Michael John Neill's Genealogy Website
Ida (Trautvetter) Neill was born in Wythe Township, Hancock County, Illinois, in 1910 and died near Carthage, Hancock County, Illinois, in 1994. Some things I’ve learned about research from her: people give the information they believe to be accurate. Grandma thought she was born in Tioga, Illinois, and put that on every record throughout her […]
In “Details the Estate Settlement Does Not Care About,” we saw an 1871 era estate document from Illinois that seemed to suggest that an Ernestine (Trautvetter) Hess had three children: Valentine Hess, William Hess, and Wilhelmina (married to an unnamed man with the last name Rothweiler). All that is said about Ernestine is that she […]
Introductions matter. The microfilmer of the St. Joseph County, Michigan, Deed Index (Volume 1) indicated that he took three images of each page. If I had just jumped into the index without seeing this page I might have been very confused and wasted an inordinate amount of time. Always look for prefatory material. Even if […]
Thomas Chaney was born in Maryland in the 1780s and died in Bedford County, Pennsylvania in the 1850s. Some things I’ve learned from researching Thomas: People leave children out of their will. Records clearly indicate Thomas had ten children. Only a few are mentioned in his will. Thomas indicated that his other children had been […]
Genealogists rely upon records often created by courts and lawyers for specific legal purposes. The 19th century estate settlement of Michael Trautvetter in Hancock County, Illinois, is one of those records. One of the heirs of Michael is Wilhelmine Rothweiler. Wilhelmine is listed along with her siblings as follows: William Hess, Valentine Hess, & Wilhelmina, […]
[this is reposted from our old site] I’m not certain of the origin of this joke, but I’m paraphrasing it here. I’m fairly certain this joke first crossed my path at least ten years ago… ——————————————————– A widow had “discovered” genealogy and found it a great way to occupy some of her spare time in […]
New information is always good to get. The problem is that the temptation is to right out and look for more without organizing what has just been located. That can be a mistake. In addition to images of church records from the German villages of Wohlmuthausen and Helmershausen, the researcher sent a summary of what […]
We’ve moved the date of this presentation to 15 September. Registrations are no longer being accepted, but a recorded version of the presentation (audio/video and handout) can be pre-ordered on our announcement page at a discounted price. If you registered for live attendance and did not receive the link to attend, please email me. Thanks!
Erasmus and Anna Catharina (Gross) Trautvetter of Wohlmuthausen, Thuringia, Germany, did not immigrate to the United States. However, after they both died (Erasmus died last in 1841, Anna Catharina having died in 1823), over thirty members of their family (children, grandchildren, and in-laws) migrated to the United States between approximately 1845 and 1855. If the […]
