How to Use Obituaries to Determine Family Relationships
If you read this last blog post , you know that I was sorting the parents for Gottlob Ortlieb and his children and stepchildren. He had two different wives, Paulina and Frederike and Frederike was previously married before she came to be Gottlob's second wife. In Emma's obituary, there was a brother named Rudolph, which is a name I had not come across before as a sibling. I did some research on him and found his obituary which really added to my confusion. It listed his parents as Gottlob and Fredericka, who is not the mother of Emma. I then located Fredericke's obituary, which listed NINE children (yes nine), all of whom I had never heard of except Rudolph and Ida (but she had an incorrect last name). I wanted to know whose parents were whose so I went to work finding the obituaries for all the children in this family. I also wanted to know what the relationships were. Each time I found an obituary, I made a column in a table. I had all the family members listed on the l...