Joseph Peter Heimbach and Anna Oswald... The beginning

My first encounter with Joseph Peter Heimbach was a letter from a distant cousin saying Helena Heimbach Ellsworth's death certificate identified her father as Peter Heimbach.  Armed with that information, I found him on the 1870 census.  This was before digital records were online in the late 1980s.  I loved scrolling though the films.
No one in the family had any inkling about the family other than they lived in Chicago during the Chicago Fire of 1871 and that Helena married Edward Ellworth in Chicago about 1890.  No clue as to how they met.

From the 1870 census, I learned they were from Prussia. Their oldest child Nicholas, was born in Prussia too.
Then I found an index done by someone on Rootsweb of St Michael's Catholic Church in Chicago.  There was Joseph and Anna and the third daughter Margarurite.  The blessing was, the priest had them write their birth place also.  I spent some time searching but to no avail.  It would be 8 years later, I met a man in the Family History Center I worked in that had the family genealogy book from Losheim, Germany where they were from.  He loaded me the book and it had both families back to 1800.

I will begin the journey of this story with Joseph Peter, his birth and the events around his birth.
I love this family; they are so interesting.
My internet is so incredibly slow tonight I can not upload anything.  More later.

Slice of Life Affects of Documents

As TexasBlu said in her introduction of the topic at Slice of Life  (click here to see her blog) for this week, documents can play such a roll in so many facets of our lives.  For this blog, I will stick to documents for primary proofs in genealogical research.
 Before we get started, I will remind the readers that if you click on the image it will be larger, I have them small for space.
I have to tell you that there is one site right now that I can not say enough good about and praise the volunteers that are making it possible to for easy access of documents of primary proofs such as marriage licenses, birth, and death certificates.

Drum Roll...are you ready...FamilySearch Record Search... [if you click on FamilySearch it will take you to the site. ]

Why am I so excited about an old dog?  Well this dog has added some new tricks.  I have a family I have talked about before.  The Heimbach Family.  I knew from family resources that Helena Heimbach married Edward Ellsworth, but I didn't have the document proof.  Here it is from Records search.

I had all of her brothers and sisters from a Nebraska census in 1880, but after that they all seemed to disappear except for Helena and her youngest brother Frank.
In comes Records search new data...a marriage license for a younger sister in Nebraska. You notice it has her parents and his parents names listed also I apologize I cut John F Riley's name off at the top...concrete association.

A search for her with her husband.  This census has the majority of her younger brothers and a sister all together in Oklahoma with the father as boarders at her home...The Heimbach name was so slaughtered that it had never been picked up in searches...(I corrected the indexed name in Ancestory.com)...

Another search put them in Arizona.  A death certificate for a younger brother who died childless,

but the sister and her husband and oldest brother, who I had thought mustt have been dead are on the census in Arizona at that time.  A daughter of the oldest brother is with him in the census. I find he had been in Colorado.  Still looking for him there.

Another search.  A death record for the daughter is found in Texas.

and a marriage record in Arizona.  That is why I went to the historical cemetery in San Antonio, Texas to find her grave.
It is wonderful that there is organized documentation of vital activities in our lives which aids us in matching generations past.