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The Groh Family

JN. The GROH Famly. Two typewritten pages (incomplete) document found in the possessions of my mother Ruby (Anderson) Klamm. Origin unknown. It contains a number of interesting stories about the family. I have made comments in italic font preceded with my initials JN. The genealogy is confusing with so many people named Christoph and Peter, but I think my analysis of their error in ancestry is correct. All of these people are descended from Peter Groh (1753-) and Eva Katharina Fry (1777-) but I believe sometimes by different paths than described here. This is a common kind of error, especially when the same names duplicated in every family. If you are not interested in the details of the ancestry, just enjoy the history and stories.

During the 1840s. Christoph Groh (b. 1796 14 Nov 1795-d. January 5, 1853), his brother Peter Groh III (b. 1786 7 May 1788-d 18 Dec 1846), and their families over the course of several years immigrated to America from their place of birth Rheingoenheim, Bavaria then under the rule of King Maximilian.

JN. Both immigrated 27 Jun 1843 on the Baltimore to New York. Christoph came with some of his children. Peter Groh came with wife Maria, Heinrich, Christoph, Michel. Some other of Peter’s children were adults and also came to America. This is the same ship as the Brenners arrived on.

Christoph and Peter III were the sons and grandsons of Peter Groh II (b, 1753) and Peter Groh I (b. 1723) farmers from Rheingoenheim. They first settled near Parkville, Missouri along the Clay and Platte County line.

Neuhofen map from 1790

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The Groh Family Comes to America

I recently found an incomplete undated document of unknown origin in my mother’s papers entitled The Groh Family which interested me enough to take a closer look at the Groh family.

The sailing ship Baltimore arrived in New York on 27 June 1843 with a number of people who were on their way to Platte County, Missouri or nearby. Among the passengers was the Heinrich Brenner and his wife Susannah Hoffmann and family, which is described in a previous post. Also on that ship were Christof Groh (1795-1853) and daughter Eva Groh (our ancestor) who married John Klamm in 1844. Her mother had apparently died before the trip. The other children arriving on that ship were Philipp 26, Peter 23, Daniel 15, Anna 18.

Port of New Orleans in 1855
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Dessie Ellen (Kimsey) Anderson

  • Kimsey

Dessie Ellen Kimsey was born April 11, 1896 in Platte County, Missouri. In 1900 census, taken on June 22, 1900, her father, Thomas Frankly Kimsey was listed as a widower, so her mother, Sarah Ellen Spencer, died before that date. Dessie was 4 years old. Then in January 1903 her father died, leaving her an orphan at the age of 6. In the 1910 census we find her living with Joseph Wilson, the father of Lewis Wilson who married Dessie’s aunt Melissa Kimsey.

Dessie and daughter Grace (Anderson) Borgmier

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The Scotch Irish and the American Revolution

In my genealogy journey I have noticed something about the American history. My maternal ancestors immigrated to Virginia and Pennsylvania. It became clear to me that history was written by New Englanders because the early days in Virginia and the southern Appalachians are not very well documented. After a while I discovered (recognized) my Scotch-Irish ancestors and started reading about them and learned the amazing secret that without the Scotch-Irish the Revolutionary War would probably not have succeeded.

Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec, 1775
Oil painting by John Turnbull completed in 1786

This blog post is about the Scotch-Irish (or Ulster Scots or Scots-Irish) and their significant contribution to America during the Revolutionary War.

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Recipes

I thought for the holidays it might be fun to write about a few family recipes. So I’ve decided to remind people about the Brenner Ridge recipe booklet, offer some recipes from my grandma Elizabeth (Brenner) Klamm, Aunt Carolina (Brenner) Renner, and a recipe from a cousin in honor of my mema Dessie (Kimsey) Anderson.

First, if you are interested in old recipes, I encourage you to download and look through the Brenner Ridge recipe booklet. My husband scanned it and I put it together and OCRed it, so you can read and copy and search the booklet. It has some traditional German recipes and some that were “modern” at the time it was written, but are now also old. Besides the recipes I’m going to put in this post, one of my favorites is the recipe for the all-important pickles, always on the table before meals when Grandma had company. Also hand-written into this copy is a recipe for Mexican Wedding Cakes from Carolina (Brenner) Renner, because she knew I liked them so much.

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John Ratliff – Mystery Life

  • Anderson

If you are descended from Samuel Anderson, you are descended from John Ratliff (ca 1805-1847), my third great grandfather.

It seems that when you “go west young man” you get forgotten back home. [Footnote the quote below re brick wall] So when someone decides to write down the names of the children of your parents, well, you just aren’t there! So John Ratliff moves to Platte County Missouri and apparently pretty promptly dies. Who was he? Who was his wife?

It was all about land…
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DNA and Genealogy

  • General

The first news is so far I have found NO NPE in either line. What is an NPE? Non Parental Event.1 In other words, my paper records do agree with DNA. All lines have been confirmed to around the mid 1700s or as far as I have been able to go. I need to learn more about using DNA results to try to find our last few missing “recent” ancestors. One is the wife of John Ratliff (ca 1805-1847), my third great grandfather. I’m also not sure of his parents, but from DNA I know who his grandparents are. Also, I do not know for sure who the parents of our second great grandfather Alexander Anderson (1805-1884) is. We think the name is Archibald, but I cannot be sure of a suitable person in the records. The good news is I have a clue that might work out. We do know the ancestry of his wife.

The chart below is how ancestry.com displays something they call Thrulines, and is so far the most important way that I am using the DNA information. What they do is compare DNA matches with me to other people’s ancestry trees comparing them to my tree. In this case it works pretty well because Robert Davis’ ancestry is well known and that means most people’s trees are reasonably correct. I conclude from this that I am related to 5 children of Robert Davis. That does not prove the name of Robert Davis, but does provide confirmation that I am related to 4 other children who we believe are children of Robert Davis. I say this because sometimes we do know the names of the children, but not the parent’s name, usually in the case of missing or incorrect wife’s name. All I know is I am related to 78 other people who claim to descend from Robert Davis. But in this easy case, this is sufficient for my purposes, which is to confirm that Robert Davis is my ancestor.

Robert Davis (ca 1707-1780)) DNA Matches
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The Babers and Kimseys in Platte County, Missouri

  • Kimsey

This post is about ancestors and relatives of the descendants of Dessie Kimsey Anderson. I’ve been working on understanding their migrations. The Anderson/Kimsey families’ American story begins in Virginia. From there they moved to Georgia or North Carolina or Kentucky or Tennessee. Then they went to Missouri. The early ones went to Howard County, on the Missouri River, about in the middle of the state. Then after the Platte Purchase (1836), to that part of Missouri. Not our ancestors, but many of their relatives moved on to Oregon or California. Our ancestors tended to be on the early wave of such migrations, often traveling and living on the dangerous frontier.

Today I’m focusing on a story about Robert Baber, as told in The History of Clay and Platte Counties, Missouri. Our ancestors John and Delila (Davis) Baber traveled from Kentucky to Platte County, Missouri, between 1830 and 1839, with their three children (at the time) Elizabeth, Martha (our ancestor), and the Robert of this story. I’ve included a part of our family tree, which includes Robert Baber (born around 1766), his son John Baber (born in 1795) and John’s children Robert (of this story) and our Martha. Another child, John, was born in Missouri.

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John Philip and Elizabeth (Brenner) Klamm

  • Klamm

John Philip Klamm was born 17 December, 1880 at his parents’ farm in Clay County, Missouri. In 1900 he was living with his parents and the census reported he was a “farm laborer”. On August 13, 1902, he married Elizabeth Susanna Brenner.

Philiip (or “J.P.”) and “Lizzie” lived various places throughout their lives and it was a bit difficult to figure out, so here’s our best guess. They were still in Clay County in May 1903 when their first child, Herman, was born. Their sons Oliver and Ralph were born in 1906 and 1908 in Bonner Springs, Kansas. According to a postcard of the Bonner Springs fire in November 1908, Philip and a brother had a harness shop in Bonner Springs. Since most of the downtown was destroyed, they probably moved back to Clay County after the fire.

In the 1910 census Philip is farming in Clay County on rented property next to the property of his father. The family is still in Clay County in 1912 and 1915 when Frances and Della are born. But in 1918 Winston is born in Ottawa, Kansas. Family history is that they lost their farm in Clay County.

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Independence Day

A couple of days ago I decided to see how many of my ancestors had participated in the Revolutionary War and I found 12 ancestors. My guess is there were more, but some of my ancestors I don’t even know their names and in other cases there is very little information about them. The way I found them is by finding which ancestors had been used for joining the DAR is Daughters of the American Revolution or the Sons of the American Revolution. You can join such organizations if you can prove you are descended from a qualifying ancestor. Note, these are all maternal ancestors. My father’s family did not come to America until the early 1840s.

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