Plainview Family History Center: Fun discoveries with Charlotte Schlick

Charlotte Schlick was always a murky, shadowy name on my family tree, and that was it. I knew a lot about the Stutzmanns, but all I knew about Charlotte was that she died in Germany before her husband, Peter Stutzmann, joined his children in New York.

Charlotte was one of my German holdouts for a long time, but now, as it turns out, the Stutzmanns have clammed up and it's Charlotte's line that I'm able to trace further back. Thanks to her marriage record, I know that her parents were Rudolph Schlick and Ottilie Elisabetha Dhuy of Kleinbockenheim, Germany. I didn't order the microfilm that has her death record on it, but its possible I could find it - according to Schlegel's, she died about 1885. FamilySearch gave me the info on her parents and I verified it upon my Plainview Family History Center trip by checking the kirchenbuch for Grossbockenheim and Kleinbockenheim. But I'm very proud of myself, because I managed to find a piece of Charlotte all on my own.

According to Schlegel's, Peter Stutzmann and his son, Friedrich, both were confirmed in the Lutheran church at the age of 14. So I thought to myself, maybe there's a record for the females, too. I'm still working on finding a baptismal record for Peter and I couldn't find a confirmation record, but according to Charlotte's marriage record, she was born in 1819, so as I was scrolling through the kirchenbuch microfilm and I ran across confirmation records amongst the baptismal, marriage, and burial records I was actually focusing on, I thought, why not? Charlotte would have been 14 in 1833, so I scanned to that year. Boy, was that section of the microfilm a nightmare. Anyone NOT knowing what they were looking for would have an actual hell of a time trying to find the records they needed. But I knew Charlotte and I knew her parents, Rudolph and Ottilie, so while it was still a nightmare to read and I still haven't examined them that closely, their names almost literally jumped out at me.

I told you. Once they feel comfortable with you, they want to let you in.

So, here we have it, the one discovery I made on my own so far on my Family History Center excursions, Charlotte Schlick's confirmation record:

FHL #193802 - confirmations in Grossbockenheim, 1833

Charlotte is #5 - what I can read is Charlotte Schlick,, daughter of Rudolph Schlick and Ottilia, born DeHuy.

Every record you find that backs up the info you have is a good thing...(it's also okay if records don't match up, that's how we weed out the bad info) ... but it's so much cooler when they do! Rudolph and Ottilie/Ottilia, here I come!