My Trails into the Past

This is my third year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past . I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. Over five days, three family members of the Horoch family in Oberhundem, Kreis Olpe, Westfalen, died. The first was eleven-year-old Johan Joseph Carl, who died on 1 October 1857, just ten days short of his twelfth birthday. He died from dysentery. [1] The next day on 2 October, the youngest child, Maria Elisabeth Horoch, died from dysentery. She was about a year and a half old. [2]                                                  Lastly, on the 5 October, their f...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again - time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has another fun activity for us today.  Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!): 1)  Tell us which ancestral home (an actual building, a village, a town, even a country) you would most like to visit.   Which ancestors lived there, and for how long?  2)  Share your ancestral home information in your own blog post, on Facebook, and leave a link to it in the comments. Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting this topic. The ancestral hometowns I would like to visit is Oberhundem, Kirchhundem, and Altenhundem, which today are very close to each other in the district of Olpe, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.     During the German Empire (1871-1918), there were 1296 inhabitants. [1] My great-grandfather, Johan Anton Hork, ...

Another great genealogy challenge from Randy Seaver of Genea-musing . 1)  The Family History Hound listed 20 Questions about your Ancestor, and I'm going to use some of them in the next few months.  2)  Please answer the first question - "Which ancestor moved the farthest from their home?" 3)  Write your own blog post, make a comment on this post, or post  your answer on Facebook or Google+.  Please leave a link to your answer in comments on this post. My great-grandfather, Johann Anton Hork and his brother, Johann Albert Hork, came the furthermost distance from their home. Both were born in the small town, Oberhundem, located in Kreis Olpe of Westfalen. Anton was born 8 Nov 1843 and Albert was born 10 Aug 1853. [1] The 27-year-old, Johan Hork, arrived in the United States on 5 Nov 1870 aboard the HMS Idaho . [2] He married Julia Sievert in Joliet, Will County, Illinois. [3] John was a tailor and he took his family west as far as Portland...

Last week, Michael John Neill wrote about German maps found on Ancestry.com.  I decided to give it a try and find the home town of my Horks:  Oberhundem.  I followed the same instructions Michael gave and found it in no time.  Oberhundem in part of Westfalia, which today is the German state of North Rhein-Westphalia.  According to Wikepedia, it is "the most populous state with 4 of the countries' 10 largest cities." Here is the map from Wikepedia: Oberhundem is a small town and is near Arnsberg at the edge of Sauerland.  The maps on Ancestry are historical maps.  I made the map large and then cropped it so I could see just the three towns where I found church records for the Hork, Trosster, and Soemmer families. Germany, Topographic Maps, 1860-1965, 1898 Attendorn map, Ancestry.com I found church records in Oberhundem, Kirchhundem and Altenhundem.  If you look close enough, you can imagine one of the little squares was their house...