I’ll admit it, I don’t read German. I try my best but sometime the characters don’t scan correctly to my eye. Either way for Amanuensis Monday, I’ve given it my best shot but still come up just a tad short. I really love Google Translate. It is simple to use and you can usually get the gist of a message enough to change the Google Translation to English by adding syntax. It is a simple baptism certificate but there are two words that elude me. First is gu or gee or something like that. Now I suspect is means at or in in this context. But it would be good to know for certain it doesn’t mean “near” or something like that.
The second word seems to be to be “daselbit” to me. It must be some kind of parents but I can’t figure out what it means. It might make a difference in where the Baptism actually occurred.
Anyone who knows what the meanings are, please post a comment and let me know.
Birth Certificate
My Reading
Google Translate
Click to enlarge
Clarence Eduard Huber
John von Heren Johann Huber
und frau Bertha geb Trumpi
geboren 24ten december 1909
gu Elberta, Baldwin Co, Ala.
ist am 26ten May 1910
im Hause der Elter en daselbit
im namen des
Dreieinigen Gottes
getauft worden
Taufzeugen waren
Maria Bruss
Karl Keller
welches hierdurch
bescheinigt wird
H. O. Bruss
ev. Luth Pastor
Clarence Ediard Huber
John of Heren Johann Huber
and wife Bertha born Trumpi
born 24th december 1909 gu Elberta, Baldwin Co, Ala.
on 26th May 1910
in the home of the parent s daselbit
in the name of the
Triune God
been baptized
sponsors were
Maria Bruss
Karl Keller
which thereby
is to certify
H. O. Bruss
ev. Luth Pastor
Biography – Clarence Eduard Huber (1909-1994) – Why Alabama?
One of the many family history questions we have had for some time is why was “Uncle Clarence” born in Alabama. His parents, John and Bertha Trümpi Huber, came from Switzerland and were German speaking. They arrived separately but settled in the New Glarus, Green County, Wisconsin area where they were married, in 1905, and had their first child, Florence in 1908. But Clarence was born in Elberta, Baldwin County, Alabama, on Christmas Eve, 1909, which seemed odd. Why did the family move from Wisconsin to Alabama and then to Michigan?
Morning Star (Rockford, IL) – Feb 7th, 1909 – Page 13
Many thanks to Genealogy Bank
I think why they moved to Alabama is now understood. In the early 20th century there were many Swiss and German colonies in the United States. In 1903 the Baldwin County Colonization Company began promoting land sales to German immigrants in the midwest. Their first settlers came to Elberta about 1904 and by 1908-09, when the Hubers settled there, the town boasted both a Catholic and Lutheran Church. Certainly, advertisements enticed folks from the winters of Wisconsin to the mild climate of Alabama. John and Bertha probably took such an excursion to Elberta and then purchased land after seeing what was available. In any event, by April, 1910 they owned a farm which John farmed.
St. Mark’s Lutheran Church (Today)
Elberta, Baldwin Co., Alabama
(Thanks to the Baldwin County Heritage Museum)
Clarence was baptized at home on 26 May, 1910, by Pastor H.O. Bruss. Maria Bruss, the pastor’s mother, and Karl Keller, a close neighbor were the sponsors for the baptism. It is interesting to note that the original St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, built in 1908 still stands. It was relocated in 1985 and is currently associated with the Baldwin County Historical Museum. It functions as a modern wedding chapel that provides a vintage wedding setting.
Sometime between 1916 and 1920 the family relocated to James Township, Saginaw County, Michigan. The 1920 has him living with his parents and older sister and attending school. According to the 1940 Census, Clarence completed the 8th grade.
In 1930, Clarence was still living with his parents. His sister had married and was living in Pennsylvania. In 1934, tragedy struck with the death of his sister.
In 1940, Clarence was still living on his parents farm, the same place they lived in 1935, but was working outside of the farm at an iron foundry as a core racker earning about $40 a week.
Clarence enlisted in the Army on 29 December, 1942 and was discharged 19 days after VJ Day.
Clarence Huber
1983 – age 72
Clarence’s father died in October 1948 and his mother died almost 20 years later, in May 1968. During all that time Clarence lived in the same house. It is said that after his mother died, Clarence closed the door on his mother’s bedroom and never went into it again. The room was as it was in 1968, with laundry folded, when it was opened again, over 25 years lated, after his death in 1994.
Clarence never married and had no known children. He was also known as Clarence Edward Huber (verses Eduard).
Clarence died on 25 June, 1994 at the Aleda E. Lutz VA Medical Center in Saginaw. He was cremated by the Northern Michigan Crematory, Bay City, Michigan.
Questions I’d still like to answer – Why did the Huber’s leave Alabama for Michigan between 1916 and 1920?
What did Clarence do during WW2? He shows up in the Veterans Affairs BIRLS list but I haven’t found records for him anywhere else.
Sources:
1910 US Federal Census – Ancestry.Com
1920 US Federal Census – Ancestry.Com
1930 US Federal Census – Ancestry.Com
1940 US Federal Census – Ancestry.Com
US Dept. of Veterans Affairs – Beneficiary Identification Records Locator Subsystem (BIRLS) via Ancestry.ComBaptism Certificate – Personal Document Collection.
Michigan, Dept of Public Health, Death Certificate, for Clarence Edward Huber – Personal Document Collection.
Morning Star (Rockford, IL) 7 February 1909 – Page- 13 – via Genealogy Bank.
I’m always prepared to start over a particular line of research if an inconsistency occurs and it seems I have one in my Scoggins Project.
I was doing research, for a close friend, on a Scoggins line in Cobb County, Georgia. He knew virtually nothing about the line so I figured I’d give him a help. As I researched his great-grandfather I quickly found him in the 1940 census. I was quite certain I had the correct family. His grandmother was in the household as the daughter of the head. The ’40 census indicated they lived in the same county in 1935, so finding them in a nearby location, in the same county in 1930 made sense. Continuing back in time, I found them in the same county 1920 (about 10 miles away). These moves in the county didn’t surprise me because in the records, they were renting the farm that Mr. Scroggins was working.
Snapshot showing birthdate of 6 Oct 1877
From US World War 1 Draft Registrations
Thanks to Ancestry.Com
I then found him in the World War I draft registrations. It was interesting to note that it said he was two years younger than his cemetery marked indicated. I wasn’t too concerned about that because the birthdate, 6 October, was the same in both cases. I found consistency in most everything I found. Certainly there were a few here and there, the names were G George, George C, George G, and, of course, George without an initial. One record said his middle name was Lester which concerned me somewhat, but not a lot.
In the 1910 census, I found the family in the next county over. That was really good, because I remember my friend mentioning his ancestors had a farm way back when in that county, near where the census indicated they were living. Then, I found him in the 1900 census. Poo. Not right.
Snapshot from 1900 US Federal Census
Thanks to Ancestry.Com
The 1900 census is fantastic because it includes the birth month and year of everyone. The census indicated that George’s birth month was December and the year 1878, not 1875-1877 as the other records I had for George indicated. The siblings were basically the same as I had been documenting along the way. Clearly this was a different George Scoggins than the one I had been tracking. But, sibling names and many other bits of information were similar, but the birthdate was way off. It would be easy to say that the info was wrong and then continue on my merry way, but I know that something isn’t right.
Person back at their drawing board.
Public Domain Via Wikimedia Commons
I will go back to ALL of the original sources I used and analyze them very closely knowing in retrospect that there were two George Scoggins in Cobb County, born about three years apart, both of whom had siblings with the same names. It will take some time, but I will eventually untangle the mess. I’ll probably even find that the two George’s are cousins or otherwise related. I’ll be surprised if they are not. As I said, when you are certain something isn’t right, be ready to drop all assumptions, start over completely, and document all your decisions carefully.
Check out Genealogy Bank as a source for gifts. They are currently running a Christmas Special, on gift memberships. But a Genealogy Bank membership would make a great birthday present or a thank you present anytime.
I use and prefer Genealogy Bank over the other newspaper archive services.
Some websites can be confusing and difficult to use, but I don’t expect state archive sites to be that way. Maryland is the exception to that rule. It was the most frustrating state archive site I’ve used, so far.
My task was simple, find out death information on an ancestor of my wife. The Social Security Death Index indicated that he died in December 1964. No specific date and no location other than Maryland. Looking up the specifics should be easy, peasy.
In my list of websites for Maryland I had first, https://www.aomol.net/html/index.html, I thought when I went there, “how odd, a dot net address.” Nothing about death records in their menu. Maybe under other records…. No such luck.
In my list of websites for Maryland I had another URL, https://msa.maryland.gov/ — much better. A bit more modern looking site. “How to order copies” provided a link to a pdf order form. The form wanted month, day and year. Humm. I didn’t have the day. I figured, maybe they have an index. A look at “What We Have” brought me to page that included a link to “Maryland Vital Records.” Again, I thought it odd that the writeup for “Vital Records” only spoke of death records. I was only interested in death records so I was good with that, for now. That link which brought me to “Vital Records Indexing Project” The writeup talked about the indexing project but nowhere in the text of the page was a link to the index. Then I saw it in the menu on the left, “Search MD Vital Records” The page that it brought me to was only death records also. Select County Deaths in two indexes to 1944 and Select Baltimore City deaths 1875 to 1972 in two indexes also. I’m always scared when someone says, “Select” because I always figure that that means it is just some data we put out there, we know it isn’t complete, but it is what we can provide easily. Well, maybe he died in Baltimore and all will be well. A click on “MSA CE 42” brought me to a long death record index. Down the list to 1963-1964. A look at the naming pattern at the three files associated with ’63-64 led me to the second file, G000-M663. Then select a letter – I picked “H”.
OMG – The records are PDFs, each page is an individual file, and it is by soundex. Aarrgh.
I don’t use soundex and I am often frustrated by it. However, some time ago I found Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter. On his website he has a soundex converter. https://www.eogn.com/soundex/ Totally awesome. Just enter the Surname and it provides the Soundex. Entered the name and received back, H-400. Thank you Dick Eastman for the utility!
Back to the website, I’m on page 1 of who knows how many, I click on Page 10, only H200 – sigh, click on page 19, the 28. Almost there, pages 29 & 30 were the right pages for my search. Nope, the ancestor wasn’t there. He must not have died in Baltimore – although I really didn’t know. I hate the word “select.”
Not looking good for the home team. I found the Special Collections site, https://speccol.mdarchives.state.md.us/ – another totally different URL scheme. It indicates photos, newspapers, maps, biographies, and church records. Oh cool, maybe a search for “Archives Building” will yield a photo of the archives for this blog. No such luck. The search yielded 90 photos of people in and around the building, but none of the building itself. Anyway, despite my inability to find a good photo of the building on the site, there was a fuzzy image in the banner of the Photos search page that is usable.
I continued searching for sites and finally found another site. https://guide.mdsa.net/. Maryland State Archives Guide to Government Records. Choose your Display type by Series gave me a very confusing search box. Clearly designed for someone who has intimate knowledge of the agency names and other particulars of Maryland’s government.
Then I clicked on a Reference and Research tab. There was a section on “How to Find Specific Records” and a section of “Indices Found at MSA.” The link for Death Record Indices had the link showing that I had visited it before, however, there was a link for Death Records. That page had a section on “County Death Records 1898-1972.” Maybe…. Most of the records listed had paper or microfilm listings but there were a couple that indicated “Electronic”. There was an Index Series and a Record Series. I tried the Index series SE8. Getting closer. Fairly well organized. In the date range I was looking for and the name letter, I clicked on “Detail” and found nothing that wasn’t on the preceding page. Click “back” and then on “Link.” A PDF file that consisted of thousands of names, one name on a card and a photo copy of it. A search of the document found nothing, it wasn’t a text enable PDF. Scrolling down I finally found the ancestor on page 11,000 something and it had the information I was looking for. The date of his death.
The Maryland State Archives sites were exasperating and inconsistent. Sites don’t link to each other in a simple meaningful way. It is like several different departments put their materials wherever (dot net, dot gov, dot us) they wanted without coordinating with other departments. They also don’t appear to have single style or single content management points.
The bottom line for genealogists is that I believe I have found two pages that I found useful.
A really close friend recently asked me recently if I have any special tricks to finding living people. He had tried to find a cousin of his wife, but kept running into sites that cost and didn’t guarantee that the person they were providing data on was the right person. He indicated that he was getting really frustrated.
Now my friend knows that, as a genealogist, I would want all of the information on the individual that he had. So he provided lots of basic information (names and dates changed for privacy reasons).
Particulars:
John Doe
Born in October 1948
Parents were Curtis Doe and Lorraine Olson
He married Nancy Smith in 1967
They had three children, Jane, Mitchel, and Todd
He and Nancy divorced in about 1991
He sometimes went by the nickname of Jack.
My friend also proved the last known addresses for John. He had several addresses, mostly in Minnesota, and one in New Jersey.
If I couldn’t find John’s location today with that much information, he didn’t want to be found.
– – – – – – – – – – –
I find that Facebook and Linked in are the best sources for finding people living today. In the case of John Doe, neither search yielded anyone that appeared to be him. (I guess John is probably a Luddite,) Next a search for one of his kids.
A girl born in the 60s or 70s is probably married, so I figured I’d begin with one of the boys. I looked for Todd and a very likely candidate popped right up. I also looked at his “friends;” he had one named Mitch Doe. He lived in Minnesota only a few miles from where John Doe lived in the ‘90s. Another Doe was listed; it was a women. Photos that were shared indicated that it must be the wife of Mitch and not the sister.
Another approach that sometimes works for me is zabasearch.com. It isn’t that Zabasearch always works but they also provide “sponsored results.” In this case the sponsored results yielded five results and one of them was associated with Hyacinth, Nancy, Mitch, and Todd. The sponsored result also indicated three locations in New Jersey (one the same town my friend provided) and several in Minnesota. It also provided John’s current city. I could have paid a couple bucks for the information provided there. I knew my friend didn’t want to spend anything so I continued on.
Oh, before I go on, besides Zabasearch, I highly recommend intelius.com. They provide reports for a fee. You get a pretty good report for only a couple dollars ($1.95).
Then, I looked him up on both White Pages and 411 (www.whitepages.com/ and www.411.com and got the same New Jersey phony number, 732-555-1234. Just to be certain, I did a quick area code look-up, on Google, a search for “area code 732” brought up a Wikipedia article which indicated the area code was in New Jersey – Perfect.
I copied and pasted the name, age, phone number, and addresses into an email to my friend.
I recommended the following course of action:
Call his cousin via the number provided.
Contact/email his kids on Facebook and see if they will facilitate contact. (Note: All the kids are adults.)
US Mail his cousin.
If the above don’t work, spend the $2 at Intelius for a report.
