As I continue to share the immigration story of my family, I watched Devon Lee Noel’s video tutorial: How to Make Blog Titles. Then, using Photoshop Elements, I created a graphic for this series about immigration. I’ve tried Photoshop Elements before, and got quite frustrated. But, I’m sure it’ll get easier with tutorials and practice! In my first post, I talked about how to find a newspaper article documenting your ancestor’s ship’s arrival. And, in my second post, I talked about the various places which were mentioned in my ancestor’s article and how they tied in with their trip. In...
Adding details to our genealogy makes our ancestor’s lives more interesting. Sometimes, we need to be creative to go beyond the “dates and places” that compose a large portion of our research. Although I had both the Hamburg and New York passenger lists for my Peters family’s immigration to America, I wanted to know more. In this case, an 1859 newspaper article, along with some research, gave me additional details to share about my immigrant ancestors. (For information on how I found the article, see my previous post.) Arrived. Steamship Bavaria., (Ham..) Laupe. Hamburg, via Southampton June 18. 1 P. M. with mdse....
During the summer of 1859, my great, great, great grandparents, Joachim [pronounced “Waa-Keem”] and Henrietta (Bingher) Peters emigrated from Germany to America with their six children. My Grand Aunt Beulah recorded this brief memory which had been passed down through several generations: “Seven days into his voyage to America, Joachim Peters directed his family to kneel on the floor of the cattle (not that kind of a vessel, but what we’ve been told all our life) boat that carried them and give thanks that they were leaving Germany.” Although Beulah found their New York passenger list decades ago, and I...
We have an amazing number of photos of our Peters family. This photo includes both my grandmother, Hazel Peters (1910-1975), who is third from the left, and my great grandmother, Myrtle Mae (Coppenbarger) Peters (1880-1970), who is to the right of her. The youngest girl, located on the far right, is my grandma Hazel’s sister, Beulah (1923-2009), who got me interested in genealogy in 1998. We are dating the photo by Beulah’s age guessing she is about 8 or 9 years old. Peters Family Photo Collection (Used with permission) Although my dad’s generation knew their Peters cousins, they do not...
Two years ago, I traveled to Kansas to visit with an aunt and uncle and view the incredible genealogical collection they’d inherited from my Great Aunt Beulah, the one who got me interested in genealogy in 1998. A couple of months ago, I discovered my dad had also inherited a large amount of photos and other items from his mother. Between the two of them, I imagine we have hundreds of photos and other old documents for this family. Years ago, my dad and his Aunt Beulah created this composite family tree. The primary couple, Emil Peters and his wife...
In the news… Charles Wentworth, L. E. Tibbits, Willard Wentworth and William Peters have put telephones in their residences last week. – Ashton, Kansas, 1906 [see source below] Alexander Graham Bell placing the first New York to Chicago telephone call in 1892, only 14 years before “my” family got telephones installed in Ashton, Sumner County, Kansas (photo from Wikipedia) It’s hard to imagine a time when getting a telephone installed at your house was news! I’m wondering if they were among the first to get phones in this small Kansas town. I believe these four men (& their households) were...
As part of Women’s History Month, Lisa Alzo has created 31 blogging prompts which you can find on her blog, The Accidental Genealogist. If you’re participating in the Fearless Females blogging challenge this month, let me know & I’ll hop over & read your posts! March 6th prompt: Describe an heirloom you may have inherited from a female ancestor. If you don’t have any, then write about a specific object you remember from your mother or grandmother or aunt. She Became a Painter at Age 72 My great grandmother, Myrtle Mae (Coppenbarger) Peters (1880-1970) was 72 years old when she started...
My great aunt, Beulah (Peters) Brewer, got me interested in genealogy about 18 years ago. One of our ancestral lines are the Randolphs of Virginia. Here’s the story she emailed me of what got her interested in learning more about her family: Myrtle Mae (Coppenbarger) Peters painting (Probably the photo taken for the newspaper) James Madison Randolph is the reason that I started doing genealogy. Mother had a copy of the paper that had his obituary in it, and his part took up about four pages. It was one of the smaller papers. Mother started doing oil paintings when she...
“His main occupation was a carpenter and cabinet maker finisher. He went to carpenter school in Wichita KS and helped build the first sky-scraper, the Schweiter Building at Douglas and Main.” [Beulah (Peters) Brewer, daughter of Emil Wilhelm Peters, in her genealogy notes] When I read those sentences, I wanted to learn more about this “first sky-scraper” in Wichita that my great grandfather helped to build. Emil must have been very proud of this building to have told this story to his daughter and for it to be one of the few things she wrote down about him. So, what...
At the age of 16, Emil (pronounced “Aim-uhl”) Peters had lived his entire life in the small town of Walton, Kansas. The largest nearby town was Arkansas City (pronounced “R-Kansas”) whose population was about 5,000. Emil must have been amazed as he watched Arkansas City swell to over 75,000 people. Street Scene in Arkansas City, Chicago Daily Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, 14 Sep 1893, page 1, column 1, digital image newspapers.com, (http://newspapers.com), accessed 04 Feb 2015 Arkansas City was located just north of the Cherokee Strip, a narrow piece of land in Indian Territory just south of the Kansas border. This...
