Betty-Jane and Mike

We both were researching our Yuncker family lines. A few years ago we were able to prove we were related and since then we have corresponded frequently and shared a great deal of genealogical information. This proves that genealogy is more than just names and dates.

Andrea’s search began recently with a family chronicle written by her second great-grandfather, Franz Xaver Mauer, in 1936 when he was 83 years old. He describes in detail his ancestors, their occupations and where they lived. He was born after my third great-grandmother, Anna Catharina Mauren, his aunt, left for America. Although he never met her, he heard that she and her husband Nicolas Pohl celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in America (in 1872).

Andrea graciously shared with me an electronic copy of her family chronicle. It is a great resource and is something I never would have found in a library or online collection. It is one of the rewards of publishing my research online.

Stammbaum Der Familie Mauer

My research over the years has been devoted to tracing my family backward starting with my great-grandparents. I’m pretty good at referencing the sources I use. But, I knew the facts about myself, my parents and my grandparents were correct. The First Families certificate required proof. That’s when I realized my careful research back to the early 1600′s was not based on a solid foundation.

I am now going back through my family tree from the present day, and citing birth and marriage records that prove my descent. I’m amazed at how much information I took for granted. Not only will this strengthen my existing historical research, but I will leave a much better legacy to future generations.

I read of a man who stood to speak
at the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
from the beginning…to the end.

He noted that first came the date of her birth
and spoke of the following date with tears,
but he said what mattered most of all
was the dash between those years.

For that dash represents all the time
that she spent alive on earth…
and now only those who loved her
know what that little line is worth.

–excerpt from The Dash, a poem by Linda Ellis

Interested to learn more about what happened, I found Keith Lowe’s book, Inferno¹, which describes the Allied bombing raids on Hamburg, Germany during World War II. I highly recommend this book to history buffs and genealogists alike.

It’s a difficult book to read at night before retiring. The sad eyewitness accounts are gruesome, and although riveting, they make for an uneasy night’s sleep. Lowe tells the story from both sides. He describes the mission preparation and the consternation, fear and courage of the aircrews as they dodged antiaircraft guns and Nazi fighter planes. He then describes the civilians in the aftermath of each raid. They suffered almost total destruction.

The Inferno is the firestorm that happened on the night of July 27, 1943. A firestorm is a ghastly thing. Everything burns. Temperatures can reach 1,400 degrees Celsius. Enough to melt glass and liquefy asphalt streets onto which people ran and soon died. It produces a suffocating smoke over a vast area and sucks the oxygen out of basement shelters where the doomed hid. The wind vortex created by the firestorm reached hurricane strength, up to 170 mph, enough to whisk children out of the arms of parents and pull the elderly down the street into the fire.

I learned why there are no emigration records. It seems unimportant now.

Lowe also describes the history of Hamburg and the rise of Nazi power prior to the war. I’ve often wondered how a people could witness such transgressions and allow it to happen. One quote², about the persecution of the Jews offers somewhat of an explanation:

For me nothing was more devastating than the fact that nobody, not even those who opposed the [Nazi] regime most vehemently, stood up against this, but remained passive and weak. I cannot stress these facts too strongly. It was as if we were caught in a stranglehold. And, worst of all, one even gets used to being half throttled; what at first appeard to be unbearable pressure becomes a habit, becomes easier to tolerate; hate and desperation are diluted with time.

Perhaps it is the same with everyone in every age though. For example if you disagree with the current war in Iraq, what can you do about it? How can one person stop an administration?

1. Lowe, Keith. Inferno: The Fiery Destruction of Hamburg, 1943. New York: Scribner, 2007
2. Page 27. Quoted from the diary of Mathilda Wolff-Mönckeberg

Here is a method for numbering families (not individuals) for your direct-line ancestry. First, notice that an ancestor or pedigree chart is actually a “binary tree,” meaning that each node, or family, in the tree always has exactly two ancestor nodes. Each of the two nodes can therefore be assigned a unique number. This includes even the “missing” nodes, or families that you have yet to discover.

Start with your parent’s family, of which you are a child. This is family 1. Your father’s family is family number 2 and your mother’s family is family number 3. Now move to your father’s family. His father’s family is number 4 and his mother’s family is number 5. Now move back to your mother’s family. Her father’s family is number 6 and her mother’s family is number 7. A pedigree chart would appears as follows:

      /-4
      |
  /-2-|
  |   |
  |   \-5
1-|
  |   /-6
  |   |
  \-3-|
      |
      \-7

The pattern that emerges is, for any given family n, the paternal parents are numbered 2n and the maternal parents are numbered 2n + 1. For node 3 for example, the paternal family is 2*3=6 and the maternal family is 2*3+1=7. This formula applies to any node. At node 144, one of your paternal sixth great-grandparents, the paternal family is number 2*144=288 and the maternal family is number 2*144+1=289. Even if you have not discovered your seventh great-grandparents, numbers are still reserved for their families.

Many genealogy software programs automatically number your families. However, the numbers assigned by the program may change as you add or remove families. This can throw off your filing system. Instead you can manually number each of your ancestral families according to the above scheme. Generally, your genealogy software program will not automatically change the numbers you enter yourself. You can then refer to a particular ancestral family and leave no doubt as to which you are referring. In your research, when you discover a child of one of your ancestors, you can include the family number in your notebook.

For consistency, you may wish to make the numbers five digits long, like 00289. If you also trace your spouse’s ancestors, you can add a separate prefix to tell them apart, like B00289 for your family and M00289 for your spouse’s family.

Unfortunately this numbering scheme does not account for your descendants, since each family can have fewer, or more, than two children. It also does not account for non-direct line ancestors, who you wish to reference by number. For these families I assign an arbitrary number greater than any possible direct-line family. These numbers are sequential, starting at 50000. The maximum number of families in a binary tree is 2^k – 1, where k is the number of generations. So 15 generations would account for 2^15–1 = 32,767 families, that is, 2 to the 15th power, minus 1.

In his personal journal, he wrote that he was at Netherby, Humberstone Township, Ontario, Canada on November 19, 1875. Whether he lived there, worked there, or was passing through is unknown. Later he wrote that he worked in Hawkesville, Ontario in April 1877. His death certificate indicates he was born in Canada and that his father’s name was also Joseph.

He emigrated to America sometime in or before 1879. He is rumored to have traveled with Clements and Elizabeth Starr, who were also from Ontario. On October 3, 1879 he bought land near Beal City in Nottowa Township, Isabella County, Michigan. He married Mary Ann Yuncker February 16, 1885 in Mount Pleasant, Michigan.

Other researchers have studied the family of Joseph Voisin (1805-1892) and Catherine Meyer (1820-1881). They lived in Wellesley Township, near St. Clements, Ontario. This is very near Hawkesville. There is apparently no link between this family and my ancestor, Joseph Voisin. However it is still a possibility. There were also other Voisin families in the area then, but they moved away.

If anyone has any information about my ancestor Joseph Voisin, please post a reply here, or contact MikeVoisin@iSeeAncestors.com.

On my paternal side, Nicolas and Catharina Pohl immigrated from the Eifel region of Germany in 1840 and settled in Westphalia, Michigan.

On my maternal side, Albert and Mary Pohl immigrated probably from Austria-Hungary in 1892 and settled near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

A “preferred” fact is a best estimate. It may include information from a combination of alternate facts. A single preferred fact is often used in genealogical reports and charts, where listing several alternate facts is infeasible.

For some facts, it is not a matter of having several conflicting facts from alternate sources. Sometimes you must draw inferences from several sources to form a conclusion. Suppose you have a hunch that a particular person is your ancestor. If you evaluate several sources, you may find proof to a reasonable degree of certainty that your hunch is correct. In other words you may be able draw a conclusion even though there are no explicit facts that prove it.

As an example, marriage records often list witnesses, their ages, and their relationship to the bride or groom. Evaluating the marriage records of two sisters may lead you to conclude that one of the witnesses who appears on both records is actually their brother. The age and hometown of this witness may lead you to conclude he is indeed your ancestor.

Therefore, besides citing individual sources for a given fact, you can also cite a conclusion. Simply document the steps that led to your conclusion, and name that as your source. Future researchers can then see your logic and verify it against your sources, and any new sources that may be discovered.

For instance someone’s date of birth taken from their death certificate has a greater chance of being incorrect since their birth happened so many years beforehand. The person filling out the death certificate may only be guessing the deceased’s birth date. The birth date is seldom verified with other official records when the death certificate is filed.

Birth certificates are considered more accurate because they are recorded soon after birth, when everyone involved is sure when it happened. However a clerk generally recorded births in a ledger book. Sometimes these ledgers were themselves re-copied several years later. So even a “birth certificate” is subject to transcription errors and recording mistakes.

Even if a birth record and a death record each point to the same birth date, that date is not necessarily accurate. Two or more inaccurate records do not make an accurate record.

That is why citing a source in genealogical research is so important. You, or a subsequent researcher may happen upon another source in the future that corroborates or refutes a given fact. All sources will again need to be weighed for accuracy before another conclusion can be drawn. Any genealogical fact has an inherent degree of accuracy that is never 100%.