Wilderman Family (2) - Colonists & Pioneers

Part 2 - West, Into the Frontier
Find Part 1 of the story here . . .

Note, this post has been revised. The original 2-Part Wilderman Family series has been updated and more information has been added. The series has been expanded to 3 Parts with most of the new information found in Part 3.

In 1751, Jacob Wilderman and Johann Meyer left their small village in Baden, Germany and came to Colonial America. Among the 20 or so in their party were Johann Meyer's wife and four children, including daughter Elizabetha, who would later become Jacob's wife. They lived in Pennsylvania and Maryland. This was the home to many of the Pennsylvania Dutch settlers who came to the new world from the Rhine Valley in southern Germany. Jacob and Elizabetha's oldest son, George, grew up in this colonial environment and came of age right during the American Revolution.

Maryland about 1780; Baltimore and Ann Arundel Counties are in the upper center of the map.

Wilderman Family (1) - Colonists & Pioneers

Part 1 - German Colonist is the New Word

Note, this post has been revised. The original 2-Part Wilderman Family series has been updated and more information has been added. The series has been expanded to 3 Parts, with most of the new information found in Part 3.

There is a lot of German ancestry in my blood, on both my mom's and dad's side of the family. They are from many different parts of Germany and most settled in the Midwest (namely Wisconsin) in the middle of the 19th Century. The Kahl, Ostenberg and Bilse families were in Blue Mounds; the Goth family in Middleton, the Hermann family in Verona; the Goldner family in Chicago (possibly via Michigan); and the Pazel and Ebersold families, also in Chicago. These are typical of the ethnic Europeans that came to American in waves from the 1840s right through to the first World War. There is, however, another German family in my ancestry that came to America much earlier. They arrived before the country existed and settled in the British Colonies in the middle of the 18th century.

Colonial Philadelphia Street Scene.

David Hermann - Arrived - Part 1

Note, this post has been revised. The original David Hermann article has been updated and more information has been added. Because of its length, it has also been split into two parts. There is some new information in the report below, but most of the new stuff is in Part 2.


Part 1 - Mecklenburg, the 'old country'

My Mom's Great Grandfather, Friedrich David Julius Hermann, who went by the name David, came to America and settled in Dane County, Wisconsin in the summer of 1862. I did not know of him prior to starting my family research and I don't think my mom did either. His story is a typical immigrant saga and he arrived around the same time as a number of my northern and central European ancestors.

Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1856. The Goth
and Hermann families came from the northeast area of Mecklenburg.

Peterson - Moe . . . What's in a Name?

Did my great-great grandfather, Ole Peterson, ever have the last name Moe and how is "Moe" a Norwegian name anyway? Don't all Norwegian names end with son . . . like Peterson, Olsen, Johnson, etc? Ole Peterson's father was Peter Olsen Moe so why wasn't Ole also named Moe? For the answer to these and other questions, read on.

The naming of individuals and families in Norway prior to the 20th century seems to hearken back to a more primitive time when one was named after their father or perhaps a place they were from, rather than carrying a common "family" name. In that system, names change every generation. At first, this can be very confusing but in actuality, the Norwegian naming process is fairly straight-forward once you get use to its particular quirky-ness.

Ode to the Genealogist

"No evil-minded person ever felt any interest in his ancestors, or made any efforts to rescue their History from oblivion."

That is a pretty powerful and somewhat provocative statement! The quote is part of a tribute to the genealogist I came across a few years ago. I re-read it recently and decided to share it with whoever might look at this blog. The tribute was in the introduction to a book about the Buell Family. This was (is) an ancient family that settled in New England as part of the Puritan migration in the 1630s. The book is typical of the family histories and genealogies written by a family researcher (or other party) in the late 19th century. In this case, the book was compiled by Albert Welles, the President of something called the 'American College for Genealogy Registry, Family History and Heraldry' and was published by the society in New York in 1881.

The Goldners of Chicago - Finding a Lost Family 2

PART 2 – Three C's (Chicago, Census and Cemeteries)
Find Part 1 of this story here . . .

Chicago is a wonderland and when I first moved here, I spent a lot of time exploring the city. I would walk the neighborhoods I lived near, explore the loop and surrounding areas, drive the boulevards and visit some of the nearer suburbs (older towns that were once farther away from the city). I sometimes thought about the Goldners and my great-grandfather, where they might have lived, the parts of the city they inhabited. This was before I had begun my family search and I wasn’t sure how to find anything more. I didn’t know much about genealogy, there was no internet and although my grandfather was still alive, he was in South Carolina and had left Chicago as a young boy some 70 years earlier. I seemed to have very few resources available to me . . . or at least that is what I thought. But I was wrong, some clues did exist.


Goldner / Ebersold / Roth residence and Cemetery locations
on the south Side of Chicago (current map)

The Goldners of Chicago - Finding a Lost Family 1

PART 1 – Connections


The Goldners of Chicago are one of the lines in my family. Although I consider every ancestor important, this line has some particular interest for me because my great-grandmother (Louise Goldner) was very special to my father and played an important role in his life. Even so, I didn’t really know that much about the family, beyond that. After I came to Chicago to live, I started to become more interested in finding out more. Sometime in the mid-90’s the search began, albeit in a fairly modest way. I should preface this report by stating that I do not know of anyone with the name Goldner (my relations) that still reside in Chicago. There are probably some family members, distant cousins perhaps, with other surnames still around but, as of yet, I have not connected with any of them.

Louis Goldner, the father of Louise Goldner;
photo was probably taken in Oak Park, Illinois.

New Discoveries are Delightful

My genealogy research is pretty casual these days. A couple of years ago I was really gung-ho and eating up the information as fast as I could find it. You might say I was in serious discovery mode. Things started off slow, floundered for a few years, then the flood gates broke open again and I went crazy once more. At some point, you start running out of information . . . or at least information that is easy to find. So now it has become slower. There are certainly many things I could do to fill in some of the missing information, close some of the gaps and get more detail but right now, I am content to sit back and take it slow. Too many other things going on that are consuming my time. But I still find new discoveries delightful and when I find one, I still get that tingly feeling from head to toe.