#7-2020 Favorite Discovery. 52 Ancestors in a Year
I think my all time favorite was the discovery of the passenger record for my 2nd great grandfather, Peter Paul Deewall. From years of research, I knew the story by heart of when he came to the United States, as well the story of why he came to America and who he had traveled with.
But I could never find a passenger manifest with his name. And believe me, I looked, using all the tricks I knew about genealogy research.
One day I decided I was going to find Peter. Deciding that I WAS going to find Peter, meant I had to go back to the basics. There were several stories passed down by various family members, but I found the one written by his daughter, Mary Etta Deewall Kurtz.
Peter was born in 1820 and died in 1890. Mary Etta, the oldest child, was born in 1849 and died in 1940. She would have been 41 years old when her father died, so I assumed she knew his story that she wrote.
I took that story and read it line by line looking for clues; probably using my finger on each line; slowly reading and thinking of clues. I referred back to the 1850’s census and examined who was in the household and his neighbors. (in the genealogy world it is called a FAN Club; Friends, Associates and Neighbors). Sure enough, the people, according to the family story, that he traveled with were his neighbors. But two differences; the spelling of the names. The family story said that he traveled with his best friend, Ludwig Odom and his mother and her son Peter. Peter’s neighbors in 1850 were Mary Otto, Peter Otto and Lewis Otto. I had never caught the spelling variation when looking at the census before.
Was Mary Etta's story correct? Odom vs Otto. Ludwig vs Lewis.
Realizing that spelling difference occur and that Lewis could be an English name for Ludwig; I started a new search. And within minutes I had found the passenger list! I had looked for Mary Odom for years, but never Mary Odom Widow! Mary was indexed as "widow" for her last name!
How could I be sure that this was Peter Paul that I was looking for? Especially since Peter Paul’s last name was Duval? And not Deewall.
The family story said that Ludwig and Peter Paul were best friends and when the Odom’s decided to go to America, they encouraged Peter to go to posing as the driver of the team and wagons as he apparently had problems with his stepfather.
A month before my search for Peter Paul, I had found Ludwig Odom’s confirmation record at a church in Ludweiler, Germany. Sure enough, in the same database was Peter Paul Duval confirmed in the same church in Ludweiler Germany as his best friend Ludwig Oden. Again birth dates matched.
With the help of a friend, originally from Germany, we examined microfilm from the community of Ludweiler. There was actually a stammlisten or originating list, which is a genealogy list of everyone in the community. There was MY Peter Paul with the exact birth date that he used in America! The same birth date used in the family history that I inherited. But even better, was the Odom’s history stating that they left for Amerika in 1842! There is no mention of Peter Paul leaving, but the family story is that he left in the middle of the night!
In Germany Ludwig Odom, was Ludwig Oden. A spelling mistake, perhaps; a pronunciation difference, perhaps. But I think I found the correct people and verified a family story.
Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1820-1897. Microfilm Publication M237, 675 rolls. NAI: 6256867. Records of the U.S. Customs Service, Record Group 36. National Archives at Washington, D.C.
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