Have you reviewed the census enumerations of your ancestral aunts and uncles? Are there boarders living with them? Is it possible that person is a relative even if the census does not mention that relationship. This 1860 enumeration for my uncle Henry Trautvetter contains two other household members who could be clues. Or they could be relatives of his wife. Or they could be totally unrelated. I’ll never know if I don’t research them as well.
I’m excited to be heading back to Burbank, California, this June to present at the annual “Genealogy Jamboree” hosted by the Southern California Genealogical Society on Friday – Sunday, June 9-11, 2017. I’ll be giving the following lectures: Generating Genealogy Blog Content–on Friday Image Creation and Citation–on Saturday Using the Bureau of Land Management Tract Books–on Sunday Jamboree is always great fun and a wonderful learning experience for those able to attend. If you’re a reader and in attendance, feel free to come up after a lecture and introduce yourself! Email me if you are interested in having me give a workshop or seminar for your society.
Never assume that your ancestors lived for generations in the same place “in the old country.” Your forebears might have been like one of my families from Thuringen, Germany that moved several times in the generation before they immigrated to the United States, living in at least six villages within a fifteen mile radius of each other during a twenty-year time span. Another relative moved from village to village in Sweden and worked as a domestic before finally coming to the United States in the 1880s. And other families stayed put in the same small hamlet for generations. The key? Being open to the possibility that your relative moved around in the old country, especially when they disappear from the records.
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