For about 10-15 years I’ve been part of a small group of men
(3-4 of us) who have met twice a month for prayer, mutual support, and study.
We meet for breakfast at one of the local diners where we enjoy a meal
together, then often talk about a chapter of a book that we’re reading together
to help strengthen our faith. We also talk about what’s going on in our life,
the challenges that we are facing (in confidence), pray for each other, etc.
One of the others of this group, Bob Davies, who has been
part of it for longer than I have, is a man whom I’ve known from church for 40
years. We have a lot in common – both of us had careers in the IT field, we
sang together in the church choir, sang together in a men’s quartet for many years,
served as elders together, etc. And while we’ve known about each other’s
immediate families, it’s interesting that the topic of our ancestors never came
up until our last meeting a week ago. But it finally did, and I thought it
would be interesting, given my interest in genealogy, to research his family.
Here is what I had to go on – the names and approximate year
of birth of his parents; that Bob knew practically nothing about his paternal
grandfather; the fact that his paternal grandmother had the last name of von
Steuben and that she was somehow related to General von Steuben from the
Revolutionary War; and that his maternal grandmother’s last name was Green but
that it had come from Gruen which is the German word for Green but got
Anglicized.
I put the above information into a new tree in ancestry.com
and fairly quickly came up with the names of Bob’s grandparents. But each of
these four individuals required me to do a very different type of research – a potpourri
of genealogy if you will – that was so interesting that I thought it warranted
being documented in this blog.
Misinformation in
the Census
I was quickly able to find Bob’s parents in the census
records of 1940 and then before they were married in the 1930 and 1920 census
with their parents (Bob’s grandparents). Bob’s grandfather, David T. Davies,
was born in 1878 and both the 1930 and 1920 census indicated that he was born
in Maine and his parents were born in Wales. But I was unable to find him
anywhere in the 1910 or earlier census records – in PA, in ME, or anywhere
else.
But not deterred by this dead end, I started looking for
information elsewhere. After some digging, I was able to find him in
immigration records from 1911. These records are pretty detailed and give lots
of information, so I noted that David was a blacksmith, that his destination
was Portland, ME, that he left behind his mother, Jane, and many other
interesting things.
Thus, it appears that when the census taker stopped at the
Davies’ home in 1920 and 1930 that Bob’s grandmother was the one who answered
the door. When she was asked, “where was your husband born?,” she gave what she
thought was a truthful answer of “Maine”, because as far as she knew that’s
where he had come from. But the truth was that while he was in Maine originally
in 1911 when he entered the US, he only lived there a few years before
moving to PA and marrying her in 1916. This is not unusual in doing
genealogical research, to encounter misinformation that occurs for a variety of
reasons. But it complicates this research – or at least slows it down as it did
here.
Connection to a
Famous Person
Bob’s paternal grandmother was Charlotte von Steuben – a helpful
thing to know, as finding maiden names is sometimes difficult in genealogical
research. As I traced back through her ancestors there was a plethora of German
names, nearly all of whom came to the US over 200 years ago. So while Bob is ¼ Welsh
through his paternal grandfather, it is pretty obvious that he is ¼ German
through the von Steuben line.
But General Friedrich von Steuben never married and had no
children. So what was Bob’s connection to him? This required me to research
both Bob’s ancestors and General von Steuben’s ancestors to find the
intersection. But along the way I found that the von Steuben line took a
detour. Bob’s great*3 grandfather, Peter von Steuben, came to the US not from
Germany but from Denmark where both he and his parents lived. General von
Steuben was Peter’s first cousin, thus he is Bob’s first cousin, 5 times
removed.
My Cousin – Three Ways!
In tracing back Bob’s maternal grandfather, I found that the
Ackley family moved to Bradford County PA from Connecticut. Since genealogy
records from Connecticut are pretty robust, I was able to trace it back several
more generations quite easily. In the process I began to notice family names
that occur in my own family tree – which has been in Connecticut for over 300
years. So I took some of those family names and began checking to see if Bob’s
ancestral lines intersected with my own. I have found three such connections.
Bob’s great*4 grandmother was Abigail Doane. Her ancestral
line goes back to John Doane (b. 1575 in England), but John is also my ancestor
on my father’s side. Through this connection Bob is my 10th cousin,
once removed.
Another of Bob’s ancestors is Sarah Andrews who was born in
Waterbury, CT – the same town that I was born in. Her father, Abraham Andrews
is also an ancestor of mine on my mother’s side, making Bob my 8th
cousin, once removed.
Finally, another family in Bob’s ancestral line is the
Terrill family where Daniel Terrill is Bob’s great*6 grandfather and my great*7
grandfather, making Bob my 7th cousin, once removed, again on my
father’s side.
This makes a total of three ways that I am related to Bob.
But it also means that through the Doane family line Bob is an official “blue
blood” as one of his ancestors, Constance Hopkins, who is the grandmother of
Israel Doane came to the Plymouth Colony on the Mayflower in 1620.
Unraveling a
Complicated Story
The last of Bob’s family lines, through his maternal
grandmother, was the hardest to unravel. He knew his grandmother, Minnie Green,
and that the family name used to be Gruen, but establishing that through
genealogical research was a bit difficult. After several hours of looking
through census records, death certificates, etc., the story goes like this:
Conrad Gruen
was born in Germany in 1853 and came to the US in 1872. He married for the
first time in 1884 to a woman named Marie Dengler. But this was the second
marriage for Marie. Her maiden name was Marie Pistor and she had married back
in Germany and had a daughter Pauline [Dengler] (b. 1869). Conrad and Marie had
two children, Pauline (who went by Minnie) (b. 1885), and Frederick (b. 1890).
Conrad then divorced Marie and married a woman by the name of Mary Frank in
1899. He and Mary had a child Anna (b. 1904). [Note that part of the
problem was that the first marriage was after 1880 and ended before 1900 so
there were no census records documenting Conrad and Marie being married.]
Of the 3
children of Conrad, Anna lived with her parents, Frederick lived with Conrad
and his step-mother Mary, but Pauline (Minnie) went to live with her
half-sister Pauline who by this time had married Ernest Hausman and lived in
Allentown. Pauline/Minnie eventually married Isaac Ambrose Ackley.
Conclusion
Bob’s ancestry is ¼ Welsh, ½ German, and ¼ British. And
after knowing him for 40 years I can now call him a cousin!
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