My wife posted the above photo from Ancestry.com on my Facebook time line yesterday and described my status as being genealogical heaven. She was correct and her Valentine’s Day gift to me was the reason.
Probably a year or more ago through Ancestry, we found the marriage of my great-grandfather Henry Karn. He married Pauline Hechler in Brooklyn New York in May of 1886. We never got around to ordering the certificate from the city though. The hope was that his parents names would be listed on the certificate. The only thing I knew was his father’s name on his death certificate was listed as Andrew.
As far as I knew Henry came to the US from Hesse Germany in 1882 by himself. In the 1890s he was in the Philadelphia area and by 1895 he was living in Bridgeboro NJ. I have never found any Andrew Karn in any Federal Census in either the Philadelphia or New York areas.
A Valentines Day’s Gift leads to Karn Genealogy Discoveries
Anyway, for Valentine’s Day, my wife contacted a researcher in New York and he went to the City Archives and got the certificate. To our surprise,his parents were listed. His father’s was not Andrew, it was Kaspar! His mother’s name was Katherine Sohl.
Edward Researches on Ancetry.com
On Thursday I was busy because we were picking up Oliver and then taking him and Zoe to play bingo at our elementary school. Sometime later that evening, I discovered a birth certificate on Ancestry among the Hesse Lutheran Church records. It was for a Peter Karn born in 1872. His parents were listed as Kasper and Katerina Elisabeth Sohls Karn. He was Henry’s brother!
A few more minutes of searching revealed a second brother named Andreas. Andreas was born in 1875 . Both of the brothers were born in Oberaula, in Hesse. Next I found the children of Peter and Andreas. Peter had three girls Katherina Elizabeth, Anna Barbara and Martha Pauline.
Andreas had only one child listed in the database. A daughter Anna was born in 1906. Sadly, she died in 1907. Andreas died a year later in 1908.
The database, which had all this information, only covers births until 1901. I haven’t been able to find any of the children of Barbara who married Heinrich Moller or Katherina who married Johannes Braun in 1919 and then William Seiple in 1924.
The Research Leads to Ancestors in Oberaula Hesse in the Early 1800s
The final find was the death certificate of mother Katherina Elisabeth, Kasper’s wife. Katherina was born in 1838 and her parents were Johannes Sohl and Anna Maria Roth. While I have not found any death certificates for Johannes or Anna, based on Katherina’s birth year, they would have been born in the early 1800s.
So thanks to my wife and Ancestry.com in two days I went from knowing only my great grandfather came from Hesse Germany to knowing who his parents and at least two of his siblings were and where they lived in Hesse! Now that I know that my roots go into the early 1800s in Oberaula, I can do some more online searching using German websites. Wish me luck!
Here is a link to Oberaula with some interesting pictures of my ancestors homeland.
