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.
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. 😏
Not only is researching my maternal grandmother’s line difficult, it’s exhausting! Not only is there a paucity of evidence, there are so many conflicts and inconsistencies to reconcile in the few records I do have. When I began this post, just the thought of writing about my Great x3 Grandfather Georg Jacob Anton was taxing, only because I knew I had my work cut out for me.
In fact, after many hours of pouring over what I do have, the most significant advance I made was to change the title and image caption from “(Georg) Jacob Anton” to simply “Jacob Anton”. One of my oldest sources for the Anton line is The Antons: German-Russian Heritage 1720-1995 published in 1995. It listed Jacob as “(Georg) Jacob”. It’s been in my database that way ever since, even though in the last 30 years I’ve come across enough information indicating that it’s simply “Jacob”.
Jacob was born in 1843 in Karlsruhe Colony in the Beresan. Based upon the Karlsruhe census for 1858, he was the eldest son and second child of Johannes Anton and Marianna Schmidt. Johannes and Marianna were most likely from Mörlheim, Landau, Rhinepalatinate before settling in Karlsruhe.
Jacob married Katherina Loran on October 28, 1863 in Karlsruhe. The family lived in Karlsruhe until about 1874, when they relocated to Christina, a recently founded daughter colony. In Christina, Jacob and Katherina had six more children.
Katharina died about 1893. Jacob remarried shortly after Katharina died, to Magdalina Gustin. Magdalina was a widow herself. They had two sons, Alexander and Thomas, known as “Fat Alex” and “Al Capone” after they immigrated to southwest Saskatchwan. There were a lot of Alexander Antons in their community, so they all had nicknames. As for Thomas, my Great Aunt Adeline (who was Thomas’s great niece), told me that he earned his nickname because he operated a homemade still.
Jacob died in Christina on September 18, 1908. Magdalina, along with Alex and Thomas, left for Canada in June 1912. The ship manifest noted that Magdalena was a widow. In addition to her sons Alex and Thomas, the manifest noted that there were two other individuals traveling with Magdalena. One was an individual who was 21 years old and married, but the name is intelligible. Presumably, this person could be a child of Magdalena’s from her first marriage. This person also had a one-year-old child named Rosa, who would likely be Magdalena’s granddaughter.
Magdalina and her family travelled aboard the S.S. Pennsylvania on the same voyage that brought Jacob and Katherina’s son Jacob and his family to the new world. Also on that voyage was Katherina’s brother, Sebastian, and his family. The ship landed at Ellis Island on July 1, 1912. A fitting date, as that was Dominion Day (now known as Canada Day). The families all then made their way to the Fox Valley and Rastadt area of southwest Saskatchewan.
For me, the passenger list almost reads like a family group sheet!
Talk about “leveling up” one’s genealogy. My maternal grandmother’s ancestry has been so difficult to research over the decades. However, thanks to the spin I’ve taken on this year’s 52 Ancestors Challenge, I’ve managed to improve my work on this branch. I’ve spent a lot of time double-checking and updating my research. As a result, I’ve changed a lot of what I’ve recorded about my maternal grandmother’s line, some of which has been unchanged in 30 years.
Case in point is my Great x3 Grandmother, Margaretha Bechler, who until about a week ago I had as “Boechler” in every genealogy database I’ve used since the mid-90s. In fact, until three minutes ago, the draft I’ve had for this post for the last two weeks has had “Margaretha ‘Regina’ Boechler (1844-?)” as the caption under her image above. I removed the “Regina” because I cannot find where I got that from. So even if it was correct, I can’t back it up.
In the old country, the name was spelled “Bechler” and “Boechler” in the new world. This is reflected in the church register for Margaretha’s marriage to Valentine Schmidt. It is the spelling used in the 1858 Karlsruhe, Beresan census entry for her family. “Bechler” is also the spelling used in “The German Colonies in South Russia” by Konrad Keller, one of the leading sources for Germans from Russia.
For many of the descendants in North America of Margaretha’s father, Gregor, they use the spelling “Boechler”. This is demonstrated by one of the few resources I have had for many years, the Boechler Family History, by Tim Boechler and Annette Boechler, published in 1994 and revised in 1997.
As a result of revisiting my research, I’ve also come to reject a photo I had accepted without question that is reproduced it the Boechler Family History. I have no idea about the provenance of the photo. It is said to be a photo of Gregor Boechler, his wife Katherine Geiger, and their seven children, including Margaretha. Some time in the last 30 years I came across another copy of the image that has a caption with the names of the people who are supposedly in the photo.
Unfortunately, much of the information in the caption does not pass scrutiny. First and most egregious, the 1858 Karlsruhe census states that Katherine died in 1853. It further indicates that Gregor married a woman named Marianna by 1854. The census includes five children said to be Gregor’s. Three were born before 1853 (Margaretha, Jakob, Andreas), two were born after 1853 (Katharina, Franz). Given that the photo has children born after 1853, that cannot be Katherine in the photo. It must be Marianna. The photo doesn’t include the younger Katherina, but it is possible she had died before it was taken.
For some of the children, the birthdates in the caption are wildly different from those in the 1853 census, primarily those who can be attributed to Katherine Geiger. The most glaring of these is Margaretha. The census indicates that she is Gregor’s eldest child, but the photo says that she is the youngest. If Phillip and John (both born after 1858) are the youngest, it cannot be Margartha (or any girl) on the woman’s lap.
On that point, I have no sources for Phillip and John. FamilySearch has a Phillip and Johannes listed as Gregor’s sons; however, none of the sources attached to these individuals provides any evidence that they are Gregor’s sons.
After having revisited my research, what do I know about my Great x3 Grandmother?
Margaretha was born in 1839 in the Beresan district, most likely in the Karlsruhe colony, to Gregor Bechler and Katherine Geiger. Gregor was originally from Karlsruhe in the Grand Duchy of Baden, who moved to the Beresan with his family shortly after he was born. I know nothing about Katherine other than the fact she married Gregor and had three children with him.
Margaretha married Valentine Schmidt on October 21, 1863. Together they had two daughters, my Great x 2 Grandmother Barbara and a younger sister, Elisabeth. There may be four other subsequent children, but beyond a list of names I have not seen proper sources for them. While that is not the end of Margaretha’s story, that is the end of what I know about her.
A Deck of Ancestors 