CategoriesSunday's ObituaryThielke

Sunday’s Obituary: Augusta Last

I thought I’d participate in this week’s Sunday’s Obituary by transcribing the obituary of my great-great grandmother, Augusta (LUEDTKE) LAST, who lived to be 100-years-old. It was from a July 18, 1963 Ozaukee County newspaper.

MRS. AUGUSTA LAST

Mrs. Augusta Last died Sunday morning, July 14, just 11 days after observing her 100th birthday. She was in good health and was listening to church services on the radio at the home of her daughter at Grafton when she suddenly hemorrhaged. The rescue squad was called and she was transferred to St. Alphonsus hospital where she was pronounced dead at 9:30 Sunday morning.

Mrs. Last was a semi-invalid for the past five years after breaking her hip in a fall at her home at 312 Van Buren St., Port Washington. Since then she had been alternating her visits and living with her two daugthers, Mrs. Arthur (Dora) Thielke, 13th Ave., Grafton and Mrs. Leonard (Ella) Didier in Port Washington.

The deceased, nee Augusta Luedtke, was born in Germany on July 3, 1863. She and her husband, the late Carl Last, had farmed two miles south of Port Washington on the Lake Shore Rd. in the town of Grafton until August of 1926 when they moved to the Van Buren St. home. Mr. Last died the following summer, on June 5, 1927. She continued to live at her home until suffering the hip injury. She had transferred from the Didier home to the Thielke residence last November.

Survivors in addition to Mrs. Thielke and Mrs. Last are three sons, William and August of Port Washington, and Walter of Milwaukee; two other daughters, Mrs. August (Ida) Schlueter of West Bend and Mrs. Helen Kibbel of Port Washington; one daughter-in-law, three sons-in-law, 24 grandchildren, 58 great-grandchildren and 14 great-great-grandchildren.

The Rev. Christopher Boland, pastor of Frieden’s Evangelical and Reformed church in Port Washington officiated at the funeral services at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, July 16.

Burial was in Union Cemetery, Port Washington.

Funeral arrangements were handled by the Poole funeral home.

 

CategoriesTech TuesdayTechnologyTips & Tricks

Tech Tuesday: Pinterest

My wife, Darcy, made me aware of Pinterest. She does a lot of work with the web and is always finding these new, interesting sites. Pinterest is best described by a story about it on the MySanAntonio website:

[Pinterest is] a “virtual pinboard.” Creative types often use actual pinboards or corkboards for inspiration on projects, adhering to it magazine clippings and printouts of images, quotations and typography; fabric swatches; cards; and other ephemera. In the business world, it’s more commonly referred to as a “vision board” but contains the same elements. With Pinterest, users – called “pinners” – can organize and “pin” photos of items they find on the Web to various boards on their page.

It may not sound exciting, but it can be pretty addicting like she says in her article. I think, for the genealogy folks, that it can be put to good use for inspiration or even collecting great old photos that you find around the web that you love. I’ve personally pinned some neat ideas for a family tree wall. I see a lot of other people using it (it seems to lean heavily female at the moment) for craft ideas, food ideas, and even fashion ideas. Another fun use is pinning places you’d love to visit or even people that inspire you. Maybe it will create some discussion on the site.

Here is my page if you’d like to browse around. The site looks to be invite-only right now, but I think I can invite you if you’d like. Just leave me a comment on here.

[Photo: AuntyCookie@flickr]

CategoriesCorriganSunday's Obituary

Sunday’s Obituary: Emma Firmenich

I’m going to participate in this week’s Sunday’s Obituary theme.

This is the obituary for my great-great grandmother, Emma Jane (FIRMENICH) CORRIGAN in from April 28, 1941. I’m not sure exactly which newspaper since I found the article in my grandmother’s collection and she didn’t note it. If I had to guess, it’s probably from a local Ashland, Wisconsin newspaper.

MRS. COOK, 67, OLD RESIDENT DIES MONDAY

Wife Of Former Street Commissioner Succumbs To Long Illness

Mrs. Emma Cook, 67, of 109 North Ellis avenue, a resident of Ashland and the Chequamegon region for the past 59 years and wife of the late George S. Cook, former city street commissioner, died Monday evening at her home following a lingering illness.

The former Emma Firmenich was born in Wrightstown, Wisconsin, on June 29, 1873, but moved with her parents to Ashland in 1882. The Firmenich family lived in Ashland for a few years and then moved to Sanborn.

She was married to Thomas Corrigan in 1892 at Sanborn where the couple lived until 1905. They then moved to Ashland and lived near the cemetery on Sanborn avenue for several years. Mr. Corrigan died in 1916, but his wife continued to live in their home until 1926 when she moved to Milwaukee. Six years later she returned to the city and in 1932 was married to Mr. Cook in Ashland. Mr. Cook died on December 5, 1940.

She was a member of the St. Agnes church, the Altar Society and the Old Settlers’ Club.

Survivors are twelve children, Edwin and Sadie of Ashland; Maurice, Clayton and Mrs. E. H. Olson of Iron Mountain, Michigan; Henry, Mrs. Norbert Enders (Lenore) and Mrs. Ed Strelka (Ethel) of Milwaukee; Mrs. Harry Nantais (Beatrice) of Dearborn, Michigan; Frank of Rivera, Florida; Mrs. Joseph Maurer and Mrs. Mary Foster of Detroit; four sisters, Mrs. A. F. Anderson and Mrs. Joe Fabro of Ashland, Mrs. William McKindley and Mrs. Thomas Gorman of Grand Coulee, Washington; and one brother, Henry Firmenich, Baudette, Minnesota.

Funeral services will be held at 8:30 a.m. Friday at the Cook home and at 9 a.m. at St. Agnes church. Interment will be in St. Agnes cemetery. The body will be removed from the Wartman Funeral Home to the Cook residence on Thursday where is will lie in state until time of services.

CategoriesSaturday Genealogy Fun

SNGF: GeneaMeme

Sometimes I’m late to these, but her is Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun for this week. He had completed  The Ancestors’ GeneaMeme from Geniaus.

According to the instructions, the list should be annotated in the following manner:

  • Things you have already done or found: bold face type
  • Things you would like to do or find: italicize (colour optional)
  • Things you haven’t done or found and don’t care to: plain type
  • You are encouraged to add extra comments in brackets after each item
  1. Can name my 16 great-great-grandparents
  2. Can name over 50 direct ancestors [with a little help from my genealogy program]
  3. Have photographs or portraits of my 8 great-grandparents
  4. Have an ancestor who was married more than three times [Don’t think more than 3, but I have a few 3-timers]
  5. Have an ancestor who was a bigamist [Not that I found, yet]
  6. Met all four of my grandparents [Yes, and fortunately, two are still with us]
  7. Met one or more of my great-grandparents [I, fortunately, remember meeting 3 of them, but 5 were alive when I was a baby]
  8. Named a child after an ancestor [If you count middle names. Our daughter Aerissa’s middle name is Jean after my mother’s and my grandmother’s middle name]
  9. Bear an ancestor’s given name/s
  10. Have an ancestor from Great Britain or Ireland [CORRIGAN, McCANN, THOMPSON]
  11. Have an ancestor from Asia
  12. Have an ancestor from Continental Europe
  13. Have an ancestor from Africa
  14. Have an ancestor who was an agricultural laborer [Probably a good 75%+]
  15. Have an ancestor who had large land holdings [I’m told one of my ancestors had a good sum of money, which I also assume land was involved]
  16. Have an ancestor who was a holy man – minister, priest, rabbi
  17. Have an ancestor who was a midwife
  18. Have an ancestor who was an author
  19. Have an ancestor with the surname Smith, Murphy or Jones
  20. Have an ancestor with the surname Wong, Kim, Suzuki or Ng
  21. Have an ancestor with a surname beginning with X
  22. Have an ancestor with a forename beginning with Z
  23. Have an ancestor born on 25th December
  24. Have an ancestor born on New Year’s Day
  25. Have blue blood in your family lines [Nobility, no, but my great-grandfather, Joseph ZALEWSKI, was a police officer. They’re sometimes called Blue Bloods. My wife’s line has the noblility]
  26. Have a parent who was born in a country different from my country of birth
  27. Have a grandparent who was born in a country different from my country of birth
  28. Can trace a direct family line back to the eighteenth century
  29. Can trace a direct family line back to the seventeenth century or earlier
  30. Have seen copies of the signatures of some of my great-grandparents
  31. Have ancestors who signed their marriage certificate with an X [More than likely, I just haven’t seen it]
  32. Have a grandparent or earlier ancestor who went to university
  33. Have an ancestor who was convicted of a criminal offence
  34. Have an ancestor who was a victim of crime
  35. Have shared an ancestor’s story online or in a magazine (Tell us where) [on here, more than likely, many times]
  36. Have published a family history online or in print (Details please) [Would like to someday]
  37. Have visited an ancestor’s home from the 19th or earlier centuries
  38. Still have an ancestor’s home from the 19th or earlier centuries in the family
  39. Have a family bible from the 19th Century
  40. Have a pre-19th century family bible
CategoriesTombstone Tuesday

Tombstone Tuesday: Kearns-Moran


The headstone of my wife’s 3rd-great-grandmother Margaret KEARNS from her father’s maternal side. Born in 1822 in Ohio, she first married Nelson ENYART (sometimes spelled ENGART) in 1841. There is mystery surrounding what happened to Nelson, but in 1875 she ended up marrying Robert MORAN, who is actually my wife’s 3rd-great-grandfather from her father’s paternal side. They didn’t have any children, so the branch of that tree didn’t get too twisted. She died in 1890 and  is buried near Robert at Tavara Cemetery in Richwood Township in Richland Co., Wisconsin. Photo courtesy of B. Coberley at Find-A-Grave.

[Find-A-Grave Page]

CategoriesFamily TreeSaturday Genealogy Fun

SNGF: Matrilineal Line

It’s time for another one of Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun posts.

  1. List your matrilineal line – your mother, her mother, etc. back to the first identifiable mother. Note: this line is how your mitochondrial DNA was passed to you!
  2. Tell us if you have had your mitochondrial DNA tested, and if so, which Haplogroup you are in.
  3. Post your responses on your own blog post, in Comments to this blog post, or in a Status line on Facebook or in your Stream at Google Plus.
  4. If you have done this before, please do your father’s matrilineal line, or your grandfather’s matrilineal line, or your spouse’s matriliuneal line.
  5. Does this list spur you to find distant cousins that might share one of your matrilineal lines?

According to my blog, it seems I did this line for myself already. Though, I will post it again in case something is more up-to-date. I will do my father’s line and also my wife’s line since I haven’t really inspected those before. Here is mine, first.

My matrilineal line:
  1. Brian J ZALEWSKI
  2. Sharon THIELKE married John ZALEWSKI
  3. Marge DeBROUX married LeRoy THIELKE
  4. Mildred Vida VAN PRICE (5 Jul 1903 Mattoon, Shawano Co., Wisconsin – 29 Oct 1994 Port Washington, Ozaukee Co., Wisconsin) married Leon DeBROUX
  5. Minnie May MUHM (12 Jul 1879 Norwood, Langlade Co., Wisconsin – 6 Jul 1959 Port Washington, Ozaukee Co., Wisconsin) married Pieter Fransiscus VAN PARIJS
  6. Ida W SCHAVANDIE (6 Sep 1852 Germany – 12 Nov 1934 Antigo, Langlade Co., Wisconsin) married Peter MUHM
  7. Anna RASCH (? in Germany – ??) married Lawrence SCHAVANDIE

Unfortunately, my matrilineal line is one of the few lines in my tree that is somewhat short, though I have not done a ton of research on it. I have done a DNA test, so I do have my mtDNA information. According to the latest 23AndMe info, my Maternal Haplogroup in H11a. I have made my 23AndMe Maternal Line page public, so you can view more details there. It does match the German ancestry that I find in my research.

Next is my father’s matrilineal line, though there is no mtDNA haplogroup info since my DNA does not have that information. Only his DNA (or his sibling’s) would show that.

CategoriesPersonalSaturday Genealogy Fun

Genealogy Bucket List

My inspiration for this post had come from, what I thought was a one-off post about this, but it turns out that it was one of Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun projects. He’s always thinking of clever things to post about.

What is on your Genealogy Bucket List? What research locations do you want to visit? Are there genea-people that you want to meet and share with? What do you want to accomplish with your genealogy research? List a minimum of three items – more if you want!

I was thinking about it this week and this is what I came up with right now.

  1. I’d definitely like to visit one of my many ancestral homelands. There are a lot, though most of them seem to cluster around Germany and Poland, as you can see on my custom Google Map. The top three that I’d like to visit, in no particular order, are:
    1. Killeeshil Parish in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Origin location of my CORRIGAN ancestors. I just love Ireland and the history of the area.
    2. The origin location of my ZALEWSKI and LINDNER ancestors, which looks to be the ÅšwiÄ™te and Gocza?ki areas in modern north-central Poland. As with a lot of people, I feel a deeper connection to ancestors in my direct surname line, Zalewski. Plus, pictures I’ve seen of the area make it look beautiful.
    3. The origin location of most of my Belgian ancestors, DeBROUX, LAURENT, etc. They all came from the Walloon Brabant area of Belgium. Some of them came from the area of Chaumont-Gistoux, which during WWII was part of the famous defensive KW-Line.
  2. I would like to publish some smaller books either based on a specific family or just my ancestry in general. Both, I think, could be helpful to future researchers.
  3. I would like to become a certified/professional genealogist. I’d love to be able to help other people find their family history and hopefully spark the appreciation for everything that has come before them.
  4. I would also love to attend a national genealogy conference of some sort. I have yet to meet any of the extremely friendly and helpful geneabloggers that I socialize with almost every day. Unfortunately, most of them are never around in this area, so I have yet to have a chance to attend one.
What is on your genealogy bucket list?
CategoriesMilwaukeeTombstone TuesdayZalewski

Tombstone Tuesday: Gwiazdowski

Anyone following the latest research into my ZALEWSKI line knows that I’ve run across the GWIAZDOWSKI surname on a few occasions. They have something to do with my ZALEWSKI family, but I’m still not 100% sure what it is. Research points to many conflicting options: These are Frank ZALEWSKI’s parents, these are Frank’s aunt and uncle, or maybe they’re just good friends. I have more research to do with the Polish/German church records I recently found at the FHL.

Above: More evidence that they’re related to me somehow is that (among other things) they’re buried with members of the Jacob ZALEWSKI family (the brother of Frank) at Holy Cross Cemetery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Their plot is located at the back part of the GORALSKI stone (another family somehow related to me.)

[Find-A-Grave link]

CategoriesAmanuensis MondayCorriganWisconsin Research

Amanuensis Monday: Edwin Corrigan Letter

Amanuensis Monday ““ An Amanuensis is a person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another. Amanuensis Monday is a daily blogging theme which encourages the family historian to transcribe family letters, journals, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin ““ some we never met ““ others we see a time in their life before we knew them. A fuller explanation can be found here.

I’ve posted about this letter in the past, but I thought I’d talk about it again. I have possession of some typewritten letters that my great granduncle, Edwin Corrigan, wrote to another relative. My grandmother must have had them in her possession since I have a lot of her old family documents. Edwin was born in 1909 and grew up in rural northern Wisconsin in the Ashland area. He was a well-traveled and bright man and he had seen a lot of things. The letter is a great insight both into life in the early 20th century (in rural Wisconsin and other similar places) and also other aspects of his life. Read on for some excerpts:

CategoriesCorriganFeaturedWay Back WednesdayZalewski

Way Back Wednesday: Remembering Grandma

I was put in charge of creating the memorial video that was to be played at my Grandmother’s funeral today, so that everyone could remember her through the years. I assume this is due to the fact that I seemed to have inherited the title of “Family Historian” which I have no problem with. I love seeing all of these old documents and photos. I ran across this photo of my grandmother from 1938 and I really like it. She looks like she’s saying, “Hurry up and get that picture taken!” I also notice on a lot of the older photos of my grandmother that she had prominent freckles. I don’t remember seeing them on her when she was older. It must be her Irish heritage shining through.

Mary Jane Corrigan – 1938

After the break, I have embedded the memorial video that I created. Even though you may not know her, I hope you enjoy the video.