Icedoth

Someone please help me figure out what the hell Icedoth is.

The underlying goal of my research is to find where in Germany my family originally came from and to go back and visit that town. So naturally when I found that “Icedoth, Ger” was listed as my great-great-great grandfather's country of birth in the 1920 census, I became super-excited thinking I had already accomplished what I set out to do. I was wrong.

I do not know what Icedoth is supposed to be, but I'm starting to believe it's a cruel joke planted by either my ancestors or the 1920 census taker (or maybe both) that's playing out 90 years later. Through me.

I have searched countless sites through Google, Cyndi's List, and other genealogy blogs. I even found Kartenmeister, a nifty site that has a searchable list of old Germanic towns with a spell guesser that's supposed to help German language lightweights such as myself. Even with all those resources and references at hand I still can't find diddly squat that even comes close.



Now I'm not sure what you see when you read the picture above, but I see Icedoth and apparently I'm wrong. I even tried searching for alternative spellings (Iceduth, Iceduth, Fceduth, etc.) and have the scratch pad I scribbled all this gibberish on to prove it. This doesn't mean there aren't other ways to source my family's origins – it just means it will take that much more digging and ponying up cash for NYC record requests.

I've come to find in a very short amount of time that misspellings are such a pain in the butt when it comes to genealogical research and have been a hindrance to my research on more than one occasion. I recently received my great-grandfather's birth certificate from 1894 where they decided to spell the last name “Kahler.” I was able to confirm it was him through his mother's last name and through cross-referencing other documents but his birth certificate also uncovered an additional odd factoid. Apparently my great-great grandmother's name, despite being Mary Zugner on some documents I have in my possession, is also Lena Zugner. What a shock it was to me that after finding this out and plugging the info into Ancestry.com, I was able to find an enormous wealth of hits on my family that I wasn't able to find before. And I'm talking big finds, like birth dates and anniversaries.

For anyone that's starting out and having a terrible time locating any information on their ancestors, my best advice is to just stick it out and keep digging. If the information isn't coming up with what you're searching on, try alternative spellings of names where you can. As I found out, it can literally mean the difference between wasting your time and finding gold.

Except, of course, if your family is from Icedoth. Then you're SOL.

Family Stories

One challenge I’ve encountered with genealogy research is making my ancestors more than just names and dates on a family tree. The problem is aside from oral history, I really don’t know of any other ways that family stories are passed down through the ages. I’ve heard stories of people finding that their relatives are famous, influential, wealthy, etc (there’s even a group called the International Blacksheep Society of Genealogists who apparently regal each other with stories on being related to not-so-nice people in history). I can’t for the life of me figure out how they know this.

Waiting for public record requests (which takes upwards of 6 weeks per record) leaves a lot of downtime to explore the ins and outs of your family history. This has led me to wonder who my ancestors were, what they liked, disliked, did for fun, and other random tidbits. For all I know and suspect, this information is lost forever but I really want to know how some people know so much about their great-great grandfather’s grass cutting techniques while I rejoiced at just finding out my great-great’s name. I’ve done a few newspaper archive searches to test the water but to no avail. I only know of the few stories that were told to me and they really only extend back to my grandfather’s generation.

The best stories are those my dad told me about my grandfather John Koehler’s time in the Korean War. My grandfather was a radio repairman during the war with somewhat of a hot temper. According to my dad, my grandfather was promoted and then summarily demoted several times for fighting with people. My favorite was a story about one time my grandfather beat the living hell out of guy who, in a state of shell-shock, tried to hide in my grandfather’s work-tent and knocked over all the equipment he had just fixed. There’s another story about my grandfather receiving a Bronze Star for taking the reins of gun placement and beating back an enemy advance after the person manning the station was killed. I can't confirm this, however, since a huge problem with the Korean War records I’ve found on Ancestry and on Cyndi’s List is that they only have the casualty lists online. There isn’t anything about links to record requests for those who came home alive.

Now I would love to know if these stories are real but I have not had luck in getting responses to my FOIA requests for my grandfather’s Korean War records and I haven’t found any sites with good leads yet for that information. That is why I have decided to enroll in a non-credit genealogy class through Portland Community College. It’s my hope that I’ll be able to learn a little bit more about how professional researchers don’t’ just look for names in public records but look for the the people behind the names on a piece of paper. I’d also love some input on how to look for non-casualty Korean War records. Wish me luck!