“Family Archaeologist” explores a century of family letters, diaries, and artifacts, and how they illuminate history and our shared humanity. To get an overview of the blog, click: “Welcome to Family Archaeologist”
LATEST BLOG POSTS
The Real Dracula
Vlad Dr?culea III TRAVEL TUESDAY When I tell friends or new acquaintances that my grandparents hailed from Transylvania, the Dracula jokes start flying (“Well, I guess I’ll watch my neck” or “Good Bloodlines,” and so on). For those who don’t know how the Dracula legend got started, I thought I’d give you a thumbnail [...]
Be My Valentine, 1911
This little Valentine has no date and no signature. So I had put it aside, only to rediscover it just last week! I was able to read the strange writing better after a year of practice, and when I translated the sweet greeting in the first part, I realized it was a century-old Valentine. I scanned [...]
Love Finds a Way
Section of Eva Beer’s letter included with Josef’s. On February 11, 1911, the mail arrived in Hermannstadt, Hungary, where my grandmother, Lisi Ebner, worked for Mrs. Jickeli. I can imagine Lisi’s heart quickening when she saw a letter postmarked Cleveland, Ohio. Except for a brief postcard from New York, she hadn’t heard from her [...]
The Road from Alsace
Renate, Neppendorf Lutheran Church secretary and keeper of genealogical treasures. TRAVEL TUESDAY What’s in a Name? I had no inkling our family surname had ever been anything other than Gärtz. But then we visited my grandfather’s home town church, the Evangelische Kirche Neppendorf, and met Renate, church secretary and Neppendorfer genealogy and history-maven supreme. She handed [...]
Love Across 5,000 Miles
No email. No texts. No chats. No tweets. No Facebook. By God! No telephone! So how does twenty-one-year old Josef Gärtz, my grandfather, persuade the love of his life, Lisi, merely twenty-two, to make a 5,000 mile trek to join him in America? A letter took about two weeks to travel from Cleveland, Ohio, the first [...]
A Millennium of Germans in Transylvania
Evangelische (Lutheran) Kirche Neppendorf (near Sibiu)Historically, the Gärtz family church TRAVEL TUESDAY Church as History On the second day of our 2007 roots-finding trip in Romania, my brother, Bill, and I met up with Renate, church secretary of the Evangelische Kirche Neppendorf, (the Gärtz family church). Her impressive knowledge of the church’s, Siebenbürgen, and [...]
2010 iGene Awards—And the Winners are…
Welcome to the 2010 iGene Awards, one of the Carnival of Genealogy (CoG) monthly themes. For my readers new to CoG, it offers genealogy bloggers a new topic each month for our blog posts. February is the month to highlight our best posts of the previous year in the categories you’ll see below–a fun “Academy Awards” [...]
The Road to Sibiu—Travel Tuesday
My cousin, Maria and I flew out of Stuttgart on September 16, 2007, and landed in Bucharest as the sunset washed the countryside in an peachy glow. At a nearby hotel, we met my two brothers, Paul and Bill, and Bill’s wife. The next morning, we squished five people and their luggage into a mini-van and took off [...]
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