Breaking Down Brick Walls: Part Two

Part One

Two Mondays ago, I transcribed the decision letter written by The Dawes Commission concerning my Hartley ancestors.  This letter mentioned the parents of my second great grandmother, Sarah Hartley Denyer Foster, as provided in the testimony of her brother, Samuel:  George W Hartley and Eliza Beasley.  However, the letter also mentioned another possible mother - Ann Fisher.

It also appears that all of said applicants claim rights in the Choctaw lands under article fourteen of the treaty between the United States and the Choctaw Nation, concluded September twenty-seventh, eighteen hundred and thirty, by reason of being descendants of one George W. Hartley, and from Eliza Hartley (nee Beasley) (or Ann Hartley nee Fisher) who are alleged to have been three quarter blood Choctaw Indians and to have resided in Mississippi in eighteen hundred and thirty.

I said in my notes that followed the transcription I would devote a post to this conundrum.   I also said that Ann Fisher's name appears in only one other location in the documents I downloaded from Footnote for all eight related applications. A genealogy chart that appeared in Samuel T Hartley's application, but with no indication where/who it came from.  (click on the below images to see a larger version)

Samuel T. Hartley clearly states in his testimony that his mother was Eliza.

One assumption that could be made is that if there was a second mother for George Hartley's children, Ann Fisher was likely the mother of Sarah.  But that would be an assumption.  It's also possible Samuel may have said his mother was Eliza, but later admitted in some document I don't have, that his mother was actually Ann.  Or perhaps this chart was drawn up by the commission, and Ann's name got added there accidentally by some strange unknown series of events.

Is there any evidence that might support the theory that Sarah's mother was Ann?  Any evidence that might suggest otherwise?  Yes, and Yes.

1) Sarah's full name at birth, as far as family records are concerned, was Sarah Ann Hartley.  (circumstantial, but shouldn't be ignored.)
2) Sarah's second daughter was named Eliza.  (also circumstantial, but shouldn't be ignored either.)

3) One might ask who was the older child -- Samuel or Sarah -- and whether there is any evidence of which wife/mother came first.

Let's take a look at the evidence provided by the census.  The first census of any use is 1850.  (Prior to 1850, only the head of the household was named.)

1850  Census

In Houston County, Texas, there is an Eliza Hartley (32) living with two sons, Samuel (18)  and William (6).  They are in the same household as the family of  "Elijah and Margaret Wheeler."  Samuel claims in his testimony to have been born in 1830, so this isn't too far off.  However, there is no Sarah.

There is a Sarah Hartley (14), in another Houston County, Texas household.  Working as a farmhand for Hardey and Sarah Ware.  Her birth year would be 1836.

1854

Sarah Hartley married Ebenezer Denyer (I have a copy of the marriage certificate)  There are no ages given.

1860 Census

Sarah is recorded as age 32.  Her birth year would be 1828.  (Her brother Samuel is in the same household, and is recorded as age 26.  This is the only census where Samuel is recorded as a younger age than Sarah.)

1870 Census

Sarah is recorded as age 30.  Ten years later, and she's 2 years younger!  But because of her husband, I know she's the same woman.

1872: Ebenezer Denyer dies
1874: Sarah marries George W. Foster

1880 Census

Sarah is recorded as age 44, putting her birth year back to 1836.  Her daughter Eliza Caroline Foster Reeves testifies to the Dawes Commission that Sarah was 66 years old when she died in 1898, suggesting she was born in 1832.

While her exact birth year is open to question, I am fairly certain that Sarah was younger than her brother Samuel.  If that is their mother, Eliza (Beasley) Hartley in Houston County, Texas in 1850.  And if Ann Fisher and Eliza Beasley were both wives of George Hartley, that means Ann was the first wife.  Of course, either Ann or Eliza could have been a mistress.

So this conundrum isn't solved.  If Ann Fisher's appearance in the Dawes Commission documents isn't a mistake, she could be the mother of either Samuel or Sarah.  Since her name doesn't appear in any of the testimony, and I have no idea how her name got introduced into the documents, I have recorded Eliza Beasley as the mother of all three children (including the William who appears in the 1850 census), and relegated Ann Fisher to the notes section of my database until I learn more about her.

Breaking Down Brick Walls: Part One

The theme for the 98th Carnival of Genealogy is: "Document Analysis! Show us a document that helped you break down a brick wall on your family tree. Discuss the information that appears on the document and how it contributes to your family history."

The term "brick wall" can be used to define almost any barrier we arrive at in our research, but is often used in genealogy circles to describe those ancestors for whom we know nothing about their parents.  There might as well be a brick wall beyond this ancestor, because we can see nothing beyond them.  Since we don't know their parents, it usually means we also are uncertain about when they were born.

Every branch of every family tree reaches a brick wall ancestor.  (Note: I'm going to ignore any comments from people who claim to have traced a branch of their tree back to 'Adam.'  We likely have different standards of reliable 'evidence,' so there's no use even trying to have a discussion.)  As I said, every branch.  Every time a wall is broken down, we have two more brick walls, because everyone has two parents.  It's a hydra.  (Pedigree Collapse is the only thing that can decrease your number of brick wall ancestors.)

Using this definition of "brick wall," I, personally, have only managed to knock down parts of three on my family tree.  I have found the research of other genealogists online, and in libraries, that helped extend the generations my immediate family knew about.  However, I didn't break down these walls, someone else did before me; thankfully, they wrote the information down for me to find.  These walls are mostly on my maternal side, as my paternal brick walls mostly lay in countries where English is not the spoken language, and the online records are sparse.

One brick wall I may have knocked down half-way, is that of Jane Goldfinch.  As I blogged about in July, I found the will of a Barnard Goldfinch, who looks very likely to be Jane's father.  I still don't know her mother, though, so the wall isn't completely cleared away.

Here's what the will looks like:

And here's the transcription.

Another half-wall toppled does reside on my paternal branches.  My paternal great great grandfather Selig Dudelsack arrived in the US in 1890.  My family knew the name of his mother, Gertrude, or Gitel.  We believe her surname was, "Slupsky," though this hasn't been verified.

In this case, finding the name of Gitel's father was the most simple of my genealogical breakthroughs.  All it took was a trip to a cemetery.  Some documents are carved in stone.  It turned out Gitel made the trip to America with her son, and is buried next to him.


Translation of Hebrew: Gitel daughter of Reb Simcha Zelig died on the 16th of Av 5666. [August 6, 1906]

The tombstone doesn't provide a surname for the father.  The family came from Poland or Russia, and may not have had a surname until sometime between 1821 and 1844.  It's possible neither her father, nor Gitel, were born with one.

I did learn that Gitel named her son, Selig, after his grandfather. Selig's tombstone indicates his full Hebrew name was, "Simcha Zelig," too.



I will devote an entire post to the other wall I have chiseled away at.

Part Two

Choctaw Ancestry

Minnie Van Every Benold (1884-1969), the sister of my grandmother Myrtle Van Every Deutsch, at some point in her later years, the exact date is uncertain, wrote a few pages about her experiences as a child.

Excerpt:

Then too, after Indian Territory was opened for settlement (about 1888?) my father filed on a claim on Sac and Fox Reservation, possessed it and built a log house, a good barn, and sent for his family – all on the fact that mother was part Indian – in December 1891.

After a snowy winter, he planted a crop, and made many trips to the County seat (Chandler) consulting his lawyer as his right to the land was being contested. In a fit of discouragement he loaded us all in a wagon and started back to Texas. He said he could not find an honest lawyer. We left in Spring 1892, after we could not get a hearing on our claim. I do know, or at least have been told that no records were kept during those years.

So it was last night I put the name Samuel Denyer into Footnote. The brother of my second great grandfather, Ebenezer Denyer. I was looking for his Civil War record. Instead I found a reference in the Dawes Packets.

The Amercan Dawes Commission, named for its first chairman Henry L. Dawes, was authorized under a rider to an Indian Office appropriation bill, March 3, 1893. Its purpose was to convince the Five Civilized Tribes [Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Seminole] to agree to cede tribal title of Indian lands under an allotment process to the individual Indian, enacted in 1887 (See Dawes Act for other tribes). In November 1893, President Grover Cleveland appointed Dawes as chairman, and Meridith H. Kidd and Archibald S. McKennon as members.

During this process, the Indian nations were stripped of their communally-held national lands, and the land was divided up into single lots and given to individual members of the nation. However, to prove you were a member of a tribe, you had to declare membership in one and only one tribe to a national registry known as the Rolls

Footnote has almost all of the Application Packets (98% complete).

This was exciting. It wasn't for Ebenezer's brother, Samuel, it was for Ebenezer's son, Samuel, the uncle of my grandmother. Ebenezer married Sarah Hartley who family lore says claimed to be 1/8 Choctaw. And in the Dawes packets at Footnote I have found the applications for admission to the Choctaw Tribe made by all of Sarah Hartley's children, from both of her husbands, Ebenezer Denyer and George Foster. As well as those made by her brother, Samuel Hartley. Apparently several years after they tried unsuccessfully to claim land, they tried again when the Dawes Commission was formed. The applications are dated November of 1900.

Refused. Every last one of them. (Well, logically, one would assume if one was refused, all of them would be. And if they had been successful, they'd have claimed the land, so I shouldn't have been surprised. The decision by the commission: insufficient evidence.)

I don't care. OK, I do care. If they had been accepted my grandmother would likely have grown up somewhere other than Texas, with possible repercussions on her adult life. I might not exist. Refusal, naturally, doesn't mean they weren't Choctaw, just that the commission wasn't satisified with the proof. But each application has between 10-25 pages, and they go into detail about the relationships between all those applying. Names of spouses, children, etc. And most importantly, the names of the parents of Samuel and Sarah Hartley: George W Hartley and Eliza Beasley.

Samuel Hartley claimed to be 1/4 Choctaw, not 1/8. If accurate, this would double the percentage of my Choctaw ancestry from what I previously thought. Unfortunately, the claim was through their father, dashing any hopes that a test of my, or my mother's, mtDNA might contribute to the solution of this mystery. It would still be interesting to find out where my maternal ancestry originated, but it's much less likely to be Native American.

Also, unfortunately, while the applications make reference to marriage certificates that were entered into evidence, none of these certificates are part of the files online.

It does seem that my previous suspicions regarding the 1850 census are likely correct. The Eliza Hartley who is recorded as living with two sons Samuel and William is my third great grandmother, and Sarah was recorded in another household, likely as some sort of servant.

Samuel Joseph Newmark (1863-1940)

This is the fourth in a series of Brick Wall posts.

Samuel Joseph Newmark was born in Warka, Warsaw, Poland on Oct 7, 1863. He married Rose Cantkert. (That's the best guess at the spelling of the name that was written down on the birth certificates of three of her children as Sandgart, Sonka, and Sankad. It is my understanding that the 'C' in Polish is pronounced 'Ts'.) Rose was born in approximately 1865.

In 1893 they immigrated from Poland to England with sons Sol, Barnet, and Max, and daughters Nellie and Bella. In London they had three more children - Kate, Cecile, and Israel David. In two voyages in 1908 and 1909 the family immigrated from England to the US, settling in St. Louis. Samuel, and most of his sons, were tailors.

We know that Samuel's father's name was Israel David. We think his wife's name was Leah. Samuel almost certainly had siblings, but nothing is known about them.

The photograph in this post was discovered today in a photo album. It was taken in 1938.

The Siblings of Samuel Deutsch (Rosenblum, Greenfield)

This is the third in a series of “Brick Wall” posts. I have actually discovered a few leads in the past couple days on this branch of the family which provide a little more hope than previously.

Samuel Deutsch (1861-1938), his wife Helen Lichtman Deutsch (1881-1958), and six children (Jean, Edward, Maurice, Ted, Martin, and Berta) immigrated to America in 1913 from Nagayalmas, Hungary. The town, in the Transylvania region, is now part of Romania.

(Helen actually arrived a year earlier to earn money for the rest of the family to make the trip.) In 1914 a 7th child, Allen, was born. They all settled in Chicago, Illinois.

According to family records, Samuel’s parents were Abraham Deutsch and Sarah Weiss. I have no information on them except for their names.

Martin, Ted and Berta recorded a family history audiotape in the 1970s, and they knew their father had had several siblings, and they had cousins in America, but they hadn't seen them in years and their memories were hazy. They were able to come up with a handful of names, though their certainty was low. They also knew that Samuel had had a wife prior to Helen in Hungary, and six children who decided not to come to America. They didn't know any names.

A couple days ago my mother had a phone conversation with the daughter of Jean, and her memory was also now hazy, but Jean had been the eldest child, and her daughter recalled a few more names of Samuel's siblings (but not that of his first wife). Plugging the names in Ancestry.com has resulted in a few interesting leads

Likely siblings of Samuel:

David Deutsch – it is thought he was in America only briefly and returned to Hungary. However, a son of his, Herman, settled in Michigan, was a teacher, and he changed his name to Herman Dexter. It’s not believed he had any children. David may have had a few daughters who stayed in America, and their names may have been Hannah Goodman, Celia Palmer and Bertha Newman.

Sarah Deutsch – married a Rosenblum, and had six children. One son named Daniel, and five daughters.

A very likely family has been found in a Rootsweb forum post – a Sarah Deutsch and Adolph Rosenblum who lived in Chicago. Their children were Daniel, Pauline, Frances, Esther, Julia, and Lillian. In 1930 Julia Rosenblum had married David Mittelman. [The post is dated back in 2003, and the poster has not responded to a query I made a month ago.]

Regina Deutsch – married Nathan Greenfield

I found a Nathan and Regina Greenfield in the 1930 Chicago census, with children Gertie, Milton and Irving. Country of origin being Hungary.

Nephew of Samuel

Sigmund Deutsch

I found in Chicago a Joe and Eva Deutsch with sons Sigmund and Albert, living on the same street as Samuel and Helen in 1920.

There are enough names here I should be able to locate some cousins with a little help from the Chicago Vital Records which are supposed to come online at some point in the near future. Before then I might make a trip to the local library and browse through the Chicago city directories for 1923 and 1928, but I'm not sure if they will provide more information than the census already does. Unfortunately, after 1928, the next Chicago city directory at my local library is from 1973.

Sarah Ann Hartley Denyer Foster (1836-?)

This is the second of a series of posts that I am putting together to hopefully get seen by those doing searches on their surnames.

Sarah Ann Hartley, was my second great grandmother, and I carry her mitochondrial DNA. According to most census forms, she was born approximately 1836 in either Mississippi or Arkansas, or Texas.

In 1850 there is an Eliza Hartley in Houston County, Texas, with two sons Samuel and William. In a different household in Houston there is a Sarah Hartley of appropriate age who might have been acting as a servant of some sort. There are no other Hartleys in the 1850 Texas census, but they might not have been in Texas yet.

In 1854 Sarah married Ebenezer Opham Denyer in Gonzales County. (G-d bless Gonzales County archivists who managed to keep a marriage certificate for over 150 years.).

In 1860 a Samuel Hartley is residing with Sarah and Ebenezer in Hays, Texas.

Sarah Hartley and Ebenzer Denyer had four children – two sons and two daughters. Mary Susan Denyer and Ezekiel Denyer both died as infants. Samuel William Denyer married Alice Gollihar, and Margaret McAlpin Monteroy Denyer married Melvin Elijah Van Every. Margaret Denyer and Melvin Van Every were my great-grandparents.

Ebenezer Denyer died in 1872. Sarah Hartley Denyer married George Foster in January of 1874. Sarah and George had three children: Eliza, George, and Sarah. (It could be a coincidence of given names, but their daughter Eliza, and Ebenezer’s son Samuel William, make me think that the 1850 Hartleys in Houston County, Texas may be the right ones.)

According to a Rootsweb Community post Eliza Caroline Foster was born in 1875, and she married a William T. Reeves in 1892. George William Foster was born in 1877, and died in 1957 according to his death certificate. The informant on his death certificate was Sarah Ann McCarty. According to her death certificate, she lived from 1887 to 1961. Her parents were George Foster and Sallie Unknown.

It's possible George Foster had a new wife, but I don't think so. I think the informant got the first name of the mother wrong. [See comments. Sally is a nickname for Sarah.] It would mean that Sarah Hartley, who according to the 1860-1880 censuses was born about 1836, would have been 51 years old when her last child was born. However, while unusual, that's not impossible. My Aunt Minnie wrote about her grandmother Sarah as someone she remembered, and Minnie was born in 1884. Sarah had to have lived at least until the early 1890s for Minnie to have her recollections.

I am in contact with some cousins who are also descended from Margaret McAlpin Denyer. Thanks to Texas birth and marriage records online, I've been able to trace the generations of Margaret's brother, Samuel, and I've written blind letters to a couple descendants, but with no response. Not everyone is interested in extended cousins.

I don't enjoy writing blind letters, but I'm going to write to some descendants of Eliza Foster as well, since several generations of her family remained in Texas. Sarah Ann Hartley claimed to be 1/8 Native American, but I have no details on her ancestry, and it's possible the children of her second marriage were better at passing down the information.

I'd also love to find descendants of any siblings of Sarah. Some possibilities in the censuses appear below.

Census Records

1850 Houston County, Texas

Household #1
Hardey Ware – age 71 - Unknown
Sarah Ware – age 56 - Georgia
Sarah Hartley – age 14 – Mississippi

Househould #2
Eliza Hartley – age 32 - Tennessee
Samuel Hartley – age 18 - Mississippi
William Hartley – age 6 – Texas
6 Wheelers – ages 0-36

1860

Household #1
Hays, Texas
4 Lawlins – ages 1-33
E. Danner – age 32 - Louisiana
Sarah Danner – age 22 - Texas
Sam Hartley – age 26 - Texas

[I am relatively certain this is Sarah (Hartley) Denyer and Ebenezer Denyer. Ebenzer was born in Pennsylvania, but he traveled through Louisiana to get to Texas, and the Lawlins probably provided the information. I suspect Sam is a brother of Sarah.]

Household #2
Leon, Texas
William Hartley – 31 – Mississippi
Elizabeth Hartley – 26 – Mississippi
Jno Hartley – 4 - Texas
Albert Hartley – 1 - Texas
11 others age 3-46

1870

Household #1
Hays, Texas
Samuel Hartley – age 30 – Arkansas
Margaret Hartley – age 22 – Louisiana
Children: Caroline, Virginia, Amelia
3 Rawls (age 11-42)
[I have found a Rawls genealogy online and it is the family of Samuel’s wife Margaret.]

Household #2
Hays, Texas
Sarah Denyer – age 30 – Arkansas
Ebenezer Denyer – age 43 – Pennsylvania
(Samuel) William Denyer – age 4 – Texas
(Margaret) McAlpin Denyer – age 2 – Texas
4 other Denyers age 10-18 (Children of Ebenezer’s deceased brother)

1880

Hays, TX
Sarah Foster – age 44 – Arkansas
George Foster – age 40 – England
Samuel (William) Denyer – age 14 – Texas
Margaret (McAlpin) Denyer – age 13 - Texas
Eliza Foster – age 6

Dudelsack Dudelzak Dudelczyk

This is the first of a series of posts that I am putting together to hopefully get seen by those doing searches on their surnames. Most of these are what are referred to as “Brick Walls,” though I think usually that is used to reference lines you are attempting to expand further generationally. I don’t have high hopes for this with most of my Polish, Russian and Transylvanian ancestors. It might happen, but I am more interested in finding cousins. (Theoretically finding cousins could also help me find a way around the wall)

My website is already at the top of the list for searches on "Dudelsack," but the other variant spellings actually seem to be more common, and I haven’t written a post yet that gathers all the information that might catch the eye of a cousin researcher.

Generation One: Simcha Zelig Slupsky

I know nothing about him. His given name appears on his daughter’s tombstone in the traditional fashion of “Gertrude daughter of Simcha Zelig” (In Hebrew). The surname is the name passed on by family oral tradition. More about that later.

Generation Two: Gertrude (Gerte) Slupsky (1846-1906) married Samuel Harry (Shmuel Zvi) Dudelsack. They had six children: Yidel, Selig, Gershon, Selma, Toba, Belle and Sprinsa.

Gerte Slupsky's birth year is a guess. Her death record says she was 60 years and 5 months old when she died, which would indicate she was born in 1846. However, her tombstone says she was born in 1831, which means she would have been 75 when she died. She immigrated with her son, Selig, and died in St. Louis, MO.

Generation Three: Yidel, Selig and Toba immigrated to America. Yidel became Julius Odelson (Odelsohn). Selig became Selig Feinstein. Toba, back in Russia, married Aaron (Aron) Oberman, and in America became Tillie Oberman.

Julius, his wife Jennie (likely his second wife), and most of their family moved to Chicago. Julius probably died in Chicago before 1916.

Tillie died in 1935, and is buried in St. Louis, MO with her husband Aaron.

Research suggests there are Dudelzaks in the US and Argentina. I have no idea if they’re related. The name seems to come from players of a particular type of bagpipe, and several different Dudelczyk families could exist.

My great-aunt who passed down the information said that Gershon, Selma, Belle and Sprinsa remained in Europe. However, Selig, Yidel and Toba immigrated in the 1890s, leaving a few decades their siblings, or the next generation, could have followed and still have escaped the Holocaust. It's possible they immigrated to somewhere other than the US (there seem to be some Dudelzaks in Argentina, for example), or immigrated to the US, but didn't know how to make contact since the previous generation had all changed their surnames.

We don’t know what city our Dudelsac family came from. The best information we have is for Selig’s brother-in-law Jacob Perlik who put down Szdobeitzen, Poland/Russia on his naturalization papers. No such city exists, but ‘Dobryzn’ is close, as is ‘Shebreshin‘.

Slupsky surname: There was a Slupsky family in St. Louis at the time Gertrude and her son Selig immigrated to America. It’s a logical theory that they are related, and may have been the reason St. Louis was chosen as a destination, though while I have communicated with a descendant, no connection has been made.

My great aunt has been 100% correct with all the other names she provided, so there is no reason to suspect she is wrong with ‘Slupsky’ or the given names of Selig, Yidel and Toba’s three other siblings. Her accuracy with dates, on the other hand, was very poor, but it’s not uncommon to have a greater facility at recollecting names than dates.

This covers what I know of these generations. I have made contact with some of Julius's grandchildren, and they have kept in contact with each other, so I don't think there are any stray Odelsons that I won't ultimately be able to find.

I've made contact with one Oberman, though he is in his early 90s and hasn't kept in touch with the rest of his family. He gave me a few leads on finding others.

I'd really love to find out if any descendants of Gershon, Selma, Belle or Sprinsa exist.

Any descendants of Dudelsacks, Dudelzaks, Dudelczyks, or variations are welcome to email me at the email address at the top of the sidebar, and we can compare notes to see if we are possibly related.