Grandma Minnie in Stories and Pictures

My great grandmother Minnie (Minna Anna Louise (Papstein) Depperman, 1888-1985) has always been something of an enigma to me.  She was in her 80's when I was born and I was only 15 when she passed away at the age of 98.  She lived all of her life in northern Illinois (with the exception of her birth in Germany -- she was 1 year old when she arrived in the US) and I lived only my first seven years in northern Illinois before moving to southern Illinois for four years and then on to Texas.  After the age of 11 I only saw my Grandma Minnie twice more before her death.  We never did get a chance to sit down and have any sort of meaningful conversation.  I wish we had. The stories she could have told me!

Grandma Minnie, her famous "upstairs" (to the right) and homey kitchen

I knew that she'd raised my mother after my mother's parents divorced, and that my mother thought of her more as a mother than as a grandmother. My own personal memories of her are few, honestly; I only clearly remember her spending time with me one on one once (though I'm sure there were plenty more times that I don't recall.)  I remember sitting on Grandma Minnie's lap and she would hand me her Vick's Inhaler, letting me sniff it to my heart's content!  Otherwise I remember playing at her house quite a bit but I'm sure I spent much more time in her basement and on her front porch than I did with her.  She was probably busy cooking and conversing with the other adults.  I remember she forbade me to go upstairs so of course the banishment made me ache to sneak up and see what all the fuss was about!  I do recall sneaking up one day and seeing a row of bedrooms and not much else, all perfectly straight and neat and clean, like they weren't even lived in! -- before I was too scared to stay any longer and snuck back down.

I most remember thrilling to her dark, dank basement, so unlike the basements that I was used to in the metropolitan Chicago area I grew up in.  She would let me play down there because it was basically an empty room with a lot of space to run circles in (which I did!)  I clearly remember climbing down the stairs and seeing an old 1930's washing machine in the right corner of the basement near the cistern and, above that, a picture of a young boy in an ornate oval frame.  When I asked who it was I remember Grandma Minnie saying it was a "picture of my boy that died."  The boy was Alvin Friedrich Depperman, who was born around 1909 and died about 1912.  I was fascinated by the picture.  The little boy's eyes followed me wherever I went but I wasn't frightened of it.  I often stopped playing long enough to look at it longingly.  I wanted to touch it, but it was too high...and I knew better.  My mother always told me that in Grandma Minnie's house I was not to touch anything and to make sure that everything I got out was put back exactly as I found it.

Often when the family would get together I would stand in the front room looking at a picture that was always near the German bible that Grandma Minnie had on her end table.  It was of a handsome calvaryman standing in front of a row of Lipizzaner stallions.  Grandma Minnie told me that the man was her father when he was training those stallions for the Kaiser.  I didn't know who the Kaiser was -- the only Kaiser I ever knew was a Roll, ha! -- but of course now I know that it was Kaiser Wilhelm I, the King of Prussia from 1861 to 1888.  My g-g-grandfather August Karl Papstein wa in the cavalry in the early to mid-1880's and must've been a skilled trainer if he was chosen to work with the prized Lipizzaners (see more about these beautiful horses here)!  Unfortunately all these pictures -- the oval frame of Alvin, the handsome man in the cavalry uniform -- and the Bible, are all lost to us now.  Likely they were sold in a sale my Grandma Minnie's family had when she had to go into a nursing home so they could pay for her care.  Grrr!

It's been very interesting to me to look at pictures of Grandma Minnie.  The pictures I have of her are for the most part taken long after she raised her children and became a grandmother.  Recently a cousin sent me a picture of my Grandma Minnie taken when she was only 10-12 years old.  I love it! I post it here.  It was likely taken about 1900.  Minnie (the eldest girl) is posing with her parents, August Karl Papstein (1864-1946) and his wife Anna Marie Louise Koehn (1868-1952), her brother Otto and little sister Clara.  Goodness but when my younger brother was a boy, he sure did look like Otto in this picture!

Tragedy was just around the corner for the family, however.  August and Anna had already lost two infants before this picture was taken.  Otto never did get a chance to grow up -- he was born in September of 1891 but died between 1900-1910 and was buried in an unmarked plot next to his parents in the Peotone (Will Co. IL) Cemetery.  Clara was born in December of 1896, married Earl Laroche around 1918, and died in 1920.  She too was buried in the Peotone Cemetery.  August and Anna would go on to have three more children before 1910 (Louis b. 1901, Elsie b. 1905 and Frank b. 1909.) Then there was a lapse -- Anna was 44 upon Frank's birth -- and then perhaps....just PERHAPS....another came along. 

Grandma Minnie in 1918

I say perhaps because I have heard two distinct stories about this last child's parentage in my family.  A boy named Edwin Papstein was born on 10 Oct 1915.  Edwin was developmentally impaired (perhaps Down's, though the nature of his developmental issues has not been passed down.) As to whose son he was?  Well, if he was Anna's she was 48 when  he was born.  That's not beyond the realm of possibility, but it is a stretch one would think?  Anyway, the other story was that Edwin was Clara's son, born out of wedlock to Clara and an unknown man.  Clara would have been 18 if this is true.  As it is, I cannot locate Edwin or Clara on the 1920 census.  Clara was to die in 1920 and if Edwin was hers, it is not surprising that her parents took him in to raise him.  Edwin is, perhaps tellingly, NOT in the household of August and Anna in 1920 although their other children are.  This isn't definitive, however; they could have placed him in some sort of facility because in 1930 Edwin is found in the Illinois Institute for Feeble Minded Children in Lincoln in Logan Co., IL.  This place was also called variously the "Lincoln State School and Colony," the "Lincoln Developmental Center" and the "Lincoln State School."  In 1940 Edwin is living with August and Anna and is listed as their "son," though a biographical paper written by my grandma Minnie on the occasion of August and Anna's 50th wedding anniversary in 1937 did not mention Edwin at all.  So....until I can order Edwin's death certificate (he died in 1983 and is buried in the Peotone Cemetery) I am simply theorizing here.  It's fun to do that though!

My grandma Minnie married Franz Herman Depperman in 1904 and they had seven children.  Franz died in 1955 and Grandma Minnie went on and lived by herself until her death in 1985.   This last picture was taken on their 50th wedding anniversary in 1954.  It is Grandma Minnie and Grandpa Franz and their children (from left to right) Frederick Walter Depperman, Herman August Albert Depperman, Anna Henrietta Bertha (Depperman) Schannon Onkin, Alfred Eric Depperman, and Franklin Louis Depperman (my grandfather.)

Grandma Minnie was a fiesty and opinionated woman and the stories my mother tells me keeps her alive.  I sure hope that the recent finds I've made on this side of the family will shed some more light on her ancestors.  These Germans (Prussians) have been too long in the dark for me!

Finally.....a few Papsteins!

As I mentioned last week, my plans were to start using OneNote as an organizational tool for my Browning family. I have begun that and I'm in love with it so far.

But life, in the words of the immortal John Lennon, is what happens when you're busy making other plans.  Life brought me a few awesome tidbits this week which have sent me spinning off into my German families.  It's so much at once that I'm afraid I'll have to post more than once about it.

I've spoken before of the ridiculously small amount of knowledge I have about my mother's Prussian roots.  Her family didn't share information or pass down much in the way of history and anything that my great-grandmother Minna Anna Louise (Papstein) Depperman ever had was lost when it was all placed in a sale to help fund her last days in a nursing home.

Johannah Amelia (Papstein) Hoff

Recently, however, that's started to change.  The last couple months have brought quite a bit of extra knowledge my way.  When I was first entering into a serious study of my family's genealogy in the early 1990's I found a Popstein family (the anglicized version of Papstein) descended from my g-grandmother Minna's youngest brother, Francis Frederick Ferdinand Papstein.  Frank, born in 1909, was 20 years younger than my g-grandmother was.  He moved to New York state in the 1950's and raised his family there.  I corresponded with Frank's youngest daughter Marie for a few years.  Marie and I are first cousins twice removed and we are only seven years apart in age even though her father was of the same generation as my g-grandmother. 

Out of the blue a few nights ago I get an email from Marie's elder brother.  He sent me a map of the Pommern area of Germany and mentioned that our common ancestor (my g-g-grandfather and his grandfather August Karl Papstein, b. 6 Sep 1864 in Neu Labenz, Kreiß Dramburg, Hinterpommern, Prussia (which is now Poland) had a much older sister named Johannah Amelia Papstein, born in June of 1848.  The news itself didn't surprise me because I've always assumed August had siblings (and his obituary said he had a twin sister) but I was surprised to learn that he was one of the younger siblings in his family.  I was also a bit surprised because I didn't figure I ever would know any of his siblings.  I assumed many of them were still in Germany and were lost to me.

While I scurried to Ancestry and finally found Johannah Amelia Papstein after a rather diligent search, I received another email from my cousin who'd told me about Johannah.  He sent me a few pictures, one of which I was especially thrilled with!  My next post will be all about this picture and some of the things he and I have spoken about and I can't wait to share that. This post, though, is about Johannah. 

When I learned that Johannah was born in June of 1848 it occurred to me that, as incredible as it may seem, my cousin Marie (and her brother, the cousin I just mentioned who sent me the picture) has an AUNT born 164 years ago!  Wow! They have me beat.  My eldest aunt was only born in 1887.

Anyway, I learned that Johannah Amelia was born in or around Labenz in Kreiß Dramburg, Hinterpommern, Prussia (which is now Poland.)  I began a correspondence with the author of the tree containing Johannah and Albert and their descendants.  Turns out she and I are 4th cousins since our great-great-grandparents (August and Johannah) were siblings.  We exchanged info back and forth -  she let me know that Johannah had married Albert A.J. Hoff there around 1870 and they had at least three children that she knew of - and then they decided to emigrate to America.

Wilhelmina (Koplen) Papstein

I went on the hunt for any passenger lists that might show when Johannah and Albert came to America.  I found them after only a bit of digging and I found some more info besides. Who knows why the couple chose to travel separately but it appears that they did -- Albert came first to New York aboard the "India" in March of 1885 and Johannah and their living children (Anna, August, Emma, Bertha and Martha) followed soon thereafter.  They traveled aboard the "California" and arrived in New York City on 15 Jun 1885.  Johannah listed her destination as Peotone in Will Co., IL.

On the lists were the names of three additional children my cousin did not know about!  I looked at the 1900 census for Albert and Johannah in Kankakee Co., IL and it stated she was the mother of nine, with six of those still living. By the time we put the passenger list together with the census records, we determined that their chidren were Anna (1872), unknown (c1874-bef 1885), unknown (c1876-bef 1885), August (c1877), Emma (1879), Bertha (1881), Martha (1883), unknown (c1886-bef 1900), and Albert (1887).

But I'm sure by now you've noticed the pictures.  Oh my!  This was the best!  She sent me the picture of Johannah that you see posted here but not only did she have a picture of Johannah, she had a picture....of her MOTHER!

I know I squealed.  Hah!

Up until now, I have had no information about Friedrich Papstein and his wife Wilhelmina Koplen/Kopplin/Koplin, other than their names. Yet there Wilhelmina was on my cousin's tree, austerely peering at me from underneath her great white bonnet.  I see my g-grandmother Minna in her eyes.  I asked my cousin about the pictures but she doesn't know if they came from Germany or were done here in the states.  However, she did say she obtained them from her great aunt and that all of them were huge 16x20s, 'seemingly done at one time.'   

I post them here hoping that one of my readers will take a look at these and help me date them.  I 'think' I have a relatively good idea as to the date of Johanna's picture (the one posted at the front of this post).)  Firstly, she is wearing a memory charm housing a picture of a child, perhaps a young boy.  Her collar is high and her dress mourning black with a simple stripe of decorative gathering along the sides.  It's hard to judge by her hairstyle since she likely wears it as she did when she was younger but the age she looks (in her 40s) the dress and the high collar makes me want to date this in the early to mid 1880's.  She might've had it done prior to leaving for America or when she arrived to send back to family.

Now to the picture of Wilhelmina.  I've studied this one and the more I look at it, the more it seems that this is an older picture, re-done.  Perhaps Johanna took it with her when she left to remember her mother by?   Though I don't know.....even though the ornate white tightly looped bonnet, severe hair, and large criss-cross tie make me think this is a picture from the late 1850's-early 1860's, Wilhelmina's age (she was probably b. c1828 or so if Johanna was born 1848) makes me believe it is quite a bit later.  Perhaps the 1880's?  My cousin wondered if it could have been taken at the same time as Johanna's (therefore giving us a clue that Wilhelmina ALSO came to America!) and that is certainly possible, but I really don't know.

What do you all think?

Oh, more pictures soon!

Hallelulah! (or however you say it in German)

Tonight my good friend Suzi (she writes a new genealogy blog here so do go there!) and I were talking genealogy, as we often do when we're together.   I was telling her of my longstanding troubles finding the passenger lists for either of my mother's German grandparents, the Deppermans and the Papsteins.

In the Papstein case (August Karl Papstein, his wife Anna, and their daughter Minna) I have some naturalization records and a story written for their 50th wedding anniversary about how they met and where they lived in Germany (Koslin District, Neu Lobitz/Janicow, Kreiß Dramburg, Hinterpommern, Prussia (now Poland) and what August did (served in the German Cavalry training Lippanzer stallions) and the date that they came over (29 Mar 1889, no sure place where they disembarked, but they ended up in Peotone, Will Co., IL.) I've had no luck finding them in the lists, however.  None.  Grrrr.

Then there was the even trickier one -- my great-grandfather Franz (Frank) Herman Depperman.  Franz ended up marrying Minna, the daughter of August and Anna.)

I'd been looking online for Franz for years, and in books for years before that, with no luck whatsoever.  I told Suzi the little I thought I knew --  that family stories had been that Franz had come over from Germany as a teenager and had spent some time in Pennsylvania as a barber before finding his way to Peotone in Will Co., IL.  As the years passed I wondered if these stories were completely true because I found that his mother Henrietta had died in Peotone, so that meant she'd come over too.  I also learned that she had married at least twice more....once to a Schmidt and once to a Johann Koehn.  She was buried in Peotone next to Johann.

 I'd tried every possible combination of spellings that I could think of to look for Franz and his mother (and for Johann too since the immigration date was 1897 on the 1900 census.) Nothing.

I was convinced that both my German families had just grown wings and flapped over here.

Anyway, Suzi was looking over the lists on Ancestry with me and out of the blue she said,  "Have you tried D-O-E-P-P-E-R-M-A-N-N?"

*blink*  Huh.  No.  No, I hadn't.  I typed it in, and POW!  There it was!  Ta daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I am fairly certain I squealed.

The stories were true or at least partially so.  My great-grandfather didn't come over alone, but he was a teenager, and he came over with his mother and stepfather (mistranscribed as Kolhn) on the ship Switzerland out of Antwerp, Belgium.  Whatever were they doing in Belgium?  They landed in Philadephia, Pennsylvania, in May 1896, and there's the Pennsylvania connection.   They were from either Bramburg or Dramburg -- it's hard to read.  Which one do you think it is?  I hope Dramburg since so were my Papsteins, and even if the two families didn't know each other in Germany (which I wonder about -- Franz's mother-in-law Anna Papstein's maiden name was Koehn!) it allows me to concentrate on one area of Germany for further research.  Their passage was paid for by a man named Ferd/Fred/Ferdinand Nickel, Johann Koehn's son in law.  Is that Johann's daughter's husband from a first marriage, or Henriette's?  Who knows?  Anyway, they were going to join Ferdinand in Peotone.

I looked down the list and saw another teen going to Peotone named Gustav Borwig.  He states he is going to be with his uncle Ferdinand Nickel. So who is Gustav?

Well, I have more avenues of research now.  I will have to find out who all these people are and that'll be fodder for another post.  As it was, I jumped up and gave Suzi a big old hug.

She said, "My bill will be in the mail."

Now THAT'S a debt I'll be happy to pay!  *cue genealogical Happy Dance music*

Anna, Minna and the Remaining Triplets (1918)

It's late and my intended post got inadvertantly deleted, so I'll add a simple picture and make this an almost wordless post (hahahaha, what a joke!) and consider it late as always.

This picture was taken in the late fall or early winter of 1918. The two little boys are the surviving siblings of a set of triplets. The two are my grandfather Franklin Louis Depperman and his brother Frederick Walter Depperman. The picture is not labeled and the notations in white under the picture are my own, but I am pretty sure that my grandfather Franklin is on the left and my g-uncle Frederick is on the right. The third sibling, their sister Florence, had died at six months of age in September 1918 of milk sickness.

Their mother Minna Anna Louise Papstein (1888-1985) is sitting to the right, in mourning black. Minnie had married Franz Herman Depperman (1879-1955), the son of Hermann Depperman and Henrietta Sennhausen, in September of 1904. By the time this picture was taken the couple were the parents of five living and two deceased children. The triplets were the last born.

Minna's mother Anna is sitting to the left. Anna Marie Louise (Koehn) Papstein (1868-1952), the daughter of Johann Koehn and Johanna Vierkow, was born in the Hinterpommern in Prussia (now Poland) and came to the US with her husband August Karl Papstein. August Karl (1864-1946), one of a set of twins himself and the son of Friedrich Papstein and Wilhelmina Koplen, served three years in the Prussian cavalry before his marriage to Anna and trained Lippanzer stallions for Kaiser Wilhelm I prior to his immigration to the US. He married Anna in October 1887 (very soon after he left the cavalry) and the couple had their daughter, Minna, before coming to Will Co., IL in March 1889. August (and by marriage, Anna) were both naturalized in 1894.

My German\Prussian ancestors are a tough bunch to research and locate. I have so little on them in comparison with my father's side of the family. However, I do like this picture. My great-grandmother Minna looks sad because she'd just lost her little girl, but her two remaining boys are adorable!

Naturalization Certificate - August Papstein

Well, I scurried to my local FHC last night to pick up the film containing my 3rd-g-grandfather August Karl Papstein's naturalization certificate that were the focus of this post last week. I was excited when I got there and eagerly rolled the film to the right page. And AhHA! There it was!

I now have a date for his naturalization -- 9 Apr 1894. The wording in the document states, "....has resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for at least five years last past, and at least one year last past within the state of Illinois..."

My great-grandmother, August's daughter Minna Anna Louise Papstein Depperman, was born in Janicow, Kreiß Dramburg, Hinterpommern, Prussia (now Poland) in July 1888. She wrote a short autobiography on notebook paper before her death in 1985 and stated that she had come over with her family in March of 1889. Since April 1894 is consistent with the five year waiting period that the law required, this naturalization certificate's date is also consistent with Minna's statement. August sure didn't wait around to begin the process of becoming a citizen of this county. Finding the two dates match fairly well sure makes me happy!

I don't know who David Christian and James J. McMahon (the two witnesses) were. They may have been friends or relatives or might have simply been employed as witnesses by the court.

I did a little poking around and found that David Christian was living in Kankakee in Kankakee County, IL in 1900 with his wife Cora, son David P. and mother-in-law Sylvia Palmer. David was listed as a traveling shoe salesman. James J. McMahon was listed as "James J. McMann" in the 1900 census. James, his wife Anna, and their children Mary, William, Agnece and Sharlot were living in Peotone in Will County, IL, the same village where August also lived. His occupation at the time was "work in elevator."

The certificate didn't tell me anything else I didn't already know. But that's okay. I have it now, and it's one more piece of August's life.

More Serendipity?

I found two exciting pieces of information last night on one of my elusive German families, the family of August Carl Papstein and his wife Anna Marie Louise Koehn.

I got a call from my local Family History Center letting me know my naturalization index film was in. Unlike the last roll for the Koehns (Anna's parents) this one was a hit! I found August in the index (Vol E, pg 56, Kankakee IL County Court, nat 9 Apr 1894, wit James J. McMahon.)

Of course I ordered the film. I can't wait!

When I arrived home I did some scanning and in the course of the work I had to go looking for another piece of information for another family in an old box of loose papers my mother gave me some time ago. In doing so I ran across some photocopies of four small pages of torn-out notebook paper. And here I thought I'd looked through that box!

The four small pages were a small biography on August and his wife! They were written on the occasion of an "anniversary" and the wording implied that they were "honored guests." The end of the sheets wished them more happy anniversaries and mentioned they had two great grandchildren. After a turn in my database I saw the two grandchildren (David Depperman and Florence Schannon) were born 1922 and 1936. This narrowed the time frame of the writing down to after 1936. As August and Anna would have celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on 16 Oct 1937 and August died before their 60th anniversary in 1947, I believe I can say with some measure of authority that these small sheets of paper were written on the occasion of the party in honor of their 50th anniversary.

Ah, the information I've learned from these sheets! August was born 6 Sept 1864 in "Drumberg" Germany (other sources are more specific -- he was born in the Koslin District, Neu Lobitz, Kreiß Dramburg, Hinterpommern, Prussia (now part of Poland) and was one of a set of twins! He was confirmed on 28 Sept 1878. His father's name was Friedrich/Frederick Papstein. He served 3 years in the calvary before marrying Anna (on 16 Oct 1887) soon after his discharge. Anna (see left, picture taken one month before her death in 1952) was the daughter of Johann/John Koehn and was confirmed on 17 Apr 1881. He and Anna arrived in America on 29 Mar 1889.

Again with the serendipity! I was just doing some research on this family when poof! and I find another hidden gem. I must have a very friendly and generous Genealogy Fairy. I wonder what they eat so I can make sure he/she/it comes back again? :D

Madness Monday - All My Germans

Of late I've become more and more drawn to research my mother's father's German side of the family. When Randy Seaver had us list our Sweet 16 a few weeks ago the listing made me realize how little I knew about that side. There are many reasons for that, of course; some that involve distance (geographically and emotionally) and others that don't belong in a public forum. Suffice to say that my mother's father's side of the family were the stereotypical taciturn Germans.

My mother's parents divorced when she was an infant. Her mother Clementine initially tried to gain custody of her children (my mother and her elder brother) and when that failed, she tried to gain visitation with the same result. My grandfather, my mother and her brother moved in with his mother Minna after the divorce and Minna became my mother's surrogate mom as well as her grandmother. My mom moved back in with her father when he remarried but that didn't last long; after his second wife became pregnant my mom was told to move back to her grandmother's house. Basically, she was shuttled around. There's a lot more to the story but it doesn't really need to be shared here. The moral is that none of this really fostered any sense of familial closeness.

There's a part of me that mourns this. When I was about seven I spent two summers at my grandfather's house and spent some of those evenings in front of the TV eating ice cream with chocolate sauce, drinking Pepsi, and watching the Cubbies with my aunt. I didn't know at the time that my aunt's mother and my mother's mother weren't the same person because no one in the family ever said anything about it. You just didn't speak about such things. Come to think of it, that sentiment -- buck up, soldier, don't cry, keep your chin up, don't be weak! -- was essentially the attitude of the German side of my family. You couldn't afford to let your guard down, that's for sure.

Still, memories of those two summers stay with me. They are the only times I remember feeling close to my mother's father or any of his immediate family other than Freddie, his brother. I've written about my Uncle Freddie in this post so I won't revisit what he meant to me. I have a few other memories, too -- I remember my great-grandmother Minna would allow me to go down in her basement to play, or to use her Vicks Inhaler. She seemed stern and I would never dream of crossing her but she was sometimes indulgent with me. I suspect it was because I was her "Dolly's" little girl.

When Minna passed away she took a storehouse of memories with her. I was too young to ask her the things about her German ancestors that I should have and to my knowledge there's precious little left from her life. Her children sold most of her things to pay for her last days in a nursing home (she lived to be 98) and whatever was left was parceled out amongst the kids or thrown away. I remember she kept a huge portrait of Alvin, the son she had that died young, in her basement. She had a beautiful big bible written in German that had been brought over from Germany by her parents. By the Bible she always kept a picture of her father in his red German calvary uniform, posed next to the Lippanzer stallions he trained for Kaiser Wilhelm I.

All these things -- it seems -- are gone. At least all my inquiries as to their possible locations have come to naught.

It wasn't until I was about nine that I learned there was another woman in this story. My mother took me along with her to meet a woman in a mobile home park and I played and quietly watched the two older boys that were also there while the two women talked. I was told this woman was my mother's mother -- my grandmother Clementine. I've written about her in the past in this post. I remember only being curious and a bit confused about the relationship but it must've been a very emotional time for my mom. That visit marked the first and last time she ever met her mother. By that time Clementine had remarried and had gone on to have five more children -- my mother's half-siblings.

After their meeting the two corresponded for a few years or so but Clementine eventually stopped writing and the cessation wounded my mother deeply. I remember hearing my parents speak of it in their room (yes, I was a nosy child -- surely a personality trait of any good genealogist?) and the pain in my mom's voice. As an adult I've spoken to her about that time and she said she never understood why her mother stopped writing. I wish I had an answer for her but the same thing happened to me. I decided to try to locate Clementine again after I had my own daughter in the early 90's. She and I wrote back and forth for a few months (her letters to me remarkably resembling those she wrote to my mother two decades earlier) and then the letters stopped.

In the late 90's I managed to locate her nephew, who by happy coincidence lived fairly close to me. We went to dinner at his house once and he gave me photos and shared some memories. One of the most important ones to me was his rememberence of a picture on his "Aunt Tootie's" mantlepiece of a flaxen-haired baby girl in a pink dress (see picture at right.) He said as a boy he'd always wondered who that little girl was. I told him I had a copy of that picture and it was my mother.

It seems to me that in her way Clementine did mourn her lost children and I'm sure she was ashamed of her inability to go up against the force that was my great-grandmother Minna. I don't think she knew how to move past those mistakes and embrace her older daughter while simultaneously managing to maintain the children she had with her second husband. I think her desire to love us was stronger than her actual ability to do so. I don't hold anything against her for these things -- people are what they are and the past shapes them. Then again, I think I probably have the luxury of feeling that way about it because she wasn't my mother.

I found out one day last year that Clementine died in 2002 by putting her name into the social security death index.

Anyway, back to the purpose of this post -- the madness that is the entire German side of my family. I had names of the places they were all supposed to be from that -- until this last week -- I'd never been able to find! Incidentally, one of my most promising discoveries is that none of them would be considered "Germans" any longer if they'd stayed put in the villages they came from. Many borders have changed since the late 1880's. They'd be Polish now. (Yes, I know, grandma Minna, I can almost hear you rolling about in your grave and saying something about you'd never be Polish, so I'm very sorry about that, hehe!)

I know there are many bumpy roads ahead of me. I've never done this sort of research before so it's uncharted territory. I have maddening issues, of course. Alternate spellings of all the surnames (Papstein, Depperman, Koplen, Koehn, Sanglam/Sennhousen, Schultz, Vierkow) abound. A death certificate I have is faded in the exact place where names of parents are. I have no idea what ports any of them came through when they got here. Passenger index searches have come up empty even though in one case I have an exact immigration date. (Maybe I'm not looking in the right places, though, so when I discovered recently that a few of them were naturalized I ordered naturalization indices. Waiting on them now.)

Funny story of a convoluted relationship I've found in this family: one of my 3rd g-grandmother Henrietta's sons (Franz) married her step-granddaughter Minna. That makes Franz and Minna's children both Henrietta's grandchildren AND her step-great-grandchildren. How messed up is that!

In the coming weeks I'll be posting some of what I'm beginning to discover. I'm growing excited about all of it. I do love a good challenge. It's a good thing I do, too, or my hair would be all over the floor on a daily basis!

Freddie & Frank (1923)

The word prompt for the 11th Edition of Smile For The Camera is brothers & sisters. Were they battling brothers, shy little sisters, or was it brother & sister against the world? Our ancestors often had only their siblings for company. Were they best friends or not? Show us that picture that you found with your family photographs or in your collection that shows your rendition of brothers & sisters.

My submission is to the right -- it's a picture of my grandfather Franklin Louis Depperman and his brother, my great-uncle Frederick Walter Depperman. Frank is on the left and Freddie is on the right. It was taken in 1923, probably in Joliet, IL but perhaps in Peotone in Will County, IL.

Look at the picture. Aren't those sailor suits grand! The buttons and the lace-up boots, as well as the ball my grandfather is holding. I don't know what my great-uncle is holding but it looks like a diploma, or maybe a map? Or maybe just a piece of paper. What I love most about this photo is the boys themselves. My grandfather looks so serious, my uncle so very impish. Also interesting is though they certainly look like it, the boys weren't twins. Well, okay, they were.....kind of. They were actually two members of a set of triplets. They had a sister, Florence, but she died at the age of 6 months.

I've wondered at times if Frank and Freddie were actually identical twins instead of fraternal. I know that the family always said when they were boys the two looked very much alike and people had a hard time telling them apart. This picture does seem to lend truth to that statement! I lean toward the fraternal twin camp, though. As they got older, their differences grew more marked. By the time I knew and remembered them, when they were both in their late 50's/early 60's, they didn't seem to look too much alike to me even though so many people who didn't know them all that well still insisted that they did. But then again, I knew them my whole life. What do you think?

My memories of my grandfather were varied -- stern at times, then somewhat loving and indulgent at others. I would spend summers at his house when I was 7-9 years old and I loved it! I wish I could say he and I stayed close as I got older but we didn't. I tried to reconnect with him a few times over the years but he was far away and he was the penultimate taciturn German. He died in 2004 and I never got to say goodbye.

His brother Fred -- my "Uncle Freddie" -- was another story entirely. He was by far my favorite uncle. His wife (my aunt Elsie) would make fudge and he'd take me to Dunkin' Donuts and White Castle. We'd sit eating Baskin and Robbins ice cream and his belly laugh never ceased to make me happy. He was smiley and jovial and warm and loving in all the ways my grandfather either would not or could not be. He was Yin to my grandfather's Yang. I sure did worship him. He gave me a stuffed bear that I still have to this day and I named him Freddie (I know, I know....not very original!) Fred died in 1984 and I sure do miss him. I miss him still. The memories I have of him are sweet and savory.

So were they identical twins? Hm, I think not. They were so very different.

And oh yes, before I forget! They were the sons of Franz Herman Depperman (b. 1879 in Germany) and Minna Anna Louise Papstein (b. 1888 in Neu Lobitz, Kreiß Dramburg, Hinterpommern, Germany). Franz came to the United States around 1897 and Minna came to the US in 1889. Minna's father August Carl Papstein served in the German calvary and trained Lippanzer stallions to dance for Kaiser Wilhelm I, the King of Prussia from 1861 to 1888.

Franz and Minna were married 16 Sep 1904 in Monee, Will Co., IL. They were the parents of seven children -- Anna, Herman, Alvin, Alfred, Franklin, Frederick, and Florence. All lived to adulthood except for Florence and Alvin. Franz died in 1955 and Minna in 1985.