Latest / Stories That Live In Us / Breaking a 150-Year German Brick Wall (with Jenny Ashcraft) | Episode 130

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Breaking a 150-Year German Brick Wall (with Jenny Ashcraft) | Episode 130 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:00
  Crista Cowan: When we hit a brick wall in our family tree, our natural instinct is to keep pushing harder, heading straight back, trying to find the parents of that ancestor.
• 0:10
  Crista Cowan: It can be so discouraging.
• 0:12
  Crista Cowan: But what if coming forward is actually the secret to going backward?
• 0:16
  Crista Cowan: Today, my dear friend and ancestry colleague, Jenny Ashcraft, returns to the podcast to share how turning her focus from a single ancestor to documenting all 10 of his children and their descendants broke through a 150-year-old German dead end in her tree.
• 0:35
  Crista Cowan: Along the way, she experienced a series of unbelievable miracles that are a beautiful reminder that our ancestors want to be remembered and are probably more willing to help us find them than we sometimes give them credit for.
• 0:48
  Crista Cowan: I can't wait for you to hear Jenny's clever strategy and her pure joy in storytelling.
• 0:53
  Crista Cowan: I just know it's gonna give you a brand new wave of inspiration for your own family history journey.
• 0:59
  Crista Cowan: Enjoy my conversation with Jenny Ashcraft.
• 1:02
  Crista Cowan: Hi, I'm Crista Cowan, and this is the podcast where telling your family stories can help create a deeply connected family.
• 1:11
  Crista Cowan: Welcome to Stories That Live In Us.
• 1:14
  Crista Cowan: Jenny, I'm so glad you're back.
• 1:20
  Crista Cowan: Everybody loved your story the first time.
• 1:22
  Crista Cowan: And uh, as you and I have talked, you have, of course, a plethora of family history stories.
• 1:28
  Crista Cowan: And um, but I would just like to know a little bit more about um just like how you're incorporating family history into your family with your kids, with your grandkids.
• 1:39
  Jenny Ashcraft: Well, I have a little bit of a reputation enough, mom, that's that because I love the stories and I love the stories of my ancestors, and I want to pass that along to my children and my grandchildren because I think those stories bring resilience.
• 1:57
  Jenny Ashcraft: And when you know where you came from and whose shoulders that you stand on, it it's such a richer life.
• 2:06
  Jenny Ashcraft: And and it gives you such an appreciation.
• 2:08
  Jenny Ashcraft: And to me, that it's the gratitude.
• 2:10
  Jenny Ashcraft: I feel so much gratitude for what my ancestors went through for me to be where I am today.
• 2:18
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, and I agree with you completely, but when your kids or grandkids react with enough, like you keep telling the stories, obviously.
• 2:26
  Jenny Ashcraft: I I try, I in you in unique ways, right?
• 2:29
  Jenny Ashcraft: I'll I'll try to find a, you know, an experience that's happening now and relate a story that I've come across.
• 2:36
  Jenny Ashcraft: Or we do have a family group chat and I share stories on there quite a bit.
• 2:41
  Jenny Ashcraft: And and I, you know, I think they tease me that they don't like it, but I think they maybe really do like it.
• 2:46
  Jenny Ashcraft: I think you're right.
• 2:48
  Crista Cowan: And I think more sinks in than we realize sometimes.
• 2:51
  Crista Cowan: Like, have you had any experiences where you've realized, oh, like they really were paying attention?
• 2:57
  Jenny Ashcraft: Well, I was sharing, I have a little granddaughter that just turned 11, and I was sharing a story about a female ancestor with her, and she got teary.
• 3:08
  Jenny Ashcraft: And for an 11-year-old to get teary, and I had an obituary for this ancestor, and this ancestor had they had called her Aunt Candy because she would give candy to the neighborhood kids that would come over.
• 3:21
  Jenny Ashcraft: And and I I I love those, I love when you come across an article that gives a little bit of a personality of somebody.
• 3:29
  Jenny Ashcraft: And as I ex you know, shared these stories with her, it it made her a little emotional.
• 3:34
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I I love that.
• 3:36
  Jenny Ashcraft: I love that she felt that connection.
• 3:38
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:39
  Crista Cowan: Oh, I love that so much.
• 3:40
  Crista Cowan: You bring up a really good point, which is that sometimes, like as we're digging into our family history, there aren't those kind of personal details.
• 3:47
  Crista Cowan: And so I think that's one of the things that I love about like really digging in is sometimes we can extract just enough to be able to tell a story that has some personality, but it also points to the fact that we should be telling our own stories and making sure that we share those personal details with the next generation.
• 4:03
  Crista Cowan: Um, I've I've been talking to my parents.
• 4:06
  Crista Cowan: My parents just moved here.
• 4:08
  Crista Cowan: That's so great.
• 4:09
  Crista Cowan: I've never lived in the same place as my parents my whole adult life.
• 4:13
  Crista Cowan: Um uh and my mom made some funny quip the other night.
• 4:16
  Crista Cowan: She said, Well, now I live in the same town I'm gonna be buried in because they bought their burial plots here in Pleasant Grove ages ago.
• 4:22
  Jenny Ashcraft: So there's the fam, the Sunday family history nights are now going to be.
• 4:26
  Crista Cowan: In person, yes.
• 4:27
  Crista Cowan: So, um, and so we were talking about that.
• 4:30
  Crista Cowan: And then my mom just said the other night, she said, Oh, well, I like I think I want to write my own obituary and plan my own funeral.
• 4:37
  Crista Cowan: And I was like, I would love for you to do that, not just because I don't want to have to do that in the moment when I'm grieving, but also like I want your personality to be infused in that.
• 4:45
  Crista Cowan: I want you to make sure that you're remembered for what you want to be remembered for.
• 4:49
  Crista Cowan: And so as you think about like sharing the ancestor stories with your kids and grandkids, are you also sharing your own stories?
• 4:55
  Jenny Ashcraft: You know what?
• 4:56
  Jenny Ashcraft: You are actually making me feel very guilty right now because I have not been the greatest keeper of my own stories.
• 5:03
  Jenny Ashcraft: And in fact, my husband and I were just talking about this a couple of weeks ago, and we set a goal, believe it or not, this is literally in the last month, that on Sunday afternoons we were going to do one of those like 50 questions and record our own answers to those 50 questions.
• 5:18
  Jenny Ashcraft: It came up because there was a big flood in Rexburg, Idaho in the 1970s.
• 5:23
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he was in that flood and was rescued from his rooftop.
• 5:26
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he shared a story with our kids on our family chat, and they loved it.
• 5:31
  Jenny Ashcraft: They loved hearing his, you know, it was written shortly after the event.
• 5:36
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said, we need to be, I here I am, the one that's preaching family history and loves to do loves to research and loves to gather those stories.
• 5:44
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I haven't been very good about doing my own, but I I'm making a goal to change and do a little better.
• 5:51
  Crista Cowan: Good for you.
• 5:52
  Crista Cowan: Well, and it's interesting because when we tell the, you know, when we try to create that storytelling culture in our family, we tell them stories of people they don't know, they're not interested.
• 6:01
  Crista Cowan: But you tell them a story about yourself and all of a sudden they start to see you in a different way.
• 6:06
  Crista Cowan: But I think it also opens the door because when they realize, oh, I love this story because it's about my grandma.
• 6:13
  Crista Cowan: And then when you tell a story about your grandma, they can connect the dots.
• 6:17
  Crista Cowan: Oh, I love that.
• 6:18
  Crista Cowan: I love that, yes.
• 6:19
  Crista Cowan: So that is like like that's where I think so many of us like fail to start with ourselves, is because we're like, oh, like I'm the grandma, I'm the mom.
• 6:27
  Crista Cowan: Like you're I I'm interested in these stories from long ago, but you have to get them interested too.
• 6:32
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 6:32
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 6:33
  Crista Cowan: Well, um, speaking of stories from long ago, you have a I think it's a German brick wall that you were working on.
• 6:40
  Crista Cowan: I do.
• 6:41
  Jenny Ashcraft: I have I had a I have a couple of German brick walls, one which we burst through and we figured it out, and it was just the happiest day, and one that I have literally been chipping away at for almost two decades, but I'm getting close.
• 6:55
  Jenny Ashcraft: Okay, and I have something coming that I think might help.
• 6:58
  Jenny Ashcraft: But I do, I have a do you want to hear it?
• 7:01
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, first how kind of ground us in like how you're related to these people.
• 7:05
  Jenny Ashcraft: Okay, so this is a story of my second great-grandparents, and that's not that far back.
• 7:10
  Jenny Ashcraft: This is an ancestor, my second great-grandfather, his name's John Fink.
• 7:14
  Jenny Ashcraft: He was born in Vurttemberg.
• 7:17
  Jenny Ashcraft: I hope I'm saying that right.
• 7:18
  Jenny Ashcraft: I think I am.
• 7:19
  Jenny Ashcraft: Virtenburg, Germany, uh, in 1846, and he died in Scottsbluff, Nebraska in 1924.
• 7:26
  Jenny Ashcraft: That's not that long ago.
• 7:28
  Crista Cowan: And is this on your mom's side or your side?
• 7:29
  Crista Cowan: This is on my dad's side.
• 7:30
  Crista Cowan: And so did you know the grandparent on that side?
• 7:33
  Crista Cowan: No, she died before I was even born.
• 7:36
  Crista Cowan: But this is her grandfather.
• 7:37
  Jenny Ashcraft: Yes.
• 7:38
  Jenny Ashcraft: Yes.
• 7:39
  Jenny Ashcraft: So uh well, what how it started, Krista, and you're a woman who loves charts, right?
• 7:43
  Jenny Ashcraft: I I love family history, and I am looking at our at our family chart, at our fan chart, and I see this huge void.
• 7:52
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I, you know, you want to see that populated with all of these people that came before, and there is this void.
• 7:58
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I thought, I am going to figure this out.
• 8:01
  Jenny Ashcraft: I I'd heard for years that this was a this was a a brick wall.
• 8:05
  Jenny Ashcraft: And so I thought, I am gonna figure this out.
• 8:08
  Jenny Ashcraft: I am going to do what I need to do.
• 8:11
  Jenny Ashcraft: I I think I'm a uh you know, smart enough genealogist now that I can do this.
• 8:16
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I did the first thing I did was really something you teach, your fan network, right?
• 8:21
  Jenny Ashcraft: I called my my dad's last living sibling, my aunt, and I knew she loved genealogy and had worked on this family, had worked on this person.
• 8:32
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said, Listen, you know, I why can't we figure this out?
• 8:37
  Jenny Ashcraft: And she said, Oh, Jenny, this is I have worked so hard on this, and I just can't seem to break through.
• 8:44
  Jenny Ashcraft: We knew we know what year he immigrated, but we just couldn't get back to Germany.
• 8:49
  Jenny Ashcraft: And anybody who has German ancestors, uh, do you have German records?
• 8:53
  Jenny Ashcraft: I do.
• 8:53
  Jenny Ashcraft: They have great German records.
• 8:55
  Jenny Ashcraft: Good records, yeah.
• 8:56
  Jenny Ashcraft: Like great records.
• 8:57
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I thought, I just need to make that jump to get over to those records.
• 9:01
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I told her, I'm determined, I am going to do this.
• 9:06
  Jenny Ashcraft: And she said, I just want you to know it's not going to be easy and it may be impossible.
• 9:12
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I said, Okay, I'm ready.
• 9:14
  Jenny Ashcraft: I'm ready to dive in.
• 9:15
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I I kind of started at him and my family tree, and I was attaching all the records and adding every census.
• 9:22
  Jenny Ashcraft: And what year did he immigrate?
• 9:24
  Jenny Ashcraft: He immigrated in 1866.
• 9:26
  Jenny Ashcraft: So he was about twenty.
• 9:27
  Jenny Ashcraft: He was 20.
• 9:28
  Jenny Ashcraft: Okay.
• 9:29
  Jenny Ashcraft: He was 20 when he came over.
• 9:30
  Jenny Ashcraft: Okay.
• 9:30
  Jenny Ashcraft: By himself, supposedly?
• 9:32
  Jenny Ashcraft: For all I knew at that point.
• 9:34
  Jenny Ashcraft: Okay.
• 9:34
  Jenny Ashcraft: So you're finding him in U.S.
• 9:36
  Jenny Ashcraft: Census Records.
• 9:37
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he's saying, I'm from Vernburg, I'm from Germany.
• 9:40
  Jenny Ashcraft: Uh immigration here is it's all consistent.
• 9:44
  Jenny Ashcraft: But, you know, he literally had hundreds of descendants, and nobody knew anything back to Germany.
• 9:53
  Jenny Ashcraft: And so I I thought, I am gonna figure this out.
• 9:56
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I honestly I started praying about it.
• 10:00
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I would pray about this every night, going, I I just need some heavenly help.
• 10:05
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I don't, I don't know if you're like this, but one of I I love family history, but kind of the shot in the arm that just keeps me going that I love so much are those little miracles that I see, like those random phone calls or an a random message on ancestry or a random packet of stuff in the mail.
• 10:25
  Crista Cowan: Isn't that what your episode was about in season one?
• 10:27
  Jenny Ashcraft: Yes, it's and you just you think there is no way that just happened.
• 10:31
  Jenny Ashcraft: But I I I have really come to believe that heaven has an interest in my finding my ancestors because they are there and they have an interest in being remembered and being found.
• 10:44
  Jenny Ashcraft: And so I was just, I started praying about this and I thought I am gonna figure this out.
• 10:49
  Jenny Ashcraft: And um I everything I was trying, I just wasn't getting anywhere.
• 10:54
  Jenny Ashcraft: And one day I had this a little bit of this thought that it was a light bulb moment, an impression, whatever you want to call it.
• 11:02
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I realized I had been going about this wrong.
• 11:05
  Jenny Ashcraft: I was trying to kind of go straight back my line and attach those records and find, and I realized this man had 10 children, not all of their spouses were even in the tree.
• 11:18
  Jenny Ashcraft: They all had children.
• 11:19
  Jenny Ashcraft: There were literally hundreds of people, and I I suddenly just knew that if I spent some time researching all of those children, then I would figure it out.
• 11:31
  Crista Cowan: Isn't that crazy?
• 11:32
  Crista Cowan: Because we some like we get so stuck in this like linear concept of like go backwards, go backwards, go backwards, that it doesn't occur to people to come forward in order to go backwards.
• 11:41
  Jenny Ashcraft: I thought I've got to start at the beginning.
• 11:42
  Jenny Ashcraft: Yeah.
• 11:42
  Jenny Ashcraft: And and that's exactly that's exactly what I did.
• 11:45
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I my the impression was so clear that I called my brother, like immediately.
• 11:52
  Jenny Ashcraft: He was living in Chicago at the time, and I said, Listen, we're about to have a breakthrough.
• 11:57
  Jenny Ashcraft: I I I have just realized that if I figure out all of John Fink's descendants and and you know, document them and attach every record possible, we're gonna figure this out.
• 12:10
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I'm making a commitment and I want you to come out here with me.
• 12:14
  Jenny Ashcraft: He and he said, What do you mean?
• 12:15
  Jenny Ashcraft: I said, Let's plan a date.
• 12:17
  Jenny Ashcraft: I need like probably six weeks to do this.
• 12:19
  Jenny Ashcraft: Let's plan a date, like maybe in six weeks to two months, and you fly out and we're gonna have a miracle.
• 12:25
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he he said, Well, okay, you know, he's not that into family history, but he was like, sure, I'll do it.
• 12:31
  Jenny Ashcraft: I said, Great.
• 12:32
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I had to get to work.
• 12:34
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I just became immersed in this family.
• 12:38
  Jenny Ashcraft: And, you know, I took those 10 children, some of the spouses were attached, but not all.
• 12:42
  Jenny Ashcraft: And, you know, often as you're, you might find a newspaper article about a great granddaughter that talks, that gives the hometown of her great-grandfather.
• 12:51
  Jenny Ashcraft: You just don't know.
• 12:52
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I am just attaching every record, and you you get to know this family, right?
• 12:57
  Jenny Ashcraft: You get to, you they start taking on a personality and you learn the the families they married into and their migration paths and where they all moved.
• 13:06
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I'm really becoming invested in this family.
• 13:09
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I came across a newspaper article about John Fink being a one of the pioneers of Scotts Bluff.
• 13:18
  Jenny Ashcraft: He uh got a uh a homestead there and was one of the first that helped settle that city, and it had a about a three-paragraph bio of him that was gold.
• 13:31
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I started reading it, and the very first line says, Wilhelm Gottlieb, John Fink, in parentheses.
• 13:38
  Jenny Ashcraft: What came to Scottsbluff, you know, and start and I'm like, wait, Wilhelm Gottlieb?
• 13:44
  Jenny Ashcraft: What is that name?
• 13:46
  Jenny Ashcraft: Is that his name, Wilhelm Gottlieb?
• 13:48
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he had kind of adopted John.
• 13:50
  Jenny Ashcraft: And so I'm like, this is a huge clue.
• 13:52
  Jenny Ashcraft: And then I keep reading, and it talks about his children.
• 13:55
  Jenny Ashcraft: I knew about them.
• 13:56
  Jenny Ashcraft: It talks about when he moved to Illinois, found the homestead record, but then it said he came, his father had come to America several years earlier.
• 14:06
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I'm like, wait, his father was here?
• 14:10
  Jenny Ashcraft: And then he said, and his father, William, died in Illinois.
• 14:13
  Jenny Ashcraft: So this is this is all new information.
• 14:16
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I'm like, oh my goodness.
• 14:19
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I immediately go to Illinois Records and I'm trying to find any William Fink.
• 14:23
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I find one that, you know, kind of fit the the age, probably, that died in 1898, but I I didn't know if that was him.
• 14:32
  Jenny Ashcraft: He was in a in Pyatt County, Illinois.
• 14:35
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I thought, okay, I'm gonna come back to that.
• 14:37
  Jenny Ashcraft: I've I've got this deadline approaching.
• 14:39
  Jenny Ashcraft: I've got to finish this.
• 14:40
  Jenny Ashcraft: I literally you gave yourself a deadline.
• 14:43
  Jenny Ashcraft: Well, I don't know what it was.
• 14:44
  Jenny Ashcraft: Like I just had this strange confidence that I would in six weeks.
• 14:49
  Jenny Ashcraft: That in six weeks.
• 14:50
  Jenny Ashcraft: I know that sounds so that's so funny.
• 14:53
  Jenny Ashcraft: So um I I put that a little bit on the back burner, and I worked so hard, and I documented that family, and I had them figured out, and that day arrived, and my brother flew in, and I was giddy with excitement.
• 15:08
  Jenny Ashcraft: I was so excited, and I didn't know what was gonna happen, but I'm like, something's gonna happen.
• 15:12
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said, Let's go to the family search library.
• 15:15
  Jenny Ashcraft: That's where it's gonna happen.
• 15:16
  Jenny Ashcraft: And and he's just kind of you know, humoring you, humoring me.
• 15:21
  Jenny Ashcraft: So we got up in the morning.
• 15:22
  Jenny Ashcraft: I mean, I was so excited.
• 15:23
  Jenny Ashcraft: I was up so bright and early, and we got ready, and I I turned to some of my daughters that were there, and I said, We are gonna go have a miracle.
• 15:32
  Jenny Ashcraft: Does anybody want to come?
• 15:33
  Jenny Ashcraft: And my oldest daughter, Madeline, she said, I'm in, I'll come.
• 15:37
  Jenny Ashcraft: So the three of us drive to the family search library downtown in downtown Salt Lake City, and we get out of the car, and I'm just practically skipping up to the door.
• 15:48
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I kind of suddenly have this realization, what am I doing?
• 15:52
  Jenny Ashcraft: Like, what am I gonna look for?
• 15:54
  Jenny Ashcraft: I don't know where, I don't know what I'm expecting to find here and what I'm going to do.
• 15:59
  Jenny Ashcraft: And we walked in and he said, my brother said, Well, where should we go?
• 16:03
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I thought, I don't know.
• 16:05
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said, Well, let's go to the international floor.
• 16:08
  Jenny Ashcraft: That seems like a logical place.
• 16:09
  Jenny Ashcraft: So Was that B2?
• 16:10
  Jenny Ashcraft: I think it was B2.
• 16:11
  Jenny Ashcraft: I think you know that floor.
• 16:13
  Jenny Ashcraft: So we we take the elevator up, the elevator doors open, and there is this crowded room.
• 16:20
  Jenny Ashcraft: It's kind of the holiday season, and there is, it's busy, the library's busy.
• 16:24
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I'm looking around and I I don't even know if there's anywhere for us to kind of sit together.
• 16:30
  Jenny Ashcraft: But way across the room, I see kind of a longer conference type table.
• 16:35
  Jenny Ashcraft: And there's a woman alone at the end, but there's three seats at the other end.
• 16:39
  Jenny Ashcraft: So we walked over there and I said, Do you mind if if we join you at this end of the table?
• 16:45
  Jenny Ashcraft: And she said, Of course, sit down.
• 16:47
  Jenny Ashcraft: So we sat down and and my daughter, my brother kind of looked at me again like, what now?
• 16:52
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said, Well, let's let's just start by talking about what we know.
• 16:58
  Jenny Ashcraft: We know his name's Wilhelm Gottlieb Fink.
• 17:01
  Jenny Ashcraft: We know he came from Virginburg.
• 17:02
  Jenny Ashcraft: We know he arrived in 1866.
• 17:05
  Jenny Ashcraft: You know, we know that he died in Scott Scotts Bluff, and I'm kind of re you know, rehearsing the things that we had learned.
• 17:13
  Jenny Ashcraft: And this woman at the end of the table says, Are you trying to find somebody from Virtenberg?
• 17:19
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said, Yes.
• 17:21
  Jenny Ashcraft: And she said, You need to look at these books.
• 17:24
  Jenny Ashcraft: And she kind of comes over, guides me by the arm, walks me over to the library, and there's the shelf of books, kind of like a set of encyclopedias.
• 17:33
  Jenny Ashcraft: And she says, This is the Vurtenberg Immigration Index.
• 17:36
  Jenny Ashcraft: This will track all those immigrants.
• 17:39
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I'm like, okay.
• 17:40
  Jenny Ashcraft: And she took out a book and she's flipping through it and showing me how to find how it works and how to use the index.
• 17:47
  Jenny Ashcraft: And she was so knowledgeable.
• 17:49
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I finally just stopped and I turned to her and I said, You know so much about these books.
• 17:54
  Jenny Ashcraft: And she paused for a minute and she said, I actually wrote them.
• 17:59
  Jenny Ashcraft: What?
• 18:00
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said, What?
• 18:02
  Jenny Ashcraft: You wrote these books?
• 18:04
  Jenny Ashcraft: And she said, I don't know.
• 18:05
  Crista Cowan: That's miracle number two.
• 18:07
  Jenny Ashcraft: Right.
• 18:07
  Crista Cowan: Right?
• 18:07
  Jenny Ashcraft: You found the article that listed the name.
• 18:09
  Jenny Ashcraft: Now you've got her.
• 18:10
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I and she said, you know, I studied every immigrant from from Wurttemberg that came to America.
• 18:19
  Jenny Ashcraft: If you tell me the name, I might remember what village they came from.
• 18:23
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said, Well, his name was Wilhelm Gottlieb Fink.
• 18:27
  Jenny Ashcraft: And she said, you know, there were some Finks that came from a town called Gronau.
• 18:32
  Jenny Ashcraft: I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right either.
• 18:34
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I don't either.
• 18:34
  Jenny Ashcraft: Oh, Gronau, Gronau, I don't know.
• 18:36
  Jenny Ashcraft: Anyway.
• 18:37
  Jenny Ashcraft: And and she said, Well, let's figure out if that's him.
• 18:41
  Jenny Ashcraft: And she guides me over to the film drawers and she's like, Let's find the Gronau church films.
• 18:46
  Jenny Ashcraft: She doesn't even have to look up where they are.
• 18:48
  Jenny Ashcraft: She just knows.
• 18:49
  Jenny Ashcraft: She opens the drawer, she flips through, she pulls out a box, we go over to a reader, she puts it in, we start advancing to 1866, and we come to the month that he immigrates, and there is the little entry that says, Wilhelm Gottlieb Fink and John Frederick Fink have gone to North America.
• 19:10
  Jenny Ashcraft: And there he is.
• 19:12
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I am just astounded.
• 19:16
  Jenny Ashcraft: Like I am astounded.
• 19:17
  Jenny Ashcraft: It's uh for 150 years our family hadn't known this information.
• 19:21
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I was literally speechless.
• 19:24
  Jenny Ashcraft: And then I cried, crying again.
• 19:26
  Jenny Ashcraft: Uh-huh.
• 19:26
  Jenny Ashcraft: I cried, I just couldn't believe it.
• 19:28
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I mean, what are the chances that this woman happened to be there as a patron that day, that we happened to sit at her table, that she happened to overhear us and knew the name and knew the village.
• 19:46
  Jenny Ashcraft: And so with that, the the floodgates opened.
• 19:49
  Jenny Ashcraft: You know, now I knew where I I figured out his mother, his father, um his I I learned some stories.
• 19:57
  Jenny Ashcraft: His mother had passed away when his brother uh was four and he was eight.
• 20:03
  Jenny Ashcraft: So Carl was four and John was eight, and his mother had passed away.
• 20:06
  Jenny Ashcraft: And dad, William, a year or two later says, I need to make a better life for my family.
• 20:14
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I'm going to head over to North America.
• 20:17
  Jenny Ashcraft: I'm gonna go to America, I'm going to get established, and then I'm gonna send for you.
• 20:21
  Jenny Ashcraft: There's three kids at home there's uh Carl, John, and a sister, Rosina.
• 20:26
  Jenny Ashcraft: Well, he gets here to America, he's trying to get established, and it's now 1861, and we all know what that means in American history.
• 20:37
  Jenny Ashcraft: It's the Civil War.
• 20:39
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I don't really know, Krista, if if uh he William's telling the kids, don't come, yeah.
• 20:46
  Jenny Ashcraft: Or if they they don't I don't really know the But they're all still teenagers at the time.
• 20:51
  Jenny Ashcraft: They're they're still young.
• 20:52
  Jenny Ashcraft: They're still young.
• 20:53
  Jenny Ashcraft: The oldest is Rosina.
• 20:54
  Jenny Ashcraft: Were they living with a family?
• 20:56
  Jenny Ashcraft: They were living with relatives and grown out with with cousins.
• 21:00
  Jenny Ashcraft: And um 1866 comes, the Civil War ends, and I found now that I know he has a brother, Carl, uh Carl ends up settling in Lincoln County, um uh Lincoln, Logan County, Illinois.
• 21:17
  Jenny Ashcraft: So did John and Carl actually come together?
• 21:18
  Jenny Ashcraft: They came together.
• 21:20
  Jenny Ashcraft: But that's a sweet story too, because this town history from Illinois that's talking about Carl says that Carl immigrated in 1866, and he with he and his brother saved up their meager savings, traveled in, you know, the steerage class, a typical, you know, not very wealthy immigrant, very poor immigrant, um, got to the docks, they loaded on the ship together, and there was a lot of chaos with everybody getting on, and the officials suddenly said, Wait, we've overloaded this the ship is too low on the The water.
• 22:00
  Jenny Ashcraft: These are sailing ships at this point, right?
• 22:02
  Jenny Ashcraft: And they decided that they have to remove some of the passengers and put them on the next ship.
• 22:08
  Jenny Ashcraft: And in the chaos, these two brothers get separated, and one is removed from the ship.
• 22:13
  Jenny Ashcraft: And they, I I can you imagine they're 16 and 20 years old.
• 22:18
  Jenny Ashcraft: And they have uh virtually no money, and they're sailing separately.
• 22:23
  Jenny Ashcraft: They've become separate.
• 22:25
  Jenny Ashcraft: I mean, can you imagine the worry and the stress and the and the fear and the courage that that must have taken?
• 22:32
  Jenny Ashcraft: And they land separately.
• 22:34
  Jenny Ashcraft: One, my my second grandfather, John, goes up to Rockland County, New York, where he marries, and Carl heads down towards Illinois, and they won't see each other for several years.
• 22:46
  Jenny Ashcraft: But then we come back to William, the grandfather, the father, the who's already here, and I'm still wanting to know is is this him?
• 22:58
  Jenny Ashcraft: I've got to figure it out.
• 23:00
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I start diving into William because I've made this major breakthrough in Germany.
• 23:05
  Jenny Ashcraft: But I need to know, is this William Fink?
• 23:08
  Jenny Ashcraft: I suspect it is because Pyatt County and where his son Carl lived were one hour away.
• 23:13
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I'm suspecting that's kind of close and uh he meets the criteria.
• 23:18
  Jenny Ashcraft: He's from Germany, he's living alone, he's a grocer.
• 23:22
  Jenny Ashcraft: I I think this may be him, and I start doing the same thing, digging through all the records, and nothing's really confirming if this is him or not.
• 23:31
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I decide I've got to go there.
• 23:34
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I I had reached out to the historical genealogical society there, and I said, Do you have any any records?
• 23:42
  Jenny Ashcraft: And there was nothing digitized, and they didn't weren't really in a position to go dig for me.
• 23:47
  Jenny Ashcraft: And but she said, I do know we do have some very crumbling newspapers from that era here in the society.
• 23:54
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I I I just ate away at me until I thought, I've just got to go.
• 23:59
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I made arrangements.
• 24:01
  Jenny Ashcraft: I flew to my brother's house in Chicago, and we he drove down with me one weekend, and this kind lady at the at the society had made arrangements to come and open the the office for us and um brought out the papers.
• 24:14
  Jenny Ashcraft: I mean, and these are so delicate that I'm turning a page and sometimes it would break.
• 24:22
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I come to the date for William Fink, and um I find a death notice, and it says William Fink was found deceased.
• 24:31
  Jenny Ashcraft: He is the town grocer.
• 24:33
  Jenny Ashcraft: Um, his body was claimed by his son Carl, and we've notified the daughter Rosina.
• 24:39
  Jenny Ashcraft: So John wasn't mentioned in there, but the other two kids were, and it confirmed.
• 24:44
  Jenny Ashcraft: So what happened to Rosina?
• 24:46
  Jenny Ashcraft: So Rosina, right as these boys were immigrating, got married and moved to Switzerland.
• 24:51
  Jenny Ashcraft: Oh.
• 24:52
  Jenny Ashcraft: So she didn't come, she went on with her own life in a different direction.
• 24:57
  Jenny Ashcraft: And these two boys came.
• 24:58
  Jenny Ashcraft: They were the only three living siblings of all the siblings born to these parents.
• 25:03
  Jenny Ashcraft: And um here we'd figured it out.
• 25:07
  Jenny Ashcraft: We had finally made these connections and and you know, to go from not having that fan chart filled out to just enriching it and adding and populating it with all these family names was such a gift.
• 25:22
  Jenny Ashcraft: It was so amazing.
• 25:24
  Jenny Ashcraft: And the stories, it was so such an amazing experience.
• 25:28
  Jenny Ashcraft: And it just really taught me that it really taught me a lot about brick walls.
• 25:33
  Jenny Ashcraft: And you don't start at that person.
• 25:35
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 25:35
  Jenny Ashcraft: That's that was my biggest takeaway.
• 25:37
  Jenny Ashcraft: You don't start there, you go back and you, you know, I think in other brick walls I've encountered, oftentimes that that answer comes in some other generation, some great grandchild somewhere else, a newspaper article, a military record, something.
• 25:54
  Jenny Ashcraft: It didn't happen that way for me, but it still ended up getting us the same end result.
• 26:00
  Crista Cowan: Oh, I love that.
• 26:00
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, last season uh I did an episode for the state of Ohio about my third great-grandfather, and he was from Ireland, and everybody always just said Ireland, Ireland, Ireland.
• 26:10
  Crista Cowan: And there wasn't and to do Irish research.
• 26:12
  Crista Cowan: Well, that's the thing, right?
• 26:14
  Crista Cowan: To do to do Irish research, you have to know where in Ireland they came from.
• 26:17
  Crista Cowan: And nothing anywhere said where in Ireland he came from.
• 26:20
  Crista Cowan: And so I did the same thing.
• 26:21
  Crista Cowan: He had 13 children, and then I started researching all of the grandchildren.
• 26:25
  Crista Cowan: Did the children come here?
• 26:26
  Crista Cowan: Did they come from here?
• 26:27
  Crista Cowan: He came here.
• 26:27
  Crista Cowan: Oh, he came here.
• 26:28
  Crista Cowan: He was the immigrant, yeah.
• 26:30
  Crista Cowan: So that's why we didn't have any additional details.
• 26:32
  Crista Cowan: But as we started researching the children and grandchildren, the grandchildren started kind of spreading out across the country.
• 26:38
  Crista Cowan: And one of his grandchildren, I think, had gone to Iowa and had helped found a little town there, and there had been a biography written in a county history about him, and it talked about how he had come from Ohio and that his grandfather had immigrated from County Down, Ireland.
• 26:54
  Crista Cowan: From County Down.
• 26:55
  Crista Cowan: I have ancestors in County Down.
• 26:57
  Crista Cowan: That's so awesome.
• 26:58
  Crista Cowan: But like, but if I hadn't researched all those grandchildren, I never would have found that one piece of information that led me back to that.
• 27:07
  Jenny Ashcraft: That was exactly what I found.
• 27:08
  Jenny Ashcraft: You can't you can't go linear.
• 27:11
  Jenny Ashcraft: Just like you say, you have to go, you have to spread, spread the love and check all those, you know, research all of those children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and and that's what I'm saying.
• 27:22
  Crista Cowan: And that's really like that's the practical answer, but I love that your story illustrates this also really beautiful.
• 27:28
  Crista Cowan: Like, you cannot tell the story of John without also telling the story about his dad.
• 27:33
  Crista Cowan: Yes.
• 27:33
  Crista Cowan: And also telling the story about his brother Carl, right?
• 27:36
  Crista Cowan: Like the stories of our families and the stories of our lives are told in the totality of those relationships, not just a person in isolation.
• 27:44
  Jenny Ashcraft: Well, you know, once I discovered that William was my third great grandfather, and that bear that death record I had found did say he's buried in the old Mansfield cemetery.
• 27:56
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I went to find a grave and I'm trying to find the headstone and it's not there.
• 28:00
  Jenny Ashcraft: And so I finally called the cemetery thinking, you know, maybe somebody will just shoot a picture of it for me.
• 28:06
  Jenny Ashcraft: And they they said, we don't have record of that grave.
• 28:09
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I'm, I think I said, Well, his death record says he was buried there.
• 28:13
  Jenny Ashcraft: And they said, Well, you know, our cemetery record, we don't have the old records.
• 28:16
  Jenny Ashcraft: They're probably somewhere, but we we our records that we have here don't go back that far.
• 28:21
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I I started calling everybody in Piette County.
• 28:26
  Jenny Ashcraft: You know, does anybody know where the old cemetery records are?
• 28:29
  Jenny Ashcraft: Was he buried there?
• 28:30
  Jenny Ashcraft: And um this is this is several months after this all happened.
• 28:36
  Jenny Ashcraft: And one one morning I'm in the shower, I'm shampooing my hair, and I hear my phone ringing.
• 28:42
  Jenny Ashcraft: And you never get out of the shower and answer the phone, right?
• 28:45
  Jenny Ashcraft: That's just weird and not a good idea.
• 28:48
  Jenny Ashcraft: But for some reason, I was just compelled, I've got to get this phone.
• 28:51
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I jumped out and I answered the phone.
• 28:53
  Jenny Ashcraft: And a gentleman's voice said, Is this Jenny Ashcraft?
• 28:58
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said, Yes.
• 28:58
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he said, I hear you're looking for the cemetery records, the old records from Mansfield Cemetery.
• 29:04
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said, Yes, I am.
• 29:06
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he said, Well, I I have them.
• 29:07
  Jenny Ashcraft: I'm like, oh, that's amazing.
• 29:09
  Jenny Ashcraft: I said, Could you look and tell me, do you have a burial for a man named William Fink?
• 29:15
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he said, I do.
• 29:16
  Jenny Ashcraft: It's it's an unmarked grave, but I uh he's here.
• 29:20
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I said, Well, can you tell me the plot number of the grave, you know?
• 29:24
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he says, Yes, I'm grabbing a pen.
• 29:26
  Jenny Ashcraft: I mean, water's dripping and ink's running, but I write down and he said, It's actually not one grave because back then when you bought a plot, you bought a plot of five.
• 29:35
  Jenny Ashcraft: So I'm gonna give you the five numbers and the section, and and he is buried there.
• 29:40
  Jenny Ashcraft: I don't know which one of the five, but he's he's there and it's an unmarked grave.
• 29:44
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I'm like, oh, that's so great to know.
• 29:47
  Jenny Ashcraft: And so I started doing a little digging and realized there is no headstone at all.
• 29:55
  Jenny Ashcraft: And a lot of these extended family members that I had found in this journey that I'd connected with on Ancestry, that I'd connected with on Family Search, I kind of shot this email and I said, You guys, I I've got to buy a headstone.
• 30:10
  Jenny Ashcraft: This, this is this guy, what he did for our family.
• 30:14
  Jenny Ashcraft: And if anybody wants to contribute, no pressure, but let me know.
• 30:18
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I had some very generous cousins and everybody pitched in a little bit of money, and we purchased a headstone, and I called the cemetery and I said, Listen, I want to have a headstone placed there in another for an unmarked grave.
• 30:32
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I explained that I have the five numbers, but I didn't know which one it was.
• 30:37
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he's like, Where did you find those records?
• 30:40
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I'm like, Well, somebody called me.
• 30:42
  Jenny Ashcraft: I'd been calling all around.
• 30:43
  Jenny Ashcraft: He goes, Well, who?
• 30:44
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I'm like, I actually don't know.
• 30:46
  Jenny Ashcraft: It was just, it was so chaotic when I'm answering the phone.
• 30:49
  Jenny Ashcraft: I didn't get a name.
• 30:50
  Jenny Ashcraft: I still don't know who called me.
• 30:51
  Jenny Ashcraft: Are you kidding me?
• 30:52
  Jenny Ashcraft: I don't know who called me, but somebody had them and somebody got a message that I was trying to find them and called me and gave me the numbers.
• 30:59
  Jenny Ashcraft: And I told him the numbers, and he's like, Yeah, back then they sold them in blocks of five.
• 31:04
  Jenny Ashcraft: And and I said, I just don't know where to place this headstone.
• 31:08
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he's like, Well, we can, you know, there's a couple things we could do to try to figure out which one it is.
• 31:14
  Jenny Ashcraft: And he uh did those things.
• 31:17
  Jenny Ashcraft: They sent a probe, they do different things, and he came back and he said, We don't know, it's just been too long, we don't know.
• 31:22
  Jenny Ashcraft: And so we all my cousins that I just meeting for the first time, we had like really such a sacred privilege, really, of placing a headstone right in the middle of the plot of five.
• 31:35
  Jenny Ashcraft: And now that grave is marked, and and it's just you know, such with such gratitude that we were able to do that.
• 31:43
  Jenny Ashcraft: I mean, what they did for our family is just it's you can't imagine.
• 31:48
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 31:49
  Crista Cowan: Oh, and now I need to know like, was there some random person in Illinois that just happens to have a bunch of graveyard records in their living room?
• 31:57
  Crista Cowan: Or was that a call from the other side of the veil?
• 32:00
  Jenny Ashcraft: Krista, I it's so dumb that I didn't get a name, but it was just I was so focused on he had the information that I didn't get a name.
• 32:10
  Jenny Ashcraft: And when they asked me who it was, I I couldn't tell them.
• 32:14
  Jenny Ashcraft: Wow.
• 32:14
  Crista Cowan: But I hope I did it right.
• 32:17
  Crista Cowan: But we marked a grave.
• 32:18
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 32:19
  Crista Cowan: Oh my goodness.
• 32:20
  Crista Cowan: What a fantastic story, Jenny.
• 32:22
  Crista Cowan: Thank you so much for sharing that.
• 32:23
  Crista Cowan: Um I just love everything about your persistence and your tenacity and your willingness to like go to the places and to pray the prayers and to put the pieces together.
• 32:35
  Crista Cowan: And it sounds like you didn't just find John's story or the story of his father or his sub his siblings, but you also have connected these cousins now as well, which is also really lovely.
• 32:46
  Crista Cowan: We're Facebook friends now, so it's awesome.
• 32:48
  Crista Cowan: So fun.
• 32:49
  Crista Cowan: Okay, well, before I let you go, we have this new tradition on season three of the podcast.
• 32:53
  Crista Cowan: It is called One Word, One Story.
• 32:55
  Crista Cowan: So uh I'm gonna pull a word from the story box and we are going to just see what memories come up.
• 33:06
  Crista Cowan: Oh, this is fun.
• 33:10
  Crista Cowan: So today's word is costume.
• 33:14
  Jenny Ashcraft: Oh, okay.
• 33:15
  Jenny Ashcraft: Okay, I don't know if this would be really costume, but I'll tell you what comes to what comes to mind.
• 33:21
  Jenny Ashcraft: When this this second great grandfather, his granddaughter, who was my dad's mother, okay, who passed away before I was born, I've always I've always wanted to meet her so much.
• 33:34
  Jenny Ashcraft: And my I my dad had such a fun, cute personality, and I just know she would.
• 33:38
  Jenny Ashcraft: Like I just I would love to meet her.
• 33:40
  Jenny Ashcraft: And there wasn't a lot of photographs back then.
• 33:44
  Jenny Ashcraft: And um there was one photograph that I came across that is in our family, and it's beautiful, and she's I think she's going to some kind of a school dance at like a high school age, and um she's got this, she's sitting with her legs crossed, and she's got this beautiful dress on, and she's she's beautiful.
• 34:05
  Jenny Ashcraft: And it says dance costume.
• 34:08
  Jenny Ashcraft: Oh.
• 34:08
  Jenny Ashcraft: So that's what came to my mind.
• 34:10
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 34:10
  Crista Cowan: Well, costumes are a big deal in my life because my birthday is the day after Halloween.
• 34:16
  Crista Cowan: And so my whole life, my birthday parties were always Halloween costume parties.
• 34:21
  Crista Cowan: Um, and then the summer I turned 18, my dad's two sisters, my aunts, opened a costume shop on Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles.
• 34:30
  Crista Cowan: No way.
• 34:31
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 34:31
  Crista Cowan: And so for my birthday, almost every year through my 20s and into my 30s, I would go down and spend the week working in the costume shop, helping them because it just got overrun and crazy.
• 34:41
  Crista Cowan: But it also meant I got to just dress up in all sorts of fun costumes.
• 34:45
  Crista Cowan: And so, like, that's like I think costumes, I think about my Aunt Rhonda in the costume shop.
• 34:49
  Crista Cowan: And um, and I've kind of just continued to carry that through.
• 34:53
  Crista Cowan: I am an adult who still dresses up for Halloween.
• 34:56
  Jenny Ashcraft: I think you've actually won some of the ancestry costume concepts.
• 35:00
  Crista Cowan: We met half, yes.
• 35:01
  Crista Cowan: We do very great themed group costumes.
• 35:04
  Crista Cowan: Okay, well, the word for one word, one story this week is costume.
• 35:09
  Crista Cowan: So if you are watching on YouTube, leave your story connected to the word in the comments.
• 35:14
  Crista Cowan: I would love to read through those.
• 35:16
  Crista Cowan: If you're listening on a podcast app, you can post your story on Facebook or Instagram.
• 35:20
  Crista Cowan: Be sure to tag me so that I can follow along with the stories that you are sharing.
• 35:26
  Crista Cowan: Jenny, thank you so much for being here.
• 35:31
  Crista Cowan: Thank you for sharing the Finks and that research and just your just I just love everything about how you light up when you talk about family history.
• 35:48
  Crista Cowan: Studio sponsored by Ancestry.