Geneology
Geneology
One of my favorite hobbies is genealogy research. It’s an exhausting, time-consuming treasure hunt that leads to just as many dead ends as it does bounties, but those bounties make it all worthwhile.
The photo above was provided to me by a distant cousin - and the big man on the right is my 2nd great grandfather, William Naumann. I connected with this cousin via building out my family tree on an Ancestry site and finding another individual with a similar tree. His name is George Naumann. Wow!
I had always heard stories of William, specifically that he was a talented musician who played in John Philip Souza’s band. That’s pretty awesome, but until I connected with this cousin of mine (actually second cousin, once removed), I had no evidence to back it up. Thankfully, alongside two photographs of William, he also sent me his obituary from 1939.
Wow - how neat is that?
You can see my great grandfather - Claremont (nicknamed Buster) - mentioned in the last paragraph. Buster is another ancestor of mine I never got to meet (he died in 1983), and somebody I also had no photos of. Unfortunately, the Naumann side didn’t do a great job of preserving family memories. Or, I guess I should say my Naumann side.
That also changed when I met George - he grew up knowing Buster and his wife (my great grandmother) Gertie!
Anyways, back to William. I was able to track down his parents as well, Rudolph and Augusta Naumann, who came to the United States via ship in 1866 from Ilfeld, Germany. I discovered all of this via Ancestry.com and the amazing selection of records they have.
Once I found out the town they came from - I made a late-night/early-morning call directly to Germany. Safe to say, the little village of just over 3,000 Germans was not used to receiving calls from the United States.
Once they finally found somebody who spoke English, I was told to send an email to the local church to see if they could find the baptism records.
Sure enough, look what showed up in my inbox:
Johann Christian Rudolph Naumann was born on July 12th, 1841 to Johann Friedrich August Naumann (born 1829 - agricultural worker) and Christiane Juliane Maria Hase. If you’re wondering, yes, it looks like “Ludolph,” but after reading some literature on old German writing, supposedly they wrote capital “R” similar to “L.”
Wow.
I could fill up thousands of words with the discoveries I’ve made, photos I’ve gathered, etc, but the real reason I wanted to share this was hopefully to inspire you to do the research. I have been able to connect with relatives via DNA matching too (Ancestry - though others like 23andMe do the same) and get stories, pictures, and other fascinating leads that have kept my journey going.
I’ll probably end up boring you again sometime soon with my discoveries, but I hope one day you will bore me with yours as well. While genealogy changes very little about how we live our lives, it certainly gives some appreciation and perspective for those that came, struggled, and persevered before us.
If only they could see us now!
Cheers,
Sage