining after their mother's 1907 passing.

According to the Fort Wayne, Indiana, obituary for Mary Blaising, she originally came to the United States from France with ten of her children. By the time of her passing, seven of those descendants remained, including Theresa herself. They were Theresa's brothers Henry, August, Lawrence, John, Philip, and Louis. Granted, those were their Americanized names, but that list provides us a starting point for launching our search for other confirmations of the Blaising children's parents' names.

Unfortunately, while this sounds like a straightforward proposition, in reality these research quests are not so easily accomplished. For one thing, if you know anything about French given names, you may realize that there may be more coming into play here than a mere Americanization of their names. The possibility of two given names for one son—such as Jean Phillipe instead of simply Philip, for instance—might make one son appear as if there were actually two, depending on how inconsistently those two names were used.

Looking back to the 1870 census, where we first found Theresa and her family in New Haven, Indiana, we can see there were seven children listed. Whether the names were not totally identical to those in Mary's obituary may be a case of editorial error on the part of the newspaper where Mary's obituary had been published—or perhaps a case of census enumerator error in the 1870 census. Whatever the case might be, that 1870 census provides a sister for Theresa rather than all brothers. And there was no sign of a son named Lawrence, despite that child most likely being a namesake for his father, who was by then presumed dead back in France, or at least not likely to have fathered another son after 1870.

No matter; now that we have at least a partially confirmed list of Theresa's siblings, our next task will be to trace the location of each sibling to find records of each sibling's family across the decades, and particularly to locate their own death certificates. Let's see whether the names of Mary Blaising's parents still turn out to be Henry "Herochbeck" and Mary Ann Becker.