The Bartaway Rabbit Hole Strikes Again! (Part 2)

This evening I wanted to share a bit of methodology before jumping into the two eldest children of Adolphus BARTAWAY and Adalina HAGENBUCH. Researching genealogy and blogging about it seem to be mutually exclusive tasks for many of my genblogging contemporaries, but I use the two in conjunction. Blogging as I research and researching as I blog tends to be how I roll.

I also have started to use some emojis and unicode to add quick glance capability into my bulleted data lists. The Legend (which will develop into a reusable graphic) is as follows:

🍼  Birth (of self or children)
✒️ Census Record (pen nib)
⚭ Marriage
⚮ Divorce
💀 Death

The Bartaway Rabbit Hole has Struck Again!

The Berthoulier Confusion

My 3rd great grandfather Adolphus C. BARTAWAY (BERTHOULIER) has been a pain in my tookus. Tracking his heritage down is a big goal in my genealogy search. Pop heard stories as a child that Adolphus had attended the Chicago World's Fair and had his own booth. My father fancies himself a bit of a mechanical engineer and truth be told he's wrangled together some handy tools and projects over the years. It would be nice to find out the truth behind those stories and let him know if this branch contributes to his mechanical inclinations.

How I Organize My Genealogy Research Files

As I have mentioned in the past, I've been working on my genealogy off and on for about 16 years. The past four weeks have seen a lot of progress in organization and filling in huge gaps close to my end of the tree. In between applying for jobs and running errands for my father, I've decompressed by working on organizing the mounds of data, both digital and tactile.

(On a side note, I am quite disappointed that FamilySearch has had to change the availability of census pages. I used to be able to download and save the image that showed the page with my family member on it. The ability to download and print those images is now unavailable. I can only surmise that the US Census Bureau has renegotiated the contract and FamilySearch can no longer allow us that kind of access. Such a bummer.)

The KRAUSE Conundrum, Part 2

Conundrum

I call this family group The KRAUSE Conundrum because they have been so difficult to track down. The parents of the family are my 2nd great grandparents Ferdinand and Amelia. Their children are Gustave, Max, Charles (my great grandfather), and Catherine. Peripheral family members are documented as a way to gather additional information about Gus's movements and an attempt to find out about where Ferdinand and Amelia came from.

I focus a lot of my research on Gus because he seems to be the most interesting of the group. He didn't plunk down and settle in one place and he lived life by his own rules. There is also a lot of information on him, or at least the group of men known as Gus C. KRAUSE. When I couldn't figure out why each piece of information seemed to be at odds with the rest, I went to the world stage at the time to figure out why he would purposely disseminate false information. It has been an eye opener.

The KRAUSE Conundrum, Part 1

The German Brick Wall

One of the most frustrating parts of genealogy research are what genealogists call 'brick-wall ancestors'. I've come into contact with many such ancestors, and I'd say the prevailing nationality of those ancestors is German. What is it about the way Germans from the 1850s-1950s were raised that caused them to be so tight lipped about family matters? The majority of the issues I am dealing with lately come from my biological paternal side, but I have run into a similar problem with my maternal side as well as my adoptive paternal side. It's like they were trained from birth to keep a secret to their graves. I guess it's Gibbs' Rule 4 (NCIS); Best way to keep a secret. Keep it to yourself. Second-best, tell one other person—if you must. There is no third best.