{"id":1214,"date":"2015-10-04T17:18:16","date_gmt":"2015-10-04T17:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=1214"},"modified":"2015-10-04T17:18:16","modified_gmt":"2015-10-04T17:18:16","slug":"questions-from-an-1880-era-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=1214","title":{"rendered":"Questions from an 1880-era Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"

In “Father Comes to Visit in the 1880\u2019s and Sponsors Two Grandchildren<\/a>,”\u00a0my “non-immigrant” relative’s visit to his immigrant daughter is documented in materials from the 1880s. Johann Gerhard Grass was not a late-in-life immigrant who stayed in the United States. He returned to his homeland. But there’s more to the letter than his short stay in the United States.<\/p>\n

There were two\u00a0documents that provided evidence that Johann Gerhard\u00a0Grass was in the United States for some time in the 1880s (his daughter’s letter and his presence at his grandchildren’s baptism). He died in December of 1888 in Wiesens, Ostfriesland, Germany. (At least according to Grass’ entry on page 82 of\u00a0Die Familien der Kirchengemeinde Wiesens: (1642-1908), <\/em>written by Gerd Kroon in 2004). The lives of Johann’s two children in the United States (Bertus Grass and Noentjelena (Grass) Ufkes) have been fairly well documented and most of Noentje’s older grandchildren were knowledgeable about their immigrant ancestors. Given that these two children\u00a0lived in the same general area, Hancock and Adams Counties in Illinois, it seems likely that if Johann had immigrated, he would have settled near them and that family members would have known about it.<\/p>\n

In addition to providing evidence about Johann’s time in the United States, the Ufkes letter raises several other interesting questions–not all of which are related to Noentje’s father, Johann Grass:<\/p>\n