Alright, so, brief update on my earlier post. Considering that I'm not quite feeling my best right now, I've been making some decent progress on work. I've read about twenty or so pages of Luke Timothy Johnson's commentary on Hebrews; I've started D. Michael Henderson's A Model for Making Disciples: John Wesley's Class Meeting and gotten eighty pages into it; and I've read about twenty pages of Harold Attridge's commentary on Hebrews, with ten more pages to go before I'll technically be where I absolutely must be by, well, tomorrow. (Yes, yes, I'm behind.) I've also been listening to some podcasts - right now, very old episodes of Shawn McCraney's Heart of the Matter TV call-in show. Makes for decent background that I typically don't have to think too hard about.
So at the moment I'm taking a break and intermittently chatting with some people on Skype. I also decided to try to chase down a little genealogical issue. As I mentioned in the last paragraph of my prior post, I've had a great deal of trouble finding anything about Jonathan Rauch's wife. So I decided to try using another useful website called Find-A-Grave. Knowing from Jonathan Rauch's obituary that he was buried in Rehrersburg, I brought up a list of the cemeteries in Berks County and searched through for any located in Rehrersburg. When I got those up, I searched each of them for the surname Rauch. Lo and behold, success! Apparently he is buried in Trinity United Church of Christ Cemetery in Rehrersburg. Although no pictures are up yet, I can read a transcription of his tombstone at his online memorial. And then, wonderfully, there's the same deal for his wife. If this is a faithful transcription, it offers both her date of birth and her date of death. (I then promptly checked the newspaper archives to hunt down her obituary... but alas, the online archives are utterly missing the last couple months of 1906! Woe, woe!)
Interestingly, there's a third person there, another woman born a Moyer who married a man named... Jonathan Rauch. (Elisabeth's inscription is fully in German, and the person who posted it seems to have misinterpreted at least one clause, but I can read all but all of it, and my favorite online German dictionary is there to help with any unfamiliar terms.) An earlier wife of my Jonathan Rauch, perhaps? Maybe even a relative of Jonathan's second wife? She married her Jonathan Rauch in 1851 and had two children, a son and a daughter, before dying in 1854 - sadly early. Now, my Jonathan Rauch did indeed have one son and one daughter between 1851 and 1854. But wait! My ancestor Priscilla Rauch was that daughter, born in 1853. So.... if this Elisabeth Rauch nee Moyer were my Jonathan Rauch's first wife, would she be the biological mother of my Priscilla Rauch? Would Elisabeth Moyer then be my ancestor? Now that I think of it, a 1900 census states that Jonathan Rauch and Mary Magdalene Moyer were married for 44 years, placing their estimated date of married sometime around 1856. That is definitely several years after the birth of Jonathan's two children, isn't it? This is all coming to me right as I'm writing this post, and that excites and confuses me! You know, now that I review the documentation I've collected, I have clear evidence that Priscilla is Jonathan's daughter, and clear evidence that Mary Magdalene is Jonathan's wife, but nothing that every comes out and says that Mary Magdalene is Priscilla's mother. This hypothesis matches the evidence perhaps better than my original assumption, and so I think I'll tweak my family tree to fit it until and unless I find any indications otherwise. (Naturally, finding some of the relevant obituaries could potentially do!)
I had originally just assumed... well, I mean, in 1900, Mary has had seven children, all of whom remain living. Only two are still living with them. But then again... I mean, by then, Mary has been married for 44 years. What makes me think that she couldn't have had seven children in addition to Jonathan's previous two for a total of nine? But, on the other hand, in Jonathan's 1906 obituary, precisely seven surviving children are named: George, Samuel, Ezra, William, Monroe, Mary, and Priscilla. Interestingly, though, the newspaper account of his funeral just a few days later lists six surviving children; it omits Ezra, presumably through oversight. (Samuel died in late 1934, and his obituary states that he is survived by Monroe and Mary.)
Ahhh, but wait a second... the Mary mentioned in the obituaries is the wife of George Ritzman. Now, George Ritzman's three-year-old daughters Sadie and Edna are living with the Rauch family in 1900, and so is Mary... but she is listed as single and retains her maiden name. So my question might be, where is George Ritzman in 1900? I seem to have found a George Ritzman (b. March 1866) in the same township, as a widowed boarder living with a local minister. I've also found him in 1910 and 1920 censuses in the same township (Marion), and I think also in 1870 and 1880 in Tulpehocken Township (adjacent to Marion Township on the north). Perhaps at some point I'll have to do as I do sometimes: collect all relevant references to the Ritzman family into a single, simple document, and just try to process my way through it from a few various angles.
In the meantime, through the power of Google, I find a site that offers specifics about George Ritzman. He was born, they say, on 30 March 1866 (certainly a match) in Rehrersburg (which is in Tulpehocken Township) to Jonathan Ritzman and Anna Elizabeth Ritzman nee Lengel; he married Ella Marie Keener, who died 26 September 1899 - and thus was a widow at the time of the 1900 census. But, issue: Sadie and Edna Ritzman, the granddaughters of Jonathan Rauch, were twins born February 1897. Yet the only child attributed here to George Ritzman is one born 4 July 1897. Certainly they could not all be born of the same woman... but perhaps that wasn't an issue to George? (Hey, now there's a good reason to end up living with a minister afterwards!)
But, I think my break has lasted long enough. So I'll read the rest of my assigned reading for the night and then go to sleep, hopefully dreaming out a solution to this puzzle.
So at the moment I'm taking a break and intermittently chatting with some people on Skype. I also decided to try to chase down a little genealogical issue. As I mentioned in the last paragraph of my prior post, I've had a great deal of trouble finding anything about Jonathan Rauch's wife. So I decided to try using another useful website called Find-A-Grave. Knowing from Jonathan Rauch's obituary that he was buried in Rehrersburg, I brought up a list of the cemeteries in Berks County and searched through for any located in Rehrersburg. When I got those up, I searched each of them for the surname Rauch. Lo and behold, success! Apparently he is buried in Trinity United Church of Christ Cemetery in Rehrersburg. Although no pictures are up yet, I can read a transcription of his tombstone at his online memorial. And then, wonderfully, there's the same deal for his wife. If this is a faithful transcription, it offers both her date of birth and her date of death. (I then promptly checked the newspaper archives to hunt down her obituary... but alas, the online archives are utterly missing the last couple months of 1906! Woe, woe!)
Interestingly, there's a third person there, another woman born a Moyer who married a man named... Jonathan Rauch. (Elisabeth's inscription is fully in German, and the person who posted it seems to have misinterpreted at least one clause, but I can read all but all of it, and my favorite online German dictionary is there to help with any unfamiliar terms.) An earlier wife of my Jonathan Rauch, perhaps? Maybe even a relative of Jonathan's second wife? She married her Jonathan Rauch in 1851 and had two children, a son and a daughter, before dying in 1854 - sadly early. Now, my Jonathan Rauch did indeed have one son and one daughter between 1851 and 1854. But wait! My ancestor Priscilla Rauch was that daughter, born in 1853. So.... if this Elisabeth Rauch nee Moyer were my Jonathan Rauch's first wife, would she be the biological mother of my Priscilla Rauch? Would Elisabeth Moyer then be my ancestor? Now that I think of it, a 1900 census states that Jonathan Rauch and Mary Magdalene Moyer were married for 44 years, placing their estimated date of married sometime around 1856. That is definitely several years after the birth of Jonathan's two children, isn't it? This is all coming to me right as I'm writing this post, and that excites and confuses me! You know, now that I review the documentation I've collected, I have clear evidence that Priscilla is Jonathan's daughter, and clear evidence that Mary Magdalene is Jonathan's wife, but nothing that every comes out and says that Mary Magdalene is Priscilla's mother. This hypothesis matches the evidence perhaps better than my original assumption, and so I think I'll tweak my family tree to fit it until and unless I find any indications otherwise. (Naturally, finding some of the relevant obituaries could potentially do!)
I had originally just assumed... well, I mean, in 1900, Mary has had seven children, all of whom remain living. Only two are still living with them. But then again... I mean, by then, Mary has been married for 44 years. What makes me think that she couldn't have had seven children in addition to Jonathan's previous two for a total of nine? But, on the other hand, in Jonathan's 1906 obituary, precisely seven surviving children are named: George, Samuel, Ezra, William, Monroe, Mary, and Priscilla. Interestingly, though, the newspaper account of his funeral just a few days later lists six surviving children; it omits Ezra, presumably through oversight. (Samuel died in late 1934, and his obituary states that he is survived by Monroe and Mary.)
Ahhh, but wait a second... the Mary mentioned in the obituaries is the wife of George Ritzman. Now, George Ritzman's three-year-old daughters Sadie and Edna are living with the Rauch family in 1900, and so is Mary... but she is listed as single and retains her maiden name. So my question might be, where is George Ritzman in 1900? I seem to have found a George Ritzman (b. March 1866) in the same township, as a widowed boarder living with a local minister. I've also found him in 1910 and 1920 censuses in the same township (Marion), and I think also in 1870 and 1880 in Tulpehocken Township (adjacent to Marion Township on the north). Perhaps at some point I'll have to do as I do sometimes: collect all relevant references to the Ritzman family into a single, simple document, and just try to process my way through it from a few various angles.
In the meantime, through the power of Google, I find a site that offers specifics about George Ritzman. He was born, they say, on 30 March 1866 (certainly a match) in Rehrersburg (which is in Tulpehocken Township) to Jonathan Ritzman and Anna Elizabeth Ritzman nee Lengel; he married Ella Marie Keener, who died 26 September 1899 - and thus was a widow at the time of the 1900 census. But, issue: Sadie and Edna Ritzman, the granddaughters of Jonathan Rauch, were twins born February 1897. Yet the only child attributed here to George Ritzman is one born 4 July 1897. Certainly they could not all be born of the same woman... but perhaps that wasn't an issue to George? (Hey, now there's a good reason to end up living with a minister afterwards!)
But, I think my break has lasted long enough. So I'll read the rest of my assigned reading for the night and then go to sleep, hopefully dreaming out a solution to this puzzle.
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