Wednesday, September 21, 2011

I’ve recently picked up where I left off on my genealogy work after a break of a few years. I work in New York City now and have a pretty long commute, so I don’t have time for a lot of on site research the way I used to, but there’s a lot of stuff online now that didn’t used to be. I’ve been trying to find Robert Schmitt, Charles Lean Schmitt’s father. I found a record of a Robert Schmitt on the Mt. Elliott Cemetery web site, but I haven’t yet connected him to Charles. The cemetery sent me some records that showed that the Robert they have died June 18, 1895 of a broken neck. It would be interesting to find that this was Charles’ father, as Robert appears to have been part of a family that owned a bunch of liquor stores. The burial record shows him living (and presumably dying) in Grosse Pointe, so I’ve sent to Wayne County to see if I can get a death record. That might clear some things up. I hope to have that in a few weeks.

I’ve also done some looking into the Hertels. The LDS site Family Search has a lot of records from Michigan on their site, including a marriage record for Carl H. F. Haertel and Wilhelmine Oertel, or as I think they would be rendered in German, Härtel and Örtel. They were married in Detroit on April 7, 1874. Carl is shown as a carpenter, which matches his profession throughout his life.

The Seeking Michigan site has death records from 1897-1920 for Michigan among its many treasures. Sure enough, they have a death certificate for Wilhelmine. It’s not the gold mine of information that her burial record was, but it’s good to have.

Posted at 10:46:51 PM Link to this entry

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