Looking For My German Ancestors, Part 7

In my previous post, I mentioned that Anna's siblings had moved back to Cleveland, and that Anna and her siblings had other relatives living in Cleveland, Ohio as well. I think I will write about those relatives, and how I found the marriage record of her parents.

As I mentioned before, Anna and her parents entered the United States through New York's Castle Garden in February of 1864. About a year or so later, Anna's uncle, William Kees, came to the U. S. as well. Of course, at the time that I did the search, I was uncertain to whether or not he was the brother of Emilia Kees, Anna's mother. I knew the maiden name of Emilia at this time only because I had jumped ahead, and obtained Friedrich Klippel and Emilia Kees' marriage record the summer before when I was in Salt Lake City. My grandparent's family tree listed Anna's parents as Friedrich Klippel and Emilia Kees and gave a marriage year of 1858, which turned out later to be incorrect. (Of course, I already knew who Anna's parents were from U. S. census records, family tradition and the ship manifest, but I still jumped ahead when I should not have done so. I should have tried to obtain Anna's birth record first, but I did not.)

Before I went to Salt Lake City, I looked for Friedrich and Emilia's marriage on the FamilySearch site, and I found it. The place of the marriage, which I knew to be Trippstadt, Germany, was the same as on the tree, but the year was different. FamilySearch's entry listed the year as 1857, and since I was already suspicious of the accuracy of the tree, I figured the entry was closer to being accurate. (Some other information on the tree was inaccurate.) So, while I was at the Family History Library, I took at look at the Trippstadt marriages for 1857, and Friedrich and Emilia's marriage record was the first marriage I saw on the film.

Once I got the marriage record transcribed, I began to research Emlia's family, and I came across records for a William H. Kees. Since I did not know if William was related to Emilia, I left a query on a rootsweb message board, and was contacted by a woman in Germany. She sent me some information on Emilia's parents that indicated that William was Emilia's younger brother. The information, though, was from secondary sources, but I was able to confirm the relationship when ancestry posted the passport applications. William Kees had applied for a passport several times for travel to Europe, and on one of his applications, he listed the name of his father, which confirmed the secondary information I had.

In my next post, I will write some more about Emilia's family and possible about some of my latest research on the Klippel and Kees family. Stay tuned ...