An Overview
Don't ask me why I am working on this project, I really can't explain it. My dear cousin, Lois Paha, got me hooked on family genealogy. In 1998, she gave my daughter, Jill, a handwritten document (HWD) compiled and written around 1944 by Corrine Elizabeth (Weigand) Kestel detailing the Resch and Kestel family trees (my father's ancestors) as they came and lived in America.
Corrine is the great grand daughter of John Weigand, who traveled to America from Hesse Cassel in 1833 to the Port of Baltimore. He may have traveled with Joseph Resch and his family. He was their neighbor in Zanesville, Ohio, their first stop (for 20 years). In 1853, again they all traveled by covered wagon to Brown County, Illinois. But she is also the great grand daughter of Joseph Resch. Though she did not know either of her great grandfathers, she grew up on Dutch Ridge 4 miles northeast of Mount Sterling, Illinois, amongst the Rash, Krupp, and Weigand families. Just another reason for calling this effort - Living the Dream on Dutch Ridge. As she grew up, she married into the Kestel family of Manhattan, Will County, Illinois, thus tying the two families and counties together again (as you will read). Corrine is my second cousin, twice removed, our common ancestors are Joseph and Barbary (Grass) Resch.
Corrine worked very hard on this project moving between Joliet, Chicago and Mount Sterling collecting and organizing this story in a genealogical outline format. A large majority of her data is verifiable by source documents. I also have a school project Joe Kestel completed for his family tree some years ago which has some great pictures.
I read through the HWD initially in the winter of '99 and attempted to make a crude family tree based on the Kestel and Resch family text, to say the least, it was interesting and exasperating at the same time. The HWD at times was difficult to follow and I was usually confused after looking at it for more than an hour - yet the attraction to continue on was always there, at least until the weather turned warmer and I could get back out on the golf course. After many hours of work, I was not sure who my direct ancestors were in these bloodlines. So, by March of 2000, I was back out on the links. I didn't know if I would continue on with this project or not.
October 2000 - March 2001
The winter of 2001 came early and hard. Over 40 inches of snow in December - I worked out of Milwaukee that month, where we had 48 inches. So onward I go. The HWD is really a great piece of work. Though not a valid source document, the HWD provided me with many clues in writing and researching these stories and facts. The bottom line though is not 100% accuracy, but a description of our family's ancestry and a flavoring of the times of their lives. By March of 2001, I finally pieced together my direct ancestors in the Resch and Kestel lines. I started making entries into a family tree program and learned about writing web pages in HTML format.
One discovery that surprised me was Mount Sterling, Illinois. As I read about this town in the HWD, I thought I'd better find out the location. To my great surprise, the town is about 30 miles south of Macomb, where my three daughters were attending college at WIU. I was able to make some site visits to Mount Sterling and visit my daughters at the same time. I met Mary Ann Logsdon, a life long genealogist living in Versailles, who helped me out immensely in researching records at the Brown County Courthouse. I will say that I've met some of the nicest people in the research I've conducted.
Through my research, a common thread has pierced all of the families, namely the family bond. The Catholic Church played a major role in strengthening this bond by providing a strong social and spiritual link to the community. Many times, the Catholic parish played was a primary contributing factor in where these families lived. I complemented much of my research using church records. Baptisms, communions, confirmations, marriages and deaths, the church was always there with the congregation. I would be remiss is I didn't mention the strong ancestral ties to German culture brought with them from Europe. Obviously, with over five million Germans emigrating to America in our history, many customs and traditions survived in America. German Catholic Churches and cemeteries, schools, the language and work ethic and of course, beer drinking on Sundays.
I would be remiss if I didn't address two families not from Germany, the Paha and Crummy families. The Paha family immigrated from Bohemia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but they were very close in many ways to German immigrants with language and custom. The Crummys, our only Irish immigrants, were also very family and church oriented. Both families were Catholic.
I decided to write and organize this work as an extension of Corrine's work using a series of essays and sketches highlighting the experiences and flavoring the work with historical essays about events and places long forgotten, but no less significant. I use the word organize because many of the writings here are not my own, but are taken from numerous sources including libraries, national archives, LDS History Centers, historical groups and numerous web sites. From the French Revolution and Napoleon's Wars, economic strife, German revolution, Irish political and religious problems of the 1700 and early 1800s, the Franco Prussian War of 1870, hardships in crossing the Atlantic, the anxieties and difficulties establishing roots in a new land, Civil War, recessions, depression, labor strife, both World Wars, and many more. The beauty of writing stories today cannot be understated, using present day technology and hyper linked text, many different areas can be highlighted with the push of a button.
Many facts and details, many histories, I've tried to be selective in what I am passing forward. I've discovered I have a great affinity for history - that's very surprising to me considering the fact my disciplines in life have always leaned towards the scientific and mathematical. In undertaking this project, as time has progressed, I realize I won't finish. That's not surprising, when Corrine Kestel wrote the HWD for the Resch and Kestel family, she probably had the same thought. I glad I've had some opportunity to take up the task 60 years later.
October 2001 - March 2002
Getting back into some heavy genealogical research and writing as it's already cooling down in Chicago in mid October. I'm starting to gather information faster than I can keep track of it, so I've decided that this season I will concentrate heavily on my mom's ancestry, the Bodinet and Utz families. I'm also starting to work on my dear wife's ancestry, she has the patience of a saint to put up with me as I work on this project (she calls it working with the dead - I call it waking up to an historical past through the study of ancestry).
I've had some initial success with online census information, some other sources I've lost. I'm working with my mom to write her recollections of growing up on Laflin street in the '30s and '40s. She has taken the task up to become computer literate in her middle 70s. The compilation of this story, compared to the Resch and Kestel families, will be more difficult, I'm basically starting with my mom's recollections and not hand me down notes. Much more of a challenge. Fortunately, most of my source data is available in Chicago. It's a matter of collection and writing. Hope you enjoy!
October 2002 - March 2003
Last year I completed naming all of my direct ancestors and their families who came and lived in America. I've working also on my wife's ancestors with some success also.
As this year starts going, my initial plan is to detail the Resch story with their arrival in Baltimore in 1833 and their 20 years in Zanesville, Ohio, farming the land. I plan on using the LDS library, internet and email for the majority of my work, and hopefully, a visit to Zanesville will follow. I am also planning on filling in details for the first two generations of the Kestels in Will County. As I become more competent with HTML, I've been able to organize the essays into chapters covering various aspects of my ancestors lives.
October 2003 - March 2004
This was a very difficult year for our family. My mom, Lorraine, passed away February 13th. She had lung cancer, but her suffering was for a short period of time. We all loved her and we will miss her immensely. She was a great help for me in this project. I got very little done during this timeframe, mostly document research.
October 2004 - March 2005
I'm just getting rejuvenated on this project and I've bought a quarterly subscription to Ancestry.com. In a very short period of time, I've done days of census and immigrant research using their indexes. I've found all the families in the 1920 and 1930 census and have a lead on the Paha immigration. More to follow.
Summer/Fall of 2005
I've just completed my upgrade training on the DC 8 for the left seat, a position a long time coming, some because of the events on 9/11/2001. I've made a site visit over to Georgetown, Scott County, Kentucky, which is about an hour east of Louisville. I've been working closely with Karen McAndrew, another family genealogist on the Crummy side who has as much fervor for this project as I have. The Crummy family, detailed in the 1850 census as Scott County residents, was the purpose of this visit which yielded some interesting facts and pictures. I visited Valparaiso, Indiana to research Elizabeth Crummy and was reminded of the day trips my family took to Lake Eliza in the '60s with my parents close friends and their families. I've also wrote a page about White Sox baseball and the fact that Josef Paha and his family and Charles Rash and his family lived less than 100 yards from South Side Park, their original home. And lastly, I've managed to get this document up on the web using Front Page editor. For the remainder of the year, I plan on writing about the Crummy experience in Scott County. BTW, the lead on the Paha immigration panned out with location of their ship's manifest, picture of ship and country of origin - Bohemia.
Winter/Spring of 2006
Winter's been somewhat typical , yet atypical for Chicago. We were set for a white Christmas, and Mother Nature warmed a bit to melt all the snow. They she forgot to turn the heat off and for the next 30 days we had temperatures way above freezing. Then in late January we got a nice 10 inches in a five hour period, I was working Rockford at the time and launched in the thick of the storm. I was fortunate in that I worked Rockford from before Thanksgiving through the end of January. Now the news, a major fine for the Paha clan.
Ancestry.com opened a new data base on WWI registration. I collected the data from all registrants, finally getting to John Paha. He listed his place of birth as Sirb, Bohemia. I initially looked up the location and three popped out. Further research placed the town in western Bohemia along the Bavaria border. Again, back to searching the web about Bohemia, and many interesting facts and pages are coming to light, the most important being the heavy German population living along the western and northern borders of the country. This area in the early 20th century would be known as the Sudetenland and be an important chess piece in the early stages of Hitler's WWII.
I finally stumbled upon some important pages in German, which through the magic of computers, was translated into usable English. The page listed surnames of Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia at the conclusion of WWII. The surname Paha was there. I e-mailed the author of the group involved and a week later I receive a file attachment in reply detailing the Anna Paha's (Aunt Anna) ancestry back 10 generations. Whoa! I must be dreaming. What an assist. Anyway, you'll have to review the chapter to get the details. The ancestral tern used in many writings is German-Bohemian, though I actuality, the Paha and Gill clans are of German Ancestry.
I will probably spend the rest of the winter on the Paha chapter, as this story unfolds.
Fall 2006
By this fall's conclusion, I will have worked on this project for 7 years. Though I've slowed down on writing somewhat, I hoping I can get back into some creative efforts this winter.
Well, in May, my daughter Jamie married Adam Schaeffer, and needless to say, our family spent allot of time making sure the ceremony and reception went well. My wife Jan and daughters put together a very nice program, and the church ceremony was beautiful, and I'm not bragging. Father Merold and Jeff Johnson were simply the right people, our close church friends, family and relatives provided the rest. We had a fun time at the Naval Station for the reception, and Jamie and Adam were a perfect couple.
I worked on and off on during the summer, more off than on. My work schedule hasn't been as regular as when I was an FO, but I new that before I took the upgrade to the left seat. I ended up sitting some reserve in Louisville, and tuning my golf game up. Finally, by late summer , I'm flying the line regularly, as the company expanded it's freight operation. I'm hoping this continues for a few years as my seniority grows in the left seat. We also signed our labor contract in late August which has put my retirement plans in a better situation. As for genealogy, I'm mostly concentrating on research of the Paha family. I made a visit to the Newberry again to research the Chicago Directories for the 1890s, in particular, focusing in on the spelling of Baha. None to my surprise, I did find some entries which validated the family residing at 39th and Fifth Avenue close to St. George's Church and School. I'm adding more pages, life the one in the Resch early years about the Brothers Grimm. I added some supporting pages for the Pahas concerning Bohemia, German Bohemians and also the area in Bohemia (Czechoslovakia) known as the Sudetenland, which became an area on contention between Germany and the UK during the preliminaries of WWII.
Winter 2006
Just setting up for this winter's work and I am coordinating with Anne Nadler, my third cousin on my dad's side. Her grandmother, Esther Kestel Wagner, is the young girl in the 4 generation photo of Mary (O'Callahan) Crummy. I think it's about time I got to working on the Kestel story, though much of my initial research is done. I did allot of work a few years ago and I spent some time with Bernie and Sheila Kestel collecting some great pictures and background data. Bernie has had a rough time over the last year with his health, and I'm praying he can make some recovery this spring. As for the Kestel story, I'd like to put together the first two generations of the family and the time they spent in Will County, similar to the efforts I gave Joseph Resch and family in Zanesville. It's been a warm winter so far, with our only snowfall to date occurring on the day after Thanksgiving, 14 inches worth. Otherwise, we got two rounds of golf in during the first week of January.
The Table of Contents can be reached with this link.
How to Use this Website or CD and Internet Explorer Effectively
My goal is to make this story available online as a primary source of viewing. The web really makes this project a dynamic work in progress editable and correctable in an eye's blink. Secondarily, as an auto running CD and maybe down the road a DVD. As of October, 2005, I using Comcast web space which limits me to 25MB of space. I'm starting to push that wall, but I'm assuming that more space will be forthcoming from them. I'm also assuming that high speed connection will be the norm for all surfers in the very near future, so I don't attempt to be critical of file size management as I was a few years ago. So if you are viewing this online, great.
CD Usage: I'm hoping that when you put this CD into your computer, this page opens automatically. That was to be the easy part.
HTML format allows hyperlinked text, usually the text is a different color and underlined. By selected the text, your computed will be directed to a new page. Very simple. I've also installed directional links throughout the pages for moving backwards and forwards, or to the Table of Contents. Another convention for browsers is your backspace key. If you go to a site, and want to go back to a previous site, use your backspace key. This key can be used as many times as you please, all the way back to the first page you viewed.
Another convention is the F11 key, which will take you to the full screen option, one I recommend for viewing some of the pictures I've included. Also, you may want to increase your text size displayed of your browser. I enjoy the large text option.
One last point, I can't guarantee that any of the pages will print out on paper correctly. I wrote the pages for a computer screen display and 1024 by 768 pixels. Any lower resolution on your display can be done, but some of the pictures have to be scrolled right for viewing. If you desire to print, which I don't recommend, then you might want to reduce your text size and use Internet Explorer's Print Preview option.
