Augie's Family

Augie's great-great-great grandpa Julius (second from left) and his brothers, including August (far left),
at the 1929 Steinke family reunion. Photo courtesy Augie's great-aunt Elaine.

About a month ago, Gretchen saw a commercial for Ancestry.com's free, two-week trial period. So, she signed up to see what she could learn about her family. I had thought about doing the same before, but had never gotten around to it. We made the most of our two weeks and found as much as we could before we had to cancel our subscription. Here's a recap of some of the interesting things I came across:

Arrival in America

Everywhere we have lived -- Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan -- people have come up to us and asked, "Are you related to so-and-so," who usually has a last name of Steinke. Usually, my answer is "maybe," but I have never known for sure because I didn't know where my ancestors might have lived outside of Southwest Michigan. Following my research of some of the Steinkes, I found that Augie's lineage pretty much stayed in the Berrien County area since coming to America. I didn't have time to see where great-great-great aunts, uncles and the like may have dispersed to, unfortunately, but the immediate lineage lived here.

My main focus was to learn more about the Steinke family line. Before I get into what I found, I'll say this: take my findings with a grain of salt because some of it is based on research others have done into common ancestors. Much of the Steinke line, though, came from Census data, so I'm pretty confident of what I found. Also, to keep things simple, all relations will be in reference to Augie, not me.

According to ship manifests, great-great-grandpa August (the person whom I, my father and Augie are named after) came to America from Germany in 1896 via Baltimore, Md. with his mother and other relatives. His father, Julius (seen above), arrived in 1892, presumable to get settled before bringing the rest of the family over. Census data from subsequent years, showed they landed in Sodus.

Oddities and Interesting Finds

In no specific order: August served in WWI, great-grandma Delores Steinke was adopted, great-great-great-grandpa Manassa Brosius married his servant Anna Bell Johns, and way down the line an ancestor was born in India.

I expected to find more info on ancestors serving in wars. Maybe I didn't look hard enough. Maybe the information wasn't available online. Maybe my ancestors just didn't serve in many wars. The one I did find in my limited search time, was information about August serving in WWI.

I think I was told before that great-grandma Delores was adopted, but I had obviously forgotten. I started by looking at ancestors through her adopted name, Delores Avery, but quickly decided I wanted to search via her birth name, Brosius. I'm glad I did, because that line provided to be researched vastly by other people. The oldest ancestor I found in my two weeks was a man named Heinrich Dus who was born in Germany in 1180.

The most interesting find, in my mind, was great-great-great-grandpa Manassa and his wife, Anna Bell. According to Census data, Anna Bell was Manassa's "servant" in 1910. Ten years later, in the 1920 Census, she was listed as his wife. I don't know how long she was his servant, or what "servant" entailed, but they married later in 1910 when he was 50 and she was only 17. It seems an odd couple, but I don't remember finding any prior wives for Manassa.

So many great-great-greats down the family tree that I lost count, was Manuel Antonio deQuadros, born in India. This is the find that I am most questionable of because every other line leads to Germany, but if it's true, it's interesting.

Regrets, More to Come

Obviously, I wish I had more time to dig into some of my ancestors, but I really didn't want to pay $35 a month to do it. Perhaps I'll sign up for my own account and do some more digging. I also wish I had been able to look down the Becker side of my family line, but lack of family knowledge and common names stifled that initial search.

There isn't anything here about Gretchen's side of the family, because Gretchen did that searching. She promises to post some on that later.