Scholle

Among my grandma's papers are two pages stapled together. The first page is a typed transcription of her grandparents' obituaries. On the second page, someone attempted to draw a family tree. The same grandparents whose obituaries are on the first page are correctly placed in the tree, but that's about it. Just one other name (Kaspar Hermann SCHOLLE) is correct. The birth and death dates attributed to Kaspar's wife are so strange that I don't even know where to begin; no one in the family, or extended family, seems to have been born on March 31, 1842 or died on February 20, 1872.

So, were these dates based on faulty research or memory, or am I missing a family member? The dates don't seem to be for any ancestors, but then again little is known about Kaspar Hermann SCHOLLE at the moment. He's a bit of a wild card because the Buer church records aren't easily or cheaply available (a recurring theme in other lines as well). The 1842 date may in fact refer to his marriage, and although it's said he died in the 1860s, it could be that he really died in 1872 and that's what prompted his widow and children to emigrate later that year.

Another possibility is that the dates belong to a "lost" sibling of an ancestor or a cousin that's been overlooked. As far as I can tell, and as this tree is drawn, later generations knew who their contemporary cousins were, but didn't quite have all of the older names in the right places, especially when it came to those back in Germany. I don't think the truth was really known until the last decade or so.

[genealogy, Scholle]