Month: March 2014

I discovered an article from an old Baltimore German newspaper at Chronicling America that mentioned a Johann Epple.  My 3rd great-grandfather was named Johan Epple.  This may not be him, but I do have the fact that there were not many Epple folks in Baltimore in the 1870s on my side.
Here is the original article courtesy of Chronicling America:

I was able to view the page as text and I copied and pasted the article into Google Translate and got the following translation:

Hmmmm, I’m missing some important parts I think.  Was Johann the victim or the one arrested?
I’m sure that the issue is in reading the original German script.
So, if anyone out there can help with the translation or has another resource to get the full translation, I would greatly appreciate the help.

After 10 years I think I finally located my 3rd great-grandparents (Johann and Catherine Epple) before their boat ride to Baltimore.  I don’t have the time I would like to spend researching, work gets in the way.  But I did have some time last week to spend on FamilySearch and boy am I glad I did!!
I knew that Johann and Catherine emigrated from Germany with their 3 daughters (my 2nd great grandmother Rose being the youngest at the age of 3) in the fall of 1852.
I knew they arrived in Baltimore, Maryland on 29 Nov 1852 on the ship Bessel.
I located them in the 1860 census in Baltimore City with 2 children born since their arrival in Baltimore.
In the 1870 census it looks like Johann was not in the household and that Catherine had remarried (although her age was not quite correct).
In the 1880 census Catherine was living with one of her married daughters and listed as widowed or divorced.
I was unable to locate Catherine in 1900. She would have been about 85 so maybe she was deceased.
I have not been able to locate either Johann or Catherine in any death records.  Johann probably died before Baltimore City recorded death records and I haven’t located either of them in any church records that I have looked at.
I had a clue as to Catherine’s maiden name when I found the death certificate of one of her daughters that listed her mother’s name as Catherine Heyde.  A good clue as my 2nd great-grandmother’s death certificate listed her mother’s name as Katherine J Epple.
So, last week I had some time and since I hadn’t been on FamilySearch recently I decided to start plugging in names to the search box.  I’m not sure why, out of all the names in my tree, I decided to search on Johann Georg Epple, but I typed his name, hit enter and stared at the 1st result.  There it was, Johann Georg Epple and Katharina Jakobina Heyd, parents of Augustine Albertine Epple.  Augustine was one of the daughters that came to Baltimore when she was 14. Her age matched, her parents ages matched, the town of the baptism matched the information from the immigration information.
Further searching resulted in birth and death records for 4 other children that died by age 2 or younger, a marriage record and lots of information on their parents and grandparents, I still haven’t gotten through it all.
So weeding through all this information, verifying and trying to locate the actual records will keep me busy for awhile.
Thank you FamilySearch!

Well, I finally did it.  I bit the bullet, opened up my wallet and ordered my AncestryDNA kit.  As if waiting for the kit to arrive wasn’t bad enough, after I worked up enough spit to fill the tube, sealed it up and trusted my package the the US Postal Service, now I sit and wait.  And wait.  I’m sure that this 6-8 weeks will go as slowly as the 6-8 weeks leading up to vacation.
And what will be worse I’m sure will be the time between connecting my results to myself in my tree and the first DNA match.
But what if I don’t get any matches? Oh God, what did I get myself into?  HA!!!