I Can Identify - 52 Ancestors Challenge

 Week 8: I Can Identify


This week I want to focus on one ancestor that I can identify as one difficult to identify. You know, the one's where you just can't get a good handle on who they really are and if you have them combined with someone else. He is my 3rd great-grandfather, Gottlob Friedrich Ortlieb (LB19-N3R). He was confused with another man of the same name so I needed to identify what records went with my grandfather and which were for the other man of the same name. He was the last one with a blue record hint on my seven-generation FamilySearch fan chart and I really wanted to get rid of it!

This was a case where you definitely needed to work backward. I found records for my 2nd great-grandmother that identified Gottlob with his spouse, Catherine Louise Pauline Roser. This turned out to be the biggest help in this research as their marriage record was how I differentiated between the two men. Luckily, the two men had parents with very different names so there was no confusion there and that let me clean up the profiles of both men. Over time, the two had records for my grandfather attached to both of them.

Once I found the mistake, which was actually my own doing, it was a quick process. I realized I had found the death record of the other man (M5BX-X5C), who is actually still related as a third cousin, and he had died at three years old! It is so important to pay attention when sources are being added that information gets into the profile since it doesn't always make it on there the way the record has it. In this case, the record did not get recorded as a death, but as a different event.

Once I had the two separated, I wanted to make sure I had all the records I could easily find for Gottlob attached. I realized he had immigrated to the US in 1884 but was not in any census records. I also didn't have a birth date for him. I was able to locate some information on him but with a possible second wife. I then ran into many children and you can find how I sorted through them to get the correct relationships here.




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