Sun Dogs (Parhelia)

Here's an image that is perhaps similar to the parhelia (sun dogs) that I described in Abraham F. Reimer's diary entry from yesterday's blog post.

New West Prussian Church Books Digitized

Archion.de has posted some newly-digitized church books for West Prussia that might interest researchers.  These are early (i.e. pre-1800) Lutheran church books for Neuheide and Zeyer in Kreis Elbing and Graudenz in Kreis Graudenz.

Adding Context from a Diary

I am editing a very rough draft translation of Abraham F. Reimer's #3945 (1808-1892) diary for 1870-1874.  It's been tough to get going because it's been hard to figure out his handwriting and because he shortens words and uses some Low German words.  But I'm finally figuring it out and finding some interesting things.

I'm interested in this diary for several related reasons.  Abraham F. Reimer was my great-great-great-uncle, so he has interesting information about my Reimer ancestors.  He was also good friends with my maternal great-great-grandfather Gerhard Klaas Siemens #6461 (1805-1877), so he mentions him frequently in his diary.  Since he was a member of the Kleine Gemeinde, he knew almost all my maternal ancestors.  And he was a keen observer of people and natural phenomena.  He was called Foala Reimer (Fool Reimer) because he was much more interested in breeding flowers, astronomy, and many other intellectual pursuits than in farming.  But that is exactly what makes him a good diarist.

In just the first two pages of the diary, I've come across a couple interesting observations.  First, he faithfully records the temperature morning, noon, and night using the Reaumur scale that was common in Russia.  (The Reaumur scale uses 0º as the freezing point of water and 80º as the boiling point.)  From 17-29 January 1870, the weather was extremely cold, and the lowest temperature he recorded was -25º Re., which was -24º F., on 27 January 1870.  The official low temperature for Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, the nearest large city is -20º F., so clearly this was a run of extraordinarily low temperature for the area. 

I'm sure this was a memorable event for all my ancestors, who lived in that part of Russia.  Think of the difficulty of feeding animals, breaking ice in the stock tanks, burning enough wood to keep the house warm, doing laundry, and many other daily tasks.  The worship service was even cancelled.

Abraham F. Reimer (1808-1892) diary, Steinbach, Borosenko Colony, South Russia, 1870-1874, Mennonite Heritage Centre Archive, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Kleine Gemeinde collection, vol. 5907, item 4, p. 2.

And here is the translation for that date:

27. Tues. –25 degrees [-24º F.] in the morning and  –14 degrees [0º F.] at noon, in the evening –22 degrees [-18º F.].  The junior Penner from Rosenfeld was here and also at the Toewses. The Russian came again.

The previous day, the 26th, Abraham Reimer witnessed a spectacular display of parhelia, or sun dogs.  They are caused by refraction and reflection within ice crystals in the atmosphere.  They occur most often when there are high, thin cirrus clouds; low temperatures; and dry air and when the sun is low in the sky.  To see one or two sun dogs is fairly common, but Reimer saw six large and four small sun dogs as well as half of the parhelic arc that can extend all the way around the horizon at the level of the sun.  The additional sun dogs are visible when the arcs created by various internal refractions and reflections in the ice crystals intersect in the sky.  I myself have seen left and right sun dogs, the upper tangential arc, and the 22º circle around the sun.  But he saw ten total sun dogs plus half the parhelic arc, which is amazing!  I'm sure he and many others remembered this display all their lives.

Here is the translation for the 26th:

26. Mon. –19 degrees [-11º F.] in the morning. -15 [-2º F.] at noon, and –20 degrees [-13º F.] in the evening.   In the morning we had six[?] large sun dogs also with four small sun dogs and a ring over half the horizon.

I had a terrible time trying to figure out what he saw.  In the text, the word looked like "Neben Sonen," but I couldn't find that in any dictionary.  "Neben" means "secondary" in German, but I couldn't think what a secondary sun might be.  And how would he see ten secondary suns?  Then it hit me that the weather conditions he described were perfect for sun dogs, so I looked that up, but I couldn't find "sun dog" in my English-German dictionaries either.  Then in an English-Low German dictionary, I found the translation of sun dog as "Biesonen" or "beside-sun" which actually describes it quite well.  But that wasn't the word that Reimer used.  Finally I decided to read a little about sun dogs in Wikipedia and learned that the technical term for a sun dog in English is parhelion.  When I looked "parhelion" up in my English-German dictionary, I found the translation "Nebensonne," which is the singular of the word that Reimer used.  Mystery solved!

Motivation When Translating German Script

Translating German script can get really discouraging and frustrating.  I sadly did not learn German as a kid, so not only do I have to fight through the Gothic script but also I have to read words and sentences that are foreign to me.  I imagine most of you are in the same position.  Here is what motivates me:

1.  There really is genealogical gold in there.  Maybe not in the sentence you are working on, but if you keep going, you will find one nugget, and then another, and then another.  Think of the gold miners in the Old West who dug away tons of dirt and rock and sifted through one pan of gravel after another until they found one nugget.  We're doing the same thing!

2.  The cryptanalysts in World War II who broke the German and Japanese ciphers were not only trying to break into cipher systems with millions of combinations.  But also they were doing this with a foreign language, German or Japanese.  And they had an enemy that would change the ciphers whenever they realized that they had been broken.  Our task is much easier.  Our authors were trying to communicate something and they did it in plain language without encryption.  If the cryptanalysts in World War II could break the German and Japanese ciphers, surely we can figure out what our ancestors were trying to say - we have a much easier task.

3.  Even when your pace starts veeeeeeerrrrrryyyyy slowly, if you keep at it, you will get faster.  If you don't give up, you will learn how the author makes his letters.  You will start to recognize one word after another.  You will get faster and faster at it.  By the end of the document, you may almost be able to read it directly without a dictionary.

If the Gothic script sometimes seems like your enemy, I'll leave you with the immortal words of Winston Churchill, "Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."

Sometimes Gothic script seems to have the overwhelming might of an enemy; but if you take Churchill's advice, you will someday declare victory over that church record or diary page and come away with a full sack of genealogical gold nuggets.

Need Suderman & Reimer descendants

I got a couple Y-DNA tests on the holiday sale, so I'm looking for a male, direct-line descendant of Jacob Suderman (1856-1906) #319370 and of Heinrich F. Reimer (1856-1923) #317342.  If you are such a person (or know of someone who is), leave a comment below or send me an e-mail.  It would be nice if the persons were in the Hillsboro area, but if not I can mail the test kit.

HURRY - Discounts on YDNA at FTDNA

Family Tree DNA is offering a couple discounts on Y-DNA.  Most or all of their kits are discounted.  For example, Y-DNA 37, which is probably the best one to start with, is $129 instead of $169.  This sale lasts until 31 December.

But they are offering an additional $20 off one kit until Sunday, 19 December.  Use this link.

Grandpa's Trouble with Debt

My grandfather David D. Fast #112876 (1884-1974) learned a hard lesson about debt in the Great Depression.  About a year ago, I wrote a post about my courthouse research on his mortgages.  Shortly after that, Adam from Niceville, Fla., in an act that truly represented the name of his town, contacted me to say that he was cleaning up his grandfather's stuff and had found some documents related to my grandfather's mortgages.  He was kind enough to Fedex them to me, postage-paid.

The documents were seven interest coupons on a mortgage that my grandfather made with C. H. Bailey on 28 February 1921.  My grandfather owed $350 interest every six months, and he apparently sent it in with an interest coupon that he cut from a sheet of coupons.  Here's the first coupon in the series:

 I was glad to get the coupons, but they weren't that exciting until I compared the due dates with the dates of payment stamped or written on the front.   The first one, shown above, was paid on time, as was the second one.  But the third one was paid five months late, the next six months late, against six months late, and then seventh one (due on 28 August 1924) was on time again.

Interestingly, my grandfather married on 10 June 1924, and my grandmother, Elisabeth Suderman #55577 (1892-1981), came from a moderately well-to-do farming family.  She had owned land before she married, and I have the impression that they did not tolerate being late in payments.  Since the next payment due after they were married was the seventh one (the first time Grandpa had been on time on for a couple years), I wonder if it was under her influence that he caught up on payments.

In any case, it didn't matter in the end.  Grandpa continued rolling over the principal because he couldn't repay it and finally lost his farm on 4 August 1931 as the falling wheat prices of the Great Depression took their toll.  But read my post linked at the beginning for the happy ending to the story.

BTW, both Adam and I wondered how these items wound up in his grandfather's possession.  He also found documents from other unrelated people in the Midwest in the same stack.  He said that his grandfather was a flea market seller, so I've wondered if perhaps the interest coupons were in an item of furniture that was sold at some point.  But it's all speculation.  In any case, I'm extremely grateful that he contacted me and gave me the interest coupons.

What Is Our Nationality?

On my grandmother's (Margaretha H. Reimer, #321744, 1895-1993) death certificate, the informant, my uncle, said that she was German.  Here's a snip from the certificate:

Margaret H. Siemens death certificate, died 26 October 1993, dated 15 November 1993, certificate #93-019194, Office of Vital Statistics, Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Topeka, Kansas.

And here is the information for her "ancestry:"

When she died in 1993, Mennonites absolutely considered themselves German.  They spoke Low German and read and wrote High German.  So my uncle's answer was correct.

But it wasn't always so.  During Word War I and the years immediately following, Mennonites usually considered themselves Dutch because of the anti-German backlash of the war.  Here is my grandfather's (Cornelius K. Siemens, #7529, 1884-1950) 1921 Canadian census record:

Census of Canada 1921, Provencher District, Manitoba, ED 19, Sheet 15A, Family 108, Household of Cornelius Seamons accessed at Ancestry.ca on 10 April 2014.

And for a closer look, my grandfather reported that the language spoken by every member of the family was "Dutch," which was the closest question to ethnicity on that census:

The language that they spoke didn't change from 1921 to 1993 - but the way that Mennonites viewed themselves (and they way they wanted outsiders to view themselves) definitely had.  And since their Low German dialect was indeed part of a group of Low German dialects that had historically been spoken in a band from modern Netherlands to modern Poland, this was an accurate description.

If we go back a century earlier when the Mennonites were living in Russia, they did not consider themselves either German or Dutch, but rather they saw Mennonite as a distinct ethnic group.  For example, my great-great-great-uncle, Jacob Siemens was murdered in Molotschna colony in Russia in April 1811 at age 19 by Nogai nomads while working on a road crew.  The official report on the crime called him a "Menonist" (менонистъ in Russian), not a German.  Here's a snippet from the report:

“Po raportu smotritelia Molochanskikh” kolonii Zibera o ubitykh” 4-kh molochanskikh” poseletsakh” [On the report of Supervisor Ziber about four murdered Molochansk settlers],” 26 April 1811, Odessa State Historical Archive, Odessa, Ukraine, Fund 6, Inventory 11, File 78, found at Mennonite Library and Archive, North Newton, Kansas.

And here's a blow-up of his nationality from the report:

You may not be able to read the Russian, but it says Menonist, or Mennonite.

BTW, this incident became a notorious crime among the Mennonites in south Russia and led to the Rusisan government disarming the Nogai nomads two years later.  So most of our ancestors would have known about and felt the fear of the nomads.

So I've given you a few documents that show how Mennonites understanding of their ethnicity or nationality has changed over the last couple centuries.