I’m trying to find a man enumerated in an 1860 census as Philip Pipher. He may be the brother of Barbara Haase who is enumerated in Hancock County, Illinois, with her husband Conrad. Philip’s last name may actually be Siefert or some rendition of it as that was Barbara’s maiden name. The places of birth for these individuals in this 1860 enumeration are to be taken with a grain of salt. The children 12 and under all are known to have been born in Illinois, so it’s possible that other places of birth are incorrect as well. My attempts to find him needs to include an eliminated list of individuals who are named Philip Pipher/Siefert (or reasonable variants) and can’t be him. Creating this list requires me to […]
I spent some time looking for an immigrant relative who came to the United States in the 1880s after her husband died. Several things combined to make her difficult to find, including: She changed her first name. Many from her area of origin anglicized their name by directly translating it or by using a name with the same first letter. Not her. She picked something seemingly random and totally different. She married again in the new area where she settled. The problem was that I didn’t know where this was or that she changed her first name. She immigrated under her maiden name. Took me a while to find that. She really didn’t “break any rules.” She either did things in a slightly unusual fashion or acted in […]
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