A gift for the family

I just couldn't let the day slip away without posting.  It is 1/1/11.  I just love the combination of numbers.  I suppose it has something to do with my birthday.  I was born 2/3/45.  So Happy New Year to everyone.  

I also want to show you what The Trout and I worked on for quite some time.  Every year, after a vacation, we make a hard back album of our photos.  We have always chosen Shutterfly as they do a great job and they do it quickly. 

As I am getting more and more into family genealogy, I realize how much simpler it could have been if my family had written down a lot of the information I am now finding.  So, I have been going through photos for over a year, finding subjects that would be representative of our families and deciding where to end it also.  Once you crawl into a family tree, the branches just go on and on. 

So, we had three books made for our family.  Our daughters each got one and one for us.  The book ended up being 26 pages.  We start out on a text page of The Trout's family, where they lived in Norway, when they came to America...you get the picture.  Then, in as much order as we possibly could, we proceeded through the pages.  Then we started on my family photos and information and ended up with our marriage, the places we lived, the children, the pets.  We did stop after the birth of our grandchildren. A couple of pictures of us with the grandkids and then a final text page.

I wrote how I hoped that someone in the family would someday take the reins and continue down the tree branches.  I think our daughters were very surprised.  We included dates of births, deaths and weddings. 

This is a photo of the beginning of my family page.  The castle where my ancestors last stayed before coming to America.  They were not royals, but had taken refuge from religious persecution in this castle.  I have visited it quite a few times, and feel history soaring through my veins as I walk the cobblestones, touch the walls, and eat in what has become a most wonderful restaurant in the castle.  I certainly hope it is still there.  The castle is found in Leiblos,  near Frankfort, Germany, and it is called The Ronneburg.

So, the sun has risen on a new year, I am feeling somewhat better, and The Trout was out playing golf at 7:30 a.m.  Still eating light today, but eating well.  Mary, from "One Perfect Bite" shared her most wonderful clam chowder recipe this fall, and we are making it once again.  Must be about 4 times now, Mary.  Just love it. 

I am also so thrilled to mention that two readers of my blog have climbed out from behind their screens and commented.  Sandy and Linda P., welcome and please stop back often. 

One more step back in time

It's been six months since I had any luck in furthering the search of my family tree. Last month I wrote a letter to the priest of a small town in Germany, asking for information on my father's ancestors. Today, I received an email with some new information.

Granted, it is a small amount of information, but important. Baby steps at this time. It is only one generation back that I found, but now I am more determined to reach back even further.

Do any of you do research of your ancestry? Thanks to the Internet, it is a lot easier.

A genealogy hit!

Not that often, but every once in a while, I get the genealogy bug. A cousin of mine has done a lot of research, and Marianne has been kind enough to share with me. Sometime back, she enlightened me to a website of a place in Klagenfurt, Austria, that is owned by our ancestors.

Yesterday I went back onto that website and saw that more pictures had been added. They own a pension, or gasthaus in Austria. This home was originally owned by my ancestor, Hans Kleinsasser, who was born in 1689. It is still in the Kleinsasser family.

There was an email address on the website, so in my fractured German spelling, I made myself known and gave pertinent details of our possible relation and I got an email back several hours later telling me that we are related. Can you imagine? This goes back 320 years. He was willing to answer any questions I may have, so have started a list to ask this gentleman, my relative!

Now this town goes onto my "Bucket List." What is so very strange is that back in 1991, I was actually in the town where this man lives. I wish I had known then what I know now.

So, this goes onto my genealogy postings here and hopefully more information will be added soon. Anyone want to make a quick trip to Austria, to meet my relatives and visit cemeteries and churches? I do know that Europe has the tradition of unburying old graves to make way for new generations, or they bury them very, very deep to keep adding family members on top. There is a shortage of land over there and this seems like a positive solution to a centuries old dilemma.

Family Tree and Pictures

In recent weeks, I have been doing some genealogy research. Or, I should say, I have been doing some posting to my family tree and have been fortunate to receive a lot of help from friends and family members as to information, names and dates. I have now taken my paternal grandmother's history back to 1680. What I find so amazing is that it tells me that my ancestors at that time came from Transylvania and Russia. Wow! I have work to do to go back even further than that.

The problem, or excitement, of working on a family tree, is that it can be very time consuming to the point where your eyes are hurting looking at the computer screen. It just makes me wonder how people did it years ago, before computers. I know as a very young adult, I sat down with my father and a large poster board and together we did a little tree making. It ended up being rather confusing, but I still draw information from it today.

The problem is, one branch leads to another branch and WOW it does get very interesting. Now, The Trout, I know, would like me to start recording his information and I do have a lot of it thanks to a cousin who did all this research and gave it to him years ago. It just takes time and believe me, I spend enough time on the laptop.

In conjunction with this, I have a heavy burden lying on me--photographs. I wish we had bought a digital camera many years before we did. Now we have boxes of some-what organized photos and slides. We don't even have a slide projector anymore. And then we got into videos of our trips abroad. We have one of the most delightful scenes at Juliet's balcony in Verona, Italy, where I am asking The Trout (wherefore art Thou?) Surely, someone besides me will find this humorous someday? ...hmmm, doubtful!

I have this wonderful photo album that belonged to my grandmother. Her name is in the front and the date Christmas, 1906. Even the price, $2.25 is written in the front. Surely, that was a very lot of money in those days.

Inside the photo album are many pictures with no names and dates. I recognize this one below, because it is my father's mother on the right, Susanna, and the other lady is unknown. I find that I do not write names and dates as often as I should on the back of photographs either. I like to think I am somewhat organized, but doing this is greatly lacking in my repertoire of things to do.

What is your name?

Do you know this man? I didn't think you did. The problem is, neither do I. You see, many years ago when my father told me about him, I didn't listen carefully and now the information is lost. I do know he was related to my father's mother on the Hofer side and that he is a Prussian soldier as that part of the family came from Western Russian. I vaguely remember hearing White, Russia.

Now I have weakly started into genealogy and this man comes back into the picture. I have been trying to date the uniform without luck. If only people had written on the back of photos. I guess everybody alive at the time knew who he was so why write what is known on the back of a piece of paper as valuable as a photo. I think they were considered valuable, don't you?

And so the search continues. I am hoping someday, quite by surprise, I will come upon some information on the Internet that will be helpful. Then this stoic man in uniform will have a name.