different info for same person
My great great grandmother Anna Dreyer is also listed as Anna Curtler. They both have the same number GF2G-78y but one says she was born in Germany and one says Czechoslovakia. Also birthdate differ. How can I find out the correct information?
Answers
-
On FamilySearch, women are listed with their maiden names (Curtler). I only see one person with the number you shared.
It's possible that the boundaries of where Anna was born has changed over time. Some times in history it was Germany while others it was Czechoslovakia.
To find out the correct information, you should look at the attached sources and study what they say (or don't say). If available to you, I'd suggest visiting a local FamilySearch Center and talk with one of the volunteer staff to help you understand how to evaluate the sources.
1 -
Two people cannot have the same PID. PID GF2G-78Y belongs to Anna M. Curtler, who married Charles Dreyer on 12 July 1874.
The name on the profile was edited by another contributor in 2023. The USCensusProject created the profile in 2022. The USCensusProject does not follow FamilySearch standards, which call for women to be listed with their maiden names. In 2023, a contributor correctly edited Anna's surname to Curtler.
I haven't found a marriage record, to confirm Anna's maiden name, but there is a NUMIDENT (Social Security) record for a child, listing her maiden surname as Curtler. I did find a newspaper article with the date of the marriage of Anna and Charles.1 -
It's important to distinguish between the person in Family Tree (often called a "profile") with its associated vital conclusions (birth date/place, death date/place, name, etc.) and historical records (called "sources" when they are attached to the profile) that refer to that person.
The person you referred to is currently listed in Family Tree as Anna M Curtler, born in March 1851 in Germany, and died in 1823 with no death place listed. Those are the conclusions associated with her profile at this moment. Note that a profile is a dynamic thing, where other users may refine or otherwise change the conclusions, hopefully based on sound analysis of historical records. There is only one birth conclusion allowed per profile, so the profile currently says she is born in Germany (not Czechoslovakia).
There are currently 10 sources attached to this profile. Most of them provide some information about her birth. As is often the case, those sources don't entirely agree. The 1880 US Census says she was born in 1849 in Czechoslovakia; the 1900 US Census says she was born in March 1841 in Germany. Other sources have birthdates ranging from 1841 to 1852, with places including Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. If you're looking at the source records, you can certainly see different answers for when or where she was born.
Why do those records differ? There are a variety of reasons. One census enumerator may have asked the question about birthplace in a way that asked for what the country was called when the birth occurred, and another enumerator may have asked about the current name (at the time of the census) for the country then containing the birth place. Those two ways of asking the question could result in different answers, both of which are entirely correct. Note also that enumerators usually simply recorded what one informant for the household reported to them; different household members might have given different answers. And sometimes enumerators made mistakes in hearing the responses or writing them down.
How do you resolve which records are most reliable? That's both an art and a science. @Lawanna-- gave some good advice for some steps you might take.
4 -
@CherylOtis - if you look at the original image of the 1880 census, it does not say that her birthplace was Czechoslovakia, it says that she was born in Bohemia, which is more specific than Czechoslovakia. For whatever reason, the indexing process used the modern name for the area - except, of course(?) it isn't even the modern name any more. Czechoslovakia didn't exist as an independent country until 1918, and it was split at the end of 1992 into the independent countries of the Czech Republic (now Czechia) and Slovakia.
Good luck trying to sort out whether any of Bohemia was ever in "Germany" - looking at Wikipedia, I can believe it was sort-of in Austria (as in, it was in "the Austrian Empire") which makes Germany seem unlikely to me. The 1905 census has Austria (it's on the 2nd page) but the rest say Germany. I've seen too many over-simplifications in censuses to have total faith in the items saying "Germany" (plus her husband was born Mecklenburg on the 1880, which was definitely in Germany by 1880, so they might have used the husband's birthplace by default for all of them).
If you asked me to make a guess, I'd suggest she was born in Bohemia, which is in FamilySearch as a country in its own right up to 1918, but in all honesty, with all those "Germany" entries, it's not clear, is it?
By the way, it would be sensible to have her married name of "Anna Dreyer" as an Alternate Name.
4 -
The instructions to US census enumerators were to record the name as it was known as of the date of the census. That explains, in most cases, why the place of birth may differ from census to census.
5 -
Hi @CherylOtis. I just found this!:
Peter Gurtler and family, the only German speaking family that we know of that settled in Neuchatel township, came from Wisconsin, in 1873, and settled on the farm he lately lived on. He was a brother of John Gurtler, of Mill creek, the father of Wesley and Peter Gurtler, of Onaga.
He had come to Wisconsin from the old country in 1855. His wife, Mary, and children, Mat, Anna, Veit, Peter, Mary (Mrs. John Sampey, of Concordia), John, and Joseph came with him from Wisconsin. Anna married Charles Dreyer in 1874 or 1875, and is living in Topeka. Veit married Alice Londale, and is now in Wabaunsee county. Peter, jr., is in Marshall county. Mr. Gurtler comes from a family who were remarkable for their longevity. His mother's father lived to be 110 years old, and his mother was 99 when she died. Mr. Gurtler's wife passed away last fall, and he died July 7 of this year.
Source: https://www.kancoll.org/books/crevecoeur/ost14.htm
This lines up with some of the research I had just been doing below:
There was a note on Charles' profile that the 1905 census said he had moved to Kansas from Massachusetts. That led me to a couple items of interest (not proven of course):
Possible naturalization
Possible 1870 census (Living with a family of bakers, his profession in 1880)Looking at what it said for Anna (names on prior page), she moved from Wisconsin.
3 -
I believe this is her profile. It will need to be merged. She was born in Austria: https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/GNLT-CCY
4 -
@GFre
I located a number of newspaper articles about Charles Dreyer's purchase of the bakery and then later advertising snippets about the bakery. He purchased the bakery in June 1876. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-topeka-capital-journal-dreyer-purcha/205920589/Before the bakery purchase, I found multiple 1873-4 newspaper adverts for a Charles Dreyer with a hairdressing establishment. Possibly the same man; all the adverts predate his marriage to Anna.
3 -
@CherylOtis - the GNLT-CCY profile that @GFre has found for you, is interesting in that it has a pretty precise birth and christening place. The visible/display placename terminates in Pilsen, Bohemia, Austria, the equivalent part of which, is standardized to Bohemia.
If you decide that this really is your ancestor, then you will need to get your head around the relationship between Bohemia and Austria - in particular, what does the term "Austria" actually mean? Is it what we would know today as Austria, or is it the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or is it....?
Personally, I think that "Bohemia, Austria" is a touch misleading as a placename since it gives the impression that Bohemia was part of the modern country of Austria, which is not true. Especially misleading if someone shortens it to just Austria. But I'm from the wrong side of Europe to be too dogmatic about these things. And it's not my family!
2 -
I concur with @GFre that Anna Gurtler GNLT-CCY is most likely the same individual as Anna M Curtler GF2G-78Y. Particularly in light of the article referenced. It's conceivable that a 'G' in some forms of cursive may have been misconstrued as a 'C' in transcribing the NUMIDENT record.
Anna Gurtler's family actually emigrated in 1854, arriving in New York. You can see the passenger list here. The family is listed as 'German', but the actual record is very perfunctory, with the scribe having written 'German' once near the top of the page with a squiggle indicating the same for all following passengers. So I think it's safe to say assumptions may have been made. I cannot for the life of me read the writing that states the ship's name or port, but assuming it docked in Germany, and that's where the family embarked, that could be where the 'German' identity came from.
Additionally, according to Anna Gurtler's profile she was born in Hněvnice, which is in modern-day Czechia, about 52kms/32 miles from the German border. So that proximity may have been a factor when later records were being written.
With that in mind, there is also a, 1870 census record for an Anna Gersler/Gessler/Gursler? (the exact spelling isn't the clearest) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin which may be a match. It's only about 20 miles from where the rest of the family were living at the time. She's listed as a servant, born in Bavaria, which is the German state bordering the part of Czechia in which Anna Gurtler was born. It is circumstantial, but I think worth considering.
2 -
And just to illustrate the head-scratching nature of country names at this point in parts of Europe, the column containing "German" on the passenger list that @RaniM found, is described earlier (image 668) as "The country to which they severally belong". It's an 1854 passenger list and there was, at that time, no such country as Germany - it didn't exist until 1871. Of course, if you described someone as German in that era, it meant something - it (roughly) meant that they were German speaking, but that could have meant that they were a citizen of Austria since the widest possible definition of "Germany" included the German speaking parts of Austria.
I'm not trying to confuse anyone, @CherylOtis, honest, rather I want to show that some of the names have shifted more than somewhat over the years.
1 -
I found this newspaper article:
"Mrs. Herman Dreyer, who is making her home with her son at Parsons, Kan., is visiting her sister-in-law, Mrs. Charles Dreyer, 134 Harrison street."These are Herman Dreyer's naturalization records and Find a Grave (same cemetery as Charles).
Hermann Dreyer, Hampden Naturalization
Shawnee, KS Passport application (Says he lived in Boston, then Topeka)https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/15119349/herman-dreyerSo this should be Charles' birth record, and the Massachusetts records linked earlier also appear to be correct: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPV4-VZZV?treeref=GF2G-4FY&lang=en
0
