Well, why didn't you tell me I was illegitimate?

A couple years back, I was searching through some of the records my father had obtained from his uncle that had recently died.  I knew my Asmussen line hadn't been explored too thoroughly, so I was excited to fund quite a number of documents on my Asmussen line.

Unfortunately, as I was searching, I realized that the information had all been recorded and the temple work for the individuals had already been completed.  That is, until I came across a shocking discovery.

I was looking upon some records regarding my great great grandfather Johan Heinrich Asmussen when I found a record pertaining to his birth.  I started deciphering the writing, expecting to find as his father Heinrich Conrad Asmussen and his mother Wilhelmina Benedicta Schmidt.  However, I noted a word in German that looked familiar, but that ultimately I did not recognize.  When I looked up the translation, it said "illegitimate."  My eyes widened when I realized what I had discovered.  My great great grandfather was not the son of Wilhelmina Benedicta Schmidt at all.  In fact, he was the child of Sophia Magdalena Lucie Schmidt, a name I had never seen before in any records.  Apparently, Johan had been born of Sophia, but raised by Wilhelmina as one of her own.

What did this exciting revelation mean? It meant that I had an entirely brand new line of ancestry that had never been researched before! What luck! What glory! I carefully studied all of the records in my father's possession and uploaded the names to Familysearch.org (here's a link to Sophia's page).  However, I have done nothing further on the line.

Project:

1) Flesh out this family tree

There is a ton of research that could be done here, but I know very little about German family history.

Ideas:

1) What we need to do is see if we can find any records pertaining to Sophia: See if she remarried, see if she had any other kids.
2) We can look for all of her brothers and sisters in records, too; see if the married, had kids, etc. (plus, I need more information on them so we can do endowments, sealings, etc.)
3) We can try and push this line back as well, starting with attempting to find more information about Sophia's parents (again, I need more information on them so we can do endowments, sealings, etc.)

Where to go first:

1) The best and easiest thing to do would be get the records from my dad, see where they came from, and look in similar records (also, they all need to be digitized for record keeping purposes)
2) Familysearch has an awesome wiki that has so much valuable information.  You could start by reading the Germany page.
3) Then, you might check out the page for Schleswig-Holstein, the area where Sophia was born.  That should give you some idea of records that are available.
4) You could always just Google it.
5) After you are done, check out my favorite German soccer team, Holstein Kiel.  Can you guess why they are my favorite? :)

This is all original research! If you want to talk about it, give me a call! I would love to brainstorm!