I-Gene Awards 2012-And the winners are...

Thanks to Jasia, at Creative Gene for once again hosting the annual I-Gene awards, an opportunity for the genealogy blogging community to look back over the past year and salute each other's best posts in five categories. Here are my choices for Family Archaeologist for 2011 Let the awards begin!

Best Biography: Dress Designer Extraordinaire My maternal grandmother, Aloisia Woschkeruscha, earned a dressmaker diploma in Vienna, Austria. In honor of Women's History Month last year, I posted a brief biography of her, accompanied by this photo of Aloisia posing in her graduation masterpiece.

Best Comedy: Going to the Dogs My trip to Romania in 2007 confirmed my grandfather's warning: It's a bad idea to name a girl "Linda!"

Best Documentary: It has to be the series of my paternal grandmother, Lisi's, journey to America as recorded in her diary from Transylvania to New York. It begins when she ships her trunk to America: Farewell, My Homeland, and continues with her Train Journey (Part I), then onward to the Port of Bremen, Train Journey Part II-To Catch a Ship. On board the steamer, Kaiser Wilhelm II, it's Lisi's Moveable Feast and From Ship to American Soil until, finally: Central Park, NY "I've Arrived!"

Best Screenplay, a love story:  Falling in love––70 years ago My mother's diary of meeting and falling in love with my father begins with this post on October 11, 2011, and unfolds in a weekly series over the next several months (it's ongoing even now on this blog), as she pours out her heart in these "engaging, sweet, and vivid entries, full of hope and promise." If you ever were madly in love, this serial "screenplay" will take you right back to that emotional high.

Close up from above photo: Josef Gartz, age 23. 1912

Best Picture: Joe Nelson's Saloon, 1912. Free Sandwich with that Beer! My grandfather, Josef Gartz, finally landed a decent-paying job at this saloon, at Crawford and Madison on Chicago's West Side. And it came with food! This photograph of an early 20th Century saloon, with my grandfather (background, above, and close-up, right)  at age twenty-three, is a classic. It's the oldest one we have of Josef after his arrival in America in January, 1911. My grandmother's letter, in which she references this job, is included with the post and brings their monetary struggles to life.

I will come

The blue flowers are "forget-me-nots"

Josef’s long, heartfelt letter of May 25th, 1911, (click: If you love me...) could not yet have reached Lisi in Transylvania when she picked out this sweet postcard and wrote to him on May 30th.
For one thing, she chastises him for sending her such a “short” response, making clear she hasn’t yet seen the May 25th letter in which he exhorts her, in determined pleadings, to come to America (“If you love me, you will come here”).

She’s also annoyed that he has told her not to show his writing to anyone else, and yet recently has written to her (prior to May 25th) on a postcard which anyone can read. She, however, sends this postcard in an envelope (the entire back is filled with her writing, with no space for an address.)

Below is an approximate translation.

Note: Sepp is a nickname for Josef (think of the Italian for Josef, GiuSEPPe, and it makes sense):

May 30, 1911

Dearest Sepp,

Thank you for all your letters and also postcards, which I’ve received. But your answer to my long letter is very short. Also, you asked me to keep all the writing from you to me hidden from the eyes of others, but then you send me a post card where everyone can read what you say! That’s the main reason I feel annoyed and am uncertain if I should make the trip to America.

But just like the flowers [bloom] on this card [forget-me-nots], joy blooms in my heart because I know that I love you and that you love me. God knows what is right. I have in mind that I should come.

Picture this:
You are a twenty-three year old young woman--one hundred years ago. You were raised in a small town of all German-speaking people, and now work in the larger town eighteen miles away.  You secured an enviable job with one of the most prominent families in the area, a family of merchants, politicians, church luminaries, doctors. You’ve served them well, especially the mistress of the house, been responsible for the vast staff she has to feed and manage, taken care of her little daughter and loved her as your own.

But the love of your life has traveled to a strange land 5,000 miles distant--a land where you won’t understand the language, have no idea of the customs, habits, expectations. He sees the opportunities in America and has made it clear: he will never come back to Transylvania. He wants you to come to marry him…now! He doesn’t want to wait, and “if you love me,” he says, “you will come here to marry me.” (see If you love me...)

The translation is difficult, but it seems Lisi is leaning toward joining Josef in America. But by the time she writes again, she will have received Josef's desperate pitch ("If you don't come here,  I know you don't love me." see If you love me...). Her response on June 7, 1911 -- up next.

I look forward to your hearing from you. Please click on the word "comments," centered, below this post and leave me a message.

The Roma in Grosspold

Travel Tuesday

It was getting later into the afternoon by the time we left Frau Sonnleitner, her pigs, and her dog named Linda. (See Going to the Dogs) with no luck in finding the Ebner Hof, my great-grandfather, Samuel Ebner’s, home in Grosspold, Romania.

Pastor Meitert said he would make further inquiries on his own, and we could check with him the next day. Right now, he wanted to show us the “Zigeuner” (gypsy) part of town. Today “gypsies” prefer being called Roma. Many Roma consider “gypsy” derogatory and want to avoid the stereotypes associated with the word.

After we had passed through the main section of Grosspold, we ascended into the upper, Roma, part of town. At one of the first intersections, we saw a shirtless man hand-shoveling what appeared to be the lumbered remnants of some structure, cluttering the street. Nearby a woman was burning refuse of indeterminate origin in a fenced-in, barren, expanse of land.

Once we passed the burning rubbish, the air cleared, and we turned down the last street with small homes on either side. It was a lovely September day and groups of people were walking or sitting outside.

Everyone was unfailingly friendly, often asking to pose with us for photos. I promised I would send them all copies, which I did, through Pastor Meitert, to be sure they would get them. We were clearly an oddity. My brothers are both over six feet tall, and we three women (cousin Maria, my brother Bill’s wife, and I) range from 5’6”-5’10”, two of us very blond. Our towering height and sturdy western clothes must have made us look like gigantic aliens to the much shorter and dark-haired, dark-eyed Roma.

Roma posing with brother, Bill,  and his wife, Robin

Although young parents and kids also dressed in western styles, the older folks, especially the women, were layered in a grab-bag of colorful clothing. House slippers with socks were the most common form of footwear for everyone.



It appeared that running water was not universally available. We saw a young woman drawing water from a centrally-located well, pouring it into her own bucket, and then carrying it home, listing left with the weight.


At the far end of the last street, we came to the highest part of town, where we saw a young boy and girl sitting on a wall. I thought they were quite beautiful with the setting sun lighting up their faces, and gestured to ask if I could take their picture. They agreed and looked right into the lens, with no need to “smile for the camera.”

Roma children in Grosspold

A few steps further and we had a magnificent view of the town from whence we had climbed. As twilight drew near, we looked down on the highway and my grandmother’s church in the German part of town below. Just as in my grandmother’s time, the Roma still lived separately from, and more poorly than, the mainstream population. While we had come searching for touchstones to my grandmother’s past, we had unexpectedly met up with another ethnic group whose history has also been intertwined with Grosspold, and our visit was richer because of it.

As we turned to head back down, Pastor Meitert promised us he’d make further inquiries into the whereabouts of the Ebner Hof. When we called him the next day, he had indeed made some amazing discoveries--beyond what we expected. Coming soon.

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Spilling Secrets

 Lutheran Church, Neppendorf
Welcome

TRAVEL TUESDAY

Come, enter with me into the courtyard of the Evangelische Kirche Neppendorf. We’ve been here before -- and learned when and from where (late 18th century and Gerstheim, Alsace, respectively) our forebears made their way to this little German community that became home to the Gerz/Gärtz family for nearly two centuries.

Like all families, they faced their share of trouble and tragedy: poverty, illegitimate children, death by sometimes tragic means. But tucked into the back of the church, a small museum celebrated the good things in life: the communal spirit and optimistic outlook of Neppendorf and Siebenbürgen residents. It was an ethic based on the belief  that anything is possible--if you’re willing to work for it. We also discovered a stunning and unknown connection between our own family and this museum.

Embroidery-typical of Siebenbürgen.
  Similar to samples my grandmother,
Elisabeth (Lisi) Ebner, created

At the top of a small flight of stairs, Renate, the church secretary who had been our guide to our family’s genealogical history in Neppendorf, pushed open a heavy wooden door, revealing a small, neat, brightly lit museum of German life in Transylvania, and Neppendorf in particular. I felt immediately at home among the familiar--looking artifacts: musical instruments, furniture, books, and needle work in the same style my grandmother created, thick black or red embroidery on white woven cloth. I’d lived in Germany for a year as a college student and yet never felt as if I’d “come home” as I did here.

The walls were lined with photos, displaying Neppendorf weddings, families, individuals, the town’s celebrated band, the rebuilding of their church. As we pondered the wedding photos, brother Bill paused, his eyes widening. “Wait! Isn’t this Grandpa’s sister?” Cousin Maria and I stared. Sure enough, Katarina Gärtz and her bridegroom, Josef Huber, stared back at us across the past century, posing in their wedding finery, holding hands, in 1912.

As we made our way around the room, shouts of recognition continued. In this little church museum, 5000 miles from our home in Chicago, we discovered three photographs that we recognized from our own family collection. Had we not come, we never would have known that our family’s photos help tell the story of the Siebenbürgen Germans in Neppendorf!

1911 Photograph. Left to right: 
Katarina Gärtz, Elisabetha
Ebner (my grandma), and Sarah
Reisenauer, Josef Gärtz's cousin.

On this wall we found a photo of my grandmother posing with Katarina Gärtz, Josef’s sister, and Sara Reisenauer, his cousin. It's the same photo my parents had included in a family history photo album they had made for us kids in 1984.

But it wasn’t until almost three years after this visit, when I was able to decipher and translate the missives between my grandparents, that the previously-unknown significance of this iconic photo emerged from the pages of a long-buried letter. Stay tuned for that stunner, coming up as we follow the correspondence between Lisi and Josef. 

Photo Collage, Museum
Katarina Gärtz/Huber
and family in upper right hand
corner. Close up below right.

MONTAGE TITLE: 

Die Neppendörfer liebten immer das Schöne, die Gemeinschaft und die Arbeit

The final picture was another of Josef’s Sister, Katarina -- this time with her husband and children, also our personal family history album. This last photo was in the upper right corner of a display headed with a joyous statement about what my grandfather’s fellow- townspeople held dear. It says, in English: “Neppendorfers always loved beauty, community, and work.”

Katarina Gärtz/Huber, husband,
Josef and their 2 children

It doesn’t mention “fun,” and I think I know why. I feel pretty confident that working people of that era didn't pursue “fun” as relentlessly as so many do today--as an end in itself. First of all--there wasn't time. But humans need fun--so it was delivered by working together--as part of a community, creating beauty--in their gardens, their needlework, their craftsmanship, their churches, their homes, their singing-and then reveling in their creations. Yes, life was harder, illness and death ever-present, but perhaps without directly seeking “fun,” they found it in the pleasure of the every-day, and with it, satisfaction--whence they derived happiness.

And more discoveries were to come, including our family’s role in the musical life of the town. The Gärtz known as the “John Philip Sousa” of Neppendorf helped bring the town joy and renown after the devastation of war. Next up on Travel Tuesday.

LINK TO THIS POST:

Genea-Musings

The Real Dracula

Vlad Drăculea III

TRAVEL TUESDAY 
When I tell friends or new acquaintances that my grandparents hailed from Transylvania, the Dracula jokes start flying (“Well, I guess I’ll watch my neck” or “Good Bloodlines,” and so on).

For those who don’t know how the Dracula legend got started, I thought I’d give you a thumbnail sketch. The real Dracula (upon whom it is believed that Bram Stoker derived at least the moniker for his novel’s main character) was a fearsome leader who literally made people’s blood run--and whose name alone made the blood run cold. He became "Prince of Wallachia," so a bit about that centuries' old principality is in order.

Wallachia (in yellow)  around 1390.
Note "Kingdom of Hungary" to the north. Ottoman Empire directly south.

Wallachia was originally founded in about 1290, but taken over by the Ottoman Empire in the early 15th century. Wallachia was just south of present day Romania.

Vlad Drăculea III (sometimes spelled Drakulye, meaning “son of the dragon”) was born in 1431 in Sighişoara (SIG ee SHWOR uh), called Schässburg by the Germans. It is one of the seven walled cities in Transylvania that give the area its German name, Siebenbürgen (seven fortresses).

In 1436 Vlad III’s dad, Vlad II, was made ruler of Wallachia, but was ousted just six years later in 1442 by rivals with Hungarian backing. Vlad II persuaded the Ottoman Empire to support him in getting back his throne, but they agreed only on the condition he give them two sons, including Vlad II, as hostages to ensure he would stay loyal. Vlad II was imprisoned, beaten, and whipped, and God knows what else by the Ottomans, ensuring his enduring hatred of them.

Vlad, the dad, was killed in 1447, and in 1456, Vlad, the lad (now age 25), reconquered his native land of Wallachia, which he found in economic ruin. He created laws to renew trade, help merchants and peasants, and imposed harsh punishments for thieves and robbers (the adjective “Draconian” might be used, but “Vladian” seems more appropriate).

My ancestors had not yet arrived in Transylvania when Vlad was ruler, and a good thing too. Because Vlad thought the Transylvanian Germans had helped to bring about Wallachia’s ruin, he raided their cities and impaled several Saxons in Kronstadt.

Impaling is what Vlad became most famous for, and his adorable nickname became Vlad Tepeş (TSEP-esh), meaning “Vlad, the Impaler.”

Vlad "The Impaler"
His sculpture near the town center of
Sighisoara, Romania, his birthplace.
 Western Europeans thought Vlad was a
monster, but in  Eastern Europe he was
admired for fighting off the Turks.

Vlad was a “take no prisoners” sort of ruler. If anyone broke his laws--men, women, children--punishment was the same. He instigated war with the Ottomans by nailing the turbans of some Turkish envoys to their heads because they wouldn’t “remove their hats” in his presence. That got their attention. Sure enough, the Ottomans invaded, but Vlad ambushed them and skewered all that didn’t die in the fighting.

He was superb at psychological warfare, once staking 20,000 people of all ages around his home town to freak out invading Ottoman forces. It worked. They turned back. A woodcut from the era shows Vlad dining while surrounded by his impaled victims. I want this to be a family friendly site, so this post won’t get into the grisly details. If you want to learn more, click on one of the links.

Needless to say, the real “Dracula” was a far more fearsome creature than the one Bram Stoker devised, and I’m just glad my forebears waited a couple of centuries before emigrating from Germany to Transylvania. Part of the fun of genealogy is imagining what our ancestors’ lives were like. I wouldn’t want to imagine them living under the rule of Vlad Tepeş.

Travel Tuesday-Transylvania Sights & Family Secrets

Welcome to the first post for “Travel Tuesday.” I plan to use Tuesdays to highlight the roots-finding trip my brothers and I made to Transylvania, Romania, in September, 2007. I’ve suggested this topic to Genea-bloggers as another possible prompt to which others may wish to contribute about genealogy research trips they have taken, and/or to highlight the lands of their ancestors.

Transylvanian Countryside

One of the scores of horse-drawn carts in Transylvania

A Breathtaking Land


The theme of Travel Tuesday is two-fold. One is to introduce my wonderful readers to the not-yet-fully discovered, gorgeous region of Transylvania in Romania. Some of the places we visited are as beautiful, historic, and fascinating as any destination in Europe. Romania is caught in a bit of a time-warp. We saw scenes every day that one would have to go back forty to sixty years to see in Western Europe: ubiquitous horse-drawn carts hauling harvests on the secondary highways, men actually cutting grass with scythes in the fields, cone-shaped haystacks out of another time, parents and youngsters working side-by-side to harvest potatoes. Breath-taking mountains and valleys, dotted with farms and grazing animals, created an unfolding panorama, a new view around each bend.

Ubiquitous cone-shaped haystacks squat throughout
the countryside

Gleaning Genealogical Treasures on a Roots-finding Journey


The second theme is to share the genealogical discoveries such a trip afforded us, which I hope will encourage others to travel to their ancestors’ native lands, if for no other reason than to breathe the air, and be part of the geography in which previous generations lived. In some places, this is no longer possible, so much was destroyed in the wars or built up with 20th century sprawl. But some vestige of the past probably remains that your imagination can latch onto as we all love to envision the reality of our ancestors’ lives.

So I’ve used up most of my words today just introducing this idea, but will begin next week where my my journey to Romania began: in Crailsheim, Germany, where the present-day Gärtz family, my cousins, settled after leaving Romania.

Family Resemblance


In my previous post, I wrote about my 1995 trip to meet these relatives for the first time in my life. The goal of my most recent visit in 2007, twelve years after the first, was to visit again with a part of the family that had actually lived and grown up in interview the elder Gärtz, Hans, and find out what I could about my grandfather and life in Romania.

Hans Gärtz and me. Hans's grandfather
was my grandfather's half-brother

I was struck, as Hans spoke to me, how much his gestures resembled those of my grandfather, Josef. Just like Josef, Hans used his hands, often spreading the fingers wide, palms down, to emphasize a point, leaning back, then forward in his chair, as he shared stories from Neppendorf, the little town he and my grandfather’s called home.

Like Josef, Hans laughed easily and had a quick sense of humor, Hans didn’t know Josef, who had emigrated before he was born, but Hans’s father, knew him. “Josef was always full of silliness,” his father had recalled. Same guy I knew -- always sticking his false teeth out at us grandkids to get a laugh.

Critical Family History Details Revealed in Interview


Hans’s interview, two years before I found Josef’s diary, was the first time I had heard that Josef had left Romania on Christmas Eve, and that he didn’t have the proper papers to leave. “He just wanted to go,” Hans said, “and didn’t want to wait.” When I found the diary, corroborating the Christmas Eve departure, combined with Hans’s story about missing papers (not mentioned in the diary) it was like the click of a lock. I knew I had important details, which explained why Josef had to escape detection at the borders. Without the Hans interview, I would have been left wondering what that was all about.

Lesson: interview your relatives!

So, dear readers, in order to keep these posts brief and readable in everyone's limited time, I’ll continue the Romania story on Travel Tuesdays over the next several months.

Life and Death - Abbreviated

Grosspold Family Book 

My grandmother kept a photo of her hometown church tucked into the hymnbook she brought with her from Romania. No wonder. That church was more than just a place of worship. It was the repository of her entire community's history. That's why my brothers and I made the Grosspold Lutheran Church a crucial stop on our roots-finding mission to Transylvania/Siebenbürgen in 2007. But we had no idea just what we would discover. 

After finding the Ebner family house number (403) during our background research in Hermannstadt/Sibiu, we arranged to meet the Grosspold church’s minister, Pastor Meitert, who presented us with enormous volumes of ancient ledgers and narrowed down our grandmother’s family to this one. Centuries of handling is worn into its cover on which is handwritten: Familienbuch Grosspold  [Grosspold Family Book].


Like churches throughout Europe, the Lutheran church in Grosspold encapsulated the lives of its parishioners in columns and dates maintained in "Family Books." A sense of life’s harsh calculus in 19th century Europe emerges from those stark numbers.

Pastor Meitert used the Ebner “house number” (Grosspold has no typical street addresses -- only house numbers) to search the book, and began turning the pages. History was literally unfolding before our eyes. At the top of page 283, the name “Samuel Ebner,” my grandmother’s father, was handwritten under the heading, “Name of Family Member.” 

Here’s page 283, photographed at the church. 

Samuel Ebner Family-Page 283
in Familienbuch

Under Samuel's name is "Elisabetha Ebner, geb. Eder" [née Eder], my grandmother's mother. The next three columns record the "year and date" of each family member's birth, marriage, and death. (I cropped out additional columns with little info to make viewing easier).


The entries show Samuel Ebner was born December 20, 1854, and married Lisi’s mother, Elisabetha Eder, on November 23, 1879. He was 24. Born September 3, 1863, Elisabetha was only 16.  

Their first child, Maria, arrived about two years later, February, 1882. What good news this book holds! I imagine Samuel and Elisabetha's  thrill. But then the entries turn tragic. The next baby, born in December, 1883, was named Elisabetha, after her mother. It was winter. She died three and half weeks later. A little boy, Samuel, bearing his father’s name, was born in April,1886. The book records he died July 2, 1886, living only two months.

Names were assigned to children over and over until they could stick. My grandmother was given the same name as her deceased sister, Elisabetha. But the book erroneously records her birth as July 30, 1886, impossible since baby Samuel was born three months prior to that date. The year should have been 1887. 


A good archaeologist has to be sure even recorded history makes sense! But it makes me wonder. Was the pastor pondering little Samuel’s birth and death dates when he absentmindedly entered the wrong year for my grandmother's birth? 

Only 23 when my grandmother was born, my great-grandmother had already suffered through the deaths of two children. But more heartache for the family was to come. In May, 1890, little Johann was born. He lived one year. My grandmother would have been nearly three when her baby brother died. Her parents’ grief must have affected even a child so young, but she never spoke of it. She would have plenty of other losses to hold in her heart.

Elisabetha gave birth again in June, 1893, another little boy, again named Samuel.  But his mother never got to see her only son live to grow up. Death bypassed Samuel -- for the time being -- and sought out his mother this go-around. On January 13, 1898, thirty-four-year-old Elisabetha succumbed to what Grandma later told us was pneumonia. The book doesn’t record the cause of death, but in an era prior to antibiotics, disease was the likely culprit for every death the Ebners endured. In this one family's ancient record, we see first-hand the kind of loss endured by virtually all families of the era. 

Left motherless, Lisi (my grandmother's most common nickname) clung ever more tightly to the father she adored. But then he, too, she felt, was taken from her. How what happened next spawned an amazing coincidence a century later.

Pastor Meitert shows the Family Book
to brother Bill and me 

Grosspold Lutheran Church rising above townscape