Also of note, Lindemann-wise...

My second great grandmother, Augusta Lindemann Stutzmann, had an older brother, Reinhold, so for fun, I plugged his name into Google (with an unusual name like that, your results are more likely to be related to the person you're looking for...not something I'm ever lucky to experience when I Google myself, and yes, sometimes I do Google myself)... anyway, I got a hit for Reinhold Lindemann along with a mention of his daughter, Elsie, and her two daughters, Ruth and Dorothy Koch. Bingo. Those are all people I already have in my tree. They turned up in an entry for the book "Rising from Rubble: Germany Revisited" by a Kenneth Weaver, about his experiences photographing post-WW II Europe for the US military. Reinhold, Elsie, and Ruth and Dorothy all show up because Kenneth Weaver befriended a Wilbur "Goldy" Goltermann while in the military and Goldy was married to Ruth. Goldy and Ruth introduced Weaver to Ruth's sister, Dorothy, who Weaver eventually ended up marrying. So I thought that was pretty interesting, finding relatives in a book, and being able to add information to my tree - not only Dorothy and Ruth's husbands but the fact that they grew up living with their mother and grandfather, Reinhold, after Reinhold rescued Elsie from her abusive marriage. It's all about rounding out the picture and making these names in my tree living, breathing three-dimensional people.

Anyway, Ruth and Dorothy are (were? I think Dorothy is still alive...) my second cousins twice removed...

An interesting Lindemann mystery to keep me busy...

...I mean, there are really all sorts of ways I manage to keep myself genealogically busy whenever I'm at a complete impasse on all roads, as I am right now. Today I was doing so by just randomly typing relatives' and ancestors' names into Google and seeing what turned up. It was while I was looking up my 3rd great-grandfather, Casper Lindemann, that I noticed Martin Luther kept turning up as well. So this is what I discovered today - Martin Luther's mother's maiden name was Lindemann and he had a first cousin by the name of Caspar Lindemann. Could there be a connection there? Martin Luther was born in Eisleben, Germany in 1483. My Casper Lindemann was born in Stedtlingen, Germany about 200 kilometers away and about 350 years later. Is it worth making note of? Absolutely. Is it a connection I'll ever be able to make? Who knows. I've only traced the Lindemanns back as far as Casper's parents, Casper Lindemann and Anna Marshal, which only brings me to, at best, the end of the 18th century. But it gives me a genealogical goal to focus on and work toward.

Nicknames

Sometimes when I'm doing genealogy, I get so used to the formal, entire name of a person - Hiram Horatio Raynor, for example, or you know, say, Maria Eva Justina Dauch Berg (what a mouthful!) - that I forget that the people who knew and loved them whether parents, spouses, or friends, probably didn't refer to them as, say, "Richard William Poole." My sister is a Margaret and we call her Maggie, but that affectionate diminuitive of her name might possibly get lost in future generations of genealogists, who will probably record her as "Margaret Anne." Even my brother Tim will probably be remembered as Timothy. So I'm trying to start to record the nicknames as I learn them. Some I already know - my grandfather, Clifford Monroe Raynor, was known as Dick, my great-grandmother Amelia Berg Raynor was called Millie, and my great-grandmother Ellen Casey Cronin (sometimes called Nellie) had sisters Maggie (Margaret), Jennie (Genevieve) and Lizzie (Elizabeth). Some nicknames I'm just learning - my second great grandfather Joseph James Raynor was called "J.J." and my second great grandfather James Gorry was called "Jimmy" by his widow. In a way, these nicknames make them feel even more like real people - people who lived and laughed and loved. And knowing if someone went by a nickname can also be helpful in actual genealogy research. If you can find Margaret in one census but not another, look her up under Maggie. A great uncle Michael of mine was listed in one census as Mike. And don't forget Mary as Molly!

The intertwinement of genealogy and history

For all my interest in my colonial roots, I never really look at it in context of American colonial history. American colonial times are not my favorite period in history. Early, early colonial, like the early 1600s and the Pilgrims and Jamestown and the Great Migration, yes. American Civil War, yes. Western European history - medieval especially, the Roman Empire, yes. But 1700s America, both early and late... I know my family were Loyalists. And that's about it. But looking into St. George's Church has awakened some interest, I'll admit. And for some reason I've started to become interested in Washington Irving and his early American (New York State) folklore (he wrote in the 1800s but about New York in the 1700s...). Maybe I should start reading James Fenimore Cooper. I always enjoyed The Last of the Mohicans...

Anyway, the point is, once again, that genealogy is inseparably intertwined with history. You can be interested in history without being interested in genealogy, but if personally, I don't see how you can be interested in genealogy without being interested in history.

While I'm at it, I think I should start looking at my colonial Dutch roots more. I always focus on the English, but the English settlers at Hempstead were actually smack dab in the middle of Dutch territory (the English settled what is now Suffolk County, while the Dutch were in New York out to Nassau County), and the English families invariably intermarried with some of the original Dutch families in the area. You can't look at colonial New York without looking at the colonial Dutch (just ask Washington Irving).

Interesting note that I just learned, as I was writing this entry - Washington Irving is the person who popularized the term "Gotham" for "New York."

Long live Batman!

Hempstead history: St. George's Episcopal Church

This is a new section I've decided to try called "Hempstead History," since so much of my genealogical research is tied to Long Island in general and the Hempstead area of Long Island specifically. I'm a bit of a history buff so I love learning everything about the people, times, and places, but in genealogy, the more complete a picture you can paint, the more you'll get to know your ancestors and the more you'll understand about your family and yourself. You can learn so much about a person or at least begin to form assumptions about them just from where they lived - what their occupation might have been, religion, ethnic background just to name a few. So in this section, I think I'll probably deal with specifics to my genealogical research - for those of you researching Long Island families, we're all tied together by our history, so even if it's not your specific family it will probably still apply. And if you've never heard of Hempstead, never even been to the East Coast, and just don't give a hoot about any Raynors, Seamans or Smiths, that's okay too - maybe just reading the things I discuss wlll give you new ideas about places specific to your own genealogical research that you've never considered before that might give you new insight into your family.

Okay, so the inaugural "Hempstead history" post is about St. George's Episcopal Church, located on Front Street in Hempstead. If you have colonial English Long Island roots, chances are you have someone in your family who was either baptized or married in this church.



For all my research, there are a lot of local historical places I've never been, so when I found myself in Hempstead last week, I decided to finally stop by St. George's and take some photos. Besides the church and rectory buildings, the whole church grounds are an old cemetery. The names are all familiar old families - Rhodes, Seabury, Weeks.




The original church was built in 1702, making this parish more than 300 years old. St. George's received a charter from King George in 1735 (which is whom I would assume the church is named after, right?) The current church building you see in these photos was built in 1822. Both the church and the rectory are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Not just Hempstead but most of Nassau remained loyal to England during the Revolution, so much so that Loyalist from other colonies fled here during the war, but because of that, British troops used St. George's as a headquarters as well.




By the 1700s, much of my family was located further south, closer to Freeport and the shore, but in 1787 my 8th great grandparents Jacob Raynor and Rebecca Raynor were married at St. George's and in 1815 my 4th great grandparents Richard Poole and Sarah Ackerly were married there as well.

To give you an idea of how old the current building is, when it was built:
* James Monroe, our 5th president, was in the White House...
* Abraham Lincoln was 13 years old...
* Missouri had just become a state the year before and there were only 24 states in the US...
* Ulysses S. Grant was born...
* Beethoven was still alive
* The California gold rush was still 27 years away...
* The transcontinental railroad was still about 40 years away...
* Davy Crockett had just begun his career in politics...

Also something I thought was extremely interesting and revealing that I discovered today while I was researching St. George's (many of their baptismal, marriage, and funeral records have been transcribed and can be found at www.longislandgenealogy.com) is that St. George's, but also other local churches such as Christ's Presbyterian, which was also in Hempstead, had black members. In the 1790s and early 1800s. A 1790 marriage record at St. George's reads "Jacob and Mary - freed blacks" and there is an 1850 death record at Christ's Presbyterian for 82 year old Jacob Johnson, who was listed as both "colored" but also as a church member. Amazing, amazing stuff. I'm sure the English settlers did not consider the black settlers to be equals, but I never thought they would be so forward-thinking as to allow early black Americans to be members of the same churches as them. Plus, when I think about it, I think of the Dutch, the English, and the American Indians, but I never much thought about the African-American population on early Long Island. Oh, the things we learn!

Commentary on the Michelle Obama story by Tony Burroughs...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/10/14/burroughs.obama.genealogy/index.html

Also, about the importance of preserving records, the importance of honing genealogical "detective" skills in order to track down and find the information that might be available but unorganized, uncatalogued, or unindexed, the advances constantly being made in preserving documents, and the growing amount of resources available to people tracing African-American and African ancestors.

The guy who wrote it, Tony Burroughs, spoke at a genealogy conference I went to in March 2008 for the Genealogy Federation of Long Island on "becoming a better genealogist" and I thought he was an excellent speaker. Well-spoken, knowledgeable, and knows how to make the topic interesting.

Read it!

Oh, the stories our lives weave...

This is an extremely interesting New York Times story about Michelle Obama's family tree, including her slave ancestors and her mixed-race ancestry. Also lists many of the sources used to find out that info, which I love - interesting *and* informative.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/us/politics/08genealogy.html