Author: Sean Vanderfluit

52W Mark V: Now What?

Happy New Year!

For the fifth year in a row, I’m going to participate in Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors Challenge. For the first three years, I followed Amy’s prompts. However, for the 2024 iteration of the Challenge, I struck my own path and set my own prompts, as I explained this time last year. In Week 52 of last year’s Challenge, I indicated that I would likely return to following Amy’s prompts.

https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/52-ancestors-in-52-weeks-themes-for-2026/

However, after seeing the list of this year’s prompts, I decided they were not for me. While I appreciate that there are many new ideas this year, most of them do not speak to me. As well, for many of the prompts, I feel hard pressed to come up with something I haven’t covered before. So I’ve decided to once again strike out on my own and create my own set of prompts.

For me, what I came up with last year really worked for me. Not only did it help my achieve my primary goal of writing up my research, it unexpectedly helped me identify the many unexpected gaps in my research. As a result, I inadvertently participated in Yvette Hoitink‘s Level-Up Challenge! It also helped that I was able to divide my fourth through sixth generations of grandparents into four suits and 52 cards, keeping with my blog’s theme of 52 Ancestors.

I decided that I would write about the next generation of my ancestors. It would once again tie the whole year together and provide me with some focus. However, the seventh generation consists of 64 individuals, which precludes writing about one per week. This problem is partly resolved by the unfortunate fact I have yet to identify seven of my Gx4 Grandparents, but that still leaves me with 57 people to fit into 52 weeks.

Despite that problem, I’m going to forge ahead with the plan to write about my seventh generation of ancestors this year – my Great Great Great Great Grandparents. I’ll figure out how to fit 57 people into 52 weeks as I go.

Continuing with last year’s theme, this results in four “suits” based upon each of my four grandparents. The individuals I will write about are in the orange boxes.

Good luck to everyone participating in the 52 Ancestors Challenge this year!

52W Mark IV – Week 52: Card L13 Mary Geiss

Mary Geiss (?-?)

With my Great x3 Grandmother, Mary Geiss, we come to the final card in the deck for this year’s 52 Ancestors Challenge. As the saying goes, last but not least. So while this might be one of the shortest posts, it does not mean that Mary is the least of the ancestors I’ve written about this year. She, along with her husband, is simply someone I know the least about.

Mary was of German origin who lived in one of the German colonies in the Beresan district of Ukraine, Russian Empire, possibly Karlsruhe colony. Mary married Philip Heck sometime before 1868. They had at least one child, my Great x3 Grandmother, Margaret Heck.

With that, another year of the 52 Ancestors Challenge is complete. Hard to believe that after signing up in 2020 and 2021 and failing to produce anything, I’ve successfully completed the challenge four years in a row. I thought that the way I approached the challenge this year would have resulted in a greater focus on writing – a primary reason why I began participating – but instead it resulted in far more research than I anticipated. In hindsight, it was worth it, but I was not expecting the amount of work I put into it.

I’ve signed up for the 2026 edition of the Challenge. I suspect I’ll revert back to following Amy’s prompts. I think I’ve gotten what I needed by deviating from the prompts for a year. Plus, by striking out on my own, I’ve become a bit disconnected from the other participants in the Challenge, particularly on Amy’s Facebook group where the weekly prompts are discussed.

In the meantime, I once again put my hard work on the Challenge to use, having compiled a third edition of my collection of 52 Ancestors entries, consisting of my posts for 2024. It was a popular Hannukah and Christmas present this year. I’m really excited about next year’s edition (which will include this post!), because I’m really proud of the work I did this year. I’m particularly happy with the cohesive theme I set, which tied the whole set of 52 posts together unlike any other year.

All distributed now but for two copies!

52W Mark IV – Week 51: Card L12 Philip Heck

Philip Heck (?-?)

Welcome to my penultimate, and probably shortest, entry for the 2025 52 Ancestors Challenge.

Philip Heck, my Great x3 Grandfather, was of German origin who lived in one of the German colonies in the Beresan district of Ukraine, Russian Empire, possibly Karlsruhe colony. Philip married Mary Geiss sometime before 1868. They had at least one child, my Great x3 Grandmother, Margaret Heck.

Das ist alles.

52W Mark IV – Week 50: Card L11 Katherina Loran

Katherina Loran (1846-1893)

While I might not have a lot about my Germans from Russia ancestry and I haven’t gotten as far back in those lines as the other branches of my family tree, Katherina Loran, is one of the few of my Great x3 Grandparents of this lineage for whom I have the names of all four of her grandparents. In fact, I know the names of three of her for Great Grandfathers, but it should come as no surprise to any genealogist that I don’t know any of her Great Grandmothers.

Katherina was born in the Karlsruhe colony in the Beresan in 1846, to Michael Loran and Klara Stumpf. Both of Katherina’s parents were born in the Beresan – Michael in Karlsruhe and Klara in Speier.

On her paternal line, Katherina’s ancestors came from Queichheim, Rhinepalatinate. Queichheim is now part of Landau, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, about 40 kilometers northwest of Karlsruhe, where many of my other German-Russian ancestors originated.

On her mother’s paternal side, Katherine’s maternal grandfather, Jakob Stumpf, was born in Riedseltz, Weissenburg, Elsaß (Alsace). Alsace spent much of its history moving between French and German control. At the time Jakob was born, it was primarily under French control, but small exclaves were under German control. Riedseltz is now within France, about five kilometers from the German border and just over 30 kilometers due west of Karlsruhe.

Katherina’s maternal grandmother, Elisabetha Berk (or Burck) was born in Pforzheim, Baden, on the other side of Karlsruhe and about 50 kilometers from Riedseltz. Just over 15 years ago, when one of my cousins married, they and their spouse created a new surname that was a mash-up of their surnames at birth. The result was “Burke”. I had to let my cousin know that she was reviving the surname of our Great x5 Grandmother!

Returning to Katherina, she married Jacob Anton in Karlsruhe on October 28, 1863. Over a 25 year period, Katherina had 11 children with Jacob. At least half her children emigrated to the United States and Canada, mostly to Montana and Saskatchewan. I think it’s amazing to think that my lifetime overlapped with two of her children. The youngest of Katherina’s children, Mathilda, lived until December 1971, passing away at age 83. If I had ever met Mathilda, I’d have been meeting with someone only one generation away from someone born more than 100 years before me.

In  1874, Katherina and her family moved from Karlsruhe to Christina, one of the German daughter colonies in the Beresan. It was very likely that Katherina was pregnant at the time of the move, because she gave birth to a daughter, Veronica, in June 1874. Katherina and Jakob may have been amongst the earliest settlers in Christina, as it may have been founded in 1874; however, there are birth records showing that German colonists were there as early as 1860. Today what remains of Christina

Katherina died young, at age 47, when her youngest child was only five years old.

Paul Antone, my maternal grandmother’s second cousin*, made a trip to Ukraine in 2010 to visit some of the places where the German colonists had lived. He shared many of his photos with me, including several from the Christina cemetery. Amongst those was a photo of Katherina’s headstone.

Translated to English, the inscription on Katherina’s headstone reads “Here rests in God Katherina, born in the year 1846, died 1893.”

*Yes, I know that makes him my second cousin twice removed. 😏