I've always wanted an Opa

We all have 16 great-great-grandparents.  Two of mine were born in Germany, and one was born in the US of German parents.  Three out of 16 great-great grandparents means I'm 3/16 German.  Wunderbar!!

I randomly Googled the following ancestor and had a surprise.

Family member name: Ernst Friedrich Ferdinand Goesch
Tree branch: Goesch
Relation: My 2x great grandpa.  My mom's mom's mom's dad.

Turns out there is another crazy person out there (probably a lot of them) who blog about their ancestry.  They had an entire post about Grandpa Ernst!  In fact Ernst was his great grandfather, but through Ernst's first wife Amelia.  Ernst is my 2x great grandpa through his second wife, Bertha.
Ernst was born September 8, 1848 in Grammentin, Pommern, Prussia which today is known as Mecklenburg – Vorpommern, Germany.  On March 17, 1869, at the age of 20, Ernst sailed from Hamburg, Germany on the ship Saxonia bound for New York.

They moved between Chicago, Minnesota and finally Nebraska, where generations of Goesch family members were born and still live.  Ernst had 6 children with Amelia then another six with Bertha.  The 12th child was my great-grandmother Martha.

The German word for grandfather is Opa.  Here's my great-great Opa.

And this is Ernst and Bertha's home in 1915 in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Building a 19th century resumé

Was Grandpa Smith a go-getter? An intentional seeker of new horizons? Or did life just happen? You decide as you read his resumé below.

Family member name: Charles H. Smith
Tree branch: Smith
Relation: My 3x great grandpa.  My dad's mom's dad's dad's dad.

The carpenter - Young Charles' first occupation was a carpenter. He lived in Chatham, Massachusetts which is the elbow of Cape Cod. (Make a fist and flex your bicep. That's Cape Cod. Now use your other hand to point at the flexed arm's elbow.  That's Chatham.) Chatham was a fishing and whaling town, so perhaps he made a good living repairing boats. We can't really know for sure. But this skill surely would have helped him in his next jobs.

The lighthouse keeper - Light house keepers have always held a beloved position in their community. Their role was to keep the town's mariner sons and husbands safe.  Grandpa Smith was entrusted with this position for over ten years, three of which were during the Civil War.  Normally lighthouse families were isolated because their homes are often located on islands or on remote peninsulas. Not so with Chatham Light. It is on Main Street in the middle of town. So I imagine their interaction with the community was as normal as their neighbors. Speaking of neighbors, Angeline Nickerson lived next door with her children. She is a local Chatham legend. Her husband was the light keeper until his untimely death. She took over the post and "manned" (pun intended) the station for 10 years until she was about 50 years old.

The twin lights as they would have looked in the 1860s.

I have yet to locate the lighthouse logs from Grandpa Smith's tenure. The logs generally recorded how many ships passed by daily, significant storms, sea rescues and lighthouse repairs. The Chatham Historical Society does not have them, the Chatham Eldredge Library does not have them. I have not yet contacted the current lighthouse keeper (the US Coast Guard), but often the logs were thrown away when the Coast Guard took over in 1943.  The result of these missing logs is that we know almost nothing about his service. In fact, he is barely (if ever) even mentioned in books about lighthouse histories. But he's on Wikipedia, so... it's all good.


The inn keeper - Grandpa and Grandma Smith transitioned from the rescue business to the hospitality business.  The Chatham Monitor local newspaper shows the chain of events.

Advertisement for Nauset House

Newspaper announces sale of Nauset House Aug 1872

Monthly advertisement for Nauset House

Nauset House is often listed in the paper as hosting town events on their large front lawn.  Unfortunately, Grandma Smith died just three years later, yet was remembered as a gracious hostess to town visitors in her obituary. 

Nauset House is still an Inn 150 years later (not run by family members that I know of). Consider staying there on your next trip to the Cape.


The tax collector - Holy career change Batman!

Here is Grandpa Smith's obituary, kindly sent to me by the Chatham Historical Society.

Looks like as the new tax collector, he whipped them into shape! Was he the type of person who could recognize a problem, devise a solution and had the power and energy to implement it? I admire those people.

From his various careers over his lifetime, it seems that Grandpa Smith was always reinventing himself, a catchphrase from the 2010s. What a diverse and interesting person.

Hingham

Hingham, Massachusetts holds a special place in my heart. It’s where I would visit my Grandma and Grandpa Webber and spend much time with my two cousins. My dad grew up in Hingham. I had no idea of our connection to Hingham other than knowing that my grandparents moved their young family there in 1952/53.

Family member name: Ralph Smith
Tree branch: Smith
Relation: My 10x great grandpa.  My dad's mom's dad's dad's dad’s dad’s dad's dad's dad's dad's dad

Why did my grandparents move to Hingham? They grew up in Needham and New Bedford. Maybe they just wanted to be commuting distance to Boston?  My Grandma Webber’s maiden name was Smith. Normally a difficult surname to research, but there have been mountains of information on this family with deep New England roots.

When reading a history of the Smith family in New England, many generations lived on Cape Cod, in the towns of Chatham and Eastham. But when going back further, a Ralph Smith lived in Hingham for almost 20 years, from1635 to 1653. He lived on Main Street and ran a store. When researching the history of the town of Hingham, it was founded in 1635. In fact, Ralph Smith, his three brothers and four other men originally arrived there in 1633 to begin clearing land and building huts in order to cultivate the land the following spring. Though it was called Bare Cove at that time, when they set up a town government, they renamed the area Hingham. Why? They had just arrived in the new world from their hometown - Hingham, England.

It’s so exciting that my dad grew up in the town that was founded by his direct ancestor, who was a pioneer of distinction.

Here is a plaque placed by the Association of the Descendants of Ralph Smith.  Disclaimer: I did not take this picture.  I copied it from another website. :)  But I hope to visit it someday.