Michael John Neill's Genealogy Website
Focke Janssen Goldenstein was born in 1857 in Wrisse, Ostfriesland, Germany and died in Golden, Adams County, Illinois, in 1913. He married Anna Dirks in Coatsburg, Adams County, Illinois. Some things I’ve learned about research from Focke: the importance of migration chains. Focke’s parents and two siblings remained in Germany, but he was part of a […]
There is always a little more to the story. In an earlier post, “Focke Returns to Germany in 1879,” discussion focused on two passenger manifest entries for Focke Goldenstein and his March 1879 naturalization in Galesburg, Knox County, Illinois, around which those naturalizations were sandwiched: 3 November 1873, arrival in New York City on the Weser […]
3 November 1873 the steamship Weser arrived in New York City. Focke Goldenstein was on board. As we saw in an earlier blog post, Focke’s father had written a letter in support of his immigration in September of 1873. In that post, I indicated that Focke probably never saw his parents (Johann Lucken and Tjode […]
It’s difficult to imagine sending your sixteen year old child to a foreign land knowing that you’ll probably never see them again. But that’s exactly what the Goldenstein family in Wrisse, Ostfriesland, Germany was preparing to do in the fall of 1873. On 23 September 1873, Johann Goldenstein wrote a letter about his teenaged son, […]
We’ve mentioned the incomplete land homestead claim in Dawson County, Nebraska, for Cornelia Albers before. Cornelia’s father was a first cousin of my ancestor, Focke J. Goldenstein, who also settled in Dawson County. A statement Cornelia makes in support of that claim on 1 July 1884 makes for a good illustration of the importance of […]
Current genealogical theory indicates that an exhaustive search should always be performed as a part of the research process. I say…look at everything. As mentioned earlier, Focke Goldenstein–an Adams County, Illinois, resident in 1880 and 1881 and who probably settled in Adams County, Illinois upon his immigration in 1873–naturalized in Knox County, Illinois. The question […]
Before I wrote this post, I had a preconceived notion about Focke Goldenstein never having actually having been a resident of Knox County, Illinois. As I wrote the post, I realized that given what I know about him between 1873 and 1880, he very well could have lived in Knox County during a significant part […]
