A little late getting this posted this week. This reflects the status as of Sunday night.
Grandparents’ estate: Got word from the state that they are denying the death benefit claim. Need to decide whether to appeal. Will ping lawyers and CPA this week on status of things in their hands.
Mom’s estate: Nothing happened that I know of. Dad reports he has mail from Vanguard. Will head up there this week to see if any of it is related.
Gym: Fail.
Cooking: Cooked 4 meals at home this week, not including the pies for Pie Night.
Swedish: About 1 hour spent on Swedish, mostly on pronunciation. Game theory: Fail.
Dating: Asked out two women this week. No dates.
Travel: Not yet booked.
House: Cleaned up for 15 minutes 6 of 7 nights this week. Productivity: Was productive 4 mornings shortly after 9 a.m. One day fail.
I meant to post the eulogy I said at Gramps’ funeral last year, but didn’t get around to it. Posting now as a method of archiving it so I can toss the paper copy. I kept it short because I knew I was going to be unable to hold in the waterworks. As it was, this still took me nearly 5 minutes to say.
My hero died on Wednesday. Since I was little, Gramps has been the man I want to be. Many people are known because the do something very well. In Gramps’ case, he was a firefighter. I once watched him run to a burning cabin from the Ponderosa community club. That was great, knowing he saw that danger and knew what to do. But I didn’t want to be a firefighter; I wanted to be like Gramps.
I want to be loving and open. Gramps and Gram were married over 60 years, and their marriage was still as strong last week as it was 30 years ago when I was a kid. I want to be able to call my wife lover-girl, in front of anyone. He didn’t hide anything. Like him, I want the self-confidence to tell people what’s important about me. He was generous and without judgment. He patiently taught me how to drive a standard shift, while I killed the engine of his car over and over. Never once did he tear me down. When a student I was mentoring started applying for scholarships, Gramps gladly spent an afternoon going over scholarship applications with her so she would be ready. He gave his time because I asked and because she needed it. Nothing more. I could list his good qualities for some time.
Now he’s gone. I miss him already. We all do. That’s why we are here. But what I’ll miss most is the living example of who a man can be. I’m proud to say I’m his grandson. I hope that people who knew him will tell others, That’s Cleo Hathaway’s grandson, not because of blood-line, but because I’ve learned well from him. Because I still want to be like my hero.
Figuring out that Anton Weiss is my great great grandfather opened up a lot more of the family tree quickly. The 1880 Census lists a number of children of Anton and Clara Weiss, and that’s where I started from:
1880 United States Federal Census Record for Anton Weiss family
Then I checked the 1860 and 1870 census records and also found Anton and Clara Weiss:
1860 United States Federal Census Record for Anton Weiss1870 United States Federal Census for Anton Weiss
The listed children in 1880 were: Cecilia (~1859), Franz (~1862), Joseph (~1866), Mary (~1869), Clara (~1871), and Agnes (~1878).
The listed children in 1860 were: Robert (~1857) and Celia (~1858). I’d previously found the 1860 record, but didn’t do anything with it because I didn’t know if Anton Weiss was the correct father for Joseph. Celia is certainly Cecilia. Over the course of the decades, the U.S. Census has been taken on different dates: 1 Jan, 1 Apr, 15 Apr, and 1 Jun (at least). But both the 1860 and 1870 censuses were taken officially as of 1 Jun, so the difference in approximate birth dates is just someone getting it wrong, either the census taker, or whoever in the Weiss household the worker talked with.
The 1870 census record was harder to find. In the 1870 Census, the two are listed as Antony and Clarra Weist. All of these census records are found on Ancestry.com, where people have transcribed and indexed them. The Ancestry.com name matching algorithm is pretty good, but for some reason it never matched Anton Weiss with Antony Weist. Wise and Weise match, but the t messed up the soundex type search. At this point, I don’t remember what I put in that finally pulled up the name, or if I went through the Cassville records page by page. For a small place like Cassville, reading every page is fairly easy. There are 23 pages for Cassville in 1860, and 34 in 1870. Reading page by page would be much more laborious for a place like Los Angeles.
The children listed in 1870 were: Robert (~1857), Cecelia (~1858), Frank (~1860), Theadore (~1861), Joseph (~1863) and Mary (~1869).
Here, the birth years for Joseph and Frank really don’t match up, and Theodore’s doesn’t match with other information I have either.
It’s usually easiest to track the male children, because they don’t change their names when they get married, like women overwhelmingly did. However, I had a really good clue for Clara Weiss, so I started tracking her first.
1900 United States Federal Census Record for Anton Weiss
In the clip of the 1900 Federal Census record for Anton Weiss, I included the house and family number column. Some of the censuses include the street address, but this is a different number. Each census taker basically counted off families and dwellings. Sometimes several families would live in the same house. Anton and Clara had the 44th house counted in Cassville, and were the 45th family. Everyone in the same family number is related. Related being in quotes because sometimes servants were counted as their own family, and sometimes not. The last person listed is a Loueller, Clara, listed as a daughter born in March 1871. So it looks like Clara married someone named Loueller!
There’s possibly an interesting story behind that. Why was Clara at her parent’s house in 1900? Was she just visiting? Were she and her husband estranged for a period? Was she stashed at her parents’ for expediency while the husband was setting up a new household or conducting business? I still don’t know.
Searching for women named Weiss who got married in Wisconsin at the Wisconsin Genealogy Index brought up 2 promising hits: Clara Weiss married in Grant County in May 1896, and Clarissa S. Weiss married in April 1894 in Monroe County. I checked Grant County first, because that’s where Cassville is. That Clara Weiss looks to have married a Richard Gross. I’m not 100% certain of that because I haven’t purchased the original record, but his is the only male name that came up as getting married on the same day. It would have to be a pretty weird set of circumstances to marry someone in 1893, marry someone else in 1896, and carry the first person’s surname again in 1900. Clarissa Weiss getting married 4 Apr 1894 seemed like a better possibility, but the possibly spouse search turned up no hits.
Then I looked at the 1900 Census image again, and thought perhaps the name was not transcribed correctly. That could possibly be a Tr and not an L. Plugging in Clara Troeller brought up all sorts of hits, including another one for 1900 in Larrabee, Iowa married to a Conrad Troeller! Thank god for double counting. As it is, a number of people in the Troeller family had already entered her into their family trees, some with the Weiss last name. None of them had connected her to Anton Weiss, but it was enough for me to match them.
Going back to the Wisconsin Genealogy Index, Conrad Troeller does indeed appear, and married someone on 4 Apr 1894. But his marriage is listed in Grant County rather than Monroe County, which confused the possible spouse search. I haven’t yet ordered the original record for that, but I assume it’s an indexing error.
Other states they’ve lived in kept better records and more of them are public, so I as able to find a lot. Helpfully, someone in San Bernardino County, California cataloged a lot of head stones and put the list online, and one of them had her name. Upland California seemed like a long way away, but the other information matched.
So here’s the story as best as I can piece it together from the genealogy records: Clarissa Sophia Weiss was born on 4 Mar 1871 in Cassville, Wisconsin. She married Conrad Troeller from Dodge County, Wisconsin on 4 April 1894 in Cassville, Wisconsin. The Troellers moved to Brule County, South Dakota either with or shortly after her brother Frank (more on him later), where she had a son Harold in 1896. By 1898, Conrad and Clara had moved to Larrabee, Iowa where Conrad worked as a hardware dealer and they had son Paul in 1898 and daughter Agnes in 1903. By 1907, they’d moved to the Los Angeles area, where daughter Margaret was born in that year. But Clara is not to be found in the 1910 census; she died a couple of months before the census on 24 Feb 1910.
What happened after she died explained why they moved to California in the first place, and provided me with a clue as to where other members of my family were. And I have more sources than I did last month too. But that will have to wait for another entry.
I have the internet, and I’m not afraid to write stuff on it that you don’t care about!
Grandparents’ estate: Received and cashed a check from the last insurance policy for my grandparents. Notified the CPA of the same payment. Submitted a claim to the state for a death benefit for my grandfather. Waiting for CPA to do tax return.
Mom’s estate: Got confirmation that her IRA was moved into a new account at Vanguard. Confirmed with Vanguard that they have the transfer paperwork to move it to RBC. Waiting for transfer to happen. Waiting for RBC new account confirmations. Following that, paying lawyers and CPAs, filing with probate.
Gym: Fail.
Cooking: Cooked twice this week successfully. Attempted a third time but botched the meal. Should start tracking how many times I eat out.
Swedish: About 3 hours spent on Swedish, mostly on pronunciation. Understand the basics of Swedish pronunciation, but not the multitudes of special cases. Game theory: Fail.
Dating: Did not ask anyone out this week.
Travel: Not yet booked.
House: Cleaned up for 15 minutes 5 of 7 nights this week. Productivity: Was productive 4 mornings by 10 a.m., and most mornings shortly after 9 a.m. Friday was not productive at all.
Book blog: Installed theme and contact form for one piece of transfer. Need to do formatting and enter data.
I promised to write about what I cook in an effort to cook more. But I didn’t promise this would be stuff you’d want to eat.
The recipe comes from the Better Homes & Gardens Biggest Book of Casseroles. It turned out pretty tasty, though a little saltier than I was expecting. I should find out if any of the local butchers do a low salt bulk sausage. Doctor told me I was to watch my salt. I don’t like to be rigid about it, but seeing Gramps ingest salt licks when he was supposed to watch his salt too, and end up in the hospital for it, has been illuminating.
Recipe is how I made it, not exactly how it is in the cookbook.
1 lb. bulk sausage
½ small onion
3 cups crisp rice cereal
¼ cup rice
4 ounces cheddar cheese
1 can cream of celery soup
3 eggs
¼ cup soy milk
1½ teaspoons butter
Cook rice.
Chop the onion.
Shred the cheese.
Grease a 2 quart casserole dish.
Pre-heat the oven to 325°.
Cook sausage and onion over medium heat.
Combine 2½ cups of the cereal with the rice.
Spread the rice mix on the bottom of the casserole dish.
Spread sausage and onion over the rice.
Spread the cheese over the sausage.
Mix the soup, eggs, and soy milk.
Pour eggs etc. over everything else.
Melt the butter.
Mix butter with last ½ cup of cereal.
Sprinkle cereal over the top of the casserole.
Bake uncovered for 45 minutes.
Cheesy sausage and rice bake
Edited to add: Daniel suggests in the comments on LJ that most of the salt comes from the soup. Not exactly true, though that is biggest single contributor of sodium. I’m pretty good about checking sodium content of the foods I buy and got the cream of celery soup that had the lowest sodium content of any of that kind of soup at Fred Meyer.
Here’s the sodium contributions to this dish, taken from the nutrition labels:
Went to a show recommended by Aimee tonight. It was all right, but the excitement (such as it is) was on the way home. I cut along Fairview along the lake rather than go up Eastlake. At Newton, there was a lot of water. Thought maybe a storm sewer was backed up, though we haven’t had enough rain to generate this much water. Looked closer, and realized it was coming through the asphalt.
So I pulled over, looked up the 24 hour number for the water and sewer department, and called them. Then I drove home, got my camera, and walked back.
Took the city about 50 minutes after I called to get out there, another 10 to shut the water off, and another 20 before it stopped coming up. I was hoping for a slower response, so we’d get a giant sinkhole that eats cars. Sadly, my dreams of destruction did not come true.
Only occasionally will I make New Year’s goals. A new year is kind of an arbitrary time to do this, but I haven’t been doing the things I need to do to get the things I want. I’ve been mentally distracted by taking care of family and estates. But while I accept that such things are understandable reasons for not achieving what I want, I’m not going to be visited by the success fairy. So this is as good a time as any to make some commitments to change.
My philosophy on goals is that they are a road map rather than a straight-jacket. I don’t consider it failure if I don’t achieve what I want. The idea is that I have something to focus on when I make a choice. Should I do A or B? Which one is on my goals? It’s also useful in holding myself accountable in the steps taken along the way. These can also be changed if I change my priorities. But for now, this is what I want.
Family
My goals this year are to wrap up the estates of my grandparents and my mother. Both should be getting close and are mostly not in my control. I do want to really push to get items related to these done when they fall into my hands. I commit to writing about what I have to do and what I’ve done weekly.
It’s not exactly a goal for the year, but I also commit to saying no to new big family commitments for 2011. I don’t know what will come up, so I can’t say this absolutely. But I do need to step back and let Joe and Elaine take the lead with things unless there’s no way around it. This does not mean I do nothing. I will not take the day to day lead shepherding my step-father through his cancer treatment choices, for instance. If I do not, I will probably need to be committed. I had some moments last year where I felt as close to a breakdown as I ever have.
Health
I want to be in better shape. I weighed in at 186 pounds a couple of days ago. I would like to be at 175 pounds and toned by the end of the year. I also would like to be able to dance for an hour straight. I commit to working out at the gym twice a week through March, and three times a week until the end of the year or I achieve both results. I have a membership at 24 Hour Fitness. If anyone else has a membership there and would like to be workout buddies, please comment.
I generally don’t keep snack foods in the house. The idea is that if I have to cook to eat, I won’t munch. I’ve eaten out more than I’d like though. I commit to cooking meals twice per week (with leftovers to eat, ideally). If they are new recipes, I will post them here. If repeats, I’ll just Facebook that I’ve cooked. I refuse to apologize for turning Facebook into a verb.
Learning
I want to learn Swedish. I bought a Swedish course on CD. I commit to spending two hours a week working on it. If it turns out to be a bad one, I will find another method.
I also want to finish the Game Theory course I poked at last summer. I commit to spending two hours per week working on that.
Dating
I like to be spending time with someone with whom I click. Until I have a significant other, I will ask out a person at least twice a month. This will probably be the hardest of all my goals because even though I’ve done this a lot, I’ve never gotten over the initial fear of putting myself out there. I do it. But it scares me every time.
Travel
I will road trip the U.S. this year.
I will visit another country (besides Canada) this year.
Travel companions desired.
Other
I will spend 15 minutes every evening tidying up my place. People may test me on this by stopping by relatively unexpectedly. If my place is not presentable, you get the drink of your choice.
I will be productive by 9 a.m. every weekday morning.
This last one is less a goal for 2011 than a goal for January. I will get my book blog moved to Read Irresponsibly by the end of the month. I will abandon getting the site done perfectly in favor of getting it done.
So why post about the Weiss family yesterday? It’s because I found new information. A lot of new information about my genealogy. The following is what I knew about my great grandfather Joseph Weiss yesterday morning:
Joseph P. Weiss Descendancy Chart
From the memory book Aunts Jane and Sue gave me, I knew that Joe Weiss married Frances Ryan and had six children: Marie, Joe Jr., Helen, Glenn, Arch, and Babe. Other than my grandfather Arch, I didn’t have any other information when I started. From Ancestry.com I was able to find them in the census records for 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930. That gave me more information, such as approximate birth dates.
Particularly, I didn’t know who Joseph’s parents were. There were three Joseph Weisses born in Wisconsin about the same time. And I knew Joe had a brother named Theodore. He didn’t show up on the census records for any of the three Joe Weisses I found. Ryan was also a pretty common name. I had an idea which was the correct Ryan family, but didn’t have enough to feel comfortable. So I was kind of stumped.
Ancestry.com also had a database record that showed Joseph Weiss marrying a Frankie Ryan in 1891. That had to be my great grandfather, but Ancestry had only the names, date and location. They did not have the original record, which could have given me more information and confirmed that it was actually my great grandfather.
A quick note about sources. From what I can tell, genealogists classify their sources into three basic strata: primary, secondary, and everything else. Primary is something that is recorded at or near the time of the event, or is related by someone who was there. Secondary is something that is based off a primary source, such as a history book. Then there’s the rest, which could be family legends, or family trees that other people put on the internet, etc. Generally primary sources are the most reliable. And what’s primary or secondary isn’t always clear. For instance, the information on my grandfather’s death certificate is a mix. The death information is primary, but the birth information is based on what I told the funeral director, which he submitted to the health department.
The database that had the marriage information is no better than secondary. Information could have been transcribed incorrectly. This is what Ancestry had to say about the provenance of the data:
Dodd, Jordan, Liahona Research, comp.. Wisconsin Marriages, 1835-1900 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2000. Original data: See Description for original data sources listed by county.
Original data: Grant County, Wisconsin Marriages, 1835-1890. County court records located at Lancaster, WI or FHL #1266662 and 1266982-1266988.
That doesn’t tell me a lot. I figured at some point I would stop by the county courthouse or state records division on a trip there and look up the microfilm myself.
Last month, I was perusing the web site for the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. They have a genealogy database, which is based off the same microfilm records that Liahona Research used. In fact, they are more complete than what was sold to Ancestry.com. But not only that, you could easily order a copy of the original microfilm page for each record for only $15. They had the record listed for the Joseph Weiss/Frankie Ryan marriage. So I ordered it.
The record came yesterday.
Marriage Record for Joseph Weiss and Frankie Ryan
Pay dirt!
This lists Joe Weiss’ father as Anton Weiss, which is the the family I’d considered the most likely before. Now I can list his parents as Anton and Clara and add a number of siblings from the 1880 census record to what I know. One mystery is where is Theodore in the 1880 census? Him not being there is why I didn’t add the Anton Weiss family to my known information. Boarding school is unlikely, but possible. Perhaps he moved out young to work on his own or for a local farmer. In addition to the census information, the marriage record lists his mother Clara’s maiden name as Voight. Taking on the husband’s name makes finding wives’ birth families through census records a pain in the ass. Since both Anton and Clara are from Germany (I cut off that part of the census record below), I will have names as starting points when I eventually dig into German genealogy information.
1880 United States Federal Census Record for Anton Weiss family
Frankie Ryan’s father is listed as William Ryan, and that was also the most likely of my choices for the Ryan family. What had kept me from concluding this was the case before was that in later censuses, Francis Weiss’ father is listed as having been born in Canada, but the W. D. Ryan listed in the 1880 census is listed as having been born in Wisconsin. The marriage record has Laura Ryan listed as a witness, and the William Dennis Ryan family in the 1880 census had a Laura as a child. Suspicions there are confirmed, and I can add additional information from the 1880 census record for this family as well.
1880 United States Federal Census Record for William Ryan family
Since the Ryan family is of Irish descent, I can add Irish to the list of nationalities that make up my mutt blood.
There’s some curious things about the William Ryan family in that census, but that will have to wait for another post.
My father, George Robert Weiss, died in 1972, when I was 2 years old and my brother Dan was yet to be born. For years, I believed that he’d died of lung cancer. It’s probably the biggest contributing motivation to me never wanting to start smoking. I have no memories of him. My first recollections are from 1974 or early 1975 at the house in which we lived on Phinney Ridge.
Unlike the Hathaway side, information on the Weiss side of the family was a little harder to come by. First is that my father died and mom remarried. The second is that Grandpa Weiss divorced in the mid 1960s and we had no contact with my grandmother. I suppose that my aunts and possibly even my grandfather would have told me anything I wanted to know, but I was too young to know I’d ever be interested.
The key about all this is that mom never really talked about the Weisses all that much. Daddy George was just a name growing up. We had various get togethers with my aunts and cousins, but my only contact with more extended Weiss family was with Steve and his wife Connie. Steve is my dad’s cousin who moved to Portland from the ancestral family home in Wisconsin.
Weiss Family Memory Book
About 6 years ago, my two Weiss aunts put together a book of information about the Weiss family. My grandmother died in 2001, and I think that spurred them to make this. I got my copy around Christmas 2004. It’s mostly a photo book with some information. There’s a photo of my great great grandparents, the Sorensons. There’s a few of my great grandparents, the Solles. There’s one of my great grandmother Weiss. Lots of photos of my grandfather, many of them taken in uniform. He was a navy enlistee in the 1920s and became an officer in the 1930s through World War II. Then lots of photos of my dad and his siblings, and their respective husbands and kids, and a sprinkling of Connie and Steve’s family.
It’s main purpose was memories for us. It has the only photos I possess of anyone in the Weiss family taken before I was born. But Aunt Jane and Aunt Sue did put some genealogical information in it too. There’s a copy of my great grandparents’ marriage certificate. There’s a list of my grandfather’s siblings. And there’s a couple of death certificates in the back.
The biggest surprise for me was that my father did not die of lung cancer like I believed. I’m sure he had cancer in his lungs and that was the proximate cause. The death certificate lists testicular cancer as the cause of death. And here I was avoiding smoking because I thought I was especially prone to lung cancer. I also found out that part of my family was Danish (the Sorensons), and part was French (the Solles). I knew the Weisses were German, because it’s a German name.
A couple of years ago, my great aunt Babe turned 100. This was right in the middle of the last months of mom’s life, so I wasn’t able to make her birthday party in Madison. I wish I could have. This year when I went to Wiscon in May, I paid a visit to her after the conference. She’s 102 now, and lives in the house where she was born (or moved to shortly afterward). That house will have to be torn down after she dies. It’s functional, but beyond repair or renovation. As of this summer, she didn’t even have 24 hour care. Just caregivers there during daylight hours. Her Alzheimer’s is pretty bad though. She didn’t remember me or my dad. She talked about Arch (my grandfather) some. But we had the same conversation about 10 times in the couple hours I was there. After a few minutes, she would start the conversation over where it began because she couldn’t remember what we’d talked about. I’ll stop by again this May around Wiscon again. She isn’t in great health, but she’s a tough bird, so I expect she’ll be around still. And hopefully she’ll have a little more lucid of a weekend. Armed with a few facts, I will attempt to get her to talk about old times.
I’ll write some more about the informational details shortly, but that’s the introduction.
I have a few starting points for my genealogy. This isn’t actually the first starting point, but it’s the first I’m going to write about.
Last year, Gram and Gramps handed a package of papers to me. They wanted to make copies or scan them into the computer. It was a bunch of stuff related to Gram’s family in Sweden. It’s really a mixed bag. Some of it was Gram’s own notes. Some of it was some pedigree trees and family group sheets for the Nordvalls (her mother’s side of the family). One was a poster sized pedigree tree for the Omans (both her mother and father’s side of the family). They gave me some other stuff later on, but that was the start.
This is one of the Nordvall pedigree trees. The other trees continue people from the top of this one. It’s for Johan Anton Nordvall, who was Gram’s uncle. I assume this was prepared for one of his kids or grandkids. These sheets are 1960s or 1970s era photocopies. The paper clip holding them was rusted even. The form is in Swedish, which is not surprising. Gram’s family is from Piteå, in northern Sweden.
The earliest in time these sheets go is around 1460, with Oluff Birkarl. That actually predates the history I have on the Hathaway side of my family, which I already knew about and which goes back to the late 1500s.
But here’s the rub, it may not be correct. How many people claim to be part Indian these days? Many of them aren’t making it up, even if it’s not true. It’s what their parents told them and their grandparents told their parents. Oral history has a way of getting munged. The same could easily be true for all this information, despite the precision of the dates.
In fact, one of these sheets has information I know is incorrect.
This portion of the tree, 10 generations back from me, has Elsa Jonsdotter-Rehn married to Hans Hansson and having a child named Johan Jönsson.
A quick history of Swedish names. Until the 1800s, most Swedes did not have a family surname. A surname in Sweden was a version of your father’s name. If you were the son of Erik, your last name was Eriksson. If you were the daughter of Lars, your last name was Larsdotter. Surnames did not pass multiple generations.
Like English, old Swedish spellings were flexible. I’ve seen Olof spelled multiple different ways. But while spellings were flexible, Johan Jönsson is probably not likely the son of Hans Hansson. Later sources I’ve found indicate that Johan Jönsson was the son of Elsa Jonsdotter Rehn and Jöns Tomasson. The rest of the tree could have similar errors.
In this case, I’m pretty sure this isn’t a case of family legend passed down badly. Rather, it’s probably a problem with someone trying to match children with parents in the records. With the Swedish naming system, there could be a lot of people with the same name, and Hans looked close enough. Or it was a transcription error. When genealogy is done by hand, it can run into many problems similar to family stories getting changed as they pass down.
But I didn’t know all this at the time. Nevertheless, it was a good starting point for what I was doing.
