dallashistory

I know we have discussed the brick walls we often run up against in genealogical research here, before ... especially in connection to genetic markers. But I was wondering whether anyone else has stories of such barriers to tell ~ whether scaled or not.

For me, the two most insurmountable walls have stood before the origins of one of my paternal great-great-grandmothers and my paternal grandmother ... both of whom were adopted. Their cases would not be so maddening did I not possess record of their (supposed) birth names as well as numerous other clues. Yet, following these clues -- spurred on by hope in each case -- has been like chasing shadows, or taking the wrong way in a glass house. Nothing.

One of the dividends paid by brick walls, for those who love history generally, is the chance to explore past locales and their denizens ... that otherwise might have remained unfamiliar. This is the case for Nana and Fort Worth ... a treasure which my anonymous great-grandmother has left to be opened.

Here is one of the sadder photos to be placed for auction on eBay in recent months. The inscription on the back read:

"This was taken in the year of 1901, Jan 3 in our agreed seperation in Commercial [sic?] Tex, Then made up and seperated in June 10 1901 for keeps"

I post it here in case it might help shed light on someone else's brick wall. And of course ... it wouldn't be too difficult to search through divorce records for Hunt and nearby counties in order to narrow down the identities of this couple and their child. No names were given.

The photographer was the Driver studio of Commerce, Texas.

Lovely but sad photo.
I feel your angst. I have a couple brick walls of my own family and with others I m helping with my mother's paternal name.
Right now though I have been working on 2 of Mike's. His is a weird one mainly because all his other lines are so well documented--including these 2 and yet no records can be found for parents or marriage record in both cases. Just lots of assumptions.

In June we are going to Lafayette, LA for a Marsalis reunion! I have been designated official expert on all things Marsalis--.LOL.
All those Dutch spellings make for a fun time.

Brick walls seem to be inevitable unless perhaps you descend from royalty. I traced my father's line back to the 11th century only to find out via DNA testing that he was not my biological father. Those tests led me to two possible surnames, but no firm paper trail. On my mother's side I was able to trace my line back to early 18th century Pennsylvania. There's lot of interesting history there; and I plan to visit it this summer to learn more. The line can be traced back to Germany. I still haven't filled in all the gaps in the family history, but I think I eventually be able to trace the line back to at least about 1500. I've used DNA analysis (of my cousin on my mother's side) to try to understand the early origins of the y-chromosome. His y-dna is pretty unique. I've been able to trace its probable history. I think the y-chromosome separated off from the modal R1b1 haplotype somewhere in the area around Lake Constance, probably 1500 years ago or more. From there the descendants who carried that y-chromosome probably branched out in several directions along the major rivers of that region. The dna databases suggest that the majority of men with the y-chromosome lived along the Rhine River, especially near the intersection with other rivers, the Neckar River, the Main River, the upper Danube, and to the south along the Rhone River. The y-chromosome mutation can be found scattered up the Rhine River to Amsterdam and to the British Isles. But, the greatest density occurs in the mountain region of Switzerland west of Lake Constance. I traced the origins of the surname, Voegele, to the Rhine River as well. The surname origins appear to be in the Swabian Alb. The word means little bird, or delicate bird. The surname also seems to be dense along the same rivers as the y-chromosome, especially along the Rhine River in the upper or southern Rhine area of Mainz extending up to Cologne and beyond to the British Isles. The genealogy paper trail suggests that the immigrant from Germany was a sailor. I suspect he worked on the Rhine River, or possibly the Neckar, or Main. He seemed to be involved in maintaining the canal near Souchsberg, PA. He knew Conrad Weiser, who was a partner with Benjamin Franklin in colonial Pennsylvania. He was a Lutheran. His descendants moved down the wagon road to Virginia where the head of household was a mechanic who made and maintained the Conestoga Wagons that moved German and Scots Irish immigrants down the road. Eventually the family moved to Sevier County, Tennessee and from there to Texas. The last male member in the line worked making cotton gin equipment at Murray Gin Company. Later I worked for the same company doing many of the same jobs making replacement parts for the same type of cotton gins.

"In June we are going to Lafayette, LA for a Marsalis reunion! I have been designated official expert on all things Marsalis--.LOL.
All those Dutch spellings make for a fun time."

As you should be Sharon, and I bet they do (something that I've not had to confront as my few German lines -- the closest thing to what you're dealing with -- have been researched previously ~ and well) I am not the sleuth that you and Linda are and admire your skills greatly

Now, my Nana ~ the secrets of her past are probably trapped beneath Fort Worth's Water Gardens. It's hard for the vibes to flow now that Hell's Half Acre has been washed off the map.

adam... You've done a great job of dredging up details of ancestry, in spite of the glitch you found through DNA testing.

I'm very impressed and amazed, and I can't find such details on my old bones further back than in the late 1800s. I can trace my surname and a key surname on my maternal side back to the 1400s and 1600s, respectively, but just can't find details like you have.

Fred,
Luck plays a big part in it. I hit several brick walls along the way, before they suddenly opened up. I'll sketch out two of the brick walls to illustrate.

I traced the male line of my paternal grandfather back to Sevier Co, Tennessee and went there to visit the graveyards where all the family are buried. I knew the family surname meant "little bird" in middle high German and Yiddish, but almost everyone in the family considered themselves Scots Irish. The old cemetery was adjacent to a 19th century Baptist Church building that later became a Methodist Church, so I was thinking about the family's ethnicity. I took down all the names on all the oldest grave stones (about 3 dozen names) at one grave yard and about 20 surnames at the other graveyard. I went to the old farmland that they family owned in the 1800s. I went into all the old stores nearby and found some old guys playing cards in the back of a fish bait and equipment store. The scene was straight out of the movie Deliverance. This was back woods. The old boys there told me where I could find a woman whose brother was buried in the old graveyard (next to the church). She had the family Bible and pointed me to some other relatives of mine who lived in North Carolina. When I got home I got up on the internet, found a relative of a branch of the family who had separated off and went to Georgia following the cotton. My mother's branch went to East Texas for some of the same reasons. I sent an e-mail to this distant North Carolina cousin and he sent me all his genealogy materials, which allowed me to make the connection to the Christ's Lutheran Church in Stouchsberg, PA. That was an historic church, which had a lot of history online. I was able to fill in the details from books on Germans who came to America from the Palantine region of Germany. That led me to re-read a book on the Great Wagon Road (by Parke House, Jr.), which filled in most of the details I needed to track down Conrad Weiser, a famous personality of colonial Pennsylvania. I tracked down the historical societies for the county and found out about the canal that used to exist there in PA. The roles of the church listed my Voegele relative and by tracking down the people who witnessed their children's births, I was able to figure out the family occupations. That allowed me to backtrack my relative back down the wagon road to Virginia. I had the dates and places, so I was able to tell when they were there and why they moved to Tennessee when they did. (After the Cherokee and other Indians were removed - Trail of Tears). The family settled by the French Broad River and worked in a forge called Pigeon Forge. A Pigeon is a bird, so I looked for little bird. Sure enough, there was a little Pigeon River, although there doesn't seem to be a "little bird" Voegele reason for the name of that river. After I put all the paperwork together I had the full family history from the time of arrival of the family patriarch in the mid 1700s through the American Revolution, and down the great wagon migration paths as the West opened up, with verification all the way to Texas. The remaining task was to tie up the loose ends in Germany.

Tracking the y-chromosome geographic density took some effort. I'll write a separate post about that. Basically I took the dna databases for y-search and FTDNA and tracked down the descendants who had non-modal markers. That allowed me to hone in on Lake Constance, between Germany and Switzerland.

Tracking the surname origins was fairly easy for me and the most educational. I used the language skills I developed during my academic career and the internet to track the origin of the word. I had to sort out whether I had a German dialect, or Yiddish ethnicity. Learning that the family attended a Lutheran church in Pennsylvania led me to guess that the family had been Lutheran in Germany. The patriarch listed his nationality as Prussian, but I only had the point of origin of the ship the family took to America. I didn't have the specific church or town in Germany. I still haven't nailed that down for sure. I used the y-chromosome density to guess that I could find the family paper trail in a Lutheran church somewhere in Germany. I started searching for the names in the church records in the Black Forest, which are available online. Unfortunately their given names are very common there. There were too many. I started trying to map out the most common locations and found that most of the Voegele (or Voegelein) families lived along rivers, or in big towns. Voegelein seems to be the standard German spelling of Voegele, which appears to have originated in Swabia, possibly dating back to the time of the late Roman Empire. The name's origins may have some religious significance. It is more common among Protestants, especially Lutherans. There are some Voegele Catholics in Alsace, France and some (probably Jewish) girls and women with Voegele as a pet name or given name in East Europe. But, the dominant use appears along rivers in current Wurtumberg, Baden, or to a lesser extent Bavaria, Germany. Working back from Stouchsberg, PA to Cologne and Stuttgard, Germany, I think the family is distantly related to the philosopher Eric Voegelin. If that is so, and I can't prove it yet, the family might have derived from some of the earliest Protestants in Switzerland in the 1500s. The family typically used Biblical given names, such as Adam, David, Michael, Maria, etc. What I would like to track down next is whether there's some reason that some religious leaders took the Voegele surname. That part of the world is a stone's throw from the first (Guttenberg) printing presses, near the origins of German Pietist movements, and a hotbed of early Calvinist and Lutheran protestant movements, many of whom came to what is now New York state and Pennsylvania from the Palantine region in the 1600s. All very historical significant.

All the American historical sites are within fairly easy driving distance from my home. I will continue my search there. My primary goal is to learn a deeper appreciation of history. Learning more about my particular family just makes it more interesting for me.

They have river tours of Germany. I would be able to visit all the sites I have researched if I could convince my wife to go with me. She was within a few miles of some of them a decade ago when she gave a paper in Saarland. Her father fought in the Battle of the Bulge near there during World War II, so we could go to that battlefield at the same time. Coincidentally, her father also came from that general area of Germany/Switzerland. The patriarch of his family might have been a Hessian who stayed on in America after the Revolutionary war.

I could go on about other coincidences, but that's enough for now.
Thanks again for your interest.

adam, you're obviously a good sleuth who has done a great job of linking data from many different sources to construct the story of your genealogy. ......Excellent!

Well speaking of breaching walls--WOOHOO!!!
In the very late 1800s into early 1900s there was an effort to link Marsalis/Marseilles/Marselis lines.
Then in the late 50s and on into the 70s and on until today a group of Southern Marsalises tried to find more about their progenitors Peter H. Marsalis and his wife Mary Magdalene Gordon Marsalis.
Last week I finally after all these years stumbled upon the long searched for name that follows the initial "H".
Theories had abound for the 'H".
Peter H. Marsalis/Marseilles/Marselis had many land deeds in his name in Mississippi. Expecting to find another "Peter H." I opened one dated 1840 and there it was --5 times on the deed --Peter HUTCHINS Marsalis!

The really wonderful thing for us is that Mike's line is the only one that has carried the Hutchins name forward. Mike's great grandfather was Dr. Thomas Hutchins Marsalis, grandson of Peter H. Marsalis.
Now Peter H.'s grandparents were Harmon/Harmanus and Hannah Hutchins Marselis of New Jersey.
Hannah's brothers were Anthony and Thomas Hutchins. Anthony was one of the "founders" and a wealthy planter in Natchez, MS via SC via New Jersey. Thomas Hutchins (Anthony and Hannah's brother) was America's first cartographer - a geographer and a surveyor.