Brick Wall: Busted!

I started researching our family in 1998, and my dad’s aunt, Beulah, had probably researched several decades before that time. But, discovering the full name of my third great grandparents earlier this week – Joachim Carl Otto Peters and Henriette Mary Magdalena Bünger – busted a hole in our brick wall. Now, it is falling down. [Read part 1 and part 2.]

Yesterday morning, I found the marriage record of Joachim and Henriette. It shows the Peters family was from Bergfeld, which is one of the pieces of information I’d learned on Monday. And, most excitingly, the marriage record includes the names of both Joachim’s and Henriette’s fathers: Jakob Peters and Johann David Bünger! Our family tree has now reached back another generation and extended into the 1700s in present-day Germany.

Ancestry.com, Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1519-1969 (Lehi: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016), online database,marriage record of Joachim Carl Otto Peters and Henriette Maria Magdalena Bünger, 21, July 1843, Dobbertin, Mecklenburg, page 12, item 49.

Several more records have been found on Ancestry’s “Germany, Lutheran Baptism, Marriages, and Burials, 1519-1969” which includes over 45 million records! All of them need transcribed, translated, correlated, and analyzed. I feel like I’m in an avalanche of records right now, but it’s a wonderful feeling!