How I Became an Accidental Genealogy Tourist
An extra day in New Orleans was time well spent
If I had the money and time I might spend a lot of it tracing the footsteps of my ancestors. I might knock on the doors of churches and government offices in central Wales, hoping for a birth or baptism record for a four-times great-grandparent. I might stalk the Lutheran churches near the village of Mensfelden near Frankfurt, Germany until they gave up the secrets of my three-times great-grandfather’s family.
I think I could easily get lost visiting places and imagining what their lives might have been like. I already do. I look at documents and I am transported back.
Today I saw court documents for the estate of my great-grandfather’s sister, Louisa Gaertner. She died of pneumonia in 1899 in New Orleans, without a will. She had $554.51 in her bank account. That was a lot in 1899. It would be about $20,000 in today’s money, and her family successfully went to court to gain access to that money. The probate document was scanned in 2015 and added to the database of one of the websites I use to research. At the end of the document, I found the signatures of each of my great-grandfather’s family members.
My great-grandfather, Henry Gaertner, was just 22 when his older sister died, just two weeks after her 33rd birthday. His name appears at the top…
