Genealogy Detective, Part I: Catherine Who?
For somebody with a passion for history and a taste for detective stories, genealogy is a very logical hobby. Piecing together a family tree is a puzzle that often takes real detective skills, and reading between the lines of the births, marriages, and deaths, with the occasional nugget of a newspaper item or a picture to shed a flash of light on the story, is one form of time travel for the imagination. Although I only just got my first Ancestry subscription, I've been pursuing this hobby for years now, using the limited free resources from Ancestry itself and places like Family Search, Find a Grave, online newspaper archives, et cetera. And you know, I'm actually glad it turned out that way. Working under limitations really sharpens your wits—you learn to dig and sift and work around obstacles instead of having information easily handed to you, and perhaps learn not to take things for granted and repeat other people's assumptions or research mistakes.
This month, I spent a weekend working out perhaps the most challenging puzzle I've solved yet. It was on the German side of my family; not even in the direct line, but I like to flesh out the side branches as much as I can in the hopes that eventually I might come upon something in one of them that points backwards towards our overseas roots. Besides...once I'm launched on a really good puzzle, blood relative or no, I keep going for the sheer thrill of the chase. This time, it was so complicated that I started keeping notes along the way—it actually began as a query I was going to post to a genealogy message board, but I decided to hold back on it and see if I could find out more by myself before asking for help. I ended up solving the whole thing on my own and finished with three pages of slightly tongue-in-cheek notes. So I thought it might be rather fun to turn them into a blog post giving a behind-the-scenes look at the adventures of an amateur genealogist.
The initial beginning of the quest is several years ago; I can't remember exactly how many. (I am not the best person with dates in everyday life.) I wish to confirm the maiden name of a woman named Catherine, born about 1872, the wife of a German-born tailor named John Hoffmeister who lived first in Troy and later Albany, New York.
At first glance, it looks obvious: on the 1900 census, their household includes a girl named Clara Gregory who is listed as "sister-in-law." By 1905 they're joined by another sister-in-law, Jennie Gregory. (In-laws sharing a household are a boon to the amateur genealogist—they're usually the best and easiest way to learn a woman's maiden name.) But there is a tiny seed of doubt in my mind. Usually when you know a woman's maiden name and date of birth it's easy to locate her on an earlier census in her parents' household. But I can't find a Catherine Gregory anywhere. And my inquisitive, perfectionist mind wants to be sure I have the right name listed in the family tree. So I begin to dig.
On a lovely spring day last year, I make my first visit to the local-history research room at the library—a small room filled with bound copies of church and cemetery records, city directories, maps, books on local history, filing cabinets loaded with miscellaneous records...I could spend hours in a place like this, for research or just for fun. (I can't remember how much time I spent on this occasion, but I know it was longer than I was supposed to.) I glean a number of useful family-tree leads from church records, including the baptism record for John and Catherine Hoffmeister's first child. Oddly enough, it seems to confirm the obvious: Catherine's maiden name is listed as Gregory, and one of the sponsors is Clara Gregory. But for some reason, the tiny doubt remains. (I can't recall why, as I made no note at the time.)
The next clue: I find Jennie Gregory on the 1900 census. She was living with a married aunt, but the household also includes her grandfather, Caspar Geisler. A little further digging turns up a marriage record between Clara Gregory and Hugo Wagner, which lists Clara's parents as Mary Geisler and William Gregory.
A quick check of an earlier census confirms that Caspar Geisler did indeed have a daughter named Mary, born about 1849. And searching an online newspaper archive that I'm just learning how to use, I find an item on Caspar Geisler's will which lists among the legatees his granddaughter Catherine Hoffmaster [sic].
But here there comes a catch. On the 1880 census, Caspar Geisler's household includes a granddaughter born in 1872, whose name is...Catherine Jack. Right age, right first name...wrong surname. Could it just be an odd mistake by the census-taker? Such things are not unheard-of.
Fast-forward to the present. Having gained some skill in mining online newspaper archives for facts and made some fine discoveries about other branches of the family tree this way, I decide to see if newspapers will help me crack Catherine's case. I know, you see, that after John Hoffmeister's death, Catherine remarried to a Charles Eschner and moved with him and her three children to Buffalo—so I decide to refine my search to the Buffalo papers and see if I can find any mention of the family.
Almost immediately I strike gold—baffling, bewildering gold. It's Catherine Hoffmeister Eschner's obituary from 1955, and it gives her maiden name as Jack (!!!), lists her three surviving children from her marriage to John Hoffmeister, and four sisters: Mrs. Clara Wagner (check), Mrs. Lulu Holz (who?), Mrs. Walter Magill (who?), and Mrs. James Guyer (WHO?).
Well, all right, it's easy to establish that Mrs. James Guyer's maiden name was indeed Jennie Gregory. But next I find a death notice for Lulu Holz, and her maiden name was...Mary Louisa Jack.
And the only Mrs. Walter Magill I can find in New York was apparently born Irene Tanner.
But hang onto your hats, because this is about to get even more confusing. I here quote verbatim from the obituary for William C. Gregory (1844 - 1912) in the Semi-Weekly Times of Troy, NY, April 1912 (a gentleman described as a “Civil War veteran of note,” a prisoner at Andersonville, a member of the posse that pursued John Wilkes Booth, and a "friend and ardent admirer of President Lincoln.") "His wife, two sons, George Gregory of Springfield, Mass., and Joseph Gregory of Fort Mott, N.J., and three daughters, Mrs. George W. Weinbreck of Syracuse, Mrs. Walter Magill of Guilderlands [sic] and Miss Jennie Gregory, survive."
Now who is Mrs. George Weinbreck? And who on earth is Mrs. Walter Magill, and how did she get into both of these obituaries? Is your head spinning yet? Mine is. Now, there is a great deal to be unpacked from the obituary of the remarkable Mr. Gregory, which I'll go into further in the second part of this post. (Let me tell you, it's good.) But at this point of my investigation I am simply tying my brains into knots trying to make these two obituaries fit together somehow. Sometimes when you reach an apparent impasse like this, you simply have to abandon it for a bit and go work on another angle. So I decide, for some random reason, to go back and have another look at the newspaper item about Caspar Geisler's will. And there the answer is, staring me in the face: another one of the legatees was one of his married daughters, Carrie Tanner.
Yep. Irene Tanner Magill's mother was Carolina "Carrie" Geisler Tanner. But wouldn't that make her a first cousin of Catherine, Clara, and Jennie—not a sister? But wait, there's more! On the 1900 census, Irene Tanner is listed as the adopted daughter of William and Carrie Tanner. (The 1900 census also has a handy little feature for genealogists: a column where married women were asked to list the number of children they had given birth to, and then the number of children living. Carrie Tanner did not yet have any children of her own.) So Irene was, in all probability, the daughter of Mary Geisler and William Gregory (we still haven't yet figured out who he is, remember), and was adopted by her aunt.
With the name of Carrie Tanner for a new lead, I take to the newspaper archive again, and find in one of those delightful local society columns (the kind laden with items such as "Mrs. Smith has returned from visiting her sister in Massachusetts" and "Mr. Brown, who had influenza, is recovering") two items mentioning Carrie and her niece, "Kathryn F. Jacque." I already know from other documents that Catherine Hoffmeister Eschner's middle initial was F! And to clinch it, another item referring to "Mrs. [Caspar] Geisler and granddaughter, Miss Kittie Jack."
So, things finally begin to fall into place. Catherine F. Jack and Mary Louisa Jack were the daughters of Mary Geisler's first marriage, and Clara and Jennie Gregory and Irene Tanner (probably born Gregory) were their half-sisters. But there are still some tantalizing questions remaining.
Who was Mary Geisler's first husband? And was the William Gregory who was her second husband really the William C. Gregory of the 1912 obituary?
Read Part II to find out.
images: Albany, NY in 1907, at the time John and Catherine Hoffmeister lived there (Wikimedia Commons)