Spirit Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Renaissance Granddad

Archive by category "Spirit" (Page 2)

John Sherrington Gottlieb?? Who Knew!

RGranddad Adds New Cousins from the Gottlieb Family! So the name John Sherrington Ashton has a nice British ring to it, don’t you think! Well, it should my family immigrated from Lincolnshire, England in 1851. But how about the name John Sherrington Gottlieb!! Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it does it. But through the wonders of Ancestry and DNA testing. I have discovered that he does have a branch on my family tree! It all started the other day, when I noted a new extremely high 4th to 6th cousin match from a person with the user name of glgottlieb1. Looking at the name, my first thought was that he would have a German connection to my tree. So I was shocked, when I previewed his limited tree (10 people), and saw that the name we shared was ASHTON! His grandmother’s name was listed as Catherine Ashton. When I checked our shared locations I saw that his father, Lawrence Emil Gottlieb born on May 6, 1907, was born in Philadelphia! When I found the family in the 1910 census, I saw that Mary was born in New Jersey as was her father and mother. She was 28 years old putting her birth around 1882. Emil was born in Illinois, and his parents in Denmark Additionally, all Now came some connecting! My great-grandfather John Sherrington Ashton was born in 1858 and married his first wife Mary E. Warwick in 1881 In my tree I have four children for Mary and John. Blanche,…

Samuel Johnson of Howell NJ – exciting discoveries….

Granddad discovers his 5th great-grandfather Samuel Johnson served in the American Revolution and more… (Featured Image: My 5th Great Grandmother Antje Anny Brower) Yesterday, I decided to do a little work on my family tree.I realized that I had never put in the information that I had discovered about my 4th great-grandmother Eleanor Johnson Cliver. When I first researched Eleanor and found her death certificate it said that her father was Daniel Johnson of Monmouth County. I searched and searched for a Daniel who could be Eleanor’s father but never could find anyone. Then one day on Ancestry, I came across an abstract from a will that listed Eleanor Johnson, wife of Samuel Cliver! Eleanor is one of eight children of Samuel Johnson and Antje Anney Brower. Now what I hadn’t done until yesterday was enter all that information i.e. her parents and siblings. When I did enter the information those ubiquitous green hint leaves.One of those hints lead me to Fold3.com where I discovered that Samuel Johnson had received a pension for his service in the American Revolution! My wife and I have preliminarily read through the pension file and it appears that Samuel was a private and served in several units. When I get all of the information digested I will post the information. Now this may not by exciting for everyone but for me it’s the first of my ancestors I know of, who fought in the Revolution! This morning my wife informed me that because I put…

The Schultüte and Thoughts of Dresden

Schultüte – the traditional German School Cone Sometime last week my wife came across some of my old family pictures and gave them to me to put away One was a picture of my father’s mother Charlotte Frieda Meyer. In the picture she is holding a cone that is almost as long as she is tall. So my wife set out to find out, what the cone was. What she discovered is the cone is called a “Schultüte” (or School Cone). The word “Tute” actually translate more literally as “bag”. In Eastern Germany it is often called a Zuckertute, a sugar bag! The cone was originally made of paper and more recently plastic, The cone is given to children by their parents and/or their grandparents in Germany TheClover Czech Republic and Austria on the first day of first grad. their parents and/or grandparents. The Schultute a big cardboard cone is prettily decorated and filled with toys, chocolate, candies, school supplies, and various other goodies. It is tinggiven to children to make this anxiously awaited first day of school a little bit sweeter. What I found interesting was that the tradition dates back to approximately 1810 in Saxony and Thuringia. The first documented use of the Schultüte comes from Jena in 1817 followed by reports from Dresden (1820) and Leipzig (1836).My grandmother was born in 1901 and the picture at the top of the page was taken in about 1908 when she entered the first grade in 1908 in Dresden! All of her parents and grandparents were…

A Glimpse of the Past and thoughts about the Ashton Family.

So as someone who enjoys genealogy research, it’s always nice to see the name of your ancestor in a census, on a marriage certificate or a ship’s passenger list. It always makes you think of what their lives must have been like. When I came home from work at Target last night, my wife said “look what I found” She had found among the papers of Louise Marter, who had a massive amount genealogical information she had collected over the last 30 to 40 years. Louise passed away a few months ago and Kathy has been given the task of going through the boxes and boxes of papers to decide the relevancy of each piece of paper Better her than me because Pack-Rat Edward would be tossing nothing!! Anyway back to last night’s find. it was at list of school children in the Beverly schools in 1865 and 1866 and there among children was my great-grandfather John or Johnny Ashton His father John Sherrington Ashton, known as Sherrington was the son of John Sherrington Ashton and Martha Short Ashton. He came to the US with his brothers William Short Ashton, sisters Arabella in 1853. It appears that his parents John and Martha and his young brother James E and sister Mary came in 1852 all had lived in Holbeach, England in 1851. Sherrington married Mary Parezo in May of 1857 and my great-grandfather was born a year later in May of 1858.His sister Mary Caroline(Carrie) Ashton was born in April…