I have read that some Ancestry DNA subscribers have over
100,000 matches to their accounts. I can’t imagine. I monitor 9 accounts on
Ancestry and as of today their total matches range from 18,000 to 86,000. My own matches are at a little over
28,000. Even at that much smaller
number, this is a lot of information to sift through to find a common ancestor.
Ancestry’s Thru-Lines and their Common Ancestors go back to 5X
Great Grandparents. However, the majority of our matches do not fall into
these categories, and that interesting match that you have wondered about remains a
mystery.
One way to increase the number of known matches is to go
back to your 5X Great Grandparents and fill in the names of their children and complete
their genealogy to the present day. Do that for each generation. This will make a hefty but knowledge
rich environment, and that will help Ancestry identify more common ancestors in
your match list.
It sounds simple enough, but if, like me, you have a significant
chunk of your ancestry that resides in another country, the information is not
that easy to come by.
My father's generation is the first full generation to be born in this
country. His maternal ancestors came
from what was then Germany but is now part of Poland. After World War II when the German’s were
expelled from their land East of the Oder-Neisse line, the majority of vital
records for this area were lost. Those records that survived were scattered to
different institutions in both Germany and Poland.
Below is a map of the Stolp district in Pomerania where dad’s
maternal ancestry lived. The map is from 1794 but the area is the same
(outlined in yellow) as it was in 1945.
The city of Stolp had a population of 50,377 in the last full census
taken in 1939. The rest of the district
had a population of 83,009 in that same census.
In 1815, Pomerania became a part of the Prussian Kingdom and when the various
German states unified into the German Empire in 1871, Stolp's citizens became German citizens.
In 1874, the areas of the Prussian State required civil
registrations of births, marriages and deaths. Prior to that, church records were
the only source of this information in Pomerania.
When I wanted to add family members to my 3X Great
Grandmother, Henriette Bastubbe Gliffe, I was disappointed to learn that there
was no birth record or marriage record available for her. I did however, have a death record which gave
me her date of birth. On the other hand, of her
nine children, I had 7 of their births available in Church Baptismal
Registers. And that meant there were Godparents listed!
Sometimes Godparents were friends of the parents. Sometimes Godparents were grabbed from
whomever was available when an ill baby needed to be baptized immediately. Sometimes the weather was bad on the intended
baptismal date, and the original Godparents could not be there. But
sometimes the Godparents were relatives of the parents.
I looked at the Godparents for Henriette’s children. Twenty one Godparents and only one had the
last name of Bastubbe, Ferdinand Bastubbe from Labüssow. Labüssow is a
village a the church district of Groß Dübsow.
As you can see above, I have marked the 4 churches in the
area where my ancestors lived. For the
most part they belonged to the church in Budow. Labüssow, which is located a little north of Groß
Dübsow, was a bit of ways for someone to come who was not important to
Henriette. So I started looking at all
of the Bastubbe individuals in that church district. Fortunately, there is an index database
online that allowed me to do this.
The remarkable group, Stolper Heimatkreise e.V., has over 5
million names in the index. Not all the
records are available online, but another website, Pommerscher Grief e.V, can
tell you which church and civil registers are available, where they are located, which ones are digitized and how to find them on the Internet. This website was updated
earlier this year, and they did a beautiful job, making things easier to find
on the site. Both of these organizations
are stellar. I used them both extensively when doing my Bastubbe search.
I did not find Ferdinand but eventually, I came across a wedding entry for a Ernestine
Luise Bastubbe. It was her second
marriage and it listed a father, a Paul Bastubbe who was deceased, but had
lived in Grünheide by Gaffert. This
location was in the Budow district. When
I looked at the Godparents for Ernestine’s children, there were two Bastubbe
names listed, Carl Friedrich and Ferdinand.
In the end,(with some translation help from a forum friend) I found three marriage records listing a deceased
Paul Bastubbe of Grünheide as the father.
Unless you are related, you won’t care about the details. However, I made a timeline for each of the
siblings, Ernestine Luise Bastubbe, Henriette Bastubbe, Carl Friedrich August
Bastubbe, and Martin Ferdinand Gottlieb (who, according to the death record of
his son Carl Ferdinand Friedrich Bastubbe, went by the name Ferdinand.) I made a timeline for the father, Paul
Bastubbe. Then I color coded which
events they intersected.
Below are the five timelines.
You can see the interaction between the individuals.
Ernestine really did turn out to be the key. She interacted with each member. The bonus – one of Ernestine’s sons emigrated
to the United States. A descendant took
the test and her results were sitting in my match list waiting for me to find
her. My brother had two descendants in
his list, but he’s kind of showy that way.
In case there is someone who is related to this family, I am
putting the timeline sources below. KB stands
for Kirchenbuch (Church Book). Taufen, Heiraten, and Tote are for the Baptismal
Register, the Marriage Register, and the Death Register, respectively.
Until Next Time
Source of Ernestine
Luise Bastubbe Timeline
1. KB Groß Dübsow Heiraten, 1840/7
2. KB
Lupow Tote, 1853/37
3. Standesamt
Lupow Heiraten, 1879/3
4. KB
Groß Dübsow Taufen, 1837/56
5. KB
Budow Taufen, 1841/42
6. KB
Groß Dübsow Taufen, 1844/46
7. KB
Budow Taufen, 1844/34
8. KB
Groß Dübsow Taufen, 1847/67
9. KB
Budow Taufen, 1849/5
10. KB Groß Dübsow Taufen, 1851/1
11. DNA Test with Ancestry
Sources of Henriette GLIFFE geb. BASTUBBE Timeline
1. KB
Budow Tote, 1872/29
2. KB
Groß Nossin Heiraten, 1859/28
3. KB
Budow Taufen, 1839/4
4. KB
Budow Taufen 1841/54
5. KB
Budow Taufen, 1844/34
6. KB
Budow Taufen, 1846/52
7. KB
Budow Taufen, 1849/5
8. KB
Budow Taufen, 1852/5
9. KB
Budow Taufen, 1855/23
10. Zurückgeführtes Erstregister, Berlin X A, Heiraten, 1880/231
11. DNA Test with Ancestry
Sources of Carl Friedrich August BASTUBBE Timeline
1. Trier
Stadt Heiraten, 1846/111
2. KB
Groß Dübsow Taufen, 1837/56
3. 1852
Trier Einwohnerliste Sektion I, 1852/ 210-6
Sources of Martin Ferdinand Gottlieb BASTUBBE Timeline
1. KB Groß Dübsow Heiraten, 1845/25a
2. KB
Budow Taufen, 1841/42
3. KB
Budow Taufen, 1844/34
4. Zurückgeführtes
Erstregister, Berlin II, Heiraten, 1877/675
5. Berlin Erstregister Tote, Berlin V A 1909/1
Sources of Paul Bastubbe Timeline
1. KB Groß Dübsow Heiraten, 1840/7
2. KB Groß Dübsow Heiraten, 1845/25a
3. Trier Stadt Heiraten, 1846/111
© 11 May 2024, Teresa
L. Snyder, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged