Blog Archives

Ancestor Appreciation Day: An Offer to My Friends

9/27/2014

Photo by Nevit Dilmen

Today, September 27, is Ancestor Appreciation Day. As the name suggests, it is a day dedicated to celebrating the lives and accomplishments of those people in our families who came before us.

Obviously, if you know me or regularly visit my blogs, I consider every day to be Ancestor Appreciation Day. However, this particular post is not directed towards my genealogy-inclined friends; it is directed towards ALL of my friends. I want to let my friends know that if you ever want to learn more about YOUR ancestors, figure out where they came from, where they lived, what they did, and so on, I am more than willing to spend some time researching those people for you. I am not a professional genealogist, but I have accumulated enough knowledge and experience to know what sorts of documents and resources are out there and how to go about finding them.

Why would I spend my time helping others learn about their family history? It's been very rewarding for me to learn about my ancestors and it has helped me grow as a person. It's given me a greater appreciation for the study of history in general. I've come to realize that every person's story is important, including my own. And, simply put, I just enjoy the act of researching people and families, and I learn a little bit more about history and research methods with every person, document, and geographic area that I research.

So, if you think you'd like to take me up on my offer, send me an email or contact me through Facebook or Twitter. I'd be happy to help!

©2014, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder. All rights reserved.

0 Comments

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: ImageChef Creations

9/13/2014

2 Comments

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun is a series created by Randy Seaver and hosted at his blog, Genea-Musings. This week, his challenge is to create fun genealogy-related images using the templates over at ImageChef. Here are my contributions.

The first is a tribute to what might be my favorite genealogical document, because they can contain a lot of family-related information. I also think they are my favorite because I am a science nerd and I love all the medical jargon:

And this is what happens to me when I start searching through Italian records in an attempt to find my grandmother and great-grandparents' records:

My third image is something I need to stick on my laptop as a gentle warning to my children (as soon as they are both able to read!)

And for the times when you just don't know how to celebrate your ancestors' birthdays:

I even ventured into ImageChef's animation template section. This is how I feel when I know a document is "out there" but certain lawmakers inhibit my ability to access it.

Give ImageChef a try - it was a lot of fun! Thanks for suggesting it, Randy!

2 Comments

Surname Saturday: Watercutter, Waterkotte, and Sanders?

9/12/2014

2 Comments

Mary Watercutter Knob (1878-1965) was the maternal grandmother of my husband's paternal grandfather, Walter Schroeder. Mary was the granddaughter of Ferdinand Waterkotte, born 26 December 1809 is Ostbevern, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. He arrived in America on 27 Oct 1834, and made his way from the Port of New York to McLean Twp, Shelby County in Western Ohio, where he raised a family and farmed the land until his death in 1876.

I have been fortunate in researching the German roots of Watercutter family members, because they are listed in an online collection of family/local history records known as 'ortsfamilienbuches' (OFB). When I visited the Family History Library in Salt Lake City this past spring, I used the information from the online source to dig up microfilms of the original church baptism, marriage, death records for many of the family members, going as far back as the early 1700s. On the images below, click to see the baptism records for Ferdinand Waterkotte (1809), his father, Bernard Heinrich Waterkotte (1775), and his grandfather, Bernard Herman Waterkotte (1734). (On the bottom two records, the parents' names are listed in the first column, the godparents (sponsors) are in the second column, and the child's name is in the third column.)

Ferdinand Waterkotte Baptism Record (Page 1)

Ferdinand Waterkotte Baptism Record (Page 2)

Baptism Record of Bernard Heinrich Waterkotte (1775, Ostbevern, Germany)

Baptism Record of Bernard Herman Waterkotte (1734, Ostbevern, Germany)

Going back through the paternal line, you can see that the spelling of the surname is consistent, until you see Bernard Herman's record at the bottom. His father is listed as Herman Sanders, which wasn't a huge surprise to me, because I had seen it on the online OFB. My question was WHY? (Notice that the male sponsor is Bernard Waterkotte, so there must be some connection to a Waterkotte family here.)

I asked my question in the German Genealogy Facebook group to see if anyone more experienced than me had any insight into why the family name may have changed. I posted a photo of Bernard Herman's younger brother's baptism record, where the father is listed as Herman Sanders g. Waterkotte. One knowledgeable gentleman in the group told me that the 'g' stood for gennant, which means 'called.' He also explained that some people had two surnames; one acquired from the father in the traditional sense and another Hausname. The Hausname may have been acquired if a family had inherited from, bought or lived on some land of another family by that name OR perhaps if his mother married another man after his father died. INDEED, using the online OFB records, I found that Bernard Herman's mother, Margaretha Lange, did remarry in 1741. However, the man she married was named Jobst Heinrich Dalhoff. Margaretha had children with Mr. Dalhoff and those children's surnames were STILL Waterkotte. This makes me conjecture that the Waterkotte surname came from the land or house they were living on/in. So, the descendants of both Herman Sanders and Jobst Heinrich Dalhoff took the surname of Waterkotte and carried it forward in subsequent generations. In fact, by clicking on some of the other names on this list, you'll see that quite a few people with the surname Waterkotte did not have a father with that name. (A Kötter, by the way, is a 'cottager' who probably had a small amount of land for gardening/farming and maybe a few livestock.)

Today, Waterkotte is not a common name in Germany, and its occurrence is still concentrated in Nordrhein-Westfalen, shown in the dark blue:

Approximate Present-Day Distribution of Waterkotte Surname in Germany (Source: worldnames.publicprofiler.org)

When Ferdinand immigrated to the U.S, he, whether intentionally or unintentionally, changed his name almost right away, at least on non-church documents. His 1837 county marriage record lists his surname as 'Waterkater.' He is listed as Watercutter on his 1834 ship manifest and his 1844 Declaration of Intention also says Watercutter. And since Ferdinand settled in and raised a family in Ohio, it is not surprising that the U.S. occurrence of the surname Watercutter is still highest here, and particularly in the same county in which Ferdinand started farming his land 180 years ago. For fun, click this link, and then click on the small megaphone in the bottom left corner of the German box to hear how Waterkotte is pronounced in German. Then, I think you will understand how it became Watercutter.

Approximate Present-Day Distribution of Watercutter Surname in Ohio (Source: worldnames.publicprofiler.org)

Just for fun, I typed in 'Waterkotte' and looked at that name's U.S. distribution. I found a relatively high concentration in Adams County in Western Illinois. And just by using Google, I have found a Waterkotte Harley-Davidson dealership in Mt. Vernon, IL, a St. Louis attorney by the name of Waterkotte, and a University of North Carolina professor named Waterkotte who got his Bachelor's degree at Illinois State University. It's likely that these people are somehow related to each other. With the surname being so unique even in Germany, it really makes me want to trace the ancestors of these Waterkotte individuals to see if I could find an Old Country connection between them and my husband's Waterkotte ancestors. (And that connection may not be blood - it could be due to land ownership and/or tenancy, as I discussed above.)

Approximate Modern-Day Distribution of the Surname Waterkotte in Illinois (Source: worldnames.publicprofiler.org)

Baptism Record of Ferdinand Waterkotte: FHL microfilm 801427, Kirchenbuch: Katholische Kirche Ostbevern, Taufen 1803-1840

Baptism Record of Bernard Heinrich Waterkotte: FHL microfilm 801427, Kirchenbuch: Katholische Kirche Ostbevern, Taufen 1753-1805

Baptism Record of Bernard Herman Waterkotte: FHL microfilm 801427, Kirchenbuch: Katholische Kirche Ostbevern, Taufen 1718-1752

©2014, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder

2 Comments

Motivation Monday: In A Genealogical Funk

9/7/2014

10 Comments

You are the family's historian. You've spent years or perhaps even decades of your life researching family ancestors and digging up documents, photos, articles and stories about the people that came before you. You write about these people, and maybe even publish a book or a blog related to your family's history. Although you find all of these ancestors and their stories so interesting, it seemingly appears that few other people share your interest and perhaps don't even care to know anything about the past.

And even among other genealogists and historians, maybe you have an idea for a project or website or class or field trip and you pitch it to your local historical or genealogical society. But, in the end, the group decides to put its resources towards other endeavors, and your request goes unfulfilled.

Experiences like these can make us question our work, question why we spend so much time and money researching people who are dead. (Because as alive as they may seem to us, the reality is that they are gone.) Personally, I am in a 'genealogical funk' right now, wondering why I spend so much time on my and my husband's ancestors when I could be reading more books or keeping a cleaner house or learning how to cook better. I have lost some enthusiasm for 'digging up the dirt' and writing about it on my blog. It's almost as if I don't know in which direction to move, and I'm sort of frozen in my indecision. And this feeling of 'All this doesn't matter' keeps permeating my thoughts and further adds to my apathy.

Have you ever been discouraged or disheartened during your genealogical journey? What has helped you recharge your ambitions and regain your enthusiasm for genealogical research?

©2014, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder

10 Comments

Grandma's 100th Birthday

9/4/2014

0 Comments

I couldn't let the day end without publishing something on my blog related to my maternal grandmother, Dina Licciardi Bellan. Today would have been her 100th birthday. She was born 4 September 1914 in Iselle, Italy, which is a small mountain town on the Italian-Swiss border. She immigrated to America with her parents and sister when she was about six years old. She served in the U.S. Coast Guard during WWII and married my grandfather, William Bellan, in 1947. They had two children. She was active in her church community and loved to cook and socialize. She passed away in 1997. Here is a photo of her with me as a baby, circa 1979.

0 Comments

Ancestor Appreciation Day: An Offer to My Friends

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: ImageChef Creations

Surname Saturday: Watercutter, Waterkotte, and Sanders?

Motivation Monday: In A Genealogical Funk

Grandma's 100th Birthday

Emily Kowalski Schroeder

Archives

Categories