The year 2004 is an anniversary year: it is the 200th anniversary of the death of great-great-great-grandmother Margaretha Barbara Felbinger in Ickelheim (April 29th), and of the birth of great-great-grandmother Margaretha Barbara Felbinger in Westheim (July 4th). The year 2004 is also the 100th anniversary of the death of great-great-grandfather Charles Prahl (July 23rd).
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I am doing so much work on the family history; it is often difficult to keep details straight. To help, I have always made a few notes to myself to record progress; in the last months of 2003 I began a log book in earnest. Now I often spend as much time recording what I am doing as actually doing it. Yet I find it a necessary activity, especially as I am often surprised how poorly I transcribe material on the first round, and must go back and proof everything.
That last statement being written, I report here that in retrospect the year 2004 seems a year in which I spent as much time cleaning up previous work as well as making significant advances. There are very few entries in the log book from January to July. In part, I can explain the lack of activity because I was preoccupied with other records. Having finished a two-year tenure (2002-2003) as Clerk of the Vestry of the Congregation of St. Saviour at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, I spent a good deal of the time from January to June preparing copy of my records of Vestry meetings, other meetings and miscellaneous material for archival purposes. I was particularly eager to prepare the records in an electronic, computer-retrievable format as well as the traditional paper formats, as much to improve my own computer skills as bring the congregation's record keeping into the 21st century. In retrospect, I realize this activity probably took rather more time than I thought in the immediate moment. For the rest, I may have been just too tired to pursue anything else. I was able to turn my attention again to family matters in the beginning of July. Reading through the log entries for July to December reveals a staggering quantity of detail as well as certain themes. The material is best reported by family groupings.
Felbinger families
For the Felbinger side of the family, I spent much time in transcribing notes for 2003 trip to Germany as in making progress. Yet I did find substantial material.
I was able to find a picture of the ship Hermann, in which great-grand-parents Johann Georg Felbinger and Maria Barbara Fichtelmann, together with their two oldest daughters and her father, Ulrich Fichtelmann, sailed from Bremen to New York in 1867.
I was also able, finally, to find the death certificate for great-grandmother Maria Felbinger (b. Fichtelmann). I was visiting the NYC Municipal Archives with friends Ghyll and Vito S., and at the critical moment Ghyll jiggled my hand on the microfilm reel advance; lo, there was the entry for Maria, listed under "Filbinger".
Working in the Mormon Family History Center in Woodside, Queens, I started working through the Brenner-Archiv to find additional listings of ancestors in addition to those of Ickelheim/Westheim. The Brenner-Archiv was started in the 1920s by one Tobias Brenner, a Lutheran pastor in Ansbach, Mittelfranken, Germany, who took it upon himself to start extracting records from the vital registers of parishes in Middle Franconia, and grouping the entries by family name rather than by parish. One can only imagine the state of pastoral care in his parish if he spent so much time in other places. The work took a more insidious turn in the late 1930s/40s as many Germans were doing genealogical research to determine their "Aryan status". Still, it was a tremendous effort, and the records were found by the American occupation forces at the end of World War II in a barn where they had been secreted away for safekeeping. The records were later filmed by the Mormons. I first looked through the listings for "Felbinger", and discovered almost serendipitously a marriage record for Paul Felbinger (I was rather tired at the time). I carefully checked the bride, and discovered it was a citation for my great-great-great-great-grandparents Johann Paul Felbinger and Anna Barbara Sieber on July 30, 1760 in the St. Johanniskirche, Ansbach. Hooray! Though only an extract, it is the first documentary evidence I have seen of this event, and was completely missed by the venerable Ludwig Wendel 25 years ago. The extract also names both fathers, Georg Leonhard Felbinger and Georg Sieber, so I now have documentary evidence for both great-great-great-great-great-grandfathers as well. This find led me to explore the Brenner-Archiv records for the "Siebers" as well. Among all the entries I searched, I found a duplicate record naming Georg Sieber as the father of Anna Barbara, wife of Paul Felbinger, but immediately thereafter another record for Georg Sieber, the father of Maria Barbara Sieber, born September 13, 1736 in Höfen (west of Ansbach). Within a year, this would coincide with the death record for Margaretha Barbara Felbinger in Ickelheim in 1804. Considering the variations in given first-names through the records, this is a very slim possibility, however. To continue: the Brenner-Archiv also yielded the death extracts for Johann Paul's brother Leonhard Friedrich and his wife Kunigunda (born Eder), plus Kunigunda's birth extract as well.
Finding these records made another trip to Germany desirable. In October I again traveled to Nuremberg, where I completed my research through the Armenkasse (poor relief) records of Ickelheim and started looking at a history of the parish written in 1833/1843 by the two pastors. This document demands a full transcription. While in Nuremberg, I also paid a visit to the Gesellschaft für Familienforschung in the Staatsarchiv. While there, members of the Gesellschaft were impressed with my records, and also noted the presence of the family name of Schuri on the Fichtelmann branch. They commented that though they did not immediately have specific information about the family per se, the name itself comes originally from the Carinthia area in Austria, and would indicate that branch of the family are descended from the "Exsulanten", Austrian Lutherans obliged to leave the country after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, and who settled in Protestant Franconia, welcomed by the population devastated by the ravages of the Thirty Years' War.
Leaving Nuremberg, I traveled westward by car, passing first through Linden bei Markt Erlbach, where great-grandfather Johann Georg Felbinger met Maria Barbara Fichtelmann and from whence they emigrated. Here I had the good fortune to meet the church sexton who let me into the church, gave me a brief tour and even played the organ for me. I traveled on to Ickelheim, driving through the village and heading south to Sontheim, a small collection of houses and not much more. My final destination was Westheim which I have not yet seen. There I met a woman who I asked about the house numbers in the village, and who introduced me to her husband, who by a great stroke of fortune is Heinrich Förster, the B¨rgermeister of Illesheim, of which Westheim is now a part. The mayor gave generously of his time and knowledge, and from this conversation I was able to find the house where Johann Felbinger was born (1832) and received a tour of the church as well. My return to Ickelheim was severely dampened by a torrential downpour and a temperamental rental car, so I could not linger there but traveled on to Munich for the weekend.
I traveled next to Regensburg to the church book archives there. Here the first order of business was to see the actual record for Johann Paul and Anna Barbara Felbinger, and found it in the Fornikanten-Register of marriages. I then continued work on the Ickelheim, Westheim, Oberdachstetten and Obersulzbach vital records. Also, I began looking at the Kommunikanten lists of these villages. I had first thought to bypass these records, until upon examination I realized that German pastors of the day not only listed how many people showed up to the monthly celebration of communion, but took attendance as well. The lists are therefore a simple way of tracking various people's movements monthly, not just in the great time frame of birth, marriage and death. Two examples should suffice. From the Oberdachstetten list I can determine that great-great-great-great grandmother Margaretha Barbara Felbinger attended communion on Exaudi Sunday (Sunday before Ascension) in 1762. From the Westheim list, I can give a plausible explanation to the incident of great-great-great-grandfather Leonhard Friedrich Felbinger finding Sabina Schick giving birth out in the open fields in 1796. In that year, Prussian hussar cavalry units were passing through the area on the way to the war against the revolutionary French; it is quite conceivable that she became pregnant by one of the soldiers.
In other Felbinger news, I can report a result of putting material up on the Web and through contacts with the German Genealogy Group on Long Island: more cousins have surfaced. The first is Carol Peterson of California, from whom I received a telephone call while on a short vacation in Vermont, and who turns out to be a cousin by marriage, for her grandmother's sister was married to George Martin Felbinger in Illinois. The second is Mary Lou Benjamin, whose great-great-grandfather is Johann Friedrich Fichtelmann, older brother of my great grandmother Maria Barbara Fichtelmann. This makes us second cousins, once removed. I sent Mary Lou a copy of Ludwig Wendel's Fichtelmann research which pushed back the frontiers of her research substantially. Additionally, I copied out for Mary Lou the Fichtelmann entries in the Brenner Archiv, discovering additional relatives left behind after Ulrich, two sons and Maria Barbara came to America. In turn, Mary Lou's research helped answer a number of significant questions, including why the Felbingers went to Brooklyn upon arrival: because their Fichtelmann relations were already living there. Even better: she solved the mystery of why I have been unable to find the Felbingers in the 1870 census: *very*, very bad spelling on the part of the census taker. Extensively I quote her e-mail message of September 26th inst.:
"I went back to 1870 census for Brooklyn, NY [enumeration date: 16 July 1870] where I found my Fred Fichtelmann ... spelled FIRTHLEMAN by the way and there was a 'suspicious sounding' fellow living with Fred, Catherine & family, named OTTO RITCHERMAN. I was suspicious at the time I first saw this census but had nothing else to go on, 'till you showed up. So, does Ulrich translate to "OTTO" in US lingo? HE MUST be Johann Ulrich Fichtelmann ... He's 66 years old, a shoemaker & born in Bavaria. Census taker must've have really misunderstood his last name since he is the only one in Fred's household with last name listed except for Frederick; Fred's wife and children [Mary, 13 yrs; Barbara, 11 yrs; Fred, 7 yrs [my f-gf]; George 2 yrs; William, 6 mos [born in January] are all slashed, indicating that they all had the same last name as the HOH, Fred. AND ... you guessed it - living RIGHT NEXT DOOR was your ancestor: FETHERING, GEO., 29 yrs old, born Bavaria, a cabinet maker and interestingly the column for 'Male citizen of US of 21 years of age and upwards' is checked. But this must be a mistake since you had to be in US for 5 years in order to become a citizen, no? ... The rest of the "FETHERING" family is as follows: Mary, 25 yrs, housekeeping, b. Bavaria; Margaret, 6 yrs b. >Bavaria; Christien, female 3 yrs, b. Bavaria. [There are no street addresses given on that census]"
From "Fichtelmann" to "Firthleman" and "Ritcherman", from "Felbinger" to "Fethering": generous examples of name-mangling that drive genealogical researchers to despair. At the least, definitely examples to put on my list of "Strange Variants".
Prahl families
For the Prahl side of the family, I spent much time preparing a clean transcription of both the Hamburg and New York passenger lists for great-great Anna Prahl's passage to America in 1853. In the end, only examination of the actual New York list confirmed a long-standing family story that the youngest child Maria died at sea during the voyage. This information is not listed in transcription in Germans to America. Alas, I have been unable to find a record of great-great-grandfather Charles Prahl's passage to America. Though certainly possible, it seems unlikely he might have traveled to Boston or Philadelphia, and then by another ship or overland to New York. His arrival still remains a mystery.
In mid-year, I did prepare a preliminary list compiled from Trow's Directory of the addresses where the Prahls, the Merkels and Blaichers lived in Manhattan.
Work at the Mormon Family History Center in Queens for Ignaz and Elizabeth Stephan Merkel included going through the Baden-Württemberg emigration records (Karlsruhe (Baden). Auswanderungsamt. Auswanderer, 17. bis. 20. Jahrhundert). This search yielded nothing.
On a tip from Linda Carco, a friend in the German Genealogy Group, I was able to find the death certificate for great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Merkel (b. Stephan). She died November 25, 1902, not 1903 as Schlegel states, and is buried in Lutheran Cemetery in Queens. The reference was found through the New York City Death Index on the websites of the German and Italian Genealogy groups. Having found great-great grandmother, I turned my attention to finding the death records for great-great grandfather Ignaz Merkel, and great grandmother Constance Delia Prahl. As their last known address was with Margaret Kuhlman, younger daughter and sister, in Belleville, NJ, I called the Clerk's Office in Belleville in December to make inquiry, but was unsuccessful in turning up any records. The day after Christmas I took a trip to Trenton to the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services to inquire at the state level. It was a pleasant outing to Trenton despite the bitter cold: I now know what George Washington faced that time of year in 1776. At least he was successful; I was not.
Much of my activity surrounding the Prahl side of the family came from an unexpected source. In April I was elected to serve on the Board of Trustees of the Woodland Cemetery Association in Staten Island. The Board has reconstituted itself after having been moribund for some time, and much work confronts us. Living in the next county on the opposite side of the Upper New York Bay does make it difficult for me to help directly. Nonetheless, I gave myself the task of preparing a descriptive inventory of the Association's records, which are in fair to poor condition after 140-plus years of hard use and little care. Such an inventory is necessary to determine the extent of the records, so that they can be better preserved and the information in them made available for people looking for their ancestors. Direct access to the records has had a salutary benefit: I have seen the entries for my grandfathers Charles and Edward Alfred Prahl. Better, I found what I believe to be the interment record for great-great-grandmother Friedrika Anna Prahl. Though it is the name "Prahl" only, the interment date is January 26, 1880; this corresponds very well with Charles Prahl declaring himself a widower in the 1880 Federal census.
In other related activities, I have the honor to report that I was invited to make a presentation on reading old German scripts at the first Long Island Genealogical Conference, held at my alma mater Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, in November. This presentation gave me another reason to go to Germany in October: I knew of many fine examples of German script from my work on the Ickelheim/Oberdachstetten parish records, and was able to obtain copies. These copies I put together in my first PowerPoint presentation, a significant upgrade in my computer skills. Afterward, I linked the pictures of the baptismal records for Jobst, Johann and Johann George Felbinger, and the death record for Anna Margaretha Felbinger, to their specific entries in the records below, so that anyone who wishes might see some of the material I deal with when transcribing records.
The work is not complete; more research needs to be done.