Attention all northeast Ohio Knapp clan members – there is a family reunion planning meeting scheduled for March 17. Please click on the Reunion tab above for details about the meeting.
Note: the Reunion tab is password-protected. If you have any problems accessing the page, please contact me.
Hope to see many of you at the meeting! Extra pairs of hands to help are always welcome!
For those of you with a connection to John Sebastian TRARES, below is a photo of his home in Edwardsville, Ill., which, as you may remember from one of my earlier posts, is now a funeral home.
This photo arrived in my email inbox courtesy of Br. James-Peter Trares, who recently made a trip to Edwardsville to learn more about John S. Trares.
Reminder: If there are any TRARES connections in the St. Louis or Edwardsville area who wish to connect with Br. James-Peter, please drop me an email at Knapp Notes so I can forward his contact information to you.
Home of John Sebastian TRARES in Edwardsville, IL., now used as a funeral home. Photo courtesy of Br. James-Peter Trares
Knapp Family Reunion 2010 Group Photo
It’s official – the Annual Knapp Family Reunion is June 29 at Silver Springs Park in Stow!
Stay tuned for more information from Uncle Gary Knapp about a planning meeting in March. We need volunteers to help – there is plenty to do, so bring your kids or whoever is willing to help to the planning meeting.
If you can’t offer your time, we’re always willing to accept donations to offset the cost of renting the shelter, buying a ton of ice, food, bottled water, etc. So let us know how you wish to contribute to this event.
2010 Knapp Family Reunion Cake
If you’re not “officially” a Knapp but are part of a related line (TRARES – KLINE – MAY – WISE – etc.) and would like to attend in order to “reconnect” with your Knapp cousins, you are welcome to attend, too. We just ask that you let us know you’re coming so we can make sure we have enough food, ice, bottled water, etc. You can drop me a line at Knapp Notes – click on the Contact tab.
For those who haven’t attended before, please bring a dish to share and your favorite lawn chair. We usually have games and activities for the kids. If you have photos and family records to share, bring them with you. We can scan/photograph them right at the event and they can be shared on Knapp Notes (or kept private in my archive – your choice!).
On the Reunion tab, I will post directions and bulletins about the plans for the Reunion – so stay tuned for more details later.
Hope to see you all there!
Br. James-Peter Trares
I received a very interesting message from a cousin recently that I wanted to pass along – especially to those with a TRARES connection.
On January 13, Br. James-Peter Trares, O.P., sent me an email message expressing his interest in connecting with any TRARES relatives who live in either the St. Louis or Edwardsville, Illinois area.
Br. James-Peter is a Dominican who is based at St. Dominic Priory in St. Louis, Missouri. James-Peter is his religious name, taken when he entered the Dominican order. His baptismal name is James Michael Trares. He is the son of George TRARES and the grandson of John Lewis TRARES and he grew up in Shalersville, Ohio.
Br. James-Peter pursued studies in liturgical music and theology at Aquinas College. At the moment, he is studying for ordination. You can learn more about the friars and their activities by visiting their website.
According to the website, Preachingfriars.org is a collaboration between the Dominican Student Brothers of St. Dominic Priory in St. Louis, which is comprised of members of the Province of St. Albert the Great (Central) and the Province of St. Martin dePorres (Southern). The friars are a community of both clerical and lay students who study for the priesthood and future ministry at the Aquinas Institute of Theology. Begun in 2010 as a way to promote the weekly Vespers preaching of the friars, the site has been expanded to include reflections, videos and theological discussions.
Br. James-Peter writes:
I’ve wanted to share that I’ve enjoyed perusing the posts on the blog about the family. I’m particularly interested in the connections with John Sebastian TRARES who moved to Missouri/Illinois. I’m currently living in St. Louis myself, in formation to be a priest in the Dominican Order. From what I can tell, I’m only about a half hour’s drive from Edwardsville, Illinois. It would be neat to connect with this “lost” branch of the family and discover some distant relatives in the area.
If you have connections with anyone from this line, I would love to get in touch with them. My parents have all the family history records, most from my grandparents and others who have compiled the work.
It was also interesting to read the remarks from Christoph Trares in Germany. I had heard before (maybe it was from him then, too) that TRARES had a Spanish connection. It would be wonderful some day to go to Germany myself and look him up.
In any case, feel free to pass my email along to anyone you think might be interested in connecting with me. These things are just fun.
Blessings,
James Trares
Learn more about Br. James-Peter here:
Anyone interested in contacting Br. James-Peter can send an email to Knapp Notes requesting his contact information. I won’t post it online as I don’t want his mailbox flooded with spam.
The WordPress.com stats helpers prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog. I decided to post it online just in case you’re interested in finding out how many people actually read Knapp Notes.
I think the numbers may surprise you!
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 8,400 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 14 years to get that many views.
By 4028mdk09 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
View the video of the interior of St. Peter’s here.
It is quite a beautiful church – thanks, Mike, for sharing it with us!
Also: Mike’s wife, Denise, will be undergoing surgery on Monday, December 10 – so please remember her in your prayers that her surgery goes well and her recovery is rapid and uneventful.
Here is Mike’s message below:
Greetings Wise Guys and Girls.
I am sending you this video from Heppenheim, Germany and in particular, St. Peter’s church. The Knapps came from Wald Erlenbach, which is about two miles away, and the Andes came from Kirschausen (I think) which is less than one mile away, and the Trares came from that area also.
Peace to all.
Mike
View a map of Heppenheim and the surrounding area here to get your bearings.
Mike also shared a beautiful video of candlelight rendition of Silent Night sung in German in a Catholic Church in Germany. It is quite beautiful – and a reminder of what our ancestors experienced in Germany during the holiday season.
View the video here.
Best wishes for a wonderful holiday season for everyone!
Adam Eichler and Eve Kline Eichler
I have been busy reviewing (and analyzing!) the information which cousin Mike has so generously shared with us. And it has already led me to some interesting finds.
For example, how many of you know we have an EICHLER connection? Well, thanks to cousin Mike, now we know we do!
Here’s where the connection lies:
Johann/John KNAPP, father of our immigrant ancestor, Franz Adam KNAPP, also had a daughter named Elisabeth KNAPP. Elisabeth married John KLEIN/KLINE. They had seven children, including: Elizabeth, Adam, Betsey, Nancy, George, John and Catharine. I don’t know much of anything about the other children, but Adam KLINE I do know something about.
Adam KLINE married Barbara SCHAEFFER/SHAFFER(I have seen it spelled several ways), on 31 Jan 1856 in Randolph, Portage, Ohio. The couple had many children (about 14, I believe), but their oldest child, Eva/Eve KLINE, born about 1857, married a man named Adam EICHLER in 1878. This couple had nine children, many of whom have descendants still living in the Portage County, Ohio area today.
Which brings me to something I ran across this week on ancestry.com that I found fascinating and just had to share. A big shout of thanks to Tim DeFrange, who lives in Kent, Ohio, for being willing to share his genealogical research into his wife’s EICHLER connections.
Tim does not happen to be an EICHLER by blood – he was just lucky enough to marry one – his lovely wife, Linda, as he writes in his history. I can relate to that – I am not a KNAPP or a KLINE by birth, either – I was just lucky enough to marry into the clan and write about it!
My husband, Mark, remembers Tim from his days at Roosevelt High School. Tim was a few years ahead of Mark in school, but remembers Tim and his siblings.
Tim has put together a wonderful two-part historical sketch of the EICHLER clan’s origins, which also talks a lot about the KLEIN/KLINE connection. It has some wonderful photos and stories I just knew you all would enjoy.
I have posted Tim’s Eichler Pictorial History: Part 1 and Part 2 under the Document Galley tab, right near cousin Mike’s Wise Guys archive.
I hope you enjoy reading it as much I did – and a hearty thanks to Tim for his willingness to share his research with us. I know I have said it many times on this blog, but I really do believe genealogists are some of the most generous and giving people on the planet!
Thanks, Tim – and thanks, Mike – for helping to bring us all together to learn more about our fascinating past.
Just a quick note to let everyone know I have uploaded all of Cousin Mike’s research for you to look at and enjoy.
Here’s how to access the information:
1. Click on the Document Gallery tab at the top of the page.
2. Select Wise Guys from the list of options.
3. After you select Wise Guys, a new page opens (see above.) Click the “thumbnail” image of the issue of Wise Guys you wish to review.
4. A full page version of the newsletter will open. Note: You should see some arrows <> on either side of the image. Click on these to move forward or backward through all of the pages.
I have also typed out one of the stories and placed it under the Stories section.
I will post more later. Eventually, I hope to make these into searchable PDF files. But in the meantime, enjoy browsing through this great information.
Thanks again, Mike!
p.s. This section is password-protected for security reasons. Also: to exit the photo gallery, press the ESC key (ESCAPE).
This post is courtesy of Cousin Mike Wise from Georgia. I appreciate everyone’s patience while I comb through Cousin Mike’s archive of research and start posting it online here at Knapp Notes.
On the Document Gallery tab, I have added a menu item called Wise Guys. I will be starting to post copies of the original documents there.
Cousin Mike wrote this as part of his newsletter, Wise Guys:
Jacob WEISS came from a region of Germany called Rhenish Bavaria. He came from a small town of a few hundred people called Birkenhodt, which means “birches in the hearth.”
The term “Rhenish Bavaria” translates to “Bavaria near the Rhine.” It is located in a valley on the west side of the Rhine river only a few miles north of the French border, near the towns of Bad Bergzabern and Wissembourg. Just outside the valley is a grape-growing region, but in the valley itself, it is too cold to grow grapes.
Jacob Weiss came to America in 1840 with his wife, Mary Magdalena HAMMER. Also making the trip were Mary’s brother and sister, Dominick and Louisa HAMMER. They settled first in Canal Fulton, Ohio, for several years and the HAMMER descendants still live there today.
After living in Canal Fulton for several years, Jacob and Mary WEISS moved their family to Lake Township in northern Stark County, Ohio. The place was on the northwest corner of 619 and Doucette Avenue. His house was about one mile east of Hartville, Ohio.
Jacob WEISS‘s father, Adam WEISS, and his mother, Frances BURGER, never migrated to the USA. Mary BURGER‘s parents, Johanne HAMMER and Elizabeth OEKENHAEFER, never migrated to the USA.
Jacob WEISS was born 14 April 1801 and died 4 August 1865, and is buried at St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Randolph, Ohio. Mary HAMMER WEISS died 10 April 1873 and also is buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Randolph. The couple were married in 1827.
NOTE: After coming to America, they changed their name to WISE.
Jacob and Mary WEISS had eight children:
- Cristina WISE, born 4 Jan 1828, who married Nicolas SCHRADER on 12 May 1851. Cristina died 16 March 1902.
- Dominic WISE, born 24 Sep 1832. He died in 1917. I have his date of death listed as 1916, but we’ll have to check on that one.
- Jacob WISE, Jr., born 1835 and died in 1890.
- John J. WISE, born 12 Sep 1837 and was married 25 Jan 1862. He died 19 Sep 1919.
- Louise WISE, born 27 March 1830, Birkenhordt, Germany
- Barnhart WISE, born 2 Feb 1843, married 13 Oct 1868 and died 15 Oct 1919. I have Barnhart listed as “Bernard”; apparently he “Americanized” his name.
- Katherine WISE, 2 Feb 1840 – I show her as being born in Birkenhordt, Germany
- Joseph E. Wise, born 28 April 1845, married 21 Nov 1871 and died 18 August 1922 in Randolph, Portage, Ohio.
I am not sure of the exact order of birth, since I don’t have all the dates. Ray WISE of Ravenna said that the three youngest were born in America, all others in Germany. Ray also said that all are buried at St. Joe in Randolph, except Katherine, who he thinks is buried in Ravenna? He may be mistaken about the oldest, Cristina, as there is a good chance she is buried at St. Mary’s in Massillon, Ohio.
Note: Where I have additional information or where my information varies, I have added it in RED text. Perhaps we can join forces and fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge.
Family History Month was first observed 10 years ago.
Utah Senator Orrin Hatch introduced a resolution on September 12, 2001, to designate the month of October as Family History Month. Hatch had circulated a draft for months, but formally introduced it the day after the 9/11 attacks. In the uncertain aftermath of that day, the words of the resolution resonated with many Americans.
“We look to the family as an unwavering symbol of constancy that will help us discover a future of prosperity, promise, and potential. Interest in our personal family history transcends all cultural and religious affiliations.”
The resolution passed by unanimous consent.
This month is a good time to plan some activities centered on talking about your family’s past with your children and/or grandchildren. Kids are always interested in learning more about their own personal history.
Making a personal connection to historical events the kids learn about in school really can make history come alive for them. If children learn they have an ancestor who fought in the Civil War, they are much more likely to pay attention when the subject comes up in class.
If you’re looking for some ideas on how to get started, here are some links to websites with some great suggestions:
For those of you who have been “bitten ” by the genealogy bug, Family Tree magazine has posted a FREE webinar you can watch online to learn more about how to begin researching your family tree. It’s called: Ten Steps to Discover Your Roots and is presented by Family Tree contributors Allison Dolan, Diane Haddad, David A. Fryxell, Nancy Hendrickson and Lisa Louise Cooke of Genealogy Gems.Click here to access the webinar. Be patient – it takes a little while for the webinar to load.
And here is an infographic with some interesting information about America and immigration. It’s from 2011, but I still think it is cool. Enjoy!
Knapp Notes 