To Beu Or Not To Beu: The Remix

This past Saturday, the new hubby and I were summoned to Oma and Pop-pop's house to de-leaf their front yard after the oak forest attacked. What does that have to do with genealogy, you may ask? The reason for the leaf-blower counter-attack was that my mother's cousin Barbara was coming to visit, Barbara being Oma's niece. Apparently, she's always wanted to find about her dad's side of the family, her dad being Oma's brother Rudi (more frequently known in the family as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named), and my mother eagerly passed on what of my research she remembered and summoned me to show her the rest. As Rudi was four years older than Oma and had the advantage of going back to Ribnitz while Oma stayed home, he had more memories of their dad's family and I figured we could pool resources. The sheer amount of information seemed to take her aback, and while it debunked a few pieces of family lore, it backed up much more of it, and the exchange of stories got more and more interesting...

Barbara told me that her dad remembered meeting his step-siblings, supposedly from a marriage that Gustav had made in Germany, which he then ended before coming to the States. I have the passenger list for Gustav and Rudi coming back from Germany in 1927, when they went over to settle Hermann's affairs (as the oldest son, Gustav had to approve selling the lumber mill and the house), and being eight or nine while they were in Ribnitz, that's most likely the meeting with his step-siblings he would recall. It was the first I'd heard of a possible third marriage for Gustav, though certainly not out-of-character for a man who failed to divorce my great-grandmother Emma and remarried in Florida, only to have his bigamy discovered when he died. 1876 began the switch of vital records from churches to the government, so it requires getting in touch with the Ribnitz civil records archive, but it means I can find out what exactly happened and if Gustav had another family still in Germany. My search for Old World cousins is taking on more and more unexpected twists and turns, but isn't that what makes the search so much fun? I certainly think so.