Sons of Sara

I'm starting to think all this time I just wasn't trying hard enough. Lately I've been having a great deal of luck in identifying photos that I had long ago dismissed as "Unknowns" or "Names I'll never figure out." They've been on boxes for years and every time I dig through the archives I see them again and think "I'll never figure out who these people are" and put them back.

 But not today!

Today's triumph is a photo of two young men - boys, really. On the back in old, faded pencil is written "Sara Burdett Boys, Washington".

I have had no idea who Sara Burdett was.

This used to stop me from scanning and archiving photos, but not anymore. As I cataloged the "unknown" photos I decided to try and find the Sara Burdett and figure out just how we were related. I knew members of the Jackson family were on the west coast, so I thought maybe a connection existed there. I searched simply "Sara Burdett" and "Washington, USA" in Ancestry and came up with sparse results. I started going after one Sara who was born in Canada, but I quickly went down the rabbit hole and found myself looking at English families in the 1700s. Not my Sara.

 So I cleared the search and tried again. This time I found a Sara O. Burdett living in Washington in 1910. She was widowed at the time, so I had to do a few more searches to find her son, Thomas, and find him in an earlier Census with Sarah O. Burdett and her husband, Eli. Eli and Sara had two sons, Eli and Charles.

Two sons - two boys in the picture. We're getting closer.

Next, was Sarah's maiden name. If this was my Sara Burdett she had to be related, right? She wasn't just going to be some random friend on the coast. Women are notoriously hard to find through the Census because of name changes - especially when the maiden name is unknown. I decided to search for Eli. I saw he was born in Iowa, so I felt there was promise. Census records went back to 1856 for Eli, and I found him in 1860 and 1870. It was in 1880, however, while he was living in Nebraska, that I found my answer. There, at the end of the list of household members, was Sara Burdett.

Or, rather, Sarah Sabin.

Ancestry makes related searches pretty simply, so when I clicked on Sarah Sabin the "related records" column quickly brought me back to 1870 when Sarah was living in Howard Township, Tama County, Iowa, with her father, William Jerome Sabin, also known as my great-great-great-great uncle.

Sarah (Sabin) Burdett is my first cousin four times removed. She and my great-great grandmother, Delila Pearl (Sabin) Reinig, were first cousins. That's why her photos was among Pearl's items and why a woman on the west coast would send photos of her boys back to Iowa.

Another mystery solved. Only a thousand more to go...

Sienknecht Family Reunion

The Henry & Frieda (Krambeck) Sienknecht Family
Front (L to R): Henry Sienknecht, Frieda (Sienknecht) Sabin, Frieda (Krambeck)
Sienknecht.Back: Henry Sienknecht Jr., Maggie (Sienknecht) Fink, Fred Sienknecht,
Lilly (Sienknecht) Staker, John C. Sienknecht.

Yesterday was the annual Sienknecht Family Reunion held in Lincoln, Iowa. The descendants of Henry and Frieda (Krambeck) Sienknecht have been gathering in Lincoln for decades, but it's only in the last four years I've been attending. In that time, I've become the unofficial official historian of the family, so everyone seems to look forward to seeing me - or specifically, what I've uncovered.

This year was a special milestone in the Sienknecht family, though I didn't realize it until after the reunion was coming to a close: It's the 130th anniversary of the Sienknecht family in America. Well, the 130th anniversary of our branch of the family, anyway. Henry, Frieda, and little Henry Jr. set sail from Germany in November 1883 and made their way to New York, then to Rock Island, Illinois, and in 1893 to Tama County, Iowa, were they set down roots that remain today.

Being that far removed from the family patriarch means most of those in attendance at the reunion are Henry's great-grandchildren. His children's generation is long gone and only a handful of the grandchildren's generation remain. On Sunday four from that generation were in attendance, one grandson and three granddaughters-in-law. It was good to see and talk to them and great to get their assistance in identifying the people in a photo from a Sienknecht family reunion in the 1940s.

The reunion is always a chance to visit with distant cousins, but also make new connections. I've found over the years of doing research that people don't always realize what they have. As usual, I created a handout with photos from the different branches of the family. Most of the photos came from people at the reunion, the result of hours spent at the kitchen tables of those present, combing through scrapbooks and scanning photos. As people looked through the pictures and shared stories, several came up to me to say thank you, but also say "You know, I have this photo at home I think you should include. I'll mail it to you." or "If you want to come over to my house, I have a box of photos that belonged to my late mother you could go through." Just from Sunday alone I had tentative plans to visit at least one relative and the promise from another to send me photos to scan.

At the end of the reunion the group discussed the future of the Sienknecht Family Reunion. What used to be a big event was dwindled over the years to a crowd of fewer than 30. Thankfully the consensus was to continue the tradition - only change the location. There are more families with the Sienknecht name in the Clutier area, so the 2014 reunion will be held there. Hopefully in the year between now and then I'll have visited more Sienknecht cousins, scanned more photos, unearthed more history, and have a new, improved history book to share.

Only 364 days until the next reunion. Time to get to work!

Worth it

Yesterday I attended a Labor Day Weekend dinner at my brother and sister-in-law's house. Also in attendance were my parents, my aunt, my grandfather and his wife.

As I wrote earlier this week, I'm currently scanning all of my great aunt Helen's slides and making high-quality digital copies. Helen was grandpa's sister and he is featured in many photos. I told him about my project and pulled up a few of the photos I was able to access via my phone (ones I had emailed my mother last week). I brought up on the screen a picture of him, age 19, standing next to his grandma on her 83rd birthday.

He was instantly taken aback by it. With a slight inhale and a youthful lilt to his voice, he said "Oh! That's my grandma!" He seemed genuinely delighted to see a photo of his dear grandmother by his side, a photo he hadn't seen in decades and probably didn't realize existed.

Seeing that look of shock and joy on his face made all the hours of tedious scanning, editing, and archiving totally worthwhile.

Happy Labor Day!