Throwback Thursday: Susan Robbins Shaffer

#TBT: On November 12, 1923, 92 years ago today, Susan Shaffer died at her home in Elgin, Iowa. Susan Christena Robbins grew up in Clayton County and married John D. Shaffer, a preacher's son and farmer, in 1878. They lived in Illyria Township, Fayette County, where John was prosperous in business and politics (last week's #TBT) and Susan raised eight children.

Her health began to decline in 1911 when she was diagnosed with diabetes. Six years later, she and John moved into small house in Elgin, as life on the farm had become to strenuous. In October 1922, the Shaffers visited Lindlahr Sanitarium in Elmhurst, Illinois, to seek "consultation and diagnosis" from Dr. Henry Lindlahr, whose "Natural Cure" approach focused on fresh air, exercise, and no surgical or medical interventions.

Upon returning to Elgin, she found her health no better, and quietly slipped away a year later on November 12 at the age of 64 years. Her funeral, held the afternoon of November 14, was large, with "Elgin stores closed during the hour of the service as a mark of respect."

In her own words

A few weeks ago I went to Community Day, an annual tradition at Illyria Community Church. A older woman came up to me with a cassette tape. In 1979 she had worked on gathering local stories about the church for a history book. She recorded her interviews, stashing them away in boxes in her basement until recently.

"This is an interview with Bessie Shaffer," she said. I let out an audible gasp. Bessie Shaffer was my great-great grandmother, who was born in 1883 and died in 1980. Bessie sat down for this interview when she was 96 years old, just a year before she died.

I gladly took the tape, eager to hear the voice of someone born in 1883 - and not just someone, but my ancestor! The trouble was, I didn't have a tape player. It's 2015! I don't even have a VCR!

Thank you, Internet, for providing me the answer. A quick Amazon purchase later and I had a cassette converter express mailed (I couldn't wait!). The interview was only about 10 minutes long and Bessie's voice was faint, as the recorder sat next to the interviewer. I had to remind myself not to be frustrated, as I wasn't alive when this tape was made, so I couldn't have changed things if I had wanted to anyway.

Hearing her voice was a thrill. Hearing her stories about childhood in the 1880s and 1890s was incredible. I have spent so much time researching Bessie and her family, that hearing her own words and her own perspective on her live was downright moving.

Oh yes. I remember winters where we didn’t get to school nearly all winter because the snow was so deep. [You] couldn’t get there. Father would take us with a sled when he could, but some winters – yes, we had some winters we didn’t get to school. Sometimes we had to go another way, you know, we couldn’t go our road because it was kind of a road through there where the snow filled in, it was always deep at this house. And the men, they had no way of shoveling it out and they’d wait until spring, you see…

She also talked about her love of family, something everyone in my family still remembers today:

My happiest was after the children all left, when they could all come home again and bring the grandchildren. They were all close enough to all come home for Thanksgiving or Christmas or something like that. I think I enjoyed that a lot.

I transcribed, digitized, and shared the interview with the family. Of course, there were so many more questions I would have asked Bessie if I had been able to do the interview. So many burning questions that I fear will never be answered.

But then again, I never thought I'd hear Bessie's voice for myself - so stranger things have happened.

Do you know this child?

A distant cousin and fellow researcher sent me this photo the other day. It's a cabinet photo of a young child taken in Marshalltown, Iowa. My cousin and I share several ancestors, including William and Sarah (Jester) Jackson and Jonathon and Mary (Upp) Zehrung (in her case, through their daughter, Maria (Zehrung) Hoffman).

So, if you are related, if you recognize this photo, if you have this photo... please, leave a comment.

Illegitimate roots, legitimate shock

A few weeks ago I wrote about the great results I had with a researcher in Germany. My notes were based on my translation of very dense, hard to read church records from 150 years ago.

Today, the researcher emailed me with her transcriptions and translations. With that email came a number of fascinating things.

First, I discovered my great-great-great grandfather wasn't born in Laboe, like I had previously thought. I had misread the dense German handwriting. He was instead from Belau, a small village not 15 minutes from Ruhwinkel, where he lived with his family (including my great-great grandfather).

Perhaps the biggest shocker was the transcription of Christian's marriage to my great-great-great grandmother, Juliana Ruge. I will share it here in it's entirety:

Engagement No. 25 on July 10. / Wedding No. 25 on August 7. / Sienknecht, Christian Friedrich, bachelor, son in marriage, 36 years old, parents: tailor Hans Hinrich Sienknecht from Belau and Anna Catharina, geb. Theden in Ruhwinkel, / Juliana Maria Sophia Margretha Ruge, Juliana Maria Sophia Margretha geb. Ruge: illegitimate child, 25 ½ years old, parents: Ida Wilhelmine Sophia Seligmann, Hans Joachim Friedrich Ruge in Ruhwinkel witnesses: 1) Asmus Hept(?), Ruhwinkel, 2) Dorothea Theden in Belau. / Vaccinationsattests: Machs 1822 No 81, Groth, 1833 No. 39 / Schönböken

Juliana was the ILLEGITIMATE child of Hans Joachim Friedrich Ruge and Ida Wilhelmine Sophia Seligmann! What!? I received this email at work and I'll admit I gasped out loud when I read that. My coworkers were very unsettled.

Juliana didn't live long after her marriage, dying in 1860 just six months after the birth of her fifth child (my ancestor). By the time she had passed her mother, Ida, had already passed on as well according to her death record. The burial record, however, says something interesting about her mother: her maiden name was Möller. Does this mean Seligmann was a married name? What was Juliana's relationship with her father? She had his name and he was listed on her marriage record, so he must have recognized her. According to the biography of one of her sons, John Henry, when she died her brother, Joachim Ruge, helped raise the children. Clearly the family was close.

The researcher in Germany is still digging into the family and I expect to learn more about the Ruge family soon. 

Finding a place that doesn't exist

The town of Harmstedt, in the Holstein region of Germany, isn't real. It doesn't exist. It never existed. Yet, it is the hometown of my great-great grandfather, Henry Staker. How can this be? Something got lost in translation? Hopefully I'm on the trail to finding out.

Recently I found contact information online for church archives in Germany. They are set up by regions or districts, so you have to know a general idea of where to look before contacting them, or else spend a lot of time on wild goose chases. My first research request was in the Plön district, for the small town of Ruhwinkel, where my great-great grandfather, Henry Sienknecht, was born.

Fortunately for me, Ruhwinkel (spelled Rhuwinkel in newspaper accounts of his life) is a real place. I knew his parents' names from the 1925 Iowa Census and knew from a 1905 biography of his brother, John Henry Sienknecht, that they had a sister, Annie, who also lived in Germany. I also knew from this biography that their mother, Julia Ruge, died when the children were young.

Armed with this information, I emailed the researcher in that district and asked if she could find a record of Henry's birth, as well as a record of his parents and any siblings. It took her just a week to respond saying she'd found not only Henry's birth, but the birth of his four (!) siblings, the marriage of his parents, and their death records.

Before this request, here's what I knew about the Sienknecht family:

Father: Christian F. Sienknecht
Mother: Julia Ruge
Children:
John Henry Sienknecht
Henry Detlef Sienknecht* 
Annie Sienknectht

After the researcher in Germany contacted me, this is what I discovered:

Father: Christian Friedrich Sienknecht
Birth: 24 Jul 1817 in Belau, Plon, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Parents: August Hans and Ana Cathrina Sienknecht

Death: 22 Jul 1900 in Bornhöved, Segeberg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Mother: Juliana Maria Sophia Margaretha Ruge

Birth: 01 May 1828 in Ruhwinkel, Plon, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Parents; Hans Joachim Friedrich and Ida Wilhelmina Sophia (Seligmann) Ruge

Death: 01 Nov 1860 in Ruhwinkel, Plon, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Marriage: 07 Aug 1853 in Ruhwinkel, Plon, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Children: 

Joachim Friedrich Sienknecht

Birth: 07 Mar 1854 in Ruhwinkel, Plon, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Anna Christina Sienknecht

Birth: 23 Aug 1855 in Ruhwinkel, Plon, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Dorothea Margaretha Sienknecht

Birth: 05 May 1857 in Ruhwinkel, Plon, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Johann Hinrich Sienknecht

Birth: 06 Nov 1858 in Ruhwinkel, Plon, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Heinrich Detlef Sienknecht*

Birth: 05 May 1860 in Ruhwinkel, Plon, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Incredible, right? So many questions were answered. Henry's mother died within six months of his birth. I always assumed his father died when he was young as well, as the biography of his brother states the children were taken in and raised by their mother's brother, Joachim Ruge. Yet, it's clear Christian Sienkencht lived another 40 years. Why didn't he keep his children? What contact did he have with them? By the time he died Henry was in the US with six children of his own. My great-grandmother, Lilly (Sienknecht) Staker, was 16. Did she know about her grandfather back in Germany? 

Anyway, back to Henry Staker...

I asked the researcher who did the Sienknecht research if she'd heard of Harmstedt. She had not. She told me to check with the researchers for Barmstedt, which I agreed did sound like Harmstedt. That researcher came up empty-handed. I asked her (kind of begged, really) for any advice or ideas on where to look next. Today, she came up with one: Armstedt. 

Armstedt is a municipality in Segeberg, Schleswig-Holstein. Before this morning I had not heard of it, but I can see how Armstedt could eventually become Harmstedt in the U.S. Often accounts of immigrant ancestor hometowns came from children and grandchildren, who heard the name, but didn't actually see it written down. 

This morning I emailed the researcher for the Armstedt region asking for assistance looking for Henry Staker. I am hopeful this time I may have found him. If this search turns up empty-handed I'm not sure where to look next.

Another Successful Cousin Connection

L to R: Lydia Kerr, Will Kerr, Lulu (Kerr) Rothlisberger,
Ferne (Kerr) Malkow, Hattie (Kerr) Patterson.
Will Kerr is my great-great grandfather. The ladies are his sisters.

A few weeks ago I sat down at the dining room table of my maternal grandmother's first cousin and his wife. I've known them for years and they're wonderful people, which makes it so odd that it's taken me this long to visit them on a family history scavenger hunt.

I seem to spend a lot of time tracking down distant relatives looking for family clues that I sometimes forget to check with the most obvious sources - the people I already know. I've made it a concerted effort now to spend more time asking questions of the first cousins in my tree before reaching out to the seconds and thirds. Don't get me wrong, I've made some great connections and lasting relationships with second and third cousins over the years. I keep in touch with many of them regularly and see them when I can. But if I have someone with whom I already have a relationship, doesn't it make sense to ask there first?

L to R: Lew Gruver, Charlie Gruver, Will Gruver [father],
Anna (Gruver) Kerr, Mary (Hunsberger) Gruver [mother],
Alta (Gruver) Klingman, Alma (Gruver) Mason, John Gruver.
Anna (Gruver) Kerr is my great-great-grandmother.
Will and Mary are her parents, my third great grandparents.

I don't have that much more to write about my visit with Bill and Judy. It was great. They were great. They had incredible photos I had never seen before, or had seen and had not scanned. I'll share a few in this blog post (as always).

In addition to first cousin connections, I'm also working on more international research. I recently made contact with a church archive in Germany that has discovered the roots of the Sienknecht family. A package is on its way to the U.S. right now with records of my great-great grandfather's birth, as well as the birth of his four siblings! Until now I only knew of two! They also uncovered the marriage record of his parents, as well as their deaths. I have already contacted her to do additional research further back. It does cost money to have that research done, but it's cheaper than a plane ticket - though I would love to go there someday as well.

Happy hunting!

Ancestral Recipes

I'm always looking for ways to give context and character to my ancestors. Of course I look for births, deaths, marriages, etc., but I am equally interested in things that give a glimpse of their daily lives.

On a recent eBay search I came across the Elgin Ladies Cemetery Association Cookbook published Dec. 1, 1912. I do infrequent eBay searches on the off chance some wayward family relic was sold at auction by a distant cousin and found its way online. It's worked out several times already! I ordered the cookbook because, considering how concentrated my ancestry is in Elgin, there had to be something from them in the book.

What I found were dozens of recipes from great-great-great-great aunts, cousins, and three of my great-great-great grandmothers. I love this because it gives a look at the everyday life of an ancestor. Did they make these recipes often? Where they "special occasion" meals? Where they good cooks? I hope to make some of these recipes soon.

Chocolate Ribbon Cake.

One teacupful of sugar, 1 cup of milk, 2 teaspoonful of baking powder sifted with 2 cups of flour, 1 tablespoonful of butter, 1 egg. Mix in the usual manner. Divide the cake batter in 2 parts and add 3 tablespoonful of grated chocolate to ½ the batter for the dark part. This rule will make 4 layers, two of light and two of dark. Put together alternately with the following cream. 1 cupful sweet milk, 1 egg, 2 teaspoonful of cornstarch or flour, 3 tablespoonful of sugar, 2 tablespoonful of chocolate. Cook until it thickens and spread.

MRS. W.J. GRUVER.
Mary Louisa (Hunsberger) Gruver (1854-1928)

Orange Marmalade.

Take 12 oranges and 2 lemons, quarter and slice them, removing seeds. For each pint of fruit add 1  ½ pints water, let stand 24 hours then boil 1 hour, then set aside for 24 hours. Now add 1 ¼ pounds sugar to each pint of fruit and water. Heat slowly till sugar is dissolved, then boil 1 hour or till it jellies.

MRS. J.D. SHAFFER.
Susan Christena (Robbins) Shaffer (1859-1923)

Burnt Sugar Pie.

Yolks of 2 eggs, 1 tablespoon sugar, 2 tablespoons flour. Stir all together and have 2 cups of milk on and when it boils put in mixture. Stir so it will not stick. Put ½ cup sugar on to melt and brown, then pour into cream stirring briskly. Flavor then put in crust and frost with whites.

MRS. THOS. KERR.
Eliza  Ellen "Ella" (Moats) Kerr (1857-1939)