Be able to name all 16 of my great great grandparents

born March 15, 1817
died March 10, 1889

Married to Edward Jeffery. Mother to Frederick W. Jeffery whose child was Charles Chantler Jeffery whose child was Peter Turner Jeffery whose child was me.

born Jan 12, 1817 in Cornwall, England.
died April 22, 1871

Son of Stephen Jeffery and Anne Mary Gardner of Illogen, Cornwall.

Father of Frederick W. Jeffery whose son was Charles Chantler Jeffery whose son was Peter Turner Jeffery, my birth father.

The second set of my great-grandparents which I have found out quite a lot of information about are named Eliphalet Stewart and Lucy Tilley. (Ohmygosh is “Eliphalet” a unique name or what? Another aside….there are quite a few men from New England with that name and they all seem to be related!)

Anyway, my GG Grandfather Eliphalet Stewart was born in New York state sometime in the early 1800s. His wife, Lucy Tilley, was also born in New York State, and they were married in the town of Grafton, New York on June 5, 1830. According to one biography which I found on the Internet, Eliphalet died in Oklahoma and was reported to be 97 years old when he died. Eliphalet and Lucy had nine children, one of whom was my great-grandfather named Mansir Stewart. They left the state of New York and moved to Kansas sometime before 1850. Lucy passed away in Kansas in 1850.

This is the branch of my family that I can trace back the farthest. Lucy Tilley is also related to the Cutler family, and there were lots of people in that family in the early colonial days.

Okay – the identities of Magdalena (aka Helen) Prenessel Neiderbach Scheidnast Mischuk’s parents have finally been revealed!

[This woman apparently enjoyed aliases and name switches as much as me]

According to my Great Grandmother Magdalena’s death certificate (she died of coronary thrombosis; great :p), her Mother was Catharina, surname unknown, and her Father was Hadesbeck, first name unknown.

According to Zichydorf Queen of the Rosary Church records, Magdalena’s Mother was Catharina Prenessel, and this was also confirmed in records detailing Magdalena’s boat passage to the U.S. in 1907.

Finding the identity of Magdalena’s Dad, however, was more challenging. According to QOTR records, Catharina was married twice – first to an unknown husband, followed by her marriage to Hadesbeck. Magdalena, although she listed her maiden name as Hadesbeck, was not a Hadesbeck – that was just her step-father. Magdalena was actually a child of Catharina’s first marriage to Michael Neiderbach, which was documented in other Zichydorf town records.

And so I will close the case: my fourth set of GG Grandparents are Michael Neiderbach and Catharina Prenessel.

record:
SCHEIDNASZ Magdalena [S352] Age: 23 -From: Zichydorf
-DtAr: Monday, 23 Sep 1907 – To: St Paul, MN -Via: Ant/NY -Ship: Vaderland
-Note: Accompanied by daughter, Anna 3 and sister-in-law, Magdalena Scheidnesz 17, all born in Zichydorf. Father, Michael Neiderbach, lives in Zichydorf. Going to join husband, Stefan Scheidnacz [*25 Sep 1883, dau of Catharina Preneszel oo 26 Apr 1904 to Stefan Scheidnasz, son of Stefan Scheidnasz and M A Froh].

Who were your parents, mystery woman Magdalena?

My Great Grandmother Magdalena (maiden name Hadesbeck? Niederbach? Prenessel?) was a first-generation immigrant from the town of Zichydorf – a small enclave of Danube Swabians (southern Germans) that settled in the late 1700s in what is present-day Serbia (although it was part of Hungary when my Great Grandmother moved to Minnesota). Although I have been able to trace her first husband (my Great Grandfather) Stephen’s genealogy back to the late 1700s founding of Zichydorf, via records kept by the Queen of the Rosary Church, Magdalena’s past is much more obscure.

I sent for her death certificate last week, in hopes that it might reveal the identities of her parents, my GG Grandparents.

When I started researching the family history, I was so lucky to stumble on several other researchers who had done a lot of work on this branch of the family! Especially, researching the surname SMITH is very hard! But a couple distant cousins of mine sent me huge databases and practically dumped the Smith family history right in my lap! I was SO lucky!

W.W. Smith and his wife led very interesting lives. They were born in southern Ohio and were among the first group of people who homesteaded in southern Illinois. They arrived in Brussels, in Calhoun County (which is just across the Illinois River from St. Louis) in the early 1850s. They had a large family, I believe it was about nine children. Their first child, Dr. George Bruce Smith , is my great grandfather.

W.W. Smith served in the Civil War, along with several of his brothers and cousins, many of whom all travelled to Illinois together from Ohio. Bill was captured and spent quite a few months at the infamous Andersonville Prison. He apparently contracted some kind of sickness there (Maybe pneumonia) and although he survived the war, he was always sickly after that. He was also a travelling preacher for the Methodist church. He died in 1881 in Illinois.

My great great Grandmother Amanda Smith remarried after his death to a man named William Love. She continued to live in the town of Brussels Illinois and lived to be over ninety years old.

At one point, I had almost one thousand names in a Family Treemaker database….but then that computer died and I sort of lost interest in researching my family history. I hope that this goal will re kindle my interest in the family genealogy, because I learned some very interesting stuff!

The most interesting thing I found so far was that my grandmother had been divorced once before she married my grandfather! gasp The divorce occurred in 1902 and must have been quite the scandal. When I discovered this, and I asked my mother about it, she had never heard a word about it! But it certainly explained why my grandmother was pretty much estranged from her family for her entire life.

So without futher adieu…...

“When you’re bleak, you’re bleak!” [Joseph and Brigitte – the older couple in the middle of the photo with two of their sons]

My GG Grandfather Joseph Veilleux was born in Quebec in the early/mid-1800s, and moved to Bangor, Maine as an adult. I believe that Brigitte was also a first-generation relocated Quebecoise, probably having met Joseph in Maine. I know that my Great Grandfather, Joseph Jr. was born in Maine…and that the whole family moved to Minneapolis around the turn-of-the-19th-century.

This set of Veilleux GG Grandparents had a bit of an entrepreneurial streak – which is why, I believe, they relocated from their Quebec village (Beauceville) to Minneapolis. I am still learning more about Joseph and Brigitte, via their Granddaughter, my Great Aunt, Sister Marie Noelle (b. 1915).

I had the occasion to go and visit the very old members of my family and had them talk about our ancestors.

Funnily I got the first name of my great great grandparent and also hit a wall at the same time.
He was abandoned as a child (I don’t know exactly how little he was) at a hospital in a nearby town. This means that it will be easy to find official records and that probably all they say is the date when he was abandoned and no clue of the parents, where they came from and real birth date. Ah!

But I discovered many interesting things, I started to note recurring illnesses and common traits. It’s all very exciting and somehow bewildering even grieving. I found out women in the family who commited suicide with poison, drown brothers, almost a nomadic near past I had no suspect of.

After my GG LeVoir Grandparents relocated, family in tow, from a cabin in the UP of Michigan, my GG Grandfather LeVoir headed a bridge-building company in the Twin Cities. Although he made a great deal of money in cities needing LOTS of bridges, he squandered a great deal of it on booze – leading his wife, Selinda, to kick him out of their house! My Great Grandma (Joseph & Selinda’s eldest daughter) Viola took him in, however, and she was left his entire estate when he passed away.

As for Selinda, I guess that she at least occasionally got along with Joseph – enough to have conceived, and given birth to, EIGHTEEN children(!?). Four of their children died quite young, presumably of various ailments or diseases, although one is known to have been attacked by a wild boar in Michigan.