Brick Walls

All genealogists whether professional or amateur hit a brick wall sometime during their research.  I have a couple, but the biggest one I have is Unknown Bienlein.  Unknown Bienlein is my third great grandmother. I know a few things about her but not the major things – like her name, birth/date dates and who her parents were. 

The things I do know are few.  I know she lived in Germany and didn't come over to the United States with my third great grandpa Mathias Fleischmann.  I know that Mathias came to America with his three children and nephew Jacob Bienlein. The ship's manifest listed Mathias as a widower. butI really don't know if he was, or did she not want to leave her home country. So I really only know what her maiden could be, assuming that Jacob was the son of one of Unknown's brothers.

The thing about brick walls is all the questions and mysteries that are involved. Who is the brick wall? What were they like, are there any photos, what happened to them? Etc, etc. Other questions are: Is this truly a brick wall or rather a researching challenge? How can I break this wall? Can I break this wall? Who has the missing piece that with solve this mystery?

The next set of questions that arise, are how can I break this wall?  Some things you can try are the following.  You can try Facebook genealogy groups.  Talk to older family members, see if anyone remembers hearing or seeing anything.

DNA test can help you find relatives and ancestors.  A website called Find A Grave helped my family get back in touch with German relatives (one of whom is trying to help me break Unknown's wall).  These are just a few things that can help break those brick walls, I'm hoping that one of these avenues break my wall.  I wish you luck with your walls.

 Memories

Maroon 5 - Memories

" Here's to the ones that we got

Cheers to the wish you were here, but you're not  'Cause the drinks bring back all the memories of everything we've been through "

"Toast  to the ones that we lost on the way 'Cause the drinks bring back all the memories And the memories bring back , memories bring back you There's a time I remember, when I do not know no pain When I believed in forever and everything would stay the same Now my heart feel like December when someone say youe name 'Cause I can't reach out to call you, but I know I will one day, yeah"  

 

I don't listen to a lot of Maroon 5, but the first time I heard this song, it said something to me.  I started seeing photos that I've inherited over the years play in my mind. The song reminds me that even though things change and we lose ones we love, as long as we have our memories, our loved ones are always with us. These are just a few of those, who I toast because they've been lost on the way and cheer because the of the memories. There's so many photos, so many memories, some just from stories given to me by those I've losted, but that's what keeps all these people alive.

You Don't Know Where You're Going If You Don't Know Where You've Been 

This post is written with my cousin Victoria in mind.   We keep in touch mostly through messages on FB.   Recently she's found a couple of pretty good break throughs. The rabbit hole Vitctoria is  chasing, belongs to her Great Uncle Peter Burger; the brother in-law to my  great aunt. Just a short while ago, she found a gentleman from the area where her uncle lasted lived. Victoria was able to talk to this man who turned out to be Peter's stepson and was with him him when he died.  Uncle Peter, is no longer just a name to her now, he's now a person. She mentioned these to her sister who wasn't as excited as she was, after all it's just history, and really isn't that what genealogy is all about?  Personal history?  

For me and a lot of other people studying and following  your family tree down different paths and rabbits holes, really is a study of yourself.   It started for me as something to talk to my Grandma Beck about, and then it turned into so much more.  

I've learned so much about my family, such as where we physically come from. We mostly come from  Germany, Poland and Russia.  I'm learning from finding living relatives that we're in many states, mostly Wisconsin and Illinois, but also California and Ohio to mention just a few.  You might find out that phyiscal traits run strong in the family here's an example, on the left is my second great grandfather, the right isone of my brothers. Even with over a hundred years between thier lives you can see that they are related.  As some of you fellow genealogists know, other phyiscal attributes, especially medical ones are what we are searching for.  I've learned that heart disease and strokes run pretty high in our family history.  

Other areas that seem to cross over generations and amongst living relatives, are interests and talents.  A number of my realtives are talented in the arts, both music and drawing.  My sister and one of my brothers share these talents with my Grandpa Beck, Uncle George Beck and Uncle Ray Luetzow.  I share the interest of sewing and crochet with my Grandma Beck and Mom.  My great Grandma (on my mother's side) and I seem to like to dabble in writing.

Occupations seem to be shared, some it in the past may because the males in a family followed family traditions or the family business, which included being butchers.  Now, it seems that a common occupation has been in the computer or IT fields where quite a few of us have made a living. One other occupation shared over past and present occupations is sales, both commerical and retail.

Of course not all treasures you find while searching your roots are good treasures. You can also find the dark side of your family.  For every jewel of a relative you find you can just as easily find outcasts or undesirable individuals.  I have found both. One of the jewels of the family is a military leader. The military plays a strong tradition in my family, the most notable soldier being General Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm von Lützow.  He is credited with forming theLützow Free Corps, they were also known as the Black Troop.

After death he was honored with a permament grave site in Berlin. He also had several war ships named after him. Some of my relatives who would more described as the black sheep, include my great grandpa Leonhardt Beck and great greatmother Marie Beck. Marie, you see was born out of wedlock. That doesn't seem like a big deal now, but it was in the 1800's. So much so, Marie's mother Wallburga Obermeir had to travel two parrishes over in order to find a priest who would bapist Marie. Leonhardt became an outcast when he met and fell in love with Marie. From the best of what I can piece togethor, Leonhardt was going to marry Marie, they were out one day and Leonhardt got into a serious fight with a public offical over the fact that Marie was illegitimate and beat the man so gravely that he was either severely injured or killed.  At this point Leonhardt's father, Sebastian, kicked Leonhardt out of his home and life.  Leonhardt and Marie left almost immediately after the fight for America and got married as soon as they landed in New York.  He never spoke to Leonhardt again, even when Leonhardt and Marie travelled back to Germany in the 1900's and Leonhardt begged his father for forgiveness.  

So wherever your rabbit holes take you, you can't get there, without knowing where you came from.

Christmas Cookies 

With a lot of people posting on FB their favorite Christmas cookies, it got me thinking about helping my Mom bake Christmas cookies for our home.  Who doesn't remember either baking Chrstmas cookies with a parent or just the wonderful smell of baking cookies in the oven? Or the rarely oder of burnt cookies coming out of the oven, but that was OK, because of all the laughing and joy of baking with your mom, mostly it was just my sister and I helping.  Mom would bake about 2 to 3 weeks before Christmas, it seemed to always be on a weekend, it was one of signs that Christmas was really on it's way.  Mom didn't bake much, but we always made a bunch of cookies for Christmas. 

We stuck to the traditional cookies, butter spritz cookies, one of my favorites because they required food color and the cookie press.  The Christmas trees tasted like peppermint and green, Wreaths and camels tasted like sugared butter.  All of them were decorated with sprinkles, most ended up on the cookies, but some always found their way into our mouths.  The wreaths had sprinkles and a cherry in the middle.

One of my sister's favorites (if memory serves me) were date bars, she'd help with those, me not so much. Date bars are a lot lot coffee, they smell better then they

taste.  

A couple of my other favorites are lady pecan fingers, even though I'm not fond of nuts in my food. Maybe it's the fact that they're basically butter, powdered sugar and pecans. The other is divinity, even though it's actually a candy, but then who doesn't like a candy that is a cross between baked meringue and frosting?  

I'm not sure why I never really started my own baking Christmas cookie tradition. I did follow my Mom's tradition of putting up a tree the day after Thanksgivingfor a long time.

Leonhard Beck

Leonard or Leonhard Beck was my great grandpa. 

Born on 12 Oct 1866 in Lippertshofen, Germany to Sebastian and Walburga Beck.  He died in Milwaukee, WI on 26 Apr 1955.

I don't know a lot about him, Grandpa John Beck, didn't speak a lot about him, this what I know:

Leonard is a common German masculine given name, with originates from the old High German (Leonhard) , containing the prefix levon or lion and the suffix hardu (brave or hardy).

From what I've learned through genealogy and talking to family members,  he fell in love with Marie Obermeir, who at the time was shunned because she was born out of wedlock.  That doesn't seem like a big thing now, but in the 1800's in Germany it was.  It was bad enough that my great grandfather got into a fight, something bad happened.  I've heard that he severely hurt the other person or struck an officer.  Sabastian Beck, Leonard's father disinherited, him at this point. The German side doesn't talk about it and the Americans never heard what happened.  Both he and Marie left Germany soon after this.  They didn't marry until they got to Manhattan, New York and then headed to Wisconsin to start their new life. Leonard and Marie's sponsor, in Wisconsin, was a cousin Arch Bishop Michael Heiss. 

When Leonard arrived in Milwaukee, he found work in the breweries as a laboror.  This lead to a story that grandpa John used to tell us, that our family was part of the Beck Brewery in Germany, we later found out that this wasn't true.  The truth is we are and were farmers in Germany.  The farm is still active and is being worked by our cousin Franz Beck sr.  Leonard and Marie were blessed with five children, all lived to adulthood and married.  Their children were: Anna, John, Marie, Emily and George.

Leonard and Marie built a house at 154 W. Burleigh St. Milwaukee, WI  around 1911- 1920.  When they started building their home which was a two story duplex, Leonard went  home to Germany, to mend fences and to ask his father for money to help with building their home.   Sabastian would not even talk to his son. they went back to Wisconsin without any financial help and Leonard never tried to speak to his father again. During this trip Leonard's wife Marie become very sick and frail.  Leonard and Marie managed to build the home without his father's help and lived there until Marie's death in 1926.  He married his second wife, Barbara, the same year.  According to my grandma Louise Beck, Barbara was Marie's nurse.  I think there were hard feelings about this, because my grandpa John Beck never mentioned his step mother to me.  My mother remember her grandfather Leonard fondly, she used to tell me a dtory about how she went to visit grandpa Leonard in the hospital before getting married.

Grandpa John, really only mentioned a couple of things about his father while talking to us grandkids.  One was that when Grandpa John was a yong man, he kept telling his father to stop speaking German, that he was an American now and needed to speak English.  The second was that Leonard told Grandpa John that his father Sebastian was a rich man, so rich that he had a barrel of money at his home that he would dip into it any time and buy what whatever he wanted.

The Musicians

The Musicians

Let me introduce you to the members of the band: left to right - on the violin, Jack Burger Sr; clarinet - George Beck; on the button accordion - George Burger, the mandolin is played by John C Beck and the guitar by Ray Luetzow.

This was taken in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I'm not sure what year, but grandpa Beck looks like he is in his twenties, so this was about 1910-1929.
I had been hoping to write a great story about the musicians, in this photo, but sadly all I could find out is what I already knew - their names.

Through my genealogy research, I have found a couple of other talented individuals on the Luetzow side of the family.

On the Piekarski side of the family, I wish I could say that I inherited some of those talents, but I did not. I only really know of two.  One of my brothers, who played guitar as a child - I don't know if he still does, and my sister.  My sister still pursues her love of music.  My sister plays several instruments and sings. She started writing songs when she was 10.  Her early influences were folk and bluegrass. Life has taken her to a Christian Faith and country influence.  She isn't published yet but is a member of NSAI or Nashville songwriters association international.

Gleitzmann's Cooperage

W67 W55224 Columbia Rd Cedarburg, Wisconsin

Also Known as the Cedarburg Cooperage

Adam Gleitzmann employed quite a few people at the cooperage. They mostly made barrels for the Layton & Plankinton Packing Company of Milwaukee, for the packing of pork and beef. They may have also delivered barrels to the flour mills in Milwaukee.

During the Civil War, Adam was a volunteer in the United States army, he served from October 1864 to July 1865. While Adam was serving his new country, his wife, Barbara not only kept the cooperage running, while raising her infant son, but also boarded some of the employees. The woman of the cooperage employees repaid her kindness with a friendship quilt.

The cooperage stayed in our family, as a working business until the 1900's. Adam's son Jacob took over as cooper of the cooperage in the 1900's. After this our Aunt Francie lived in the family home until she was moved to a nursing home near Mequon.

The Pichards were the next owners of the cooperage, they owned it until The Skeens fell in love with the old cooperage in the 1940's, then some time in the 1970's, they approached Mr. Pichard and they became, I believe the third owners. They finished converting it into a residence. Richard and Evelyn Skeen worked to have the cooperage listed as one of Cedarburg's landmark buildings. Happily they did or who knows what would have happened to one of the earliest buildings in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Sometime during this time the cooperage was also added to the Stone House Tour of Cedarburg. The present owner(s) are the Nancee and Ken who bought it in 1991 from a young school teacher who was getting married. Nancee not only lives there with her two dogs, but also runs a punch needle shop out of the cooperage.