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What I am given next seems to be exciting- but I wasn't quite certain what to think of it at first. It was a very old (obviously 1800's) album of very old portraits. I was told it should be our family, although there were no names, and nobody could tell me who these people were. I had a blessing and a curse. If these indeed were our family members, they were pictures from the 1800s. The problem is, of the dozens of large portraits, not one person could be identified. If I didn't know who they were, was this photo album even our family members at all? If I could only identify even one or two, it would prove to be our family. But would identifying ANY of them be possible? It seemed not, I had the book for a long time without gaining one lead on any of the people...that's when the next breakthroughs began to occur...
So at this point, I am amassing tons of data about our family from the 1700's and 1800's at both the Family History center in Hales Corners, as well as the Wisconsin State Historical Society on the campus in Madison. The State Historical Society houses the nations largest repository of archived newspapers (on microfilm).
What I am given next, starts an entire new part of the family history quest.
This page discusses some of the exciting discoveries made while researching our family history, and how they were made...
Above: A copy of the actual passenger list of the the ship Hammonia, clearly showing our family members-Heinrich, Henriette, Carl and Marie. Next to their names is the word Siggelkow. If it weren't for a helpful guy at the family history center, I would have thought it a random German word, but he pointed out to me that was where they were from. With a little investigation, he discovered that all Siggelkow records were kept in a church in Gross Pankow. He helped me order rolls and rolls of microfilm from Gross Pankow dated around the time that the Hammonia left Germany, and the years prior. Those rolls of microfilm are where ALL of the German records I have found about our family were discovered . You will see many of those documents on this website. I will continue to add them.
In Newport News, Virginia there is a Maritime Museum. I ordered the only known 'picture' (lithograph by Currier & Ives) of the Hammonia, that you see here:
Another stunning breakthrough. This page told me that our family arrived in America on July 19, 1856 onboard the ship 'Hammonia' which had left from Hamburg (wow!). Back at the family history center in Hales Corners, I talk with the helpful guy who worked there mentioning what I had found about their ship. He asked if they left Hamburg or Bremen. I said Hamburg. He said we are lucky, he can try to order me a copy of the actual ship passenger list, but in WW2, Bremen records were destroyed. When the passenger list microfilm came and I reviewed it with this guy, he pointed out my next MAJOR breakthrough-the German passenger list listed the city they were from! Siggelkow. I was stunned. A document that actually told us the city they were from!
WOW! Look at the many extremely important things we learn about our family from this ONE small article! First, there was the other spelling that I was looking for-Stier. However, if you noticed, in the very first line the newspaper spells Steer WRONG immediately below the headline with the correct spelling. Charles and Auguste Bucholz! The names of George's parents! George was my grandfather Homer's dad, and until this article, the farthest person back that I knew about. Now I knew the parents names AND siblings names of my great grandfather George Stair! "Born at Norway Racine County". Norway , Racine County- I never would have looked there ever, and when I did, the floodgates opened...
OK, now I had the spelling, AND where to look for them. I went to the Waukesha County historical society and asked where to find census records and other family history info about Norway in Racine County, I was told to go to the "Family History Center" in Hales Corners which is in the basement of a Church of Latter Day Saints. More on this in just a bit, but let's just say the Church of Latter Day Saints sent people around the world copying ALL records they find anywhere that pertain to every family history, and in Hales Corners you can order from their archive and rent microfilms (ok at least back in the 1980's and 1990s that's how it worked :)
I looked in Racine county Census records and the farthest back I could go where I found our family was 1860. Click here to see that 1860 Census Record.
But at the Milwaukee Public Library I found a volume of books called Germans to America, which were ship passenger records from Germany, and looking through the indexes for a Charles Stier, I found this:
While beginning my research , and asking many questions of my family , they presented me with a scrapbook that my grandmother (Ruth ne'e Michaelis Stair) had kept in the 1940's. It was full of newspaper clippings that meant something to her. In that scrapbook was one small obituary, that as I read it, gave me a LOT more information than I had gotten to that point- it was an obituary of a Rudolph Stier.
Back in the 1980s I was attending a wedding and was sitting at a table with my grandfather's (Homer Stair's) sister Hazel Mae Bethke. We were talking about how I was interested in possibly looking into our family history. Hazel said that the spelling of our name (Stair) used to be spelled differently. She wasn't quite sure of how it was spelled, but she knew that the name had been spelled differently. The second thing she mentioned was that the family was originally from Waterford or Watertown, in the conversation everyone began blurring Watertown with Waterford as if it were one and the same.
The idea that the Stair name had been spelled differently intrigued me-enough that my goal was to trace the family back to find out about the spelling. So obviously, the initial family search I started was mostly paternal- to follow the family back following the Stair name.
All I knew to start with was that my grandfather (Homer's) family was a farm family in Waukesha County. So my first foray into family history research centered around Waukesha County which only focused solely on my grandfather's immediate family and I didn't get much farther. I felt as though I was hitting a brick wall. And then my first major breakthrough!
Finding Our Family
Stair
a Family History