My G4 Grandfather Christian Ritschart's Hauss Buch (House Book)

My G4 Grandfather Christian Ritschart's Hauss Buch (House Book)

I first became interested in genealogy in 1993 when I received a letter in the mail promoting a new book with the title "Richhart Ritchhart Ritschard--A Swiss-German Family From 1500 Until 1993" by Bettye Richhart.  Page 15 of the book was titled "Hauss Buch" (House Book), which was a record started by Christian Ritschhart on 7 April 1750, the year the family emigrated from Switzerland to Pennsylvania.

The following information about the book was provided on that page:  "A partial translation can be found at the Pennsylvania Historical Society.  The translation was done by George R. Seiffert of Philidelphia, date unknown.  The complete book can be found on film #468306, Item 3 at the Family History Center in Salt Lake City, Utah."  

The book contained excerpts from the book that provided pertinent names and dates of births, deaths, marriages and other key family events.  At the time I thought it would be great if I could have the original Hauss Buch"; but I discarded that thought since the book was in the hands of the Pennsylvania Historical Society (PHS) and there were other descendants with as much right to the book as me.   I did, however, want a copy of the book and a few years later sent to the Pennsylvania Historical Society for a copy.  The following are the first three pages:

Cover

 I was a little disappointed that the cover wasn't in color like you would expect a bible or record book to be.  

Title Page

 Although I appreciated the translation, as the original would have been in German; I also expected to receive a copy of the original pages as written in German. However, I was still happy to receive the information and that Christian had been so accommodating as to have kept the record.

Typical Transcribed Page 

The notes pertaining to Christian I and II on the above page were mine, as there was a transition from father to son in recording the family events. There were three pages of the transcribed writings, covering 12 pages of the original book.  

Two years ago, while on a trip back East to do Genealogical research; I stopped in Philadelphia and visited the Pennsylvania Historical Society in hopes of getting to view the original "Hauss Buch."  I didn't even need to look up the call number as the "Gen Ri5" was on the cover of the copy that I received.  Much to my dismay, however, when the document was delivered, it looked exactly like what was sent to me as a copy.  They didn't hold the original document--just the translation!  I asked if there was any way to determine if the original copy still existed and/or where it might be.  They did check a couple sources; but said there was no record pertaining to the original document.

Unfortunately, the translation has no date on it, nor did the PHS have any record of when they received the translation.  I have been unsuccessful in searching for George Seiffert, the transcriber.    

I would hope that the original still exists somewhere; but haven't had any luck it finding it.  My consolation is that I, at least, have the translation.  My visit to PHS also revealed that there were an additional two pages of transcriptions, covering 8 pages of the original document, that had not been sent to me when I originally requested a copy of the book.  Just another example that repositories do make mistakes.  

Sports Center Saturday-- High School Basketball State Champions

 High School Basketball State Champions

My senior year at Bent County High School our team won the State Class A Championship in the state tournament in Denver.  We were 10-6 in the regular season, winning four of those games by a total of five points.  We lost the District Tournament in the finals, so were the #2 seeded team from our District.  However, everything clicked at the State Tournament where we were the underdog in every one of the three games we played.    

High School Yearbook--1955

It was a good news/bad news tournament for me.  We won the state championship; but I tore the lateral ligaments in my left ankle in the semi-final game and, of course, missed the championship game.  

First State Tournament Game

The picture below was from the Denver Post the day following our team winning the championship.  I had surgery on the ankle the day of the championship; but listened to the game on the radio.   I was extremely lucky the injury happened in Denver because I had the two best orthopedic surgeons in Denver perform the operation. 

Rose Memorial Hospital--Denver
We Won State (without me)!

I was fortunate to be named to the State All-Star team despite missing the championship game.  Three of my teammates were also selected.

I was back playing baseball in May, just two months following the surgery and have been blessed not to have had any problems with that ankle since the surgery. 

Two years later my brother was a key player on the Bent County High School team that again won the State Basketball Class A Championship.

The following year at the University of Colorado I tried out for the basketball team as a "walk-on" along with about 120 other players.  About 7 players had been awarded scholarships and were assured of making the team.  The coaches selected 7 additional players for the freshman team.  I was fortunate to be one of those.  However, I was not good enough to move up to the varsity the next year.

I continued to play basketball during my early years in the Navy until I was in my early 30s.  Having played baseball, softball, basketball and football; there is no doubt in my mind, due to the constant moving and running, that basketball requires the most stamina and conditioning. 

Ancestry Honor Wall Follow-Up--Fhoto Friday

Ancestry Honor Wall Follow-Up

In yesterday's blog I discussed the announcement by Ancestry and Fold3 of a new Honor Wall.  I indicated that I was entering one of my ancestors, Christian Richard (Ritchhart), into the Honor Wall.  

Today, in reviewing yesterday's entry, I learned an important limitation of the site.  When you make an entry, it isn't immediately available when you do a search for the individual.  I noticed yesterday that I thought I had made an entry; but when I did a search for Christian, he didn't appear.  Thinking I may have made a mistake I entered the information a second time.  It still didn't appear, so I assumed perhaps their was a review process prior to posting the new data and moved on.

Today I visited the site again and searched for Christian and found him listed twice, both entries having been made by me the previous day.  I then deleted one of the entries.  I couldn't find an explanation or caution about this feature in any of the web site instructions, so thought I would pass this along in case you have the same experience.  I think they should have a "Caution" about their being a time delay (specified, i.e., 4 hour, 24 hour etc.) between making an entry and it being searchable.

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Photo Friday--Four Cousins

 About four years ago I decided to get serious about tracking down two cousins who were sisters.  I had only seen them once in my life when I was around six years of age.  My dad was stationed in the Bay Area during WW II and we had stopped to see his sister in Fresno, California.  My recollection was of the girls being around 12 or 14 when I met them.  However, it turns out they were 19 and 17.  

My main problem in starting to search for the cousins was not knowing the married name of either of them.  Fortunately, one of the sources I happened to check was the on line files for the Fresno County Clerk/Recorder.  This revealed a record for their mother, Mary Lillian.  

Mary Lillian Ritchhart Rumsby

I knew she had lived in Fresno; but death records indicated she died in Sacramento.  I lucked out and found a Power of Attorney that she and her husband, Jim, had granted to Margaret E. BARTON.  Armed with her married name it was relatively easy to find Margaret.  I started in Sacramento County where the Power of Attorney was granted and found her there still in the Sacramento area.  I called and talked with her and discovered that her sister Betty still lived in Fresno.

I talked with both of them, visited Margaret once and exchanged some family information. About two years later I learned that our cousin, Ken, was going to be coming from Indianapolis to visit his son in the Sacramento area.  I thought that would be a great time for four cousins to get together, as Ken either had only seen Margaret and Betty a couple times in his life or had never met them--I can't recall which.   

Margaret (87), Ken (84), Betty (85) and Del (74)

Ken's dad, my dad, and Margaret and Betty's mother were siblings.  However, I grew up in Colorado, Betty and Margaret in California and Ken in Kansas and Indiana.  Thus, the reason we had only met one another a couple times.

 Margaret & Betty

We had a great get together which included some of our children and their spouses.

Back: Debbie Kleinknight (Bob's wife), Cheryl Short (our daughter), Ann Ritchhart (Ken's son's wife), Jeannette (Ken's wife), Joanne (my wife)
Front: Nancy (Margaret's daughter), Margaret & Betty

Bob Kleinknight (Betty's son), Dave Barton (Margaret's son), Ron Short (my son-in-law), and me

Since I organized the reunion, Ken's son (Jeff) and wife (Ann) hosted it; I inserted a short family history presentation (which wasn't as short as my wife would have liked) into the day's agenda.  I think they enjoyed my sharing the large amount of research I have done on the family.  

It was a fun and long overdue reunion.

Fold3/Ancestry.com Creates Honor Wall in Recognition of Veterans

Fold3/Ancestry.com Creates Honor Wall in Recognition of Veterans

I received an email today from Fold3 with the following announcement.

 

Introducing the Honor Wall

Unveiled this week in honor of Veterans Day, the Fold3 Honor Wall pays tribute to millions of men and women who served our nation, from colonial days to the present.

We invite you to visit the Honor Wall and help us pay tribute to America's veterans by sharing your own memories, stories, and photos of a loved one. Whether you have family or friends serving now, or have ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War or other conflicts in between, join us in commemorating them. With your help, the Honor Wall will keep their stories alive.

Click here to visit the Honor Wall or to read more from an article in today's USA Today.

While at the site I searched for my Christian Richard (Ritchhart) who was in the Revolutionary War.  I  found a Richard Christian whom I think was my Christian Richard.  The muster sheet shown below had what looked like a comma between Richard and Christian, so I think they interpreted that as signifying last name, first name.  I also have other records with the name Christian Richard; but I had never seen this muster sheet.

Muster Sheet for Christian Richard

This Veteran's Day in honor of any of your ancestors who served in the military you might want to check out the Honor Roll and add them if they aren't listed.

Family Tree Maker Response Regarding Merging Problems--Free Family Search Look Up Service

Family Tree Maker Response Regarding Merging Problems

In my November 1 blog I discussed a problem I had with media data when I merged two of my Family Tree Maker (FTM) trees.  After discussing the problem with two different technical support people at FTM, I was told to forward the information to their "support" people.  I contacted them and sent them screen shots of the icons I was observing in place of normal photo or document thumbnails.  Following is the response I received from Ancestry support:

"Thank you for contacting Ancestry.com in regards to the default photos that appeared after merging your Family Tree Maker files together.

We apologize for the frustration you have experienced with this issue and the support.  Based off of the images attached in the email you sent us and the description, this sounds like it may be due to some form of file corruption.  Most often, file damage occurs in a family file through merging unchecked files, improper shut-downs of Family Tree Maker or Windows, a virus, or inserting damaged data into the file.

The easiest way to recover from file damage is to restore a backup of your data that was created prior to when the damage occurred. We recommend that our members protect themselves against data loss by maintaining a good backup system. If you do not have any backups of your data, you can attempt to fix the damage in your current file

For instructions for repair a Family Tree Maker file, please follow the instructions from the first section (Compact the File) in this link listed below:

Answer Link: Tips for repairing a Family Tree Maker file "

I haven't attempted yet to do another merge because I am not convinced they have correctly identified the problem.  I received the following statement from Barbara G. indicating she had also experienced these same type of icons resulting from a merge.  

I have been seeing these generic photo icons in my trees (online and FTM) quite a bit, lately. I believe it began after I started using FTM2014 but others seem to have the same problem in 2012. How could Ancestry's tech support claim they had never seen them? They are mentioned quite a bit in the Online Support Community. Are they really not even monitoring this community for recurring issues? I find that after several syncs they generally disappear and are replaced with my actual media picture. She mentioned the problems went away after several syncs; but I am hesitant to sync until after I have he problem solved.  If any of you have experienced similar problem, I would really appreciate hearing from you about the problem and how you solved it.  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Free Family Search Look-Up Service

 In Dick Eastman's newsletter of 5 November, he announced the details of a free service provided by Family Search for looking up information from the Salt Lake Family History Library.  Obviously there are limitation on what they can do and you must be very specific with your request; but it is a service that could be extremely helpful if you need information copied from a book at the library or a specific microfilm copied.  I definitely need some research done at the FHL and plan to take advantage of the service.  If you have any interest I highly recommend you read the details in Dick's newsletter. 
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Sports Center Saturday--My Dad's 1936 NFL Contract

Sports Center Saturday--My Dad's 1936 NFL Contract

Some years back while sorting through scrapbooks and boxes of papers and photos that my mother had saved and passed on to me, I came across an interesting letter--it was my dad's contract for playing football his rookie year (1936) with the Detroit Lions. As shown below, it was only one page in length.  I can only imagine the length of a contract today and it certainly would be far more than a single page!

The first letter is an acknowledgement by the Lions of receiving my dad's signed contract.  They pointed out, however, that he had only returned two copies.  They wanted three copies signed by him.

Acknowledgement of Contract Receipt

 Unfortunately, the contract is not very readable.  That is because I made a basic mistake.  The original contract and a photo of my father are matted and framed and the back of the frame is sealed, so as to preserve it as much as possible.  I didn't think, however, to make copies of the contract prior to having it framed.  Thus, I now have to scan it through the glass.  If you will look at the photo at the beginning of my blog, Del's Genealogy Ramblings, that was photographed and is much more readable.  I did crop the digital image into two parts, so that I could enlarge it more than normal.

Detroit Lions Contract for Delbert B. Ritchhart

Since it is very hard to read, I have typed a couple of the more interesting paragraphs below.

1.  The club will pay the Player a salary for his skilled services during the playing season 1936 at the rate of One Hundred and no/100 dollars for each regularly scheduled League game played. For all other games. . . . . . .

6.  This contract may be terminated at any time by the club giving notice in writing to the player within forth-eight (48) hours after the day of the last game in which he is to participate with this club.

Thus, he was to make $100 per game and they could let him go with only 48 hour notice.  Not exactly the kind of contract one of today's NFL players would receive.  The $100 income would convert to about $4500 today in terms of a skilled laborer.  Thus, it would be roughly like an NFL player today getting about $72,000 for a 16 game season.  Today's minimum salary for a rookie is $285,000.  The NFL, obviously, was the big money maker in those days as compared to now.

In another letter I have from the Lions they advised him that he had to pay his way to and from Detroit before and after the season.  He had to provide his own practice uniform and received a daily meal allowance on the days of a game or on travel.   Once again, not exactly up to today's standards in the NFL.

Framed Contract and Photo

Merging Trees on Family Tree Maker

Merging Trees on Family Tree Maker

I got myself into the position that I had two Family Tree Maker (FTM) trees that needed to be merged.  I had data in each that was unique to it and not included in the other.  I had done a merge several months ago and experienced the fact that a lot of duplicates were created in the media files.  It is interesting that Ancestry can do a great job of syncing data between two trees; but can't merge two documents without creating lots of random duplicates.  This time I noted that duplicates were created not only in the media; but in facts for some (not all) individuals.  It seemed that the more facts that were listed for an individual the more likely it was to have duplicates.  That is just probably the law of numbers and probabilities.  

I did contact FTM before doing the merge to see if there was any way to change the name of the tree on Ancestry.com to match the one in FTM and then do a sync.  However, that won't work.  He also confirmed that, unfortunately, they haven't perfected the merge and duplicates were unavoidable.  

I tried to determine if there was any pattern to the duplicates; but it seems to be random, except for media.  Almost all the media results in duplicates.  

Another, perhaps more serious problem I had with the media files as a result of the merge was that the thumbnails in the media files were replaced by a "funny looking icon".  I had a similar situation come up with FTM 2012; but the icons looked different and once the duplicate media was deleted the "normal" thumbnail view of the document or photo returned.  That didn't happen this time.  Following is a photo of the Media file (from the menu bar).

Media File Screen

The view below show the same icons; but in the person view with "All Media" displayed.  The one "normal" thumbnail of me on the far right I added after doing the merge. 

Person View Window

I spoke with two different people from Technical Support; but neither could duplicate the "funny icons" nor had they ever seen them, nor did they know how to get rid of them.  For the second time in a month I was told to send an e-mail to ancestry.com support and perhaps they could help.  Not sure how I keep coming up with problems that the normal tech support people can't solve!  Maybe I am just creative. 

If any of you have observed these icons or know how to get rid of them, I would appreciate your assistance.

  Comments on My 28 Oct Blog

In my blog of 28 October, I commented that any facts about individual had to be entered manually if they weren't displayed in the "Search Result Detail" window of a possible match with your individual of interest.  I received a comment back from Russ Worthington explaining how that could be done.  He also was nice enough to refer to one of his previous blogs that described in detail how to accomplish such a merge.  That information can be found by clicking here.