Welcoming a cousin who’s not a cousin …

I have been having an email correspondence with a cousin who is not a cousin – really.  Joe and I are ‘related’ only because one of MY people married one of HIS people…  Okay, so that makes us related by marriage, right?

No – solely because the people married are not necessarily related by birth…  just by an act of marriage. Let me explain.

My great grandmother had a great uncle (Martin) who had a niece – Margaret – on his wife’s side. So other than being ‘related’ to Martin, Margaret is NOT a Pimsner descendant.

But, in a very convoluted way, I think Margaret IS related and I will have to see just how!  After all, her maiden name is STROEMPL.  Yep, there’s one of those surnames we see many times ‘connected’ to Pimsners!  Add to that mix are the surnames Schwartz, Gloszner and BROESTL!

This is one of the reasons I continue to not only add but encourage others to add a couple generations of in-laws to their database records.  It really is NOT uncommon for siblings or cousins to marry.  By limiting your research to JUST your direct line limits the ability to ‘find’ the other connections out there!  And as we know, our Pimsner’s are connected to many of the same surnames multiple times!!

Where did they go?

Modern Metzenseifen

An acquaintance and his wife (Heinz Schleussner of the Metzenseifen website) are ‘visiting’ Metzenseifen right now.  How exciting is that??  I am posting one of the photos Heinz took…) The sad thing, from my perspective, is that after speaking with the Metzenseifen mayor, there are NO residents of this beautiful village with the surname PIMSNER!  Darn!  Where did they all go??

As with much of my previous research, I have discovered many of our Pimsner ancestors married into or married someone from a multitude of Metzy families.  Other than coming to America, where did they go to?  If they married into a family then the female Pimsner became some other surname!  (As an example, on the Metzenseifen web page, Heinz pointed out a Terezia Schurger whose maiden name was Pimsner.  Schurger and all its spellings are one of the many ‘common’ Metzy surnames our Pimsners are connected to!)

It is sad to think our Pimsners have disappeared from Metzenseifen!

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I had a fun conversation with Arlene Pimsner last week-end. (She is the granddaughter of Simon Pimsner; brother to my great grandmother, Anna Marie (Pimsner) Dittmer… I mentioned I would be sending Arlene copies of the 1920 and 1930 Census. The 1930 Census shows a ‘lodger’ named Stephen Pimsner! (I also happen to have the death certificate for this Stephen…) It turns out, Stephen is NOT related. I know, his surname IS Pimsner and I said, before, all Pimsner’s are related!!! Well, no one knew Stephen’s surname. At the time he was a hobo, transient, itinerant worker, etc and stayed with this Pimsner family for a few years… When he died, the Cuyohoga County Coroner required a surname in order to handle all the necessary paperwork. Since no one KNEW the surname the family ‘bequeathed’ their name – thus Stephen Unknown became Stephen Pimsner

Records – Civil or church?

When do you know what records to look for when researching your family tree?  Many times, it is helpful to know what church your family might have been affiliated with.  Why you ask?  The majority of church records (whether in America or Europe) tend to be a literal list of your family’s history!  But each minister/pastor handled entering data into the church book(s) differently than the next.  It is not uncommon to see references of a parents marriages and/or occupation and ages when seeking baptism/christening information.

Civil records tend to be a 50/50 proposition as far as either gaining a lot or a little data.  This depends on the document you are seeking as well as the time frame involved.  As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been obtaining quite a few marriage records from the City of Cleveland.  Depending on the time involved, the marriage license contains either just the bride and grooms full names, the date of their marriage and the date the marriage was registered.  Other years the marriage license contains ages of the couple, their birth places, their parents names – including the maiden name of the mothers!!  Occupations are sometimes listed as well as, again, when the marriage took place and when it was registered.

This is one of those times when ‘less is NOT more’!  If you have the opportunity to look at church records then by all means, do so!!  But you can ‘amend’ your church record data with civil record information when it comes to marriages because ALL ‘modern’ marriages must be recorded in modern cities/towns/counties/states!!

Take some time and look at the FamilySearch.org website (Library catalog) to see what ‘vital’ records might be listed for the location you are researching.  You might be pleasantly surprised to see films are available for you to view at your local Family History Center!!  (An example: I was able to view my great grandfather’s baptism records from the Cook County Diocese!  Having known their birth dates it was relatively simple to find them in the copies of the actual church records!  I got to see the godparents names as well which was really cool!)

Unfortunately for those of us doing Pimsner research of Cleveland, the Cleveland Diocese does NOT have its church books available on microfilm.  If a church has been closed, you will be able to contact the Diocese Archives and ask for a search – it will help greatly if you already know the parish your ancestors attended.  If the church is still part of an active parish, like St. Stephen’s, then you will probably have great difficulties obtaining data.  The parish secretaries are many times over worked and have next to no ‘free’ time to do research for something a frivolous as genealogy…  Darn!~

Cleveland OH marriages …

Over the last year I have been requesting (and receiving) quite a number of  documents for marriages that took place in Cleveland.  What is ‘interesting’, from my perspective, is that depending on the year – you can be either pleasantly surprised with the data found on the document copy or somewhat disappointed!

I’m still trying to get information from St. Stephen’s Church for a particular wedding but,  as I research a surname I just request a variety of documents with similar spellings.  How exciting when the documents arrive and there IS a connection in one form or another and finding the person, entering data in to the Archives database, was unable to read the handwriting.  THAT’S why there are so many different varieties of spelling a surname!!  I’ve only encountered 2 for Pimsner but there are any number for Gedeon, Stroempl, Ballasch, etc…

As you research these Slovak names, don’t limit yourself to how you KNOW the name is supposed to be spelled!  I know, it’s somewhat difficult to imagine a different spelling but you will be quite surprised!!

If you go to the Cuyahoga County OH GenWeb page for marriages, you will see quite a few I have added to their list! (Just look for the ‘usual’ family names!!)

TTFN

Genealogy software – dilemma…

I decided to try a different genealogy software to both track my research and update my website.  Why?  Well, you know the saying of ‘The grass is greener on the other side.’  I took a look at this new software and its reporting capabilities.  Holy cow!  MUCH better than the software I am now using!  (I will also admit, I really love the ‘glitsy’ kind of graphics :-> )  Now I am perfectly happy with the software I have been using for quite a number of years!  I understand it so well and can quite easily modify the web product when I need to…  But this NEW software!  I am rethinking whether I really want to use it or not!

I plan on paying a visit to the software website and providing some feedback – whether they like that or not won’t matter but atleast they will either be able to use my suggestions or tell me they can not make changes to their software.

One of the MAIN sticking points, for me, is their having an ‘event’ folder.  These events include the usual: births, marriages and/or deaths.  Divorces are also included as an event.  That’s well and good but – each person has their very own event ‘page’ and there is next to nothing included on the page other than a repeat of the very same event name and date as found on the family page and/or the person page…  What a pain in the neck when trying to eliminate this link from the new ‘possible’ website pages! (I promise you, you WILL like the new look if I can only get past all this html housekeeping! Sheesh!)

I’ve also noticed that instead of using the word ‘spouse’ the way my old software does, this new software uses the word ‘partner’.  I guess that IS politically correct but I don’t like it – I’ve done a global find/replace to change every html record from using partner to spouse.

As I have been ‘editing’ pages, I can tell you, it has been MOST interesting to again ‘discover’ kin I have forgotten about!  I’ve also run across names I wanted to research more and neglected. (Note to self: get back to it!)

This new software is supposed to help me determine what I still need to research per person so I’m thinking I may just use both for awhile.  After spending countless hours cleaning the html coding for the potential new web pages I’m taking a break!

So if YOU are contemplating entering your piles and piles of research into your computer, I highly recommend you first decide what it is you want once the data has been entered!  PC or Mac – there are many choices!  As a Mac user, Reunion has been my software of choice for many years!  It is clean, it is logical and it handles a download for web viewing with ease and grace.  I just wish they had better ‘charting’ with more graphics!  Ta ta for now!

Cousins – relatives all the same

I have been in contact with someone NOT related ‘directly’ yet we share a common ancestor.  Once again, we have a Pimsner to thank for bringing us together!  HIS surname is Bodenlos.  Yes, this IS a Metzenseifen surname.  In my database there are a few Bodenlos individuals – Anna Bodenlos married John Pimsner.  It is Anna’s sibling who Bill is descended from.

Thanks to the internet, more people are searching – not necessarily for their ‘roots’ but just querying Google, or Bing or…  What’s out there and who can I find?

I like adding additional ‘links’ to my family information for just this reason! If I include the parents of someone who married into my family or maybe even the siblings of the in-law along with their information then when someone is querying and the name pops up they have an inside track on where their family might have been at that point in time.  That’s pretty cool!

How are we related?

I recently received an email message from someone living in Cleveland whose ancestors were PIMSNERS and who came from Metzenseifen.  Are we related? she asked?

It took me a few minutes of searching my database before I could give her the answer I just guessed – YES!

I then explained ‘how’ we were related.  WAY back, towards the beginning of my family records, were two brothers.  I am descended from one and she is descended from the other. (I had to put on paper our ‘exact’ relationship, and it came out to be either 6th or 7th cousins with one or two times removed…  I hadn’t received where SHE fit in at that time…)

How fun, for me, to share the information I have already gathered to help someone fill in blanks they didn’t even know existed :->

As I’ve mentioned before, ALL Pimsners are related (with the exception of one ‘line’ I am aware of…)!!

Reunions – what does that mean?

My spouse and I recently participated in a family reunion.  We met people we haven’t seen in awhile; people we had never met before and gladly shared information collected over the years of ancestors that came before us.

Though we all descended from the Pimsner line, the emphasis of this reunion was on all those people descended from Frank Huetter and Anna Marie Ballasch.  (Anna Marie was the daughter of John Ballasch and Theresia Pimsner…)

From what I could tell, there were atleast 4 generations represented and possibly 5 – many people were strangers and I needed someone else to put all into perspective and how ‘we’ were related!

I don’t envy the person (or persons) responsible for coordinating such a gathering but think this is a marvelous way for families to get together!  (It sure beats the obvious gathering event – funerals!)

Family – what that really means

I recently started an email correspondence with a ‘distant’ cousin.  Yes, Katherine IS a cousin – probably a 2nd or 3rd without getting my paper and pencil to figure it out.

Katherine has been sharing with me some family photos as well as the all important ‘information’ and through our furious email messages, I have added MORE names to my database.  But – to me, this is MORE than just names or data – this is about family.  After all, in some respect, everyone in my database is somewhat/somehow related.

Sure, many of the names I add to my database are not related to me by birth but, I add them anyway thinking that someone will see ‘their’ surname and ask me how I am related to them. We start a dialog and before you know it, we share information which helps me and helps them.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, many of the families from Metzenseifen are connected – in some way or another…  And as such, the family grows bigger and bigger which in some ways makes the world a littler smaller.

Allied families

If  your ancestors came from Metzenseifen then you probably have kin to many of these families.  In my research on the Pimsner family tree, I have seen often mentioned surnames that include Gedeon, Ballasch, Bodenlos, Mellar, Frantz, Schmidt, Broestl and so many more!  And over the years, the spelling of these names have changed – some have added letters or, like Ballasch, removed letters; in this case, differing generations have removed the ‘s’ so that the name is now spelled Ballach.

My Pimsner ancestors have found ways to marry all these families.  The big question for me is just how are all these various families related to each other?

Metzenseifen was not a particularly large village from what I can tell. According to Duncan Gardner’s web page “… The town of Metzenseifen was founded in the 1300s by German-speaking settlers, apparently from the lower Rhine region. The German dialect, known as Mantakisch, is still spoken today by older residents of Medzev and their children (though the majority population is now Slovak speaking). The population in the two parts of town in the late 1800s (and today) was 3500 (Unter-Metzenseifen) and 1500 (Ober-Metzenseifen, a half-mile north of Unter-Metzenseifen).”

Finally, Mr. Gardner’s website states the following: “… Surnames of German-speaking families from Metzenseifen: Gedeon (Gedeohn), Wagner, Tischler, Goebl, Broestl, Schuerger, Schuster, Ballasch, Stroempl, Tomasch, Bodenlos, Froelich, Eiben, Kundt (later Kundtz), Schmiedl, Sorger, Antl, Muellner; Stefany, Tache, Kovats, Friedl, Glosner, Imling, Koosch, Malicsky, Schmidt, Flegner, Krupitzer, Poehm, Boehm, Ruehrkraut, Schmotzer, Hennel (Hoenl), Holop, Pimzner, Ruzsbaczky, Lazar, Schenk, Filakovszky, Franz, Frint, Gallus, Hoffelder, Huebler, Klein, Kozman, Kuchar, Lengyel, Lepesch, Majer, Poser, Progner, Pukelnik, Quallich, Roob, Roth, Schmeer, Scholtz, Streidl, Szedlay.

In Ober-Metzenseifen the most frequent names were: Eiben, Schmotzer, Meder, Frindt, Gedeon, Stark, Antl, Grentzer, Zawatzky, Jalsch, Lang, Mazorlik, Mueller, Schuerger, Tohol, Tomasch.”