Looking back to 2023, forward to 2024

The very best part of falling headlong into family history research is the stories.

Stories in The Legal Genealogist’s family take us back a long way in America on the maternal side and in Germany on the paternal side.

Stories that begin, in this country, in the late 1600s. Stories in Germany that we can take all the way back to the late 1500s.

Some of them, astoundingly, given my family’s tendency never to let the truth get in the way of a good story, that may even possibly be true.

And some of the possibly-true ones — that is, the ones that I’ve managed to document with something other than a marginal note that one of the family storytellers told me so — had very big milestones in 2023 or will have big milestones here in 2024.

These “big milestones” are events that were exactly 50 or 100 or 150 or 200 or 250 years ago — or more! — during the year.¹

And they’re the kinds of milestones that we shouldn’t allow to pass without pausing to reflect.

Looking back

In 2023, for example, in the 250-year milestone category, we had the birth of Jacob Jan Smidt, my fourth great grandfather, whose age was recorded in the 1812 birth record of his son, Carl Smidt.² So it’s not an exact date but “close-enough” record. In the 200-year milestone category, yet another birth in Germany, this time of second great grandfather Johann Christoph Gustav Graumüller, born 25 November 1823 in Rüdersdorf, Greiz, Thüringen, Germany, and baptized at the church there on 29 November 1823.³

In the 150-year milestone category, on the maternal side of the family, we had the death on 30 August 1873 of David Davenport Baker, oldest son of my third great grandparents Martin and Elizabeth (Buchanan) Baker,⁴ but a birth in the 100-year milestone category, that of my mother’s older brother Monte Boyd Cottrell, born in Midland, Texas, on 19 November 1923, and died in California in 1994; he’s buried in the Fort Rosencrans National Cemetery in San Diego County.⁵ The 50-year milestone category also highlighted a birth that will always and forever be celebrated in my family — the birth on 5 May 1973 of my personal hero, my nephew, Timothy Evan Geissler (1973-2017).⁶

Looking forward

In 2024, we have some milestones coming up as well.

In the 250-year milestone category, we have a birth: a fourth great grandmother, Elizabeth (Jones) Buchanan. The best available evidence is that Elizabeth was born, most likely in Virginia or North Carolina, on 14 November 1774. This date appears in a transcription of a Bible, the whereabouts no-one today seems to know. That transcription was reportedly made by David Stamey of Waynesville, NC, in 1993, and is generally corroborated by a second transcription, contained in an affidavit by Ben Buchanan and Burns Turner, dated 29 January 1931, executed before the Yancey County NC clerk, and reproduced in a Yancey County genealogical journal.⁷ Elizabeth’s birth year is also generally corroborated by the 1850 census (age 75)⁸ and 1860 census (age 84).⁹ She married William Buchanan in Rutherford County, North Carolina, on 16 April 1793,¹⁰ and reportedly died on 28 May 1861.¹¹

In the 200-year milestone category, there’s another birth: my second great grandmother Friederike Geissler, born 11 June 1824, in Reussen, now in the German State of Sachsen-Anhalt.¹² This lovely lady created my most enduring family history mystery — one not likely to be solved in my lifetime. She produced my great grandfather Hermann Eduard Geissler in 1855, father unknown.¹³ There are absolutely no clues to Hermann’s father — my brothers have YDNA tested and match each other, but no-one else. Sigh… Friederike died in 1880,¹⁴ taking the secret of her son’s father with her to her grave.

In the 150-year milestone category, we’ll go with a marriage on my maternal side. My great grandparents Martin Gilbert Cottrell and Martha H. “Mattie” Johnson were married in Parker County, Texas, on 27 August 1874.¹⁵ They produced at least 10 kids, all but one born in Texas, the youngest of whom was my grandfather Clay Rex Cottrell. The couple split up around 1909, with Mattie taking the younger children to Oklahoma. She died in Frederick, Oklahoma, in 1912,¹⁶ and M.G. died in Levelland, Texas, in 1946.¹⁷

In the 100-year milestone category, there are some options, but I’m going to go with the birth of a man who wasn’t related to me by blood at all. My Uncle Ray was the husband of my mother’s sister Carol — they married in 1953,¹⁸ and I can’t remember a time in my growing-up years when he wasn’t part of all of our lives. But he posed a bit of a research hassle for a good while. Oh, I had things like his tombstone, showing him as Ray Childress, born 5 October 1924 and died 30 January 1992.¹⁹ But I was having trouble finding anything else. Until — sigh — I discovered that my Uncle Ray wasn’t my Uncle Ray at all. Oh, that’s what he was called, all right. But he’d been born Miller Hamilton Childress, and that’s the name I needed for all his other records.²⁰

And in the 50-year milestone category, it’s the end of a marriage. That of my own parents, divorced officially on 12 October 1974.²¹ This is one of those mixed-emotions situations. On one hand, nobody rejoices at the end of a marriage. On the other hand, my parents were absolutely chalk and cheese. The only thing they really had in common was a whole bunch of kids. That they stayed married as long as they did is the surprise, not that their marriage ended.²²

Each of these, a story of its own, to find and to tell — each, in truth, one of the real reasons why we do genealogy at all.

Why I have to write this blog.

Why I have to tell the stories.

To make sure that those I remember aren’t forgotten… that these milestones continue to be remembered down through the generations.

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Milestones, 2024,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 6 Jan 2024).

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