Finished!!! Abraham F. Reimer Diary

I just finished translating the Abraham F. Reimer #3945 (1808-1892) diary for the years 1870-1874. It's been a year-long project, and I've enjoyed it. My German translation skills have improved, and I've learned a lot about how our ancestors lived in Russia.

I've uploaded the file to Google Drive, and I'm including a link here. Feel free to download it and to pass it on. I included a list of all people in the diary and their GM numbers and a list of vital events to make it easier for genealogists to use.

A Box of Treasures

Do you ever wondered what happened to all the family treasures? The photo albums, the diaries, the box of papers, the mementos from Russia that one of your ancestors must surely have collected? Was it thrown away? Did it burn in a fire? Was it disposed of in an estate sale?

Most of us will never know if there was such a collection and what might have happened to it. But I have a collection of photographs, letters, and documents that Carl (or Carey) James Montgomery collected going back to the 1820s. I work at a museum, and when we had our air conditioner replaced last winter, the tech gave me this box that he found in a house that he flipped. He had decided it was too valuable to throw away, but he didn't know what to do with it. And now, dear reader, I am asking if you might be the one who is looking for this box of treasures (and not even know it).

Carey James Montgomery was born on 2 February 1906 in Kansas City, Kans., to William Thomas Montgomery (1863-1906) and Mattie Belle Calhoun (b. 1867). William's parents were Alexander and Oney Montgomery. He changed his name to Carl James Montgomery at some point. He collected early photographs and jotted down family information going back to the 1820s for some lines. In the 1930s he went to prison for forgery and was pardoned by the governor of State of Kansas in 1938. He saved letters from family members in the late 1930s. And then he was drafted into the army for World War II. After about 1940, there is nothing else in the box. I know that he returned to Wichita and died there in 1997. Did he lose interest in genealogy during the war and stop adding to his box of treasures? Did he lose track of the box while he was in the service?

This box deserves an owner who would love the treasures inside. I've started a tree on Ancestry to try to find a good owner. I think it should go to a descendant of William and Mattie Belle Montgomery, if possible. If you would be a good owner, leave a comment below about how I can get in touch with you.

Putting the Sad Facts Together

I have known little of my great-great-grandfather Klaas F. Reimer #3719 (1812-1874). He was born and died in Russia and not much seems to have come down about him in our families. But I have gleaned some facts about him.

1. He married his first wife Katharina Friesen in 1836, and they had thirteen children, including my great-grandfather Heinrich F. Reimer.

2. His first wife Katharina died in 1864, and he remarried to Maria Bartel (1843-1921) four months later. A quick remarriage was common at the time, especially since he had young children in the household. He was 52 years old, and she was 22, so there was a big age difference. Such an age difference was relatively rare, but he was wealthy, so it wasn't too unusual.

3. Klaas F. Reimer died in 1874, apparently as they were preparing to emigrate to America. The rest of the family postponed the trip and left in 1875 for Jansen, Nebraska.

4. In the 1880 census in Jansen, Nebraska, the widowed second wife Maria was living with her married step-daughter and unmarried stepson. But none of her four children, who ranged in age from 6 to 14 years old, were living with her. And in the census it was recorded that she could not read or write. You might think that she couldn't read or write English, but all the other Mennonites on that page were recorded as being able to read and write, so it must have been that she couldn't read or write at all.  When I found this census several years ago, I concluded that something was badly wrong, but I didn't know what.

5. My grandmother, Margaretha H. Reimer #321744 (1895-1993) told my mom that both her maternal grandmother Katharina Barkman and paternal step-grandmother Maria (Bartel) Reimer had lived with them when she was a child. She said that the two grandmothers would argue so fiercely that her father Heinrich F. Reimer had to come in from the field to settle things between them. I haven't found a census where both of them were living in the Heinrich Reimer household, but I don't doubt the story.

For a long time, this was all I knew. But then I found a couple more facts in the Abraham F. Reimer diary, who was the brother of my great-great-grandfather Klaas F. Reimer. They must have been quite close because the two of them visited each other frequently, even though Abraham lived in Borosenko colony in Russia and Klaas lived in Molotschna. But now I have found a couple more facts in Abraham's diary.

6.  Brother Klaas started living in Heubuden in Borosenko colony in October 1871, according to Abraham's diary. Abraham didn't explain why, and it puzzled me. Klaas was wealthy and only 59, so it seemed unlikely that he would have retired from farming so young. And if he had retired, surely he would have continued living with his family in Tiege, Molotschna, instead of moving to another colony without them.

7. Then in July 1872, Abraham recorded, "Brother Klaas Reimer from Heubuden was here for faspa. He was sad and complained about the ways of his wife. He denounced [absagt] the church."

8. Then I noticed in Grandma that there was a gap in children being born at this time. In the 6 years ending in November 1871, 5 children had been born. So they were having children frequently. But then a gap of nearly two years between children, until August 1873, during this very time, before the next child was born. In fact, he was already living separately by October 1871, and their fifth child was born in November 1871. While a gap of two years is quite normal in most families, it coincided with a time when they were living separately and not getting along.

What to conclude? My guess is that Maria Bartel, the second wife, was intellectually limited since she couldn't read or write or take care of her small children in 1880. And she seems to have been difficult to get along with, based on what my grandmother said, although perhaps one shouldn't read too much into the fact that two elderly grandmothers couldn't get along when living in the same household. And it clearly affected my great-great-grandfather Klaas F. Reimer so much that he moved away and lived separately for a while. Was he also responsible? Again, we don't know the details at this remove, but I think it's fair to say that both spouses are usually at least a little bit responsible when a marriage goes bad. And it's pretty awful that he had moved out of the family about a month before his child was born, regardless of how bad the circumstances were. But then it seems that they reconciled because they had one more child born to their marriage in August 1873.

It's a sad story, and we'll never know all the details. But we're all human and make mistakes and have difficult relationships at times. It helps me to understand my great-great-grandfather Klaas F. Reimer better. And it helps me understand the family that his son, my great-grandfather Heinrich F. Reimer, grew up in.

Mixing High German and Low German

My main genealogy project right now is translating Abraham F. Reimer's #3945 (1808-1892) diary. Like most Mennonites from the late-1700s to the mid-1900s, he wrote in High German but spoke Low German. Low German and High German are distinct languages, not dialects of each other; so he really spoke one language and wrote another one. But there are times when his spoken language, Low German, crept into his written language, High German.

The Text.
This mixture of languages can complicate translation since sometimes I'm not sure which language an odd word comes from. Here are a couple examples from his diary entry for 16 April 1871:

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 3, p.32.

Here is the transcription:
16. F.[reitag] Des margens so 6 grad warm, des Tages so 14 grad war oft dünkel etwas geregent da haben wir das Ertoflen setzen nach zu hause und Egden ganz verichtet auch hat Tövs des Säen und Pflügen verichtet.

And the translation:

16. Fri. Morning 6 degrees [46° F.], day 14 degrees [64° F.]. Often cloudy, rained a little. Set out potatoes at the house and completely finished harrowing. Toews finished plowing and sowing.

Potatoes.
'Let's look at the words that I highlighted. First potatoes. Reimer uses the word Ertoflen, which is neither High nor Low German. The standard High German word for potato is Kartoffel, which comes from the Italian word tartufalo and means roughly "land truffle." (A good source for German etymologies is the translation of Friedrich Kluge's etymological dictionary into English that can be found at this link.The standard Low German word is Ieedschock. The first part of the word means "earth" and is related to the Dutch aarde, High German Erde, and English earth. (I don't know what "schock" means - maybe someone can tell me in a comment.) This is a case where the Low German word is more closely related to English and Dutch than to High German.

So Abraham Reimer has combined the Low German Ieed and the High German tofflen and come with Ertoflen. It took me a while and looking through dictionaries to figure what he was setting out.

Harrow.
The second word is harrow. The High German verb "to harrow" is eggen, and the Low German is äajden. According to Kluge's etymological dictionary, this is a case where High German borrowed a word from Low German. Abraham Reimer used the word Egden, which is the way he spelled the Low German word since Low-German speakers pronounce the letter g with an English y sound. Again it took a bit of searching in dictionaries to find the right word and to realize that Reimer's Egden was just a variant spelling of äajden.

The moral is that it can take a bit of searching and imagination to figure out some words, especially if you are not fluent in both High and Low German, as I unfortunately am not.

BTW, my favorite German dictionaries are
Reverso  Easy to use, gives suggestions if you don't spell exactly right, easy-to-follow layout of definitions, gives translations of phrases in context.
LEO Not laid out very clearly, but it has more words and definitions, you have to spell the word correctly to find anything, but it does give you a list of suggestions once you type in three letters, which can be really handy.
Koehler-Zacharias Plautdietsch Lexicon By far the most comprehensive dictionary of Low German. Both Low German-English and English-Low German. Spelling is a problem with any Low German dictionary, and he uses something similar to High German spelling, which makes the dictionary easier to use.
Kjenn Jie Noch Plautdietsch is a decent alternative, but it doesn't contain nearly as many words and goes much further toward a phonetic spelling, which can be hard to use.

Grandma Tip - What Are Ref Numbers for?

You may have noticed that there are "Ref Numbers" in the download or CD version of the Grandma database in the Event/Fact field. They are also shown at the beginning of the search results list in the online version of Grandma so that you can see exactly which names were searched.

A bit of background - Mennonites have used a small set of names (both surnames and first names) over the centuries, but they have spelled them differently. For example, Johann, Johan, Hans, John, Johnny, Jehaun, etc. are really variations of the same name. As are Friesen, Frisen, Freesen, Friese, etc. When it searching, it would be nice to search all of them instead of having to do each one individually. The Grandma committee created a list of codes for both surnames and first names. So if you want to search for Johann Friesen, you can check the list and find that Johann is "jn" and Friesen is "075."

When you search online, the database automatically uses the search codes, as long as the box "Return all known spelling variations" is checked, which it is by default. But in the download/CD, you need to do it manually. If you click on Find F3, you can enter a search code instead of a specific spelling of a name or a Grandma number. So to find all the Johann Friesens, regardless of how their names are actually spelled, enter "/075jn." The forward slash tells the program to search the Ref Number field.

There are two advantages to using the search codes and the Ref Number. First, you'll get all the spelling variations without the time-consuming process of searching every variation manually or using wildcards to speed things up. And search codes are MUCH faster than searching by name. It can take 2-3 minutes to search for a common name that has more than a thousand entries, but with search codes it only takes 10-20 seconds for the biggest searches.

It is important, however, to add a Ref Number, whenever you add a new person to the database, or your new people won't come up in searches.