2022 Favorite Find. 52 Ancestors in a Year

 2022 Favorite Find. 52 Ancestors in a Year

Writing the theme for this week, “Favorite Find” was actually very difficult.  It was so hard to decide which “Find” in my genealogy research was my favorite.   Because there are several.

One of the more exciting ones was finding information on Leroy’s Gabel family.  There was not much family information available.  And when asking relatives it seemed they did not have much information either.  I am not sure if they refused to tell me or simply didn’t know.  When I asked about another Gabel family in the area, they would reply…”Oh they are a cousin”.  But no one knew how they were related.

I asked one elderly aunt how her father’s family had come into the United States.  Her reply was “by boat”, with a look at me as “how can you be that stupid?”  I asked again as to which port they had come through.  She replied, “Lincoln, Nebraska!”   So you can see that questioning people was not producing answers.

I began collecting obituaries, death certificates, marriage certificates and slowly began creating families.  How they were related was still a mystery until I began working with the American Historical Society of Germans From Russia.  I began researching villages for surnames, history of the Germans from Russia and contacting the village coordinator for the village I thought the Gabel family had lived in.   I even went to the Huntley Cemetery with my dowsing rods and asked Leroy’s grandfather if he was from the same village as his wife, which was Frank.   The dowsing rods did not cross with a “yes” answer, but when I inquired of him if he came from the village of Warenburg, the rods indicated “yes” when they crossed.  A very scientific method!

Because of information collected,  I decided that Warenburg was the most likely village.  The village coordinator was helpful in obtaining census records from Warenburg and with the family information that I had developed, she was able to create additional families & pedigrees.

She was able to determine that the Gabel head of household was Asmus Goebel.  Asmus and family were recruited by Le Roy, arriving from Luebeck by the ship “Die Neue Freshet von Bremen"with the Skipper Steingrawer on 4 of July 1766.  Amuas, a Lutheran, a farmer from Usingen, (Germany),  Document No. 1992, lists Asmus, wife, Maria Dorothea; children:  Johann Heinrich age 19, Johann Conrad age 8, Johann Philip age 1, Maria Elisabeth, age 17, Christina Elisabeth, age 16, Susanna Catharina, age 14, Catharine Christina, age 11.1

Apparently Asmus died enroute to the Volga.  His wife remarried.  I do not have much information on that marriage.

¹ Pleve, Igor.  Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1776  “Reports by Ivan Kulberg: Saratove State Technical University, 2010, p 142.