“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.”
Grosspold Family Book My grandmother kept a photo of her hometown church tucked into the hymnbook she brought with her from Romania. No wonder. That church was more than just a place of worship. It was the repository [...]
About the time Josef Gärtz received his Military Draft Summons (see Drafted 100 years ago), this photo was taken of my grandmother, Elisabetha, (known most often as “Lisi”). It was stored with other old photographs in an envelope on which she listed the [...]
The summer before Josef wrote his sweet postcard to Lisi (see Can Love Last 100 Years?), he had received a written notice not nearly as delightful. A scan is at the left. It was the first page in a notebook onto [...]
Funny thing about love. We know it when we feel it. We know it when we see it. I can see it in this postcard, mailed one hundred years ago today, November 18, 1910, by Josef Gärtz to his sweetheart, [...]
My family’s ancestral roots are in Transylvania—known more for its Dracula legend than the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans, like my father’s parents, who had made it their home beginning in the twelfth century. One hundred years ago, my [...]