Sharing Saturday - Dusinberg Bible (Part 1)

This is part one of a three part Blog. Another Bible that the LHGS scanned appear to be for the Dusinberg Family. This time there were five pages.

The first page which is titled Births and has 6 births listed as follows:

·        William Augustus Dusinberg was born 24 day of September in the year of our Lord Eighteen Hundred and fourty six born in  Cincinnati.

·        Sarah Adaline Dusinberg was born 17 Day of November in the year of our Lord Eighteen Hundred and Forty Eight born in Cincinnati.

·        John Dusinberg was born 10 Day of August in the year of our Lord Eighteen Hundred and Fifty One in Butler county New London, Ohio.

·        Henry Burling Dusinberg was born August 19^th in the year of our Lord Eighteen Hundred Fifty Three in Covington, Ky (Kentucky).

·        Franklin Larson Dusenberg born April 3^rd year A.D. 1856 in Covington, Ky.

·        Maria Dusenberg born June 27 year A.D. 1858 Covington, Ky.

This page appears to be written with the same hand. The Ink appears to be the same darkness and thus I can’t determine if it was all written at the same time. At first glance it seems strange that the last two entries are written with different verbiage than the first four. The reason could be because the person was running out of space. In the margins the locations were written and this appears to be written in a slightly darker ink. The births appear to be the children of the same parents and the family has moved from Cincinnati when the first two children were born and end up in Covington, Kentucky for the birth of the last three children. One child is born in New London, Butler, Ohio.

I decided to use MapQuest and see what the distance was between these locations. The distance is 200 Miles and New London is North of Cincinnati and near Lake Erie. Cincinnati is near the Kentucky border next to the Kentucky River. Covington, Kentucky is across the river from Cincinnati. So the family moved back to the original area but this time on the other side of the river. Makes me wonder why one child was born in New London, Ohio.

The second bible page is titled Deaths. 

Column 1:

·        John Dusinberg died September 12^th in the year of our Lord Eighteen hundred Fifty two age Thirteen months, two days. Rest Sweet Babe ly still in Slumber, Holy Angels guard thy head and blessings with out number gently fall avoid thy bed.

·        Maria Dusinberg died October 1 A.D. 1879 at Shridan, Butler Co, Ohio age 59 yr 2 mo 3 da

Column 2:

·        Sarah Adaline Dusinberg died April 30^th in the year of our Lord Eighteen hundred Fifty Three, age Four years, five months thirteen days.

·        Franklin Larson Dusinberg died June 22 AD 1856 age two months, nineteen days.

·        Maria Dusinberg died July 14 AD 1858 age eighteen days

·        C.A. Dusinberg died May 31 AD 1903, Age 83 yr 6 mos ? da at Trenton Ohio

Looking at the handwriting, the entries appear to be written by more than one hand. The first death must have been difficult because of the little poem that was written.

Comparing the birth page with this death page, we have the following:

·        We have John who was born 10 Aug 1851 and died 12 Sep 1852. The age of Thirteen months, two days looks correct.

·        Sarah Adaline Dusinberg was born 17 Nov 1848 and died 30 April 1853. Again the age of Four years, five months and thirteen days seem to be correct.

·        Franklin Larson Dusinberg was born 3 April 1856 and died 22 Jun 1856 and the age two months, nineteen days seems to be correct.

·        Maria Dusinberg was born 27 June 1858 and died 14 July 1858, and the age eighteen days also seems to be correct.

This leaves two two new people: Maria Dusinberg from Column one who died when 59 years old. This makes her birth around 1820 and C.A Dusinberg who died at age 83 in 1903 and he too was born around 1820. These two are most likely the parents of the all these children.

Next time we will look at two more pages of the bible. The next two pages will expand to possibly the grandchildren of C.A. and Maria Dusinberg. So come back next week and see what new information we find out about this family. 

Sharing Saturday – Melinda Williams Bible Cover

Last week’s blog was about the Hauser Family Bible Pages. I stated that the 1850 US Census probably would be the one and only census that would have Benjamin with his parents and siblings by name. So I decided to explore and see if I could find Benjamin with his parents.

What I found was Benjamin with his younger siblings Zachariah and Harriet. I also found a possible older sister Elizabeth and his mother Malinda. However, Malinda was not married to Abram but to John Williams. This explains the Melinda Williams Bible Cover that I wasn't sure which bible it went with.

I don’t know why Abram’s death date is not written in this bible. However, I did find an Abraham Hauser on findagrave.com who was born 1798 and died 12 July 1848 in Bartholomew County, Indiana. 

Also, John’s birth date is not listed. Plus there is no marriage date for either of Melinda’s marriages. I did find a marriage index record for Malinda Hauser and John Williams marriage in Bartholomew County, Indiana for 10 Nov 1849.

So once again I have shown how just two simple family bible pages can lead your research in new directions. So the next time you are at an Estate Sale or garage sale, look for family bibles that people are discarding. Even if they are not for your family, think about saving them. You could scan the pages and create a simple little tree on Ancestry.com, post them in a blog or donate them to a local genealogical society. Think about what genealogical society you want to donate them to. Perhaps one where the family in the bible is from might be better than the society where you purchase the bible, especially if they are two different locations.  

Calendar of Events for the Week of February 10

Special Interest Groups: Two groups have meetings scheduled for this week.

Tuesday – February 11 starting at 10:00am - British Isle Research: If you researching English, Irish, Scottish or Wales ancestry, you might want to come to this special meeting just for you. Help your fellow members or get help from your fellow members with your research. Share websites you found helpful or brainstorm ideas on where you might want to take your research next. 

Thursday – February 13 starting at 11:00am (NEW TIME FOR THIS MONTH ONLY) - Family Tree Maker Research: If you are using Family Tree Maker for your record keeping software for your genealogy research or maybe want to use it, then this special interest group is for you. Learn how to record your facts, sources, or run reports and more. Get the most out of your software.

NOTE: Board meeting has changed and will be on Thursday – February 13 at 4:00pm.

Sharing Saturday - Hauser Family Bible Pages

I am going to try to post hidden treasures that have been donated to the Lake Havasu Genealogical Society but because of the format they received them, are stored in bank boxes in the back of the library. 

Having a bible with your ancestors’ information on it is a treasure that we all wish we would have. I was lucky enough to have a family bible that my mother started, but this was based on information given her and she wrote it down, or was written by her memory. It listed her, her parents and her grandparents and great-grandparents. This was a gold mine of information for me to start my search. Not all the information was accurate but much of it was correct.

So when I was asked by a local crafter if the genealogical society wanted to make copies of the genealogical information from pages of the bibles she purchased I said yes. Since she wanted the pages to make some crafts, I could not say, no that would be wrong. Instead I said, I will scan the pages and perhaps a relative of these people might find it on the internet and will get a copy. Of course having the actual pages would have been nicer, but to be honest, the pages would have been stored in a box and properly never be seen again. The society has many such treasures and I hope to dig those out and create future blogs to share those items.

The first set of bible pages were from the Hauser family. The pages she had were from destroyed bibles and they were just thrown into a box to be sold at an Estate Sale. We could tell there was more than one bible, but I could not tell where one started and the next one ended. Therefore I cannot tell you the date of the bible. It appears to me that the first page and the first entry of the second page were written at the same time by the same person. The last two entries on the second page were definitely written later with a different pen or pencil because it is much lighter than the rest.

 Transcription of Page 1:

Children of Abram and Melinda Hinkson Hauser who lived to maturity

Benjamin F          Nov 21 1839

Zachariah H         Jan 14 1840

Harriet C              Mar 4 1843

Marriage of Benjamin F & Louise Jane Wright Jan 19 1859

Children

Alice Elizabeth                   Mar 7 1861

George Elsworth               Mar 18 1864

Anna May                           May 8 1868

Arthur Benjamin                Nov 18 1870

Evelyn Louisa                     May 6 1873

Daisy                                   July 29 1877

Daisy Died                          Oct 5 1878

Godfrey Jurlrugg                              born Dec 10 1884

This page is very interesting because this might be the only record of Daisy to exist. What a find for a family to discover this child who only lived a little more than 14 months. Plus at this time, I have no idea who Godgrey Jurlrugg (not sure of the spelling) might be. Could he be a grandchild of Benjamin F & Louise Jane Wright? Perhaps he is the son of Alice who would have been 23 when Godfrey was born. There is a slight chance he is the son of Anna who would have been 16 when he was born. This would be something the family would need to research if they don’t know who Godfrey is.

Moving onto the transcription of Page 2:

Mrs M Hauser died Aug 21 1892 

at 10 oclock and 30 minutes Am

Benjamin Franklin Hauser died June 23 1922

Louisa Jane Hauser died Sep 12 1927

It appears to me that Mrs M Hauser refers to Melinda Hinkson Hauser. We don’t have a birth date for Melinda so we don’t know how old she was when she died.  We could estimate that if she was 20 years old when Benjamin was born, she would have been born abt 1819 and would be about 73 at her time of death.

The second page gives us a death date of 1922 for Benjamin and page 1 gives us his birth date of 1839 and thus he was 83 years old when he died. We are given Louisa’s death date but we don’t know her birth date to know her age.

However, if I was going to research the people on these two pages, I would start with the most recent known fact and work my way backwards. I would go to the 1920 US Census and see if I could find them. The census would give me the ages of Benjamin and Louisa as of 1920 and based on this information I would get an estimated date of birth and could confirm Benjamin's birth and find out a clue about Louisa's birth year.

Since Benjamin and Louisa were married in 1859, I would try to find this couple in each US census between 1920 and 1859, so I would check out the 1910, 1900, 1880, 1870 and 1860 census. The 1850 census would be the one and only census record that I might find Benjamin with his parents and siblings with their names listed. Perhaps I would find other children that didn’t live to maturity but might have been alive in 1850.

Even though no places are identified on the bible pages, but I believe there is enough information to find the family unit in the US census records to figure out where their births and deaths probably occurred.

Bible Pages Treasures

Bible Cover for Malinda Williams

Did you ever wonder why your family doesn't have a family bible with all your family facts? Perhaps it does but you just don’t know where to find it. Our Genealogical Society was approached by a crafter who purchased some old books from an estate sale and when she went through the books she found parts of bibles. She allowed our Society to scan the pages and now they sit on our Society Library computer. From these scan pages appear to be two different families.

I thought I would take the information from the bibles and put them onto Ancestry.com and make the tree public for the world to see. Okay, this sounds like a good idea until I read in another blog that Public doesn't necessarily mean public to Ancestry.com. It means that anyone who has a paid subscription to Ancestry can see the public member trees. Well this makes me very sad, because I always thought the trees were a free part of Ancestry. Well they are, sort of. They are free to create, but the only way people with “guest” accounts (those non-subscription account holders) can view other trees is to be invited to the trees. Now I wonder if they can see enough to ask to be invited or do they not see the trees totally and only get invited because they know the owner of the tree through other means.

Okay, so if Ancestry.com public trees are not so free, I need another way to get the information from these bible pages out to the masses, so I have decided to publish them on the Societies blog. So I will put them on future blogs but I wanted to discuss the usefulness of bibles. In my first example I have what appears to be the Hauser family and consisted of two pages of information. The first page appears to be written by the same hand at the same time and extends to the first entry of the second page. However, the last two entries appear to be written later and perhaps not at the same time of each other.

My second example is of the Dusenberg family and consists of five pages from the bible. These pages have titles of Birth, Marriages, Deaths, and Misc. Many of the entries appear to be written at the same time, but others appear to be written as they occur or at least at a different time.

Our town is unique in the sense that we have retirees and winter visitors from all over the US and Canada coming to our town. Because of this, when they pass away and love ones are left sorting through their items, family doesn’t always know what to do with their items. Many have estate sales and everything is sold, even items us genealogist consider sacred such as family bibles, letters, photos and such. We see these items as gold mines of information to be harvested, recorded and saved. However, crafters look at these items as items to be used in their latest craft project. I have seen many beautiful things done with old books and photos but the recipient of the item might not know or care about the history associated with those items.

So the other option for the loves ones is to donate the items to a local genealogical society. This is where our society gets many of these items. Unfortunately, this might not be the area where the research was for. I know I look at genealogical societies where my ancestor’s lived hoping to find treasures donated to them from my families collections. However, I never really thought about what if they moved in their later years and thus the items are across state or across country from where the majority of their live events occurred.

I would like to see more genealogical societies (ours included) to post these rare holdings or at least list these rare holdings online so when others are doing their Internet Searches on their family, they might get a hit and discover the treasures that were hiding and now are waiting for them to discover.