It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Ancestry.com has the Mecklenburg-Schwerin census records online, for 1819, 1867, 1890, and 1900, and that was how I was able to trace the Beu line from Gustav, to Hermann, to Ludwig, and finally to Johann, though without the parish records, I didn't think I had a way to get Johann's birthdate. I had already searched for Johann Beu in the 1819 census with no results, and thought I was stuck. I was pretty sure Oma would be happy with what I'd found so far, but for me, it wasn't enough. It was Christmas Eve, and I hadn't made as much progress as I'd hoped. A normal, sane person probably would have cut their losses right then, but as I'm neither normal nor sane, I decided it was time for a Hail Mary.

Having turned up no results for Johann Beu, I typed in Johanna Grädener, and got something of a Christmas miracle. Just as the clock was turning midnight, I found Johann and his wife in the 1819 census, and discovered that someone had transcribed the results as Johann Ben instead of Beu, and that's why previous searches had turned up nothing. From the census records, I got their dates of birth, as well as the fact that Johann was a sailor, Johanna went by her middle name of Dorothea (Johanna is probably THE most common name for a German girl in this period, so it was probably to avoid confusion, though I prefer Dorothea of the two names), and she was from Rostock. This meant that I now had the Beu line back to 1792, and it made me feel a lot better about what I'd be able to put in Oma's book. I might not have been able to do anything with her mother's line, but I could do a lot with her father's side.

I made sure the scrapbooks were the last presents to be opened, and got a few photos of Oma and Pop-pop opening them and starting to go through them. Pop-pop seemed to be near tears and Oma was speechless, so I was quite happy with the reaction. What surprised me, however, was that the first thing everyone said upon looking through the books was, 'Wow, this is a LOT of work!' I didn't expect that to be the first thought everyone had, even though I had to admit that it WAS a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun. The sheer amount of knowledge I now have about my family was a gift to myself, and it's a relief that now, this won't all be lost when my grandparents pass away. The Christmas gift was only the start, and this is going to continue as far back as I can get it, so sit back and get comfortable. This adventure is far from over.