A Tribute to Uncle Charles

June 22nd is the anniversary of the birth of my uncle, Charles Gosnell Hungerford. He was born on that day in 1924, in Rush County, Indiana. Sadly, I never knew my uncle as his life was tragically cut short at the young age of 19. His life and death was something I knew very little about when I was young. The one thing I did know from very early on was that my brother's middle name, Charles, was for our uncle. I knew that Charles died young, but did not learn of the circumstances until more recently.

I recall an experience from my past that is related with Charles,

but I didn't make the connection until much later. The year was 1968, and the occasion was the passing of my dad's father, William Carl Baetz. I was seven and my brother just five, so my parents left us to stay with my mother's parents in Rushville, Indiana, while they went to Kansas to attend the funeral. During part of that week, we attended the YMCA summer camp on the Flat Rock River in northwestern Decatur County. There were many activities there, but a goodly portion of those centered on the river. Most of the kids were allowed to go into the river, however there was a small group who were not allowed in the water. My brother and I were a part of that group.

I didn't think much of it at the time, and we still had a good time at day camp I think, but I did wonder a bit about why we couldn't wade into the river. Fast forward several years, after having learned that my Uncle Charles had been drowned in a rain swollen river. We were out for a drive with my grandparents in Rush County, viewing some of the damage from a recent tornado, and my grandfather decided to drive us by the place where Charles was lost. My grandmother had quite a fit over that, and I think that's when I finally understood why my brother and I were forbidden to go into the Flat Rock River so many years ago. One small mystery solved.

The picture at left is Charles in Rush County, but shortly afterwards he moved with his parents to Chicago, Illinois as an infant, and lived there until he was roughly 7 years of age. They lived on the west side of the city, at the time of Al Capone and the prohibition era. I can only imagine what it must have been like to grow up in that place at that time. I had never seen a picture of uncle Charles until the funeral for his mother in 2002. A classmate of his had a very worn picture of Charles sitting on the steps of the schoolhouse with some of his schoolmates.

I have since discovered several photographs of Charles, including

many of him in Chicago. The picture to the right is Charles with his mother in front of the apartment at 5262 West Adams Street in Chicago's west side. The picture below left is Charles with his mother and Aunt Mary, the one below right is Charles with his proud parents dressed in their Sunday finest.

These pictures were taken on the back porch at the same place I think. They show a nice transition in Uncle Charles' childhood. Could these be his first steps?

I had the occasion to visit Chicago not too long ago and was fortunate to locate the place on West Adams Street. While the neighborhood is now quite different, I can happily report that the apartment building still stands.

My favorite I think is Charles on the back porch with a ball and glove. I recall that his dad was a Chicago White Sox fan, so perhaps Charles was as well. Old Comiskey Park wasn't too far from where they were living on the west side of Chicago. I wonder now if he ever attended a game there?

Charles' brother Owen and two of his sisters, Lois and Laura, were born in Chicago, but after the onset of the great depression, they moved back to the security of the farm in Rush County. The picture to the left

is Charles with his brother Owen, the photo

on the right is Charles with Lois, Owen, and Laura, before they left Chicago for Indiana. The picture below is Charles and his sister Lois.

These pictures were taken at the farmhouse in Rush County, Indiana. On the left is Charles again with Lois, Owen, and Laura. In the photo on the right, they are helping youngest sister Ruby, perhaps with her first steps.

The picture below left is Charles with his brothers and sisters and his dad on the farm. The two pictures on the right below are quite a find, and rather stunning and ironic, as Charles is posing with his siblings and mother in the Flat Rock River, likely very close to where he would be lost several years later.

These two pictures are recent acquisitions to my collection of family photographs. On the left is a school picture of Charles, taken when he was in the fourth grade. The picture on the right is heavily doctored as the original was very dark and somewhat blurry. It is very possibly the last picture of Charles that was taken of him.

There wasn't any major news of World War Two for the Rushville Republican to print on Wednesday, July 7, 1943, but what little there was to print that day was overshadowed in the small farming community by this headline:

Sadly the news proved true, however it took nearly 30 hours for searchers to find his body downstream from where he was believed lost. The search team was comprised of local and state law enforcement, as well as friends and neighbors of the Hungerford family. They were said to have formed a human chain stretching clear across the river in order to locate Charles' body. On Friday, July 9, 1943, the Rushville Republican reported the news, the article appearing next to an article about Allied bombing of targets in the German city of Cologne.

Services for Charles were held at 2:00 PM that day at the Wyatt Memorial Mortuary, Reverend R. Melvyn Thompson officiating. He was laid to rest at East Hill Cemetery, located just outside of Rushville on several bluffs above the Flat Rock River.

Sadly I was never able to celebrate the birthday of my Uncle Charles. He nevertheless lives on in print, pictures, and most of all, the memories of his friends and family. On this, the anniversary of what should have been his 85th year, I submit these thoughts and images as a tribute to Charles Hungerford.

Another piece of the puzzle, courtesy of the D.A.R.

I had written in a previous post that we got a good start on the family tree with various materials that we had obtained from our parents, so once we started capturing that into Ancestry, the first four generations of our pedigree chart were nearly complete. There were a few individuals with missing lineage however, both on the maternal side. I'm not sure what it is with our society, but maternal lineage seems to be more readily forgotten. Many of the puzzles I've solved, and have yet to solve, have to do with finding missing details about a great grandmother.

One of the first puzzles I set out to solve was finding out who my great grandparents were on my mother's side of the family, and their lineage. Aside from the obvious, that is, the desire to fill in the empty places in the pedigree chart, there were some additional points of interest for me. I had been told that my grandmother had an ancestor who fought in the American Revolution, and that she was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution as a descendant of the Patriot Benjamin Gosnell. The other has to do with my interest in the Civil War, and that I had asked her a few years before she passed away if she knew of any ancestors who had fought in the Civil War. She told me that there were, on both sides, and she wrote down a few names for me. I didn't think to ask at the time how exactly they were related, but I did recall that she told me they fought for the union, and that she couldn't remember the names of any relations that had fought for the south. She insisted though that there were family members on both sides, and I remember her saying "it was brother against brother".

That conversation was long before my interest in genealogy, but at the time I was very much interested in the Civil War. At a much later date, I discovered the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System, a website hosted by the National Park Service, that has a search engine for locating Civil War veterans. The most complete name she had given me was John J. Pyles (or Piles), so I thought I would see if I could locate my veteran ancestor. Considering the uncertainty over the spelling of the last name, I searched both spellings and found there were 127 records on the soldiers side alone for J. Pyles (or Piles). Searching just on the Union soldiers side for John J. Pyles (or Piles), there were still 4 records. At this point it became clear that I would have to know more about my own family before I could hope to identify any Civil War service. This was, in part, the beginnings of my interest in genealogy.

Back to the D.A.R. part of the story. I had been inquiring about details of my grandmother's family, and my mother told me about grandma's membership in the Rushville D.A.R., and that lineage has to be proven in order to become a member. Therefore, getting a copy of her application to D.A.R. might prove useful in identifying more detail about the family ancestry. Not sure why, but it didn't occur to me at first to go directly to D.A.R., so I tried instead to see if anybody in the family had copies. It turns out that my grandmother's cousin was also a member, so I thought that perhaps some of her descendants might have a copy of the application. Several inquiries later, I still didn't have the goods, and it didn't look promising that I would find what I was looking for within the family.

When I decided to try going to the D.A.R., I started with the Rushville, Indiana chapter, but couldn't find a suitable contact for my inquiry. At the chapter level, D.A.R. is more like a club I think. They have meetings monthly or quarterly and I was able to find some information about their chapter online, but they don't have any sort of public interface, like an office or a website. I then decided to try the National D.A.R. organization, but must admit that I was hesitant to do so. I had convinced myself that they wouldn't be cooperative in sharing the records I was looking for. I guess that I had envisioned that they would be too "highbrow" to provide assistance to a lowly non-member.

I was wrong. I called their 1-800 number and was able to get assistance in obtaining the records I was interested in. They actually have a library for their records that they describe on their website as "one of the world's premier genealogical research centers". It is helpful to know the national number of the member whose application information you are seeking, but they were able to look that up for me over the phone. It turns out that my grandmother Lillian and her cousin Ethel (shown) applied together and were given consecutive D.A.R. numbers, 502907 and 8. The fee for getting copies of an application is ten dollars, but well worth it for the genealogy information they contain, which includes complete lineage back to the patriot, including birth and marriage information for the applicant, as well as similar information for

all ancestors back to and including the Patriot. The instructions and application for records can be downloaded here. I also discovered that they will research their records and make copies for a nominal fee. I was able to get the entire file they had on patriot Benjamin Gosnell, my ggg grandfather. It turns out that he served two tours in the Continental army from Virginia, and was present at the battle of Yorktown. All in all, it was a genealogical gold mine, and I absolutely recommend for anybody who has a grandmother or great grandmother who was in the D.A.R. to get in touch with them.

The entirety of what was contained in the materials from DAR is too voluminous to cover here in this blog post, but beyond the aforementioned lineage for my grandmother, it included a great deal of detail on Benjamin Gosnell, as well as some of the Civil War records for his son, my gg grandfather Washington Gosnell. I had not previously known of his Civil War service, so that was a bit of a bonus find. I was also able to determine that the name John J. Piles that my grandmother had written for me was her grandfather, and with the additional detail on him in these materials, I was able to positively identify his Civil War service record. This will be the making of another future blog entry.

To wrap up this Memorial Day blog, I will post the description of Benjamin's service from the court documents, and a picture of the DAR gravestone for Patriot Benjamin Gosnell, born 15 Mar 1761, Baltimore Co, MD, died 28 Aug 1846, Decatur Co, IN, buried in an abandoned graveyard in Rush Co, IN.

From Helen Olson papers; State of Indiana, Decatur County. In this 24th day Oct. 1832 personally appeared in open court before the Honorable Judge of Decatur Circuite Court in and for said County of Decatur, nowsitting, Benjamin Gosnell, as resident of Decatur County, I aged 71 years the 15th day of March 1832 who first being duly sworn according to law doth on his oath make the following declaration in order to obtain the benefit of the act of Congress passed June 7, 1832, that he entered by draft, the service of the US under the command of Col. Charles Linch in the Company commanded by Capt. James Adams and was stationed at the lead mines on New River. Served 3 months and was discharged by Col. Charles Linch of the Virginia line that he volunteered in the US service in March 1781 under the command of Col. Charles Linch in the Company commanded by William Jones, Capt. and marched from Bedford Co. VA through Hillsborough on the Guilford Court House and was in the battle fought at the place and Capt. Jones was killed at that place and after the battle marched to the Iron Works, thence on a (?) Deep River thence on to the Cumberland Road and was discharged for 3 months service by Col. Charles Linch. And in the month of Sept 1781 he was drafted in the regiment commanded by Col. Caloway and Trif and joined the Regiment at the Red Store in Bedford Co.VA and belonged to the Company Commanded by James Bullock then marched through Petersburgh, Williamsburgh to Yorktown, then he was transferred to General Lawsons Brigade of the Regular line and was at the seige and taking of Lord Cornwallis and was discharged to the best of my recollection by Col. Tucker. He further sayeth he has lost his discharge and that he has no person whose testimony he can procure who can testify to his service except his sister, she knowing of his going into the Army and of his return. He thereby relinquishes ever claim whatever to the pension or annuity except the present and declares that his name if not on the Pension Roll of the agency of any state and further states that he was born in Baltimore Co., MD in 1761 and resided in Bedford Co. VA during the war, thence removed to Indiana, Decatur Co. where he now resides and further states he has no record of his age and his discharge is lost. signed Benjamin (X) Gosnell; Sworn to and subscribed the day and year afforsaid, Henry Talbot, Clerk. Gosnell, deceased and who was a soldier in the War of the Revolution and as such drew a pension from the government of the US, that said Benjamin died at Decatur Co., IN on the 28th Aug 1846.. States that she was married to Benjamin on the 1st day of January 1815 at the county of Harrison in KY. Benjamin received a pension for his service in the Revolution. On August 27, 1933 his pension file, 19343, Indiana, stated that he was to receive $30 per year, with $75 in arrears to be paid.

To my ggg grandfather Benjamin Gosnell, thank you for your service to our country, and for the legacy you have left for us.

The case of the missing umlaut, or how do I really spell my name?

Once you begin to research your family history, you eventually reach the point where decisions have to be made about the scope of your research. Many people will initially choose a particular side of the family to study, others may decide to research one surname, such as that of their father's heritage. My brother and I made no such determination, deciding that we would research both sides of our parent's lineage. I'm not sure if we ever considered how big of a job that might become, but regardless, we were interested in our entire heritage.

Fast forward several months. Beyond our initial decision to study all branches of our family, there are still other perhaps less obvious choices that need to be made. One being how far back do you go? Courtesy of Ancestry.com's most generous introductory gift of free access to their premium content, and one-click access to several generations of lineage at a pop, in one night I managed to take one line of my family tree all the way back to the middle ages. Imagine my surprise to find that I'm descended from Charlemagne, "Charles the Great", King of the Franks, and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire?

Yeah, that's right, Charlemagne (shown), and his son Louis I "the Pious", King of the Franks, and Hnabi Duke of Alemannia, his daughter Imma von Swabia, Charles "The Bald", and a bunch of other names that I thought were just characters in Fairy Tales that I read about when I was a kid. To be honest, I was amused at these findings, but also highly skeptical as to whether or not this lineage was accurate. I also wondered if it was even possible to verify such information. Since making this discovery, I have spent a bit of time trying to validate it by other sources, but the truth is that I'm really much more interested in more recent history, as in post Magna Carta.

Personally, I have a very strong interest in the American Civil War, and in general, learning how my ancestors fit into the American Experience. While I'm not dis-interested in my lineage back to the dark ages in Europe, I had decided not to focus much of my time and energy on taking my family lines back that far. Besides, 19th century American history is challenging enough for the beginning genealogist.

Still, I had to make a decision just where to draw the line. The obvious choice, considering my stated focus on American history, was with immigration to the new world. Not only does that mark the starting point for my American heritage, but also includes the opportunity to discover fun facts about the immigration of my ancestors. I get to ask (and hopefully answer) questions like, did I have any relatives on the Mayflower, or, were any of my ancestors at Jamestown? Perhaps there are even future blog posts along those lines (hint hint).

There is however another interesting thing I noticed about family history that tended to occur within some proximity in time to the act of immigration. That is the change of spelling of surnames. Sometimes that would occur at the time of, or after immigration, but I noted that it also was fairly common to see spelling changes take place a generation or more prior to ancestors emigrating from the "old country". In the case of the Anglo heritage, I've described this phenomenon as the transition from "Old English" to a more modern interpretation of our language. These cases seem the most relevant for me, but I've noticed similar spelling transitions with French and Dutch/German surnames as well. I decided that this phenomenon was not only interesting, but potentially valuable in genealogical terms. Therefore I decided that it was worthwhile to research family lines back to the time of immigration, and then beyond that for a generation or so to see if I could identify specifics of surname transition.

So this all brings me closer to the point of the article. Please bare with me, there is a destination here, and I think you'll find it worthwhile (at least I did, which is why I'm writing this). As I wrote in my last piece, I had started my family research with a folder of various materials that my parents had collected over the years. One item in that

folder was a transcription of the Naturalization document for my great grandfather, Nicholas Baetz (shown). According to a family account, he immigrated to this country from Germany, solo, in 1884. His fiance, Elizabeth Franz, emigrated from Germany the following year with Nicholas' sister Kathrine. Nicholas and Elizabeth were married in Kansas and had 12 children, of which my grandfather William Carl was one. Back to the Naturalization document, which is dated September 15, 1892 in the Fifteenth Judicial District of the State of Kansas. My grandfather is listed in that document as Nicholas Batz. At the time when I first saw this, I dismissed it as a typo, or some artifact of the likelihood that my great grandfather probably didn't speak English that well, and perhaps spelled English even worse than he spoke it.

Now, more recently, I had the great fortune to meet (via email and post), a distant Baetz relative by the name of Barbara Wilson. The way that we crossed paths is another blog post of it's own, so I'll save that for later. But in any event, she had been involved with Baetz genealogy for some time, and was good enough to share with me much of what she has collected over the years. Lo and behold, most of what she sent me indeed listed the spelling of my great grandfather's name as Nicholas Batz. Actually, Nicolaus Batz in some cases, to be precise. This spelling was quite prevalent,

and included in these materials were photocopies of actual documents, including the Naturalization document I referred to previously. I inquired with Barbara if she knew what was up with the spelling, and she replied simply that 'Batz' was the German spelling, and that Nick was likely the one who changed it here in this country as it showed up in the census as 'Baetz'.

At this point, I'm really scratching my head over this. Keep in mind, I don't speak German, and have never taken any

German language courses in my entire life. Most, in fact, all of the instances I've seen previously of changes in the spelling of surnames involved the simplification of the spelling. I like to call it the "Americanization" of surnames. Never had I seen a surname changed to a more difficult spelling or pronunciation. Until now. Because 'Baetz' is more complicated than 'Batz', or 'Betz', is it not? How do you pronounce 'Baetz'? We pronounce it like 'Betz', so why isn't it spelled that way? Because, well, I think it's obvious by now based on the title where this article is going. Enter into the record the shown document as evidence. I don't know exactly what it is as I haven't had it translated yet. If there are any German speaking readers, please drop me a line if you can help. I took a closer look at this document, and it sure looks like there is an umlaut over the a in the spelling of great granddad's surname.

At this moment, it all fell into place, but I did a bit of research on A-umlaut in the German language. I started with my favorite on-line encyclopedia, wikipedia, and found everything I needed to know, including this line:

In other languages that do not have the letter as part of the regular alphabet or in limited character sets such as US-ASCII, A-umlaut is frequently replaced with the two-letter combination "ae".

Well, there you have it. The English translation for 'Bätz' is 'Baetz'. Case solved. It turned out that my great grandfather Nicolaus knew a great deal more about English spelling than I gave him credit for. And he didn't even have wikipedia to lean on.

The place to start

I'm a bit late to the game with this blog, but my experience with genealogy has become an experience worth writing about. This coming Memorial Day will mark the two year anniversary of the quest that my brother John and I embarked upon.

Truth be known, he and I had been "rattling sabers" for quite some time previous to then about researching the family history, but at that point it was all talk and no action. Sadly, it was probably the passing of my mother's sister, Lois Fitch, in 2005, and my father's younger brother, Robert Lee Baetz the year before that gave us somewhat of a sense of urgency. We had already lost our grandparents by that time and I often lament that we had not started our research when they were still living. Just 30 minutes with each of them today would be golden. Sometime in 2006 I was finally able to get from my parents the files they had collected over the years on our family's history. Even with that in hand though, I didn't really know where to start and the effort stalled.

It was my brother that got the ball rolling. Ancestry.com was running some promotions the week leading up to Memorial Day 2007, and my brother registered and started our Baetz family tree. Shortly thereafter, he "invited" me into the tree as editor, and I began to expand the tree with the files I had obtained from my parents. Within a few weeks, both of us received an introductory "3 days free access" to the premium content of Ancestry.com, to which we both indulged. Too much actually, and I may address that in another blog entry.

For those of you not familiar with Ancestry.com, a few words about them. First of all, I don't want this blog to come across as an advertisement for Ancestry. There are many options for the genealogist today, both online resources as well as stand-alone software applications. I'm not here to endorse any particular one, they all have their pluses and minuses I'm sure. But as Ancestry.com is where we got started and remain as of today, it relates to our experience with genealogy.

Ancestry.com is part of the Generations Network, headquartered I believe in Provo, Utah and is in some way affiliated with LDS. It is a for profit venture that exists essentially to sell premium subscription to their service. That service includes a great many resources, including searchable databases of census records, vital records, military records, etc. etc., and also cross references family databases in the One World Tree. What they have is very extensive, but also very expensive. Every person that you enter in your tree is automatically matched to all of these records they have access to. It can be a double edged sword, more on that some other time. All in all, Ancestry is very nice, but for now we use the service as registered guests and are still deciding whether or not to purchase the premium service.

As we approach two years of research into our family history, there have been a great many wonderful experiences to share. Many twists in the road and unanticipated finds that beg to be captured in a form beyond what can be expressed by simply filling in a pedigree chart. That's what I hope to accomplish with this blog. I hope for this to be a log of current events, and as I have two years of events to draw upon, I intend to revisit some of those. I am also hopeful that the many distant relatives and genealogists I have met, both in person and online, will drop in from time to time to see what's up in my neck of the woods.