FamilySearch Find Of The Day: Bohemian 1717 Reichenbach-Möltzer Marriage

I've been doing more and more research into my Bohemian lines lately (they're ethnic Germans), and I'm finding more and more information. Thanks to FamilySearch initially for adding these records online, however I'm finding that the actual Litoměřice archives has digitized their collections and put them online themselves. Which I am extremely grateful for, because FamilySearch's collections seem to be missing a few register books here and there. You can also search for an exact town/community within the Litoměřice archives records, whereas you can only browse via FamilySearch. Both have their pros and cons, but I'm finding I prefer the Litoměřice archives much better. Faster loading images, also. Here is the record I found today:

Entry Number 2

Married on 31 January 1717; bachelor Johann Michäel Reichenbach of Waltersdorf and
virgin Elisabeth, deceased Christoph Möltzer gardener (farmer) in Waltersdorf' daughter.
Witness: Georg Wiesner, cottar in Nieder Politz and Christoph Hahnel, farmer in Waltersdorf.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Heritage Pie Chart

Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings has come up with the following challenge this week:

Your mission tonight, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1) List your 16 great-great-grandparents with their birth, death and marriage data (dates and places).
2) Determine the countries (or states) that these ancestors lived in at their birth and at their death.
3) For extra credit, go make a “Heritage Pie” chart for the country of origin (birth place) for these 16 ancestors. [Hint: you could use the chart generator from Kid Zone for this.] [Note: Thank you to Sheri Fenley for the "Heritage Pie" chart idea.]
4) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a post on Facebook or google+.

Here are the 14 I know (plus the states for the two that I do not know based on the information given by their daughter in the census).


1. Sándor Gombás, born 21 Feb 1872 in Büdszentmihály (today Tiszavasvári), Hungary. Died 02 May 1931 in Goff, Butler County, Pennsylvania.

2. Eszter Tóth, born 22 Sep 1874 in Tiszadob, Hungary. Died 04 Apr 1950 in Lore City, Guernsey County, Ohio.

3. Franciszek Grządziel, born 1872 in Barycz, Brzozów, Poland. Died 10 Jun 1927 in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois.

4. Amelia Stec, born 29 Jun 1887/1888 in Barycz, Brzozów, Poland. Died April 1968 in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

5. Joseph Adas, born 21 May 1882 in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan. Died 20 Feb 1939 in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois.

6. Josephine Domagalski, born 04 Sep 1886 in Medina, Orleans County, New York. Died 14 Nov 1958 in Manteno, Kankakee County, Illinois.

7. Wojciech Czarny, born 24 Apr 1888 in Osobnica, Jaslo, Poland. Died Oct 1961 in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois.

8. Rozalia Sophia Wozniak, born 1887 in Osobnica, Jaslo, Poland. Died 22 Oct 1959 in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois.

9. Allen Parks Rodgers, born 29 Jun 1873 in Carroll County, Mississippi. Died 14 Apr 1945 in Duck Hill, Montgomery County, Mississippi.

10. Minnie Josephine Vance, born 03 Aug 1872 in Montgomery County, Mississippi. Died 16 Jun 1919 in Montgomery County, Mississippi.

11. Samuel Christopher Columbus Martin, born 02 Feb 1850 in Gaston County, North Carolina. Died 16 Feb 1922 in Grenada or Montgomery County, Mississippi.

12. Samantha Aylene Costilow, born 02 Dec 1869 in Holmes County, Mississippi. Died 13 Aug 1908 in Carroll County, Mississippi.

13. Johann Philip Julius Stuempges, born 30 Nov 1860 in Newton, Manitowoc County, Wisconsin. Died 16 Feb 1951 in Antigo, Langlade County, Wisconsin.

14. Anna Weishaupt, born 06 May 1867 in Graber, Leitmeritz, Bohemia. Died 11 Jan 1951 in Antigo, Langlade County, Wisconsin.

15. Herman Wilhelm Gustav Martin, born 21 Jun 1882 in Gross Schönfeld, Kreis Greifenhagen, Pommern, Germany. Died 17 May 1968 in Antigo, Langlade County, Wisconsin.

16. Maria Summ, born 23 Jul 1883 in Antigo, Langlade County, Wisconsin. Died 06 Apr 1972 in Antigo, Langlade County, Wisconsin

The Complexity Of My Heritage

I thought it would be interesting to pick apart my ancestry and analyze all the individual ethnicities of my heritage. The more and more I research my family tree, the more and more I realize that my heritage is far more complex than it appears.

Let's start with my father's family. In the beginning, when I first started my research, all I knew was that he was strictly Hungarian and Polish. And now it appears that he's a mixture of six different ethnicities: Hungarian, Hungarian-Transdanubian, Hungarian-Transylvanian, Kashubian, Polish and Swedish.

The bedrock of our Hungarian ancestry is obvious. Alex Gombás married Eszter Tóth in Hungary and they came to America with their children. But looking more deeper into their ancestry opens up new things. Let's start with the Gombás branch. The Gombás family is obviously Hungarian.. Gombás being a Hungarian word meaning 'mushroom'. Alex's paternal grandmother, Erzsébet Sajti, was more than just Hungarian. Her mother's family, the Ráduly Kovács's, were a family originally from Transylvania. Radu and Radul are a predominately Romanian (past-day Transylvania) male first name meaning 'the happy one'. Erzsébet's maternal grandmother was a Mária Sveda. I only learned this today by translating, but Sveda is a Hungarian surname meaning 'Swede' or 'Swedish'. So it seems that Erzsébet's maternal grandparents were a Hungarian of Transylvania extraction that married a Hungarian of Swedish extraction.

Eszter Tóth's family is a little more.. common.. I guess you can say, for Hungarians coming from North-East Hungary. Eszter's family is predominately Hungarian, although she does have a few Slovakian lines. The Tóth name for example, which is one of the most commonly used surnames in Hungary, means 'slovak' in Hungarian. Eszter descends from 2, possibly 3, entirely un-connected Tóth families. Eszter's paternal great-great-grandmother's family certainly is a very curious case. Her name was Erzsébet Handa. I know very little on the Handa family, other than that there was possibly two Handa families in all of Hungary.. maybe three. My Handa's resided in Szabolcs megye, in North-East Hungary. There were a few other Handa's in North-East Hungary that I have yet to research, but I am positive they are related. There is also a Handa family that lived in the area of Tamási and Kecsegepuszta in Györ megye, in Western Hungary. They were Roman Catholic and mine were Reformed, but they still may be related somewhere down the line. Other researchers have told me that the surname hails from India in Asia. A google search of the surname brings up thousands of results not only for India, but Japan, China and other Asian countries as well. One thing is for sure, it's definitely not a Hungarian or Slovakian surname.

As for my father's Polish family, they came from three different areas in Poland. Two of my branches came from towns in Southern Poland near the borders of Slovakia, but there is no doubt they were Polish. Another branch came from the Poznan area of Poland, which of course is Polish. Then my last branch comes from the Puck (then called Putzig) area of Poland. This town was right on the coast of the Baltic sea, in Northern Poland. My family from this area belonged to an ethnic group within Poland called the Kashubians. They are descended from the Slavic Pomeranian tribes and date as far back as 1238.

My mother's family is quite the mixture as well. My grandfather was from Mississippi and had old colonial roots in America. He's a mixture of English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.. and possibly Italian, Native American and/or Spanish. My grandmother is three quarters German. Her paternal grandmother, Anna Weishaupt, was Bohemian.

My grandpa Thomas Rodgers descends quite a mixture of old colonial families. The Rodgers had come to America in 1718 from Ireland, and before that they had went from Scotland to Ireland in the 1500's due to religious persecutions. We theorize they were originally Scottish. If not, they were then definitely Irish.. and descendants and relatives of the MacRory family of Ireland. Most of his ancestor's surname were predominately English, like Bennett, Blaylock, Hopkins Scott, and Wilson. But there's also Vance which is probably Irish and then the Howell family, which came from Wales. My grandpa's mother's family were the Martin's and Costilow's. Samuel Martin came from Ireland in the mid-1700's and was a big Revolutionary War captain. The Costilow's are a curious case. We originally thought they came from VA and before that Ireland, but I proved that wrong. From what I've concluded, they could be of Spanish or Italian ancestry. Finding any information on the early Costilow's of Mississippi is proving extremely difficult. The area they lived in at the end of the 1700's was then the Spanish territory of Mississippi. There is of course, the obvious Irish spelling of Costello.. but taking into consideration the area and time they lived in Mississippi we have to consider the Spanish spelling of Castillo. There's also an Italian variation much similiar. Somewhere in the Costilow heritage is believed to be Native American blood as well. It could come through Martha A. Miller, the wife of James A. J. Costilow, whom we know nothing about.. other than her birth and death date.

My grandmother, Elaine Stuempges, has 4 different lines to look at.. three of them being German. Her ancestry is very simple, the majority of it simply being German but coming from different areas in Germany. The Stuempges, or Stümpges as it was spelt in Germany, were from Western Germany in an area called Rhineland very close to the border with France and The Netherlands. Anna Weishaupt, her paternal grandmother, was born in Bohemia, which is the present day Czech Republic. Grandma Elaine's maternal ancestors came from two areas. The Martin's came from Western Prussian and the Brandenburg area of Germany. And then the Summ's came from Baden, deep in the Black Forest.. which was only about an hour from the French border.

So all in all, these are the different ethnicities that comprise my ancestry:

Bohemian

English

German

Hungarian

Hungarian - Transdanubian

Irish

Kashubian

Polish

Scottish

Slovak

Swedish

Transylvanian

Welsh

Possible:

Costilow (Italian, Native American, Spanish)