My father was a teacher. When I was three, we moved to California. It gets really hot there in the summer, and my father had those months off, so we would load everything into the station wagon and head eastward. Mom and I would stay with my grandmother in Iowa while Dad pursued Master's Degree coursework at a variety of midwestern colleges.
During the cross-country trips, Dad would always check the phone book in the motel room to see if there were any listings for our surname,"Feltz." There never were; it was like the name didn't exist outside of our little family. Nobody had ever even heard of it, as we could tell from the pronunciation attempts. It's not a tough word -- one syllable, one vowel, pronounced just like it sounds. And yet, when presented with the simple word,
everyone seems to stumble for some strange reason. My father was called "Fee-litz" so many times that it became his de facto nickname. I could recite our family litany ('F' as in Frank, E, L, T, Z as in Zebra) before I could write, but no matter how many times you recite it, they are going to write "Fletz" or "Felts" or "Felsk." Many were surprised that a rabid feminist like myself would so quickly adopt my husband's surname upon marriage, but I couldn't wait to never have to deal with those five letters again.
In genealogy, a "brick wall" is that person whose origin and parents you just can't find. Perhaps it's just desserts that my most irritating genealogy brick wall is my great-great-great grandmother, Fredericka Feltz (or possibly Velz or Voeltz or Fels). Sigh.
In October of 1870, my great-great grandfather, Herman Feltz, married Fredericka Manteufel in Renfrew County, Ontario. She was the daughter of Carl and Amalia Manteufel, who lived nearby. Once I had their names and a general idea of when they were born, it was not at all difficult to find vital records for the Manteufels in Lutheran church records from Germany, and that was in the original handwritten German on foggy microfilm. The Lutheran records are extensive, and, amazingly, they seem to have largely survived Germany's many wars. The Church of Latter Day Saints microfilmed them early on and their volunteers continue to transcribe and index them. The only thing that makes it the least bit challenging to trace the Manteufels back multiple generations is the fact that the Lutherans, God Love Them, appear to have been given a very limited number of Christian names and they just sort of shake them up and reapply them as each child is born. So "Katerina Barbara Karolina Frederica" is likely to be sister to "Karolina Katerina Frederica Barbara," and "Frederica Karolina Barbara Katerina." And it can be tricky to figure out which of those went by "Frederica," or "Caroline" or "Barbara" -- it's not necessarily the one you think it is. Johanna, Hannah and Anna may or may not all be the same person. But if you can line up dates and surnames, it usually all begins to make sense.
So, with the Manteufels sorted, I turned to the Feltz family. In the marriage record, Herman Feltz's father is not named, only his mother -- Fredericka -- so it sounds as though he perhaps was illegitimate. In the 1871 Ontario census not quite a year after the marriage, Herman is the head of a household that includes Ernst and Fredericka Gutzeit and their four children, and later marriage records for the Gutzeit children indicate their mother's maiden name was Feltz (yay!). Ship and port departure and arrival records show the Gutzeits left Hamburg, Germany and sailed to New York in June of 1870. For the July 1870 U.S. census, they are inmates at Ward's Island, the New York City immigration processing center and hospital.
In other words, their journey to North America is well-chronicled. A later Canadian Lutheran confirmation record for one of the Gutzeit children indicates she was born in "Leigelei, Neustettin, Köslin, Preußen." The ship's record agrees:
So we've got names, vitals dates, a place... these folks should just pop right up in those lovely German records.
They don't.
I'll spare you the permutations I've used to bang my head against this brick wall for the last couple of decades; there are a lot of them. I've also asked for help. One recurring suggestion has been that "Liegelei" looks more like "Zieglei," was I perhaps just looking in the wrong place. Well, yes, I certainly could. The problem there is that Zieglei" translates to "Brickyard." The most common place name in Germany is "Hausen," meaning "a place where there are houses." Zieglei -- brickyard -- is not far behind, including three in the Neustettin region.
Great. I don't just have a brick wall. I have a whole brickyard.
Recently, there appeared what might be a crack in my wall. A woman is projected by Ancestry.com to be a 4th-6th cousin and our shared DNA matches are on my Feltz line. Interestingly, her family tree includes a "Johanna Feltz, who was born in Germany and immigrated to Chicago in 1885 with her husband, Fred Schrubbe, and their children. Their immigration process and their ensuing lives in Chicago are well-documented. But (you guessed it) I am unable to find Johanna or any of her family prior to their trans-oceanic voyage.
Did 19th century Prussia have a witness protection program? Is "Feltz" the Prussian equivalent of "Doe?" Or were they just so grateful not to have to wrestle with the spelling and pronunciation that they left it in the rear view without a second glance?
I get it, Ladies. I get it.
コメント