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Leslie Renner and World War I

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Maybe it was Veteran’s Day, or maybe it was my brother sending me more materials from Carolina (Brenner) Renner which included letters written home when her fiancee Leslie was in World War I. Whatever it was, I decided to see what I could find out about Lesley and World War I. The photo at the right is Leslie ready to go to war.

He spent some time training in New Mexico and then at Camp Kearny, California. This is determined by letters he wrote from those two places to family. There is little in his military records except when he left for Europe and when he returned and was discharged. He left the United States 8 Aug 1918 on the British ship Balmoral Castle. He was back in the United States by 18 July 1919 and returned on the U.S. President Grant. The materials we had included letters, postcards, and photographs. Some of the photographs were purchased and some appeared to be snapshots.

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Visiting Friends and Relatives

I recently ran across this newspaper clipping and thought others might enjoy it. This was published in the Olathe Mirror on Mar 25, 1920. Although I never remember going to Olathe, it is only about 30 miles from Riverside. Carolina Renner was the youngest child of Louisa Mary Truskey and John Peter Brenner. She was the baby of the family, born when her mother was 49, 24 years after the first child Bertha.

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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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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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Native Americans in the Riverside area

In this blog post I want to cover some history of the area that I and my grandparents and great grandparents lived in. First, what was there for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived, who was there just before they arrived, and then a bit about the arrival of Europeans.

Not all of this would be considered genealogy, but it is my history because I wandered around in the Indian mounds, often walked the plowed fields after a rain in search of arrowheads and potshards, and participated in a Shippee dig on the Renner property in 1954 at the age of 13. The photo below is of some of the items I found walking the plowed fields after a rain, mostly arrowheads and potshards. Lower left is the grinding stone used for grinding grain.

Judy’s treasures

My great aunt Carolina (Brenner) Renner encouraged the exploration of the prehistoric site on her property and several excavations were made during her lifetime. Gary Brenner was the driving force behind the creation of The Renner-Brenner Site Park, as is explained on his website here: https://www.rennerbrennersitepark.com/

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Finding Adolph Truskey

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Snippet from Carolina Brenner Renner

Adolph Truskey is an ancestor of the descendants of John Peter Brenner and Caroline Dorethea Wegner. Adolph Truskey (1830-1950) is my second great grandfather. In my mother’s family I have back to an 11th great grandfather, Antoine Tibault (1593-1639). Even the Brenner/Klamm tree goes back to a 7th great grandfather. But with the Truskeys we were stuck.

Nor could I find anyone else who knew any more about our Truskeys than we did. Trees all ended with Adolph and Gustave. Searches came up empty for all of us, everywhere. Until this week.

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Ridge Recipes

Ridge Recipes, published by the Evening Circle of St. Matthew’s Evangelical and Reformed Church, Riverside, Missouri, in 1954, is now available in PDF format.

I received my copy from my Aunt Carolina Brenner Renner on the occasion of my (first) marriage in 1961. My favorite recipes are the German ones, dishes that Grandma and Aunt Carolina made. I long ago copied out my favorite recipes, and meanwhile, the book has been aging fast in the Texas heat, so it was now or never… The result is still a bit messy but I think all of the recipes are readable.

This copy also has Aunt Carolina’s notes plus her recipe for Mexican Wedding Cakes. Some of my other favorites are German Style Summer Pickles, Hot Potato Salad (with or without greens), Grandma’s coffee cake, cream puffs.

An aside about the coffee cake. We lived in Hamburg, Germany, for a couple of years and their butterkuchen was just like Grandma’s coffeecake except they put slivered almonds on top.

You can download it here (and it is also listed on my Resources page). The first version is complete as published, in the second version I have deleted the advertising pages.
http://nichollsfamily.us/resources/ridgerecipes.pdf
http://nichollsfamily.us/resources/ridgerecipes-noads.pdf…

How did they get to Missouri?

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Heinrich Brenner, his wife Suzanna and his children arrived in New York in 1843. How did they get to Platte County, Missouri from New York City, a distance of over 1200 miles on modern roads?

They arrived in New York on 27 Jun 1843 on the bark Baltimore (a sailing ship) sailing from Le Havre, France. In this post I will discuss how they might have traveled from New York to Platte County, Missouri. Why they might have come and what it was like on the sailing ship crossing the Atlantic around 1843 will be discussed in later posts.

New York City, South Street from Maiden Lane, ca. 1834
New York City, South Street from Maiden Lane, ca. 1834
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The Brenner Family 1843-1990

A wonderful resource for descendants of Henry and Susanna Brenner is “The Brenner Family 1843-1990” compiled by Carol Chamberlin Brenner and privately published in 1990.

The story starts with Henry (Henrich) Brenner and his wife Susanna Elizabeth Hoffman and their eight children who immigrated in 1843 from Neuhofen, Germany, and settled in Platte County, Missouri.

This book is now available as a searchable PDF which can be downloaded here:
http://nichollsfamily.us/resources/The_Brenner_Family_1843-1990.pdf

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