Category: Mapping

Census Sunday: Joseph Brunswick and Family, 1900

5/10/2014

In 1900, Joseph Brunswick, my husband's gg-grandfather, was living in German Twp, Auglaize County, Ohio with his wife, Bernadina (née Rolfes), stepson, Clemens Vehorn, and sons, Julius, Lawrence, Edwin, and Frank. He is listed as a farmer and land owner. (Click on image for larger view.)

There are several mistakes in the names and birth dates on this family's census form. Several of the names are spelled incorrectly, and the enumerator failed to note that Clemens ('Clarence' on the form) was Joseph's stepson (who had a different surname). Also, I have located county probate birth records for every member of this family, and the only date of birth that is correct on the census is Frank's, who was born only a few months before the census was taken. The enumerator did correctly record the couple's number of years married at six years; according to Joseph's obituary, they were married 4 Apr 1894.

Joseph Brunswick and Family, 1900

The location of Joseph's land can be seen in this 1898 Land Ownership Map for Auglaize County, Ohio. The farm was on the western edge of German Twp, and shared a border with Mercer County. The area of gridded streets in German Twp is the town of New Bremen, and farther south in Jackson Twp is the town of Minster. This area of Auglaize County, along with neighboring Mercer County, was heavily settled by German Catholic immigrants during the 19th century. (Click on image for larger view.)

1898 Auglaize Co, Ohio Land Ownership for German and Jackson Townships.

In the modern-day map below, Joseph's land would be located in the rectangle between Amsterdam Rd, Wilker Rd, OH-274, and Mercer-Auglaize Co Line Rd. His land would have been about in the middle of that rectangle.

Map below showing Auglaize County. The purple circle indicates the location of German and Jackson Townships.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Census source: Year: 1900: Census Place: German, Auglaize, Ohio; Roll: T623_1240; Page 19A; Enumeration District: 33
Map source: U.S., Indexed County Land Ownership Maps, 1860-1918; Collection NumberL G&M_27; Roll Number: 27

©2014, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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Surname Saturday: Bodziony

4/11/2014

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Bodziony was the maiden name of my paternal grandmother, Veronica Bodziony Kowalski. She was a child of two Polish immigrants, Michael Bodziony and Sophia Krupa, who settled in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1883, Michael Bodziony was born in the village of Świniarsko, a few kilometers away from the larger city of Nowy Sącz (see map below). At the time of his birth, this area, which has been ethnically-Polish for centuries, was part of the Austria-Hungary Empire.

When you first read the name 'Bodziony,' I don't think you immediately think of it as a Polish or even a Slavic surname. Even today, it's not a terribly common name in Poland, and the highest concentration of the name is still found in and around Nowy Sącz County, Małopolska Voivodeship, which is on Poland's southern border with Slovakia. The map below was generated by the website Moikrewni.pl, which literally means "my kin" in Polish. It shows the relative distribution of the surname Bodziony throughout modern-day Poland. According to Worldnames Public Profiler, which compiles surname data from modern telephone directories and voting registers, the surname Bodziony has a frequency in Poland of 42.8 per million. For comparison, the surname Kowalski, which is a very common surname, has a frequency of 1847 per million. Not surprisingly the frequency per million in America is only 0.47.

Distribution of the surname 'Bodziony' in Poland (Image Source: Moikewni.pl)

So, what does the surname Bodziony mean? According to good old Google Translate, the Polish word bodziec is a noun which means 'stimulus' or 'incentive.' I asked the native Polish-speakers in a Facebook group, and one person told me that the name has the same root as the word bóść, which is a verb meaning 'to gore.' I think its relative infrequency tells me that it probably doesn't describe a profession, as a lot of surnames all over the world tend to do.

The surname could possibly be a reference to a place name. There is a town by the name of Bodzanów about 70 kilometers to the northwest of Świniarsko. (There are actually several villages with this name around Poland, but this one is the closest.) There is a also a town farther away in Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, (north of Małopolska Voivodeship) known as Bodzentyn, which has been around since the 1300s. So, it's possible that the family name originated as a way to tell other people "this family is from Bodz... village."

I do have evidence that the name was NOT changed when Michael came to America - the name shows up fairly frequently in the 19th century Roman Catholic Church records of the Diocese of Tarnow.

©2014, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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Census Sunday: Street Name Changes and Enumerator Errors

3/15/2014

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In 1940, my great-grandparents, Louis and Adele Licciardi, lived with their two adult daughters, Dina and Yola, on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio. (Click on image for larger view.) On this form, their surname looks as if it is spelled 'Silccirdi,' which is probably just a mistake of the enumertor (not the only one, either, as we will see.)

The Licciardi Family, 1940 U.S. Census

My great-grandfather's occupation is listed as 'Sewing' and 'Men's Clothing'. He owned and operated a business known as 'Paris Art Embroidery' in downtown Cleveland, and here it is listed in the business section of the 1940 Cleveland City Directory:

1940 Cleveland, Ohio City Directory, Business Section

My grandmother, Dina, who is listed as 'Diana' on the census form, and her younger sister, Yola, are working as a 'Saleslady' and 'Cashier', respectively. In the residential section of the 1940 Cleveland Directory, we actually see that they are working at The May Company, which was one of the major department stores in the city at the time. (Dina is listed as 'Dine' and Yola is listed as 'Viola.'

1940 Cleveland, Ohio City Directory, Residential Section

The census form lists their address as 3521 East Blvd, and the city directory lists it as 3591 East Blvd. I searched for both addresses on Google Maps and Google Street View and came up with nothing; there are not even any addresses on the current extent of East Blvd that are close to the 3500s. My initial thought was that this part of the street had changed names between 1940 and the present day. To solve this mystery, I decided to consult the 1940 census enumeration district (ED) maps, which, fortunately, are found online.

In my humble opinion, the easiest way to get to the right map is to use this search link at stevemorse.org. You simply select the state, county, and city in which you are interested and you will get a list of links to the available 1940 enumeration maps:

How do you know which map is the area you are interested in, especially if you are searching a larger city? Go back to your census form and find the city Ward number, which is in the upper part of the sheet. In this case, we are interested in Ward 28. I had to search each map individually until I found the big number 28. Once I did, I went back to this link (large-city street finder) on stevemorse.org, chose the correct state, city, and ED number, and the page will then list all of the streets covered by THAT enumeration district. (The ED number is in the upper-right corner of the census form - in this case, it is 92-683.) This process is essentially a way of finding my great-grandparents' most immediate neighborhood, which I outlined in the red box below (click on image for larger view.)

1940 ED Map, Cleveland, Ohio

Stevemorse.org; Results of Large-City Street Finder

Indeed, if you look closely on the old ED map, there is East Blvd, right between Glenboro and Clarebird. I searched for 'Glenboro Dr, Cleveland, Ohio' on Google Maps, and here is what I got:

Oh look, that street between Clarebird and Glenboro is no longer called East Blvd, but instead has been renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. (By the way, there is still a road known as East Blvd in this part of Cleveland, which simply added to my confusion.)

Turns out, the census enumerator wrote the wrong house number for the Licciardi family's address on the 1940 form. He wrote '3521,' which, if you look carefully, doesn't even fit the sequence of the other addresses on the page. And, upon further searching, I discovered that there isn't even a lot at 3521 MLK Jr. Blvd. Thank goodness for the city directory, which DID have the family's correct address (3591).

I HAVE located the home via Google Street View and will be talking about it in a separate post later this week, so stay tuned!

©2014, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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Those Places Thursday: Réchésy, France

1/15/2014

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On August 29, 1828, a ship carrying Leon Bernard, his wife, Catherine (Kilker) Bernard, and their seven children arrived in New York, New York. From there, the Bernard family traveled west, first settling in Perry County, Ohio, before moving again to Mercer County, more specifically the area near Maria Stein. Since this area was popular with German immigrants of the time, Leon's children and grandchildren married into German families. (For those of you reading this who are related to my husband, Leon's granddaughter, Maria Magdalena Bernard, married Joseph Rolfes in 1865 and they are two of Rita Brunswick's great-grandparents through her Dad's (Brunswick) line. So, Leon and Catherine are Tony's 5x great-grandparents!)

The Bernard Family was from the small town of Réchésy, located in eastern France right on the border with Switzerland. According to his children's birth records, Leon worked as a shoemaker (cordonnier) in the village.

Location of Réchésy, France, courtesy of Google Maps

Last year, when I was working on creating my genealogy map wall, I bought a early 20th century postcard depicting Réchésy.

Early 20th Century Photo of Réchésy

I recently stumbled upon this modern photo of Réchésy (below) on the Panoramio.com website. (Photographer is Mr. Yves Bamberger.) The perspective of both photos is very similar, and it seems as if the village has not changed too much over the centuries. This French Wikipedia page for Réchésy lists population data for the village, starting in 1793 and continuing to 2011. In 1793, four years after the birth of Leon Bernard, the population of Réchésy was 606. It appears that the population grew to 1200+ in the 1880s, but declined in the 20th century. Today there are approximately around 800 people in the town.

Modern-Day Photo of Réchésy (Mr. Yves Bamberger)

The church pictured is L'église Saint Jean-Baptiste. According to this Réchésy heritage website, it was built around 1850-1860, when the population of the town started growing larger. So, this particular structure was not there when the Bernard family lived in the village, but there was surely some sort of smaller chapel/church were residents worshiped and received the Catholic sacraments.

I clipped a few screenshots of the streets of Réchésy from Google StreetView. The streets appear quite hilly, which is to be expected in the foothills of the Alps. There is also a distinctive Alsace architectural look to some of the buildings, which makes the village very picturesque indeed. (Click on images for larger view.)

Image Source: Google Map Street View

Image Source: Google Maps Street View

Oh, what I wouldn't give to be able to stumble through this cemetery on the hillside!

Image Source: Google Maps Street View

And this screenshot below may actually be my favorite, because of the 'Beurnevesin' directional sign. According to Leon and Catherine's civil marriage record, Catherine Kilker was born in Beurnevesin, Switzerland, a small village located just a few kilometers from Réchésy.

Image Source: Google Maps Street View

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Creating a Family History Wall

11/16/2013

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Way back in April, I wrote a blog post detailing a 'vision' I had for decorating one large wall in our home. I wanted to use maps, books, postcards, and other small pieces of artwork to tell the visual and geographic story of my and my husband's families, from their origins in Europe all the way up to the places where I and my husband grew up. It took several months, but my vision is more or less complete, and I'm so happy with the results that I wanted to share it with everyone, in the hopes that you may be inspired to do something similar in your home.

As I mentioned in my April post, I started buying maps and postcards off of websites like as eBay and Etsy. I also found a couple of books and small pieces of artwork that help to tell our family's story. (Tip: Don't limit yourself to U.S. sellers only; I found many unique postcards and maps through international sellers.) Once I felt that I had a good representation of the various branches of our family tree, I looked into ways in which I could frame these items. I visited a local custom framing shop in town. Let's just say that their prices were WAY out of my budget. My heart sank; I thought my project was over. I started looking around online and found an Ohio-based company called American Frame. Their easy-to-use website takes you step-by-step through the process of measuring and ordering custom mats and frames. Oh, and did I mention that their frames and mats were affordable? My project was back on track!

Here are some of the custom frames I ordered from American Frame. The photos do not do them justice, and there is some glare from the camera and nearby window. When choosing frames for each individual piece, I decided to go with a frame/mat that matched that ONE piece of artwork. In other words, I didn't try to "match" frames with each other, which the 'designer' at the custom framing shop was pushing me to do. I love the variety that resulted, and, as you'll see later, I think it gives the display as a whole a lot of personality. (Click on image for larger view.)

German map of the Balkan states in brown wood carved frame.

19th c. map of Polish Galicia in silver wood frame with blue mat.

Map of Italy in blue wood frame.

Map of Alsace-Lorraine in black carved wood frame and red mat.

Map of NYC harbor in a smooth charcoal black wood frame.

Map of immigrant ship routes in green wood frame.

Not all of my frames were custom-ordered at American Frame; I bought a lot of the postcard frames at Wal-mart. I used self-adhesive photo corners to mount the postcards on scrapbook paper.

Two vintage Cleveland postcards in 8x10 Wal-Mart frame.

Postcard of husband's home church in 5x7 Wal-Mart frame.

I knew that I wanted to display the framed maps and artwork on ledges, instead of hanging each frame individually. I wanted 4-6 larger shelves which I would arrange in two rows. The ledges HAD to have a forward 'lip' on them so that I could rest the frames on the shelf and not worry about them sliding off. I started looking around in some of the major home decorating chain stores and again I found that these shelves could possibly break my budget. And again, I took to the Internet and found a website called Exposures. The have a great selection of wooden and metal shelves and ledges in popular colors/finishes, and, if you sign up for their email list, they send you lots of coupons. Because I didn't want the shelves to be the focal point of the display, I purchased them in the white finish, which would blend in with our neutral walls and white molding. In hindsight, I probably should have purchased their 'extra-deep' shelves, because that would have given me a little more room on which to rest the frames - luckily, I didn't order any frames that were too deep, so the normal depth shelves ended up working fine for me.

Here is a photo of the entire display. Many thanks to my husband for hanging the shelves. I did not originally intend for the old sewing machine to become part of the display, but it works, especially since two of my great-grandmothers were pretty good seamstresses. I actually think it would be cool to add a few smaller items to represent some of the occupations of some of our ancestors - maybe a plumbing pipe/valve for my grandpa, and a small blacksmith tool and toy tractor for my husband's ancestors.

View of entire family history wall.

Here are a few close-ups of some of the other items on the ledges:

Postcard of hospital, book about my hometown, and vintage letterpress 'B' representing my Grandpa Bellan, who worked in printing.

Immigration ledge with books and vintage postcard of steamship in NYC harbor.

Map of my mother-in-law's home county and authentic 1949 Ohio license plate (year of birth for my husband's parents, both born in Ohio.)

German book about Lauterecken, Germany, one of my husband's ancestral villages.

Originally, I had thought that I might like to paint the words 'Our Family's Journey' on the wall somewhere at the top of the display. Now, I'm not sure if I still want to try that, or if I will just leave it alone and let the maps speak for themselves. Either way, the whole thing makes me smile when I pass it by, and I can't wait until my kids are old enough to wonder "Why is that map there?" or "What is that book about?" And now I can show friends and family members what I've learned through my genealogy research WITHOUT pulling out a binder full of death certificates and census records, which would undoubtedly put most of them to sleep.

Feel free to ask me any questions about the process of creating a genealogy history wall. I'd be happy to talk about it!

©2013, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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Visiting Ancestral Places...From Your Living Room

6/29/2013

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Family history researchers usually do a 'happy dance' when we discover a clue that leads us to that exact village or city where our ancestors once lived before "crossing the pond." And rightfully so - knowing exactly where great-grandma was born opens up so many doors as we try to research generations further and further back in time. And, once we find those special places in our family's history, we immediately feel a desire to go there - to see the buildings our ancestors may have lived in, to walk down a street they walked down everyday of their lives. But, let's face it, traveling thousands of miles is oftentimes not possible. Not to worry: Internet to the rescue! Below, I've listed some Internet resources and tools I have used to "see" these villages that are so far away. Give them a try, if you haven't already!

1.) Google it! Try seeing what an 'old-fashioned' Google search will get you if you type in the name of your ancestor's village. Nowadays, even some of the smallest European towns and villages have websites of their own. This is exactly how I found this website about my great-grandmother's village of Skrudzina, which is located in southern Poland. Using the Google Translate feature on my toolbar, I've been able to learn a little about the village's history from the site. Even if your ancestral village does not have its own website, there is a decent chance something from Wikipedia will pop up in your Google search. Also, when doing your Google Search, don't forget to click on the 'Images' button at the top of the search bar. Doing so will often return images of the town itself.

2.) Google Maps The Street View feature of Google Maps is a wonderful way of simulating a walk down the street of an old family neighborhood or town, as it looks in the present day. The Street View feature is still not available in all locations, but their coverage is getting better and better. I was surprised when I recently looked up my maternal grandmother's birthplace and found that there is indeed Street View available for Iselle, Italy, a very small town on the Swiss-Italian border. Isn't this a gorgeous view? I just love seeing all of the mountains in the background. (Click on photo to see the image directly from Street View.)

Google Street View in Iselle, Italy.

3.) Google Earth If you haven't yet downloaded Google Earth, do it...now. Like, stop reading my blog post and do it. The aerial details of the satellite images are scary-amazing - vegetation, land use, and urban development can all be deduced from looking at these images. Links to user photos posted via Panoramio are posted right on the satellite image, so all you have to do is click on the photo icons and the user-submitted photos pop up right there. Below is a screen shot of one of my husband's ancestral towns, Coesfeld, Germany. There are many, many photos available for viewing! And when I click on an icon, there is the photo! (That, by the way, is a photo of the church where my husband's ancestors were baptized and married; the present structure was built post-WWII because the previous building was destroyed by bombings.) The ability to view satellite imagery and photos is just one of the many great features in Google Earth that can be applied to genealogy; I highly recommend watching this video about Google Earth for Genealogy by Lisa Louise Cooke.

Google Earth Satellite View of Coesfeld, Germany.

After Clicking on a Photo Icon. Jakobikirche in Coesfeld.

4.) 360cities.net I recently discovered this website and really cannot express to you how much I love it. On this website, you can find 360 degree panorama photos for locations all over the world. Right now, it is the larger cities that have more "coverage," but their database is growing all the time as users continue to add to it. This, like Google Earth and Google Street View, is great for seeing what locations look like in the present day. Below is a screen shot of a panorama from a rooftop in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, where my great-grandfather was born. The detail of the photos is just wonderful and, of course, I can rotate it all the way around if I choose. There is also this cool street map utility on the left side that shows you exactly what your field of view is in this image. The map also can be zoomed in or out and closed and opened at your convenience. (Panorama shown below by Martin Kacvinsky.)

Rooftop in Palermo from 360cities.net

5.) WhatWasThere I have blogged about this website before, so I'll direct you to that post for the details about this site's features. WhatWasThere helps users upload historical photos and overlay them onto the Street View feature of Google Maps. Site users then have the ability to fade in and out between the old photos and the present-day street view. This site is a lot like 360cities in that the places YOU are interested in may or may not have photos associated with them. But, also like 360cities, their photo database is continually growing, so it's worth checking back often.

6.) Postcards. Old vintage postcards are GREAT for looking into the past. In the world of postcards, those that show scenes of villages, countrysides, city streets, buildings, etc. are referred to as 'topographical.' eBay is, by far, my favorite place to find postcards of places. I especially love that eBay is international and that purchasing items through international sellers is relatively easy using PayPal. Through eBay, I've been able to find and purchase the three postcards shown below. two of them depict ancestral villages as they were almost 100 years ago. When looking for postcards, don't forget to search for postcards of old buildings that may have special meaning to your family. That postcard of the hospital in the center is where one of my great-grandmothers died in 1919. She was only 29 years old and my grandfather was only four when she passed away, so nobody in our family knows anything about her, other than that she was a Polish immigrant. This postcard gives a little more substance to her story. (The building itself was torn down decades ago.)

Iselle, Italy, birthplace of my maternal grandmother

Cleveland's St. Alexis Hospital

Réchésy, France, one of my husband's ancestral villages.

7.) Facebook. Type in the name of a town or village in the Facebook search bar at the top, and see what comes up. Just like with traditional websites, many of even the smallest towns have their own Facebook pages. Recently, I even found a personal Facebook blog all about one of my husband's ancestral villages, Hannonville-Sous-Les-Côtes in France. The page manager posts some lovely photos of the village and surrounding countrysides on a regular basis - I truly feel like I have been there. And, thanks to the fact that she knows some English, we've also been able to 'talk' a little bit about genealogy and family surnames, too!

8.) Books. Yes, I said it. Books are still a great way to learn about ancestral places. Genealogists can spend hours in libraries and archives trying to dig out information about specific people in their family trees, but what about the places where those people came from? Sometimes locating information about a small town will mean combing through a book about a larger administrative district or state. OR sometimes you may get lucky and find a book or pamphlet that is specifically about your town of interest. I was recently able to find (on eBay again) a book about Lauterecken, Germany, one of my husband's other ancestral villages. It is being shipped straight from Germany, so I have not received it yet, but I'm excited to learn more about the town and to see what types of images are included in the book.

©2013, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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Genealogy Withdrawal and What It Led To...

4/8/2013

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I haven't posted anything on my blog in well over a week because my husband and I took the kids down to the Mississippi Gulf Coast for a Spring Break vacation. It was great; warm weather, excellent creole and seafood, and the kids did better than expected with all of the driving. The only rough part of the week for me was NO GENEALOGY RESEARCH(!) We did visit a couple cemeteries on the trip, but only to look at the neat vaults and above-ground graves that we are not used to seeing up north.

When we weren't exploring the area, I spent some time on my iPad browsing through Etsy and Ebay, looking through old photographs, postcards, and other random ephemera. I came upon some old maps, which isn't unusual, but a light bulb when off and I started getting this vision in my head of something I wanted to create in my house. Since we moved into this house last year, I've been trying to think of a way to create some sort of 'genealogy wall.' I had originally wanted to create a traditional 'family tree,' mixing old family photos with newer ones of my family. However, I don't have an equal amount of photos from each branch of our family, and I could just never picture how I wanted it to look.

Back to this 'vision.' I want to use maps to depict our family's journey. This idea seems natural to me; I've always loved looking at maps, I was a geography minor in college, and I used to make a living in a profession dependent on maps. I'm now currently in the process of buying older maps of the places where my and my husband's ancestors lived, worked, and traveled through. At first, I thought it would be neat if I could get a map that itself was contemporary with WHEN our ancestors were living in a particular place. This works with our more recent ancestors, but, of course, it can get very pricey when you are looking for an 18th century map of northwestern France. So, I decided to look for maps that were a little bit older, affordable, and aesthetically pleasing to the eye. (I told my husband this is coming out of our decorating budget :-) I'm searching for maps of all scales: nations, regions, counties, even individual cities that I know our ancestors had connections with. I'm going to write (or stencil) on the wall: Our Family's Journey. I've located and contacted a framing store in town that knows how to properly preserve and frame archival prints. Instead of nailing the framed maps to the wall, I'm going to use floating shelves, so that I can rearrange the display easily and even add to it without having the hassle of making more screw and nail holes.

So far, I've purchased a map of northeastern France and one of an individual department where my husband's ancestors lived before coming to America. I also found a map from a late 1890s atlas depicting all the steamship line routes from Europe to the Americas. In my display, I think I also may include maps of the individual cities our ancestors embarked and disembarked from: Bremen, Naples, Antwerp, New York, New Orleans, and Baltimore. Of the maps I've purchased so far, this one is my favorite - it's an 1837 map of Galicia, where my Polish great-grandparents came from. I spent a little more money on this one, but I learned it's really hard to find a map of Galicia depicted by itself. (It's bigger than my scanner, so this is just a portion of it; and it looks a little distorted because it's in a plastic sleeve.)

Map of Galicia, 1837

But since I want my wall to tell a story, I've also been looking for prints, postcards, and other pieces of artwork or ephemera that helps to do so. I found some charming prints of a German village and farm, along with a market scene from Croatia. These scenes are ones that our ancestors probably encountered and experienced while living in the Old Country. And I'm not limiting myself to scenes from Europe; I've found a 100+ year old postcard of my husband's hometown church, and I have my eye on an early 20th century photograph of workers in a Cleveland steel mill.

German farm scene

German village

It may take a few months to accomplish, but I can't WAIT to see how this turns out. Sometimes a genealogy withdrawal is a good thing! :-)

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Surname Saturday: Tumbusch

1/19/2013

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Theodor Tumbusch, one of my husband's gg-grandfathers on his mom's side, immigrated to America from Germany in 1861. His ship manifest is below. He was about 27 years old and his last residence is listed as Koesfeld (proper spelling is Coesfeld). Listed beneath him in the manifest is Anna Rasing, who was either already his wife, or who would soon become his wife upon arrival in America (I still need to figure that out.) They arrived in Baltimore and eventually made their way to western Ohio, where they settled on a farm in Mercer County. Unfortunately, Theodor died rather young in 1870; Anna lived until 1918.

Theodor Tumbusch and Anna Rasing Ship Manifest

I've done some research on the surname 'Tumbusch,' and it's difficult to determine what the name means or indicates. 'Busch' in German simply means 'bush' in English and 'tum' might refer to several meanings. The English word 'tumble' has roots in German - the German verb 'taumeln' means to fall, drop, or stagger, and the verb 'tummeln' means 'to romp.' The German noun 'tumben' means 'tomb.' The German noun 'tumult' has essentially the same meaning as the same English world and the noun 'tumultant' refers to a rioter. So, maybe my husband had an ancestor who fell in bushes or who was buried in bushes or who caused some sort of commotion or uproar in bushes. Your guess is as good as mine.

Theodor Tumbush had three sons, Henry, Bernard, and Herman, all of whom lived into adulthood and had sons of their own to carry on the family name. It appears that most of Henry's children chose to change the spelling of the name to 'Tumbush' - their birth records indicate the original spelling, while military, marriage, residential, and death records are most often without the 'c.' As far as I can tell from the records, the children and grandchildren of Bernard and Herman kept the original spelling.

If you're not one of my in-laws and have never heard the name 'Tumbusch' before, you're not alone. It's not a common name. The Worldnames Public Profiler maps surnames for 26 countries around the world using recent telephone directories and voter registries. It is not scientific or completely comprehensive, but it still gives you a good idea of relative popularity of a name in different places. In the U.S, the frequency per million (FPM) for the name Tumbusch is only 0.41 (The Tumbush spelling is 0.25). By comparison, my surname, Kowalski, which is basically the Polish equivalent of Smith, has a FPM of 81.56. And Tumbusch is actually MORE common in the U.S. than in Germany, where the FPM is only 0.09.

Relative frequency of surname Tumbusch - World

Zooming into Europe: It is a little difficult to see, but the only area in which 'Tumbusch' is found is the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which is where Theodor's hometown of Coesfeld is located.

Relative frequency of surname Tumbusch - Europe

Breaking down the United States: Tumbusch on the left and Tumbush on the right. Not surprisingly, both spellings are relatively common in Ohio compared with other states.

Tumbusch

Tumbush

And, finally, Ohio by county, Tumbusch on the left and Tumbush on the right. That county in western Ohio in the darkest shade of blue is Mercer County, where Theodor and Anna orginally settled. Notice the small concentration of Tumbush near Cleveland. One of my husband's great uncles moved to the Cleveland area to work on the railroads in the early 20th century and I am willing to bet that some of his descendants still live in the area.

Tumbusch

Tumbush

Based on the rarity of the name, it is probable that many people with the surname Tumbusch or Tumbush in the United States today are descendants of Theodor Tumbusch. And if there are any Tumbusch's out there who AREN'T of his lineage, it would be interesting to try to trace back their ancestors to Germany to try to find the common ancestor. That may have to be one of my longer-term goals for the future. In the meantime, I'm adding Coesfeld, Germany to my list of must-visit places whenever my husband and I get a chance to take our genealogy trip to Germany.

Tumbus(c)h family documents can be viewed and downloaded at this website: http://schroeder-tumbush.weebly.com/tumbush.html

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At The Intersection of History and Technology

10/1/2012

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The other day, I found a website called WhatWasThere.com. It overlays historical photographs
onto present-day Google Map streetviews, so that you can "see" what places looked like in the past. The database includes photographs and streetviews from all over the world. I could easily waste hour after enjoyable hour browsing through this website.

The homepage gives you the option of entering a city, state, country name, or zip code. At any point, you can easily zoom in or out using the scroll button on your mouse. Click one of the little orange bubbles, and a sidebar pops up showing you which photos are available for overlay.

Click on any image in the sidebar, and it will pop up on the map. Then, you have the choice of "View Photo Details" or "Google Street View."

Select "Google Street View" and watch what happens. The photo is placed on a modern-day Google street view scene in about the same place in which it was located years ago. But wait, there's more! You can FADE the old photo in and out of the scene to see what the area looks like today! (second picture below)

I chose this photo from Downtown Cincinnati to use as my example in this post because it has special meaning to me and my kids. My daughter's one year photos were taken in that little park enclosed by the columns. It was a ridiculously hot and humid early September evening (the heat index was around 100F) so we were battling sweat beads and overly red faces in these photos. I also learned that, after business hours, there are no public toilets within a 2 block radius of this portion of East 5th Street between Sycamore and Broadway. Thank you, Mr. Bub, for helping me figure that one out :)

The website also allows you to upload your own photos to add to its database. I found a photo of our 2007 trip to Vegas, in which I was looking down The Strip from the northern end (excellent IHOP, by the way). I decided to try my hand at adding and overlaying a photo. Uploading was very quick and easy, but overlaying it onto the Google Street View took me longer. Because Google Streets only let you turn and move, well, along the streets, it's almost impossible to match up the angle of your photo and Google's photos. I thought this would be a cool photo to upload, though, because The Sahara Hotel and Casino was closed down in 2011, so, in a way, this photo IS historical. (Turns out, this Google Street photo was taken in 2009, so that Sahara sign is still there, it's just behind a palm tree and down the street a little farther so you can't see it.) But, one day, when Google updates its images, my photo will be there still to remind people of the old Sahara Casino. I think that's pretty neat :)

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Map Monday: U.S. Immigration 1880 - 2000

9/24/2012

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I came across a very cool interactive 'Immigration Explorer' map that was created by the NY Times a few years ago. Here is what the interface looks like:

At the top of the map is a time bar on which you can move the little arrow to pick which decade's data you want to look at. This feature is really neat if you are interested in looking at how immigration trended geographically over time. Data is individualized by county, and if you hover over any county (for which there is data available), you can see foreign-born population as compared with total county population. Of course, the colors represent different geographical regions across the globe from which people emigrated. (Oh, and you can zoom in to a particular state or region in order to better see the counties.) If you click on "number of residents" in the upper-right corner, you get a different way to look at the data. The larger the circle, the more foreign-born residents live in that county at that time:

But what if you are interested in looking at immigrants from only one specific country? There is a way to do that, too. In the upper-left corner is an "All-Countries" pull-down menu. Click on any of the nations or regions listed, and the map will show only data for that nationality. For example, the second map below shows only data for Italy: