Seeking Sophia Müller Steinmetz Frey

So, I started writing this almost 3 years ago exactly. Ugh, better late than never! Back to 2014…

Sophia Müller Steinmetz Frey

Sophia Müller Steinmetz Frey is one of my great-great-great-grandmothers.  Her son Albert Frey was my grandmother’s grandfather.  Sophia’s eighth of my grandmother’s ancestry had been blank for a long time.  The other sides of Granny’s tree were finally filled in thanks to the Třeboň archives online, and many trips to my local Family History Center renting microfilms from Kanton Zürich.  So I finally decided to focus on Sophia, no easy task with a name as common as Müller/Miller.

Her life after arrival in the US is well accounted for with many records, except her first marriage to Joseph Steinmetz and her exact date of arrival.  I still haven’t found those records, but I figured they probably wouldn’t shed any light on the exact location of her birth anyways.   

-Many records agree she was from Württemberg, born in October 1838. 

-She was married twice.  Her first marriage was to Joseph Steinmetz from Alsace and her second to Ulrich Frey from Zürich. 

-Joseph Steinmetz purchased land in Sumner Township (part of Calmar Township at that point) on May 1, 1855.

- The location and date of her marriage to Joseph Steinmetz is unknown.  They were married before July 1856 when they appeared on the Winneshiek County Census. Their first child Mary Steinmetz Baird was born in December 1856, so it’s likely they were married in the beginning of 1856 or in 1855. There’s no record of their marriage in Winneshiek, and it’s probably not in Iowa since those records are well indexed online now. 


-In the 1925 Iowa census, it states for each person the location of their parents' marriage. The only one of the Steinmetz children living at that time is Joseph Jr, and it says that Joseph Steinmetz Sr and Sophia Müller were married in Illinois.

-The “Past and Present of Winneshiek County” from 1913 mentions that Joseph immigrated in 1851 and Sophia in 1855. I haven’t found them on any ship manifests yet though. 1900 and 1910 censuses list Sophia’s immigration year as 1855 or 1856.  

-One family legend states Joseph was living in California during the gold rush and had written somewhere (back home to Alsace?) asking for a woman to be sent to marry.  When he went to meet/pick up his new bride, he saw Sophia and decided he'd rather marry her. Sophia had immigrated to the US as an escort for her sister's child, her sister having immigrated earlier and the child couldn't travel with his/her mother b/c he/she was ill at the time.  So they got married and returned to Iowa.  The timeline seems to match, but it seems unlikely Sophia would have been taking a child to California during the gold rush, when there were very few women heading out there with the men.  Not impossible but it doesn't seem likely.

-The county record of her death states Sophia’s parents were Carl Müller and Friederike Windmüller.  The informant was her daughter Regina Steinmetz Herold.

I thought if I waited long enough the Württemberg immigration index would be updated, maybe some German parish records would be indexed and imaged on Ancestry but neither happened.   Maybe the next best thing would be Iowa parish records.  Maybe when joining the church or her burial record would have something.  Maybe a baptismal sponsor for one of the kids would lead to locating relatives of hers who immigrated here as well?

From family stories we knew she and Joseph went to the catholic St. Clement's Church outside of Spillville.  She did not convert to Catholicism, and after marrying Ulrich Frey they attended the German Congregational Church in Fort Atkinson.  Both churches closed long ago.  Luckily a copy of the St. Clement's records are held by the Decorah Genealogy Association.

The St. Clement's records did not have any info, other than confirming that she did not convert (the word "protestant" appears after her name on daughter Regina's baptism). Baptismal sponsors were neighbors who weren't related to either parent. 

Baptism of Regina Steinmetz Herold from St. Clement's Church, Spillville

Tracking down the congregational records proved more difficult.  I had consulted distant relatives from the area and some other acquaintances but nothing turned up.  I think I ended up googling or digging through some random family tree from the area and noticed someone had listed the church records as a source on their information.  Luckily I found an email address and he responded!  He gave me copies of a baptism index (not many) and told me to contact a man in Fort Atkinson who had originally given these baptisms to his mother.  I met with this man and he gave me the contact information for the Congregational archives in Boston, where the original church records were kept.

After getting a few copies of sections from the book from the archives, I hired a genealogist in Boston to go look through the book for mentions of my relatives.

Lo and behold, the record of Sophia's burial had the information I was looking for:

Sophia's burial record from the German Congregational Church, Fort Atkinson

Transcription:
Am 18ten April 1914 verstarb bei ihrer Tochter Frau Regina Herold in Cresco Iowa eins der ersten Glieder unserer Kirchgemeinschaft die Wittwe Sophia Frei, geborene Müller. Sie war am 28sten October 1838 in Unterroth, Oberamt Gailsdorf, Württemberg geboren und war also im Alter war 75 Jahren, 5 Monaten und 20 Tagen. Am 21sten April wurde sie auf dem Friedhofs in Fort Atkinson beigesetzt. Pastor Hein hielt die Begräbnis gnedigt in der Methodisten Kirche in Fort Atkinson in englisch.

Translation:

On the 18th April 1914 one of the first members of our church-community, the widow Sophia Frey, born Müller, passed away at (the home of) her daughter Mrs. Regina Herold in Cresco Iowa. She was born on the 28th October 1838 in Unterrot, Oberamt Gailsdorf, Württemberg and so was aged 75 years, 5 months and 20 days. On the 21st of April she was buried in the cemetery in Fort Atkinson, Pastor Hein held the funeral of honorable interment at the Methodist Church in Fort Atkinson in English.

So now to order the microfilms! I was so excited I ordered the wrong films and had to cancel the order the next day.  Then I thought I found the right films and ordered those.
They ended up being backordered (up to a month before they'd arrive) but I couldn't wait. So I contacted a historian who lives near Unterrot and has published volumes about different families from the area. He looked through his records compiled on Unterrot parish and found that there's no record of Sophia born at that time in Unterrot village or parish, nor any families with the combination of names Müller-Windmüller there, despite there being several Müller and Windmüller families. He suggested perhaps she was from a close by village Oberrot, and someone along the way had mistaken the two.

This seemed like a set back, I wasn't sure what to do with the potential wrong microfilms (again) waiting to be shipped to me.  I then found someone in Michigan who has ancestors from this region as well, and she has a large number of the church records from parishes in this region on permanent loan at her family history center. She offered to look in the Oberrot records and the other parishes in the area to see if she could find Sophia. She wasn't in the Oberrot or Gaildorf records (I ended up checking Unterrot/Münster and Gschwend parishes myself when the microfilms arrived and also found nothing at all), but she found a family that matched in the Fichtenberg parish records.

The image she sent me (translated here at the end) is from the Fichtenberg Familienbuch. In Germany and related countries, churches sometimes arranged all their current member information like a census, listing families with complete vital information sometimes including notes on immigration.

Sophia was from the village of Honkling (previously spelled Hohenkling and Hohnkling), which belonged to Fichtenberg parish but administratively belonged to Unterrot. It’s the only village in the Unterrot “county” that wasn’t also part of Unterrot parish, which accounted for all the confusion.

Her parents names were Leonhart and Dorothea. She did have siblings named Carl and Friederika, so perhaps her daughter Regina knew those names but didn’t realize they were an aunt and uncle, and not her grandparents’ names when acting as the informant on Sophia's death record.

Also, I returned to the emigration application records for Württemberg and found that Sophia’s siblings Carolina and Jacob got permission to emigrate on 11/3/1855 and they were taking with them their sister’s child! So perhaps Sophia ended up tagging a long with them or decided to join them after the paperwork was completed, assuming the oral history of the family was correct in that regard. Despite the number of them immigrating, I haven’t found any of them in ship manifests or in any record in the US yet.

I ordered the Fichtenberg church records, which of course were also backordered and also put in an order for Kirchenkirnberg books, where Leonhart Müller is from.

Here is a tranlation of the image she sent me:

Johann Leonhart Müller, a weaver born 4/7/1793 son of Johann Melchior Müller of Horlachen who was also a weaver. Married on 9/14/1816 to Eva Dorothea Windmüller born 3/15/1794 daughter of Johann Adam Windmüller, a farmer and Anna Margaretha Deininger of Honkling.

Children:

Christina Jacobina born 10/29/1816 died 12/30/1817

Katharina Maria born 9/11/1818

Christina Susanna* born 10/9/1819 died 11/11/1854

Susanna Barbara born 2/7/1821 immigrated 1867

Friederika^ born 8/15/1823 married 5/5/1868 to Matthias Bäßler

Jacob Michael born 9/14/1825

Eva Maria born 3/7/1828 died 11/9/1848

Eva Dorothea~ born 5/26/1830 emigrated 1855

Christina Carolina born 10/12/1833 emigrated 1855

Johann Jacob born 7/14/1836 emigrated 1855

Christina Sophia born 10/28/1838 emigrated 1855

Christian Carl born 2/3/1843 died 9/13/1865

Illegitimate (Grand)Children

* Eva Friederika born 11/22/1838 died 3/27/1839

^ Eva Susanna Catharina born 5/3/1850

^ Johanna Carolina born 1/28/1856

~ Johann Jacob (Wörner) born 4/4/1853, emigrated

As of 2017 I still haven't found Joseph and Sophia's marriage record, nor their names in ship manifests (that can be proven to be them), nor any records of Sophia's siblings in the US.  The search continues!

Sophia with sons Will and Philip Frey

Sophia had 2 husbands, 15 children, 59 grandchildren, 145 great-grandchildren….needless to say there are many living descendants!  Her children are listed below:

Child                                Birth                        Death

Mary A Steinmetz           10 Dec 1856            21 Mar 1908

Regina C Steinmetz         5 May 1858             9 Aug 1917

Sophia Steinmetz             8 Jan 1860               6 Sep 1924

Joseph T Steinmetz          3 Aug 1861             11 Mar 1938

Margaret Steinmetz          1862-1864               Aft 8/2/1865,Bef 1870

Bernard Steinmetz            2 Feb 1865              21 Oct 1902

Albert Frey                       6 Nov 1866              27 Jul 1929

Charles Frey                     9 Aug 1868              12 Aug 1943

Louisa D Frey                   6 Jan 1871               2 Jul 1944

Katharina Frey                  6 Jan 1871               8 May 1875

Anna Dorothea Frey         29 Apr 1873            12 Feb 1955

Katharina Susanna Frey    7 Nov 1875             Dec 1878

William Henry Frey          1 Nov 1877             15 Feb 1952

Bertha Frey                       10 Apr 1880            30 Nov 1883

Philip George Frey           10 Apr 1880            12 Feb 1940

Patrick McCarroll and Isabella Breadon - Parents of Mary Ann McCarl Feltis?

Quite a long time as passed!  5 years?!?  So much has happened in that amount of time it's unbelievable to look back that far.  But I have still found some time along the way to keep up with genealogy endeavors.  Oddly enough I made a great discovery on some of my Irish ancestry the day before St. Patrick's day!
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Tracing the ancestors of William Feltis and his wife Mary Ann McCarl has been quite difficult.  Jessie Maye Pierce Michalek compiled much of the Feltis family's oral history in her book Descendants of William Feltis and Mary Ann McCarl, 1822-1980.  Unfortunately not a lot of knowledge regarding the family origins was retained by the older generations she consulted when her project began. 

Mary Ann McCarl and William Feltis

                             

The first paragraphs of the book state:

          William Feltis, Sr. was born March 20, 1822 in Rhode Island.  Not much is known about his background.  When he was very young, his parents “bound” him out because they had such a large family that they could not take care of all of them.  He ran away from his foster home at the age of twelve and never located his family. 

          Mary Ann McCarl (spelled McCarrol on her death certificate) was born in Moretown, New York on June 19, 1824.  Her sister Eliza, was five years older.  Her parents came from Ireland.  A little girl was born while they were on the ocean and died before they reached New York. She was buried at sea.  A brother David, was born after Mary Ann.  Their parents died while the children were quite young and they were raised in foster homes.  Mary Ann lived with several families until she was eighteen.  Shortly after her eighteenth birthday (exact date unknown) she was married to William Feltis and moved to Québec, Canada.

          In 1865 the family moved to Iowa.  They stayed all night in West Decorah, at a home where Bill Noecker now lives.  They went to Burr Oak Township the next day and moved onto a farm west of the Halvor Ramlo farm.  Later they moved to Burr Oak where they bought a little house west of the Burr Oak school.

          Mary Ann and William became dissatisfied with their life together and decided to separate. William went to North Dakota where he lived with his son, Samuel.  He died July 29, 1895 and is buried in LaMoure, North Dakota.

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The jury is still out on William's parentage.  It appears that the name was originally spelled Feltus and going back a few hundred years would have been Feltuce or Felthouse, in England.  There are some extensive Feltus family histories that mention brothers from England settling in Ireland, County Carlow in the 17th century, eventually over to County Wexford and then many other counties by the early 19th century.

Concerning William Feltis's death, I do recall reading an old county history or some similar document I found online that was related to his son Samuel.  It mentioned that William died while he and Mary Ann were in LaMoure visiting their sons.  I know I saved it in one manner or another but am unable to reproduce it at the moment.  My office has become less organized over the last few years, now being boxes and stacks of unrelated papers.  When I find it I will have to carefully site it in my family tree file!  But, my recent discovery was actually relating to Mary Ann McCarl.

From Jessie's history we have:

 -Mary Ann was born in Moretown, New York

 -She had siblings Eliza and David

From what I can tell, Moretown, New York doesn't (and didn't) exist.  Mooers is a town though, and so is Morristown both of which are within minutes of what used to be Huntingdon County Québec, where William and Mary Ann started their family.

There is also a small town named Moretown in Washington County Vermont.  This is about 100 miles from the Canadian border. However, many census records state her birth place as New York, so we can assume that part is probably correct.

Both Eliza and David were probably remembered by the Feltis descendants because they both moved to locations near Burr Oak briefly. David's family lived near Hokah, Minnesota for a time before heading to Winona.  Eliza (married to Moses Greer) lived near Burr Oak as well before relocating to to Watertown, South Dakota.

In Bernice Feltis's photograph collection there was a photo of "Dad with his cousin Maggie Greer Bailey"...

William Feltis Jr and Maggie Greer Bailey, photo taken in Decorah

But these are old discoveries.  The other week I discovered the following baptisms in the Drouin Collection (Québec Church records) on Ancestry.com for children of Patrick McCarroll and Isabella Breadon/Braden:

Child	Baptized on	Church	Sponsors
Robert	20 Jul 1823	Basilique Notre-Dame de Montréal	Patrick Mc?nly  & Anne Curran
Sarah	11 Sep 1829	St. Patrice de Hinchinbrooke	John Campion & Margaret Bergen
Mary Anne	11 Sep 1829	St. Patrice de Hinchinbrooke	John Campion & Margaret Bergen
Margaret	11 Sep 1829	St. Patrice de Hinchinbrooke	John Campion & Margaret Bergen

In Robert's baptism record it mentions that Patrick is a day laborer, which would explain the family's financial struggles and need for the children to leave home to work as soon as they were able to.  Additionally, Sarah McCarroll was married to Merritt Gordon.  This would finally explain the origin of Mary Ann Feltis's daughter's name, Sarah Gordon Feltis - she was named after her aunt.  Descendants of Sarah McCarroll Gordon have Patrick and Isabella's origin listed as County Tyrone in Northern Ireland.

This is of course only a hunch, that the Mary Anne here is our Mary Ann.  I believe it will be difficult to obtain hard evidence, unless Mary Ann and William's marriage record is found and it states their parents' names.

However, on the 1851 census, David McCarl (age 17) is living in Hemmingford Township with Matthew and Isabella Leach both natives of Ireland.  Matthew is 38 years old, and Isabella is 60.  Perhaps this is his mother, and she is Isabella Breadon McCarroll who has been remarried to Matthew Leach?  Isabella and Matthew moved to Franklin Township of Huntingdon County and appear there in the 1861 and 1871 censuses, living next door to Sarah McCarroll Gordon's family in 1861.

A myriad of small clues.

 (Cropped from map of electoral (?)  districts in southern Québec. The Salaberry-Suroit area used to be Huntingdon County. Anyways, the townships where the McCarrolls, Feltis's, Greers, and Gordons lived are: Hinchinbrooke, Ormstown, Franklin, Havelock, and Hemmingford which all border New York state.)

Slow progress....

School has really been tying me down more than I thought it would, but I've still managed a few things here and there. I realized earlier that I had very few obits for the Steinmetz family. Since I hadn't had much luck finding pictures from the Frey side, I figured I'd try to find some of these descendants. My ggg-grandmother Sophie Müller was married twice. First to Joseph Steinmetz who she had 6 children with. Second to Ulrich Frey who she had 9 children with (at least two sets of fraternal twins). I'm descended from one of the Frey children. I've located most of the relatives on the Frey side who would have photos, but it seems a lot of them were lost, thrown away, or carried off in a tornado (no exaggeration there).

I made a list of all the obits to obtain from Cresco newspapers (other sides of my mom's family as well) and go over there to slowly go through the microfilms and pull them out. I discovered as soon as I got there that someone had already indexed the papers for obits and marriage records! I had been there before and not used these indexes, wasting my time. Anyways, I now have tons and tons of obits for the Steinmetz side and a lot of people on my list to call about pictures who live not too far away. I also learned how to change the microfilm printer cartridge so I don't have to print negatives and waste all that ink (and obtain copies not worth copying!). I've already contacted one relative and found this photo.

This is Regina Steinmetz Herold with her family.

They eventually had 14 children. Here they're only halfway so it must have been taken early 1889. It was taken at McKay Studio in Cresco. Regina looks a lot like her mother, Sophie Müller Steinmetz Frey.

Ancestry profile info...

One thing I don't like about Ancestry.com is the the lack of options. They definitely have one way they think your tree should look and one way your profile should look. I wish you could customize things a lot more, especially since they keep changing their minds. Over time, their new ideas have been making navigation of family trees harder and harder, and they end up looking more and more messy and elongated. I think they want to keep marketing themselves to older people who know nothing about the internet or computers, so in their mind they think they are simplifying their website so these persons will be able to figure more things out.

Their little survey pop-up appears every once and a while. I usually fill it out eventually, with A LOT of comments on how the site could be improved. I've also sent them emails with specific ways the site could be improved or retro-graded to previous versions that were better. But all I get is an automated email telling me to make sure my computer is turned on, and if I want to delete someone from my tree, all I have to do is close my eyes, click the little "x" in the top right corner of the screen and all will be good again. They really like charging their heavy membership fees, do they really have no computer people working for them?

I originally wanted to put lines and lines of text on my profile (even though I know most users do not look at these or know what they are, although that's now almost the only way to contact someone through the site) that describe why I'm interested in all the junk that I'm putting out there, who I am, my experience with genealogy, AND THEN most importantly how I organize and label and decide which information to include. This is very important when sharing information. But it seems that the Ancestry user profile is meant for you to state only a small paragraph describing yourself. Leaving enough room to right something about yourself, and then get scared that someone will use this information to steal your identity.

I like the idea of including a section on research interests on the profile. But it looks like ancestry only intend people to put list of surnames matched with locations here, so it was quite tricky to figure out how to include Norwegian dialects and entire counties on this section on my profile.

Enough! I'm way off topic now!

This is information I previously had on my profile, but I'm removing it now. It's way incomplete and looks stupid, stacked in a skinny column in the middle of the page. I really have to go back to the drawing board on this one, unless they up the characte limit for this section...

INFORMATION ABOUT MY TREES
My main family tree is the "Ellickson through Fretheim, and everything in between” These are two surnames of my great-great-great grandparents, Ellickson following the male line (my father's father's father's father's father) and Fretheim following the female line (my mother's mother's mother's mother's mother).I’ve been trying to update my tree by uploading an additional "supplement tree" to transfer new info and people, but ancestry currently can't handle quick tree deletes or integration. Sometimes the main tree is more up to date than the supplement. Old supplements will become private as soon as a newer one is uploaded. It takes time for the old one to be removed from search results and the new one to be integrated. Please see my main tree (without the word supplement in the name) for attached pictures/records. When I added this one originally, a lot of junk code got added (it looks like Y;Y;Y;Y;Y;Y). Mostly to the notes for marriages where I didn’t have a date listed. I’m slowing getting around to everyone and deleting this. For my family tree, my “research scope” is all ancestors of my self and all descendants of my 7xgreat grandparents. All these relatives + spouses and adopted children are included. I have also added other families who tie in a lot, or are part of my research interests.

Summer's almost over...

I have a lot to do with just one month of summer left before school starts. I always work on every side of the family at once, since there are some branches that overlap and every side is rooted in the same county.

I should focus completely on the Thorson side, since the reunion is coming up. I mostly need to verify some of the info I already have by copying the Bygebok pages and getting copies of documents. I also have already called a lot of the extended relatives, many of them said they had old pictures but weren't sure who they were of. It would be good to just check with them anyway.

I started adding all of the photos I have scanned to my ancestry tree. I'm not sure if this is a good idea yet. I like that it will be more complete and accessible, and that others can see just how to scan and fix these things. I don't like the idea though that people will take all my info and photos and not let me know! I don't mind sharing everything, so long as I get credit for it. It's also important to keep this source information so that mistakes can be corrected later.

Photo: Sjur L. Bjørgo with wife Ingeborg and daughter Bertina Strinmoen. Detail of house photo. Highland Township, Winneshiek. To be included in my Thorson ppt presentation.

Introduction Post

Hello,

I'm creating this blog now as a diary/journal for my genealogy research. It's much easier typing than writing and then losing hard copies, and this way it is more accessible to any relatives or other genealogists that want to look over some of the progression I've made to obtain certain information and I can explain some of my methods.

I started really searching for info a couple years ago and it really took off after it became more of a search for old photographs of relatives. But I have much more than just photos! I recently got way way way too into it all and started adding any families that were from Winneshiek county to my family tree program. So many different families are connected in odd ways, that it helps to know who went where regardless of their relation. Also, relatives' friends and neighbors' names often come up in genealogy related searches and it's good to know more about these people.

I also wanted to put this out there, because I was so tired of reading about other people doing genealogy on the internet who are researching the South or Northeast US families that are only of British, Irish, or German descent!