Finding Cousins: Crowley

See previous post.  The Crowley family is another example of where we could find cousins to take to the temple. 

I only have record of Dennis Crowley and Elizabeth Parsons having one child, our direct ancestor Elizabeth Ann Crowley.  Does Elizabeth Ann have siblings? Has their work been done?  Who knows ... but you could find out!  You better watch out, though, cause once I get all of this stuff on our Ancestry.com tree, you best believe I'm gonna' be all up in dat bizness.

Finding Cousins: Beans

With families that have a lot of work down, the new challenge is filling in your family tree.  This is done by going to the end of your line and tracing it forward, attempting to find cousins that need work done.  For example, all of the work has been done for our grandparents back at least six generations on the Bean side.  However, there could be any number of branches that split off that were either never members of the Church or their descendants left the Church, leaving work undone.

This is a link to a family tree I am creating on ancestry that shows all the people I can fit into my tree with verifiable data (Family Tree).  Start by going to the very end of the line: William Bean.  Then, click on "Family" right next to "Pedigree."  This will show you all of William's descendants.  You can see that there are stoppages in the line with Louisa Bean, Jane Bean, Sarah Bean, George C. Bean, and Mary Bean in the third generation and even more on the fourth.

These are where we find potential names for the temple.  These are people that I have no record of either getting married or having children with their spouse.  The research will be determining if that person was married and if they had children for however many generations to present, and if all the work has been done.

NOTE:  I have not checked these names on FamilySearch, so you may look there and say, "Hey, here's a spouse and children and all their work is done.  Greg must not know what he is talking about."  I just don't have time to check them all right now.  But that's the point.  See if their work is done, and if it is, go on to another.

Please download copies of all records you locate (or screen shots of you can't download) to send to me.  FamilySearch is the best place to start, but remember, not all FamilySearch information is accurate! It needs corroborating primary documents!!!!  Call me! We can talk about it!!!!!

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!

Harry Asmussen - Who is this guy?

I found this photograph while searching through my grandmother's old photographs:

William is my great grand uncle and Alice was his wife, but I have no idea who Harry is!  I have records of one of William's brothers named Henry, but he was born in 1887.  It is unlikely (although not impossible) that Harry is Alice and William's son, as Alice would have been 18 and William would have been 16.  Additionally, I have no idea where this headstone is located.  I don't think we need to re-photograph it, but visiting and noting gravestones close by may reveal other family members!

Project 1:

1) Find out who Harry is

2) Capture and document any evidence

Possible Resources:

1) 1900 US Census

2) 1920 US Census

3) 1930 US Census

4) Denver, Colorado Death Records (from familysearch.org or ancestry.com)

Project 2:

1) Find out where this headstone lies (use Denver, Colorado death or cemetery records as indicated above)

2) Visit the graveyard, search for any close by family graves

3) Take pictures of other graves