IGGC 2019...An Inspired Gathering Of Cousins!

Guten Tag, Freunde!

Earlier this month, from the 15th to 17th of June, the second International German Genealogy Conference (IGGC) of the International German Genealogy Partnership (IGGP) was held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Sacramento. This post is my review of the conference, but my viewpoint cannot be considered completely unbiased, because I am a board member of the host organization, the Sacramento German Genealogy Society (SGGS). The high regard in which I hold the organizers of this IGGC colors my review. I had helped a little with publicity for the conference but was not directly involved with its planning.

First, I must commend the organizers for their choice of venue. The location of the Hyatt Regency was ideal for the conference. The hotel is right across the street from the beautiful Capitol Park that surrounds our impressive State Capitol Building. A number of fascinating museums, Old Sacramento, the California State Library and Archives, the Historic City Cemetery, and several other historic sites are a short distance away from the Hyatt, accessible by light rail or even on foot.

The California State Capitol Building (Photo by California State Parks)

The Friday before the conference, June 14th, there were tours organized to some of the local attractions. I had the joy of escorting a group out to the Historic City Cemetery for a tour. The weather that day was perfect for such an excursion, and we genealogists are well known to be enthusiastic about cemeteries, so we all had a lovely time there.

Sacramento Historic City Cemetery (Photo by CSvBibra, Wikimedia Commons)

Friday evening, there was a Biergarten reception at the Sacramento Turn Verein, a beautiful German cultural center that is a real treasure with a rich history (read about it here: http://sacramentoturnverein.com/history/). It includes a library and several social areas complete with beer taps. The regular activities at the Sacramento Turn Verein include festivals, German language lessons, sports clubs, and music and dance groups. I did not attend the Biergarten, but I have visited the Turn Verein on many happy occasions. Musicians from the Turn Verein provided wonderful entertainment throughout the conference, including the skillful blowing of an Alpine horn at the opening session!

Speaking of the opening Plenary Session, at 7:45 a.m. on Saturday the 15th, the IGGC wasted no time drawing us into the rich German pioneer history of California, with visits from living-history figures that included Civil War soldiers, frontiers-men and -women, and the proprietor of that famous fort, John Sutter, himself!

All three days of the IGGC, there were wonderful keynote speakers over lunch, and I had made reservations to be at all three. Saturday's keynote was presented by IGGP and SGGS President Ingeborg Carpenter, a native of Germany with first-hand knowledge of the American immigrant experience. Her living-history characterization, in full costume, of a German woman in San Francisco and Sacramento during the Gold Rush was compelling and beautiful. It was my favorite of the three keynotes, which is saying something, because the other two speakers were the wonderful and immensely knowledgeable Michael Lacopo and Roger Minert! Dr Lacopo spoke about push and pull factors that brought Germans to America during the 18th Century, and Dr Minert offered details about German marriage and courtship practices that covered three centuries. So glad I attended them all!

A quick review of the food served by the Hyatt: The salads were excellent (fortunately) and so were the desserts (unfortunately). The house wines were good, and the cheese/cracker/fruit hors d'oeuvres for a reception were very nice. I was underwhelmed by the entrees, except for one that was a chicken Caesar salad. At the banquet Sunday night, the entree would have been fine, except everything on the plate was covered by a glaze that made me gag. I scraped off the glaze and ate some of it (the combination of German and Scottish blood in me detests waste). It would have been good without the glaze. Sauces on the side, people!

The speaker for the banquet was marvelous! I don't have her name written down, but I recall that she is an anthropologist who specializes in historic dress and has participated in living history at Sutter's Fort. She made her presentation in frontier-era dress that featured bloomers and stays (like a corset), discussing reasons and methods for wearing her outfit. It was very entertaining as well as fascinating!

It was rather difficult to choose sessions to attend during the day, because there were so many terrific choices! I decided to go hear mostly speakers I had not heard before, and of those my favorites were Wolfgang Grams (on German American migration), Ben Hollister (on German one-name studies), Nathan Machula (on researching provinces in the East), and Ute Brandenburg (on the travel companions of immigrants). I did attend presentations by familiar speakers, though, and I especially liked James Beidler's talk on German-Language newspapers (his new book on newspapers is a must-read!) and Bill Cole's session on storytelling and writing techniques.

This IGGC was of moderate size, but the hallways and small rooms that housed the society and vendor tables were not overly crowded. Of the vendors, I had particularly interesting chats with Michael Provard of FamilySearch and Mike Mansfield of MyHeritage, both of whom gave highly informative talks about their websites that I'm glad to have attended.

The first IGGC, which I did not attend, was held in 2017 in Minnesota. Every attendee from whom I heard descriptions of that conference stated that there had been a sense of "family reunion" there. At this second IGGC, I had a strong feeling of being surrounded by cousins, too. More than at any other genealogy conference I have attended, the mood was warmly collaborative and not a bit competitive. Not once did I feel as though I needed to get away from the people. I was drawn to them, and we all had beautiful experiences and exciting ideas to share. For me, the 2019 IGGC in Sacramento was a meaningful and memorable experience filled with learning and fun. 

When it was announced that the 2021 IGGC is slated to take place in Cincinnati, my excitement could not be contained. The breeding grounds of my mother's family, including the German line, from pioneer days forward, have surrounded the city of Cincinnati. I have been going back there to visit cousins and do research in the Fall for the last couple of years and plan to go back there this year, too. It will be great to be there with even more German cousins from around the world in 2021. Hope I will be able to convince a few of them to join me at Skyline for a plate of Cincinnati chili over spaghetti (what my mother called "chili-skett")!

A plate of Cincinnati-style chili. Looks good, doesn't it?

(Photo by Valereee, Wikimedia Commons)

Here's to many beautiful Summer hikes, without wildfires!

--Annie

"Man reist nicht, um anzukommen, sondern um zu reisen (You do not travel to arrive, but to travel)." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A DNA Breakthrough and Conference News

Welcome back, Readers!

Summer has not yet arrived on the calendar, but the heat wave we are experiencing in the Bay Area has aided my transition into full Summer mode! With another Midwestern road trip slated for September, lots of on-site research planning is happening at my desk. This year, a perk has been added to my back-east wanderings: my sister Denise and her husband Frank have bought a house in Arkansas! I already miss their former mountain home-base in Bishop, California, but now I have a great place for extended pit-stops on journeys to Cincinnati and beyond, with the added bonus of spending time with my wonderful sister and brother-in-law!

Frank preparing to give Denise "bunny ears." 

They are wonderfully insane. Can't wait to see them again!

Dismantling Some Masonry
One of the proverbial "brick walls" with which I have been contending in recent years involves my 2nd great-grandfather, John Thomas "JT" Romans. According to family legend, in 1858 JT's mother Angelina Romans had a late-teenage tryst with a boy named Tom Ford and found herself to be with child. Soon after his roll in the hay with Angelina, Tom Ford left town, supposedly to visit Europe.

The Romans family had a farm in Owen County, Kentucky at the time, and they had a good many neighbors with the surname Ford, who appear to have been rather well-to-do for the area, based on documents and county histories I have found. Perusal of the Federal Census of 1850 for Owen County showed one person named Thomas Ford, the son of Harbin (misspelled "Harlin") and Anna (spelled "Ann") Ford. One of the Owen County histories mentioned that young Tom, his mother Anna, and his sister Laura moved to Frankfort soon after the 1853 death of Harbin Ford so that Tom could attend a private school there. 

There continued to be a heavy Ford-family presence in Owen County following the relocation of Harbin's household, and those family ties are the basis for my suspicion that the widow and children of Harbin Ford made a number of 20-mile trips back to Owen County in the years following their move to Frankfort. It is possible that one of those visits provided the opportunity for this Tom Ford to get together with Angelina.

Due diligence required that I search for another possible baby-daddy named Tom Ford, so I dissected 1850 and 1860 census records for Owen County looking for clues that could lead to another Tom Ford but found no one else by that name. A search of census records for surrounding counties yielded only our original suspect living in Frankfort with his mother and sister in 1860.

Other neighbors of the Romans clan included the Martin family. They had a son named Elisha who must have been a generous young man, because he married Angelina in 1860, less than a year following the birth of little JT. In the 1860 census, the household of Elisha and Angelina Martin included JT, with the assumed surname of Martin. It may have been Elisha's intent to adopt and help raise JT. I've noticed that distantly related genealogy hobbyists who have included our Romans family in their trees have assumed that Elisha Martin was JT's biological father, but those of us who are JT's direct descendants have not believed that to be the case. 

Thomas B. Ford, left (Register of the KY State Historical Society, vol. 41, p 11)

and John Thomas Romans, right (from a family photo dated 1909)

In 1863, with JT only four years old, Angelina died and Elisha Martin volunteered for the Confederate Army. JT was left in the care of his grandparents, Shelton and Malinda Romans, in whose household he appeared on the 1870 census. When Elisha Martin returned from the war, he married Angelina's younger sister Zilpha and had a number of children with her, including a daughter they named Adeline, which had been Angelina's nickname.

JT's Romans grandparents had passed away by 1880. JT does not appear in the households of either Elisha and Zilpha Martin or Tom Ford in the 1880 census. 
In 1882, JT married his first wife Corinthia in a neighboring county. Corinthia died in 1888 without any surviving children that I have located. In 1889 he married my 2nd great-grandmother, Amanda Petty. 

JT and Amanda remained in northern Kentucky and raised a large family, including my great-grandmother Daisy. Census records state he worked as a farm laborer then later as a carpenter. JT fell victim to a common scourge of his time, tuberculosis, and died in a TB asylum in Texas at age 62. The informant for his death certificate was either Mrs. or Miss Anna Romans (wife Amanda's name might have been mistakenly written as "Anna," and he had a daughter named Anna), who evidently gave the name "Tom" as his father's name, which was written on the certificate as "Tom Romans." His mother's name was given as "Adeline Romans," using Angelina's nickname.

Next, I embarked upon a deeper study of our suspected paternal Tom Ford, whose full name was Thomas Benton Ford. Mr. Ford continued to reside in Frankfort following his schooling and became an attorney. He was also a published author of poetry and prose, as was his sister Laura. Because he was a man of some notoriety, I was able to find an article about him and Laura in a 1943 issue of the Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society, as well as mention of him and his family in a book entitled Owen County, Kentucky: History and Families. From these and a few other sources, I have been able to glean quite a bit of fascinating information about Thomas B. Ford, but no hints that he had left behind an illegitimate child in Owen County. 

The search for DNA evidence of paternity was my next step. Our Tom Ford did marry and by this wife had a son named Ellis, who died as a young adult without leaving any known children behind. Laura Ford married late in life and does not appear to have had any children, either. Tom and Laura were Harbin Ford's children by his second wife. Fortunately, Harbin's daughter Elizabeth by his first wife has had a long string of progeny, the lines of which I have traced down well into the 20th century. Ancestry DNA came to the rescue here, yielding two living cousin matches: One a half 5th cousin (male) and the other a half 4th cousin once removed (female), both descendants of Tom's half-sister Elizabeth!

These DNA matches constitute my first concrete piece of evidence that Thomas Benton Ford may be my 3rd great-grandfather. At the very least, it appears I have located the family of the mysterious Tom Ford. Research continues.

Recent L.A. Jamboree and upcoming Sacramento German Conference
A couple of weeks ago, I made one of my customary treks to the Los Angeles area to visit family and sneak in some research at the L.A. Central Library, one of my favorite haunts (see my article about it in the California Genealogical Society blog: The Genealogy Collection at Los Angeles Central Library). My time was limited, but I had to go check out the feted Genealogy Jamboree that was taking place in Burbank. I signed up for their free sessions on Friday morning, which were terrific, and had a chance to peruse the society and merchant booths.

Besides the free Friday sessions, Jamboree has a free mobile app that is very similar to the one that Roots Tech has. Like the Roots Tech app, you can use the Jamboree app to download all of the handouts from Jamboree sessions, whether or not you paid for or attended any of them! It's important to keep in mind that both Roots Tech and Jamboree make the handouts available for personal use only!

This coming weekend is especially exciting for many of us who do German genealogical research, because we will be enjoying the International German Genealogy Conference, which is being held in Sacramento, only a 2-hour drive from home! Of course, I will be writing about it on this very blog!

Annie

"Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei (Everything has an end, only the sausage has two)." -- German expression