Lisa Elzey: 0:00

Yay, sorry, I got so emotional.

Crista Cowan: 0:01

I'm sorry. Welcome to my podcast, Lisa. It's what we do.

Lisa Elzey: 0:06

I'm just like, I'm over here, my heavens going, oh, we're crying again. And then I'm here going, I'm talking about my mom and about Sanitary Bob.

Crista Cowan: 0:16

Stories That Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America. Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us. So join me for season two as we discover from sea to shining sea the stories that live in us. When I was a kid, maybe like you, I always looked forward to Monday nights. Because Monday nights was when Little House in the Prairie came on TV. Now, of course, back then in the 1970s, we didn't have VCRs, we didn't have streaming, we couldn't watch it later. We had to watch it live, or we missed it. And I was not about to miss those stories of Laura Ingalls and her family. My guest today is a familiar face to some of you and a familiar voice, and it is that of my producer, Lisa Elsey. She is a colleague with me at Ancestry. She is a dear friend. And if you've listened to her previous episodes, you know that through DNA, she made a discovery that her mother's father that raised her was not, in fact, her biological father. Well, today we're going to shift gears a little bit to uh Lisa's mom's mom's side of the family. And so you'll be able to follow along, I hope, with that little pedigree in your brain as we talk about German immigrants to Minnesota. Now, what does that have to do with Little House on the Prairie? I think you'll get it as you listen to Lisa talk about this particular ancestor in her family tree and some of the things he went through. It might feel like you're back huddled in front of your little black and white television on a Monday night. Enjoy my conversation with Lisa Elsey.

Lisa Elzey: 2:25

Yay! Here I am again. I know, but new set. I know. I have it this is my first time. Right?

Crista Cowan: 2:31

And I think you're now tied with this will tie you with Nika for the most frequent guest.

Lisa Elzey: 2:37

Well, of course, because you know, we're all besties.

Crista Cowan: 2:40

Love that. Okay. So back in episode 58, you and your mom came on and you told a story about your new grandpa, which is really great. If people haven't listened to that, they absolutely should go listen to episode 58 and then episode 59, where you tell the rest of the story. Yes. But I just want to do a little recap for the people who haven't heard those episodes. In that episode, you talk about your first exposure really to family history. Tell us about that.

Lisa Elzey: 3:08

Yeah. So my mom really got into family history in the 70s, late 70s. I was about eight. And I remember sitting at the big dining table with all the stuff. If anybody remembers like the suitcases, I don't know why they kept it in a suitcase, but that was how they did it. But suitcases filled with books of remembrance and things. And she had me fill out a pedigree chart. And that was my first real introduction to what family history was. Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 3:31

And so at eight years old, you're not going out to research.

Lisa Elzey: 3:34

No, no. In fact, I had to have her help me with some birthdays because I think that's the first time I learned the actual birthday of my parents, like consciously, the date of that versus just happy birthday, you know, but knowing what the date was. So yeah, no, I wasn't researching, but I felt like I was. I would get the mail. That's the other thing. I would go get the mail because that's when the letters came that were responding to inquiries my mom had sent.

Crista Cowan: 3:56

So tell us about that. Tell us about the process your mom was going through at that time.

Lisa Elzey: 4:00

Yeah. So, you know, this is late 70s, roots was all the rage. Uh, the the genealogy fever had kind of taken over the United States a little bit. Trying to find your family history was a series of writing letters to archives, to local societies, to libraries. Uh, my mom even at one point wrote a letter to the postmaster of a town asking for help finding a person with this surname. And then if you had any family that was outside of the United States in a country that didn't speak your language, that's a whole nother thing. Language barriers, who's translating for you? Uh, who do you send it to? Where? They had to really work hard. The kind of way we did in high school. We had encyclopedias, had to do reports. We didn't have Google. So it's even worse, I think, for our parents.

Crista Cowan: 4:50

Yeah. So your mom was digging into her family history. Um, and last time you were on, we talked about her new, her new biological father. Yes. And her dad that raised her. Um, but she also was looking into her mom's side of the family tree.

Lisa Elzey: 5:07

Yeah, she was, and she was actually, my mom is really close with her grandmother, and that's my my her mother's mother. And her name was Amelia Augusta Claudefelter. And that's that is a very German name. I think you're correct. Yes. Amelia Augusta, and her maiden name was Seba, S-E-E-B-A. So my great-grandmother, who I knew is great-grandma, great-grandma Amelia, she was quite old when I was a kid that could remember. I remember going to her apartment there, her condo that she had kind of retired to for Easter egg hunts during Easter. Like, you know, I think it was a retirement community and they invited all the grandkids and we'd have our baskets. And I then I later remember going to the convalescent hospital because my great-grandmother had had a series of strokes and going and visiting her. And she loved C's candy. And she always, my grandmother always made sure she brought her mother, Amelia, C's candy box because she loved giving C's to visitors. And she couldn't really talk. She had had so many strokes. So she would just like point and and to my grandma and and point to her, like, get it's in the it's in the drawer, go get the candy for the girls for me, my sister and I. And and we get the candy. And I think that was when I first really had C's candy introduced to me. My mom really didn't buy it a whole lot at that time. And but I remember those moments with my great-grandmother as her being my favorite, I think my favorite thing is she would just have this space. She had to share a room with uh another person in the hospital. They, it was a my my grandmother couldn't afford a single room. So she had to share a room that had like a drape or something that they'd pull. And um, my grand, my great grandmother would, again, just kind of point over here, and and my grandmother would go shut the drape. And my mom were all visiting together. My mom would say, What's going on? And my grandma would go, she doesn't like her roommate. Okay. So she was a very strong woman, my great-grandma. She um raised her children during the Depression. So my grandmother was born in 1925 in Spokane, and my great-grandmother was born in Minnesota, and her parents were German immigrants. So she came from German stock. Go out, do the thing in the wilderness, like cut down the wood, make the log cabin. Like she came from that. And then her husband, my great-grandfather, left her during the depression. And so she's raising three kids on her own. So she just wasn't fussy about things. She just got in and did it.

Crista Cowan: 7:41

Yeah. Well, and you think about so many of those German immigrants. My German immigrants ended up in Texas, which is an entirely different experience than German immigrants who end up in Minnesota.

Lisa Elzey: 7:52

Yes. I know the Homestead Act is what brought a lot of Germans to the United States, the idea of having something of their own and a better life and all of that. And but they went everywhere. Texas, they went to Minnesota, they went um Kansas, Iowa. I know some of them even California. So I just knew my grandmother was from Spokane, my great grandmother was from Minnesota, and that's all I really knew. But I knew she was really from Washington because that's where she raised your family. So yeah, that's all I kind of knew until I started digging.

Crista Cowan: 8:20

So what stories? Like, did your mom before you started getting into the research of great grandma Amelia's family, were there stories that were passed on to you or lit up your imagination as a kid?

Lisa Elzey: 8:33

Yeah, I think so. I love Christmas. That's um my kids will laugh because they call me the Christmas Christmas Queen. Um, I just love Christmas. I'm I'm not crazy, but I just I love being together as a family. And I know that's not horribly unique, but I love Christmas. My mom loved Christmas, and my grandmother loved Christmas, and my great-grandmother loved Christmas. She loved singing Ottannenbaum. Uh her dad would sing that to her in German when she was young. And um, they would have lots of Christmas uh foods that were very German in kind of nature, and some of those got passed down. They're a little bit not kid-friendly foods, you know, where the kids were like, I don't want to eat that. But my mom loved those kind of things. Uh, we had German potato salad a lot. That was a recipe that my great-grandmother had made. Um, again, I don't know the story of the recipe. I just know we have it, and it was great grandma's recipe. Cookies, we had cookies that she'd make that were um a recipe. Again, my mom had the card with her handwriting on it. So lots of those kind of stories. And then I remember my grandmother, my grandmother telling me the first time she met her grandpa. Now, she grew up in Spokane, and my great-grandmother, her mother, grew up in Minnesota. So she really didn't see her grandparents.

Crista Cowan: 9:48

Oh, so your great-grandmother's family stayed in Minnesota.

Lisa Elzey: 9:50

Yes, they stayed there. So my great-grandmother, Amelia, and her sister Mary moved to Cutbank, Montana. And my my I know Cutbank. As you do, yes, because they were homesteading up there. There's just great, you know, big sky. And my um, her sister, so my grandmother's Aunt Mary struck oil in her land. And I know, right? She became very, very wealthy. And my uh great-grandmother was married at the time. And in fact, her first two children were born in Montana, my grandmother's older brothers. And so Mary never married, though. She kind of had a relationship with this guy, it's really complicated with this guy. But you know how you're you know how people, when you're writing a story about somebody, you don't want to really disparage them. And so my grandmother was writing her her memoir and was writing about her Aunt Mary and her chauffeur. Her chauffeur. I know, and the chauffeur who had a child who had a daughter, and that her Aunt Mary would also take care of the daughter, and and it's like, wait, she's she's the mistress. Yeah, I think the kid. It's kind of. But here's the thing it says in the history, it it was told to me, that's what she how she worded it. It was told to me that his wife was in a mental institution. So maybe he couldn't get divorced. He maybe couldn't do divorce. Then, you know, later on I went and researched that.

Crista Cowan: 11:08

Oh.

Lisa Elzey: 11:10

I don't know if she was. Oh, okay. But we're gonna let that alone. Okay, not the story. Not my story, but still kind of cheeky. Okay. So my great-grandparents moved from Cutbank to Spokane, and that's where my grandmother was born. So they moved kind of far away from Minnesota, and the family mostly stayed there, the rest of the family, aside from Mary, obviously, and um Amelia, my great grandma. So my grandmother never really met her grandparents. She'd heard about them. So the first time she met them was when she was about in fifth grade, fourth or fifth grade, and they went on a trip to Minnesota. And so the story I remember my grandmother telling me was I remember saying, Tell me about your grandpa. She says, Well, he looked like Santa Claus. What? And I was like, Santa Claus. And again, I love Christmas. My great-great-grandpa is Santa Claus? That's what I heard. So as a kid, I remember being like, my great-great-grandpa is Santa Claus. And he sings Otaunobaum in German. And he loved Christmas too. So um it that was my really first story and foray into that side of the family. But again, really didn't understand what that they were German, didn't know anything about Minnesota until I started watching Little House on the Prairie. Because we all did when we were kids. Because this isn't that the best show. Yes. Like that was our Game of Thrones. Our our very age-appropriate Game of Thrones. Think about it though. Like, you were so excited for the next episode. It would build on each episode. You're like, oh, that Nellie Olson, and she's doing this, and there she's gonna get that beehive's gonna fall on her head, or you know, whatever. Like, I loved that show. And I hated the Olsons, I hated Harriet. I thought she was the worst person on the planet. And I love Charles Engels. I thought, oh my gosh, he's like the coolest dad ever. He does it, he just loves his kids and he beats up the bad guys and he chops the wood and kills the bear. And I just thought it was the coolest show.

Crista Cowan: 13:06

And and you know Jen calls it little H on the P.

Lisa Elzey: 13:09

Little H on the P, because you know because we all watched it. We did. It was our series. It was and it was age appropriate. It was family, and it was, it was a lot of it was actually super progressive if you think about it. If you go back and look at those stories, super progressive for its time. But anyway, as a kid, I mean, that's how I learned history. I don't know, probably because of television. We were kids of the 80s, but I learned about World War II watching, you know, Guns of Navrone or The Great Escape with my dad and uh Fiddler on the Roof, Jewish programs, right? I mean, yeah, they're singing and dancing. But still, I asked the questions like, well, why do they have to leave? Why are they kicking them out? And then my parents would talk to me and tell me uh, you know, moon landings and things with right stuff. And the list goes on. So um, for Little House on the Prairie, that was really learning about like pioneers moving west and and kind of the land and and trying to make it out west, you know.

Crista Cowan: 14:01

And I loved one of the things I loved about that show was the concept of yes, that like making it, but making it as a community.

Lisa Elzey: 14:08

Yeah, for sure. And I mean, we loved Walnut Grove. Walnut Grove. I mean, I thought Walnut Grove was so beautiful. And then I found out it's Simi Valley on the back lot, you know. It's it's a studio. It's a studio in Simi Valley, which I lived in Simi Valley later, but that's another story. So, but it's what didn't look anything apparently like what it looked like. It was way more wild, way more dense, way more wooded area, uh, and a lot harder. The reason I mentioned that is because that all of a sudden tied into my story. And so when I really discovered, I think it was probably around junior high, which seems late if you think about it. But I put together, wait a minute, they're in Minnesota? My family's from Minnesota. Wait a minute. And then my mom showed me, I would think I was in high school, like junior, maybe, maybe, maybe a sophomore in high school. She showed me a story that was written by Amelia, my great grandmother's youngest sibling. So my great-grandmother Amelia was only about 15 months when her mother died. Oh. Her mother died of sunstroke picking berries at the neighbors. What that's not a thing. That is the report in the newspaper. I know it's really horrible. And her name was, you want to be ready, Albertina Eichstatt. Yeah. The German just keeps rolling. And there's just, it's pretty, pretty consistent. So Albertina Eichstatt, z it's Zeba, but Seba, uh, she passed away. So a year later, my great-great-grandfather remarried. Because he had how many children? He had five. Yeah. Yeah. And the youngest was 15 left. Yes, yes. So a year later he married another neighbor person within the community, the Wenstroms, and then had they had a a daughter, Alice. So Alice is the baby, but her mother is a different mom. But her mother raised my great-grandmother. Yeah. Like that's who my great-grandma remembers as her mother. So they were very close, Alice and Amelia. And uh, but Alice wrote a memoir about her father. I know. And it was printed, if you remember the day the ditto copies, like the purple ink. Yeah. I don't even know what that's called. I just call them ditto paper, but it's the purple ink where you had to ch ch chunk, ch chunk, ch chung. And it was on the purple ink paper, kind of little like smidgey little bit, you know. And uh, but she had typed it out and had made copies for the family. And so my mom gave that to me around my freshman, sophomore, junior year in high school, maybe 15 to 16. And I read it and I realized my great-great-grandpa was Charles Ingalls in the flesh, not the actual, like, not, you know, Michael Landon or not Laura Ingleswilder's actual father, but he embodied everything about that. And I said, is this how all the men in Minnesota were? Is this just the standard issue? You know, like this is how they came out. They just they went and built things and killed bears and talked to indigenous folks and made, you know, made friends with everybody.

Crista Cowan: 17:01

Lived in a dugout until they built their cabins.

Lisa Elzey: 17:03

Yes, he really did. Yeah, so he it was crazy. So at the beginning of the very beginning of the paragraph of the story, it talks about how his name is John Siba, again, Santa Claus. That's who it really was with Santa Claus. Um, so the one that my grandma thought was Santa Claus. John Siba is born about 1850 in Germany. He came to the United States when he's 18 through New York. By himself? By himself. And um, that's all it says that you know, came to the United States and then came over to Minnesota and was finding a homestead. But at the very beginning it says he was born in, and I'm like, okay, where is he born? And I thought, is it just gonna say Germany? No, it said in a town called Hanaral or Hagnau near the Elbia River and the Kel Canal. This is what Alice wrote. This is what Alice wrote. And she's like, it's should it's she says it sounds more like the first pronunciation, the Hanrow. And I'm like, okay, didn't think about that for a minute. I'm like, Germany, whatever, moving on. So I got to the next thing, and it talks about how he chose a spot near uh he went to Red Wing and worked in Red Wing on a farm, and then he found some land he wanted to homestead. And he went to go like put in his ticket to get the thing, and somebody had just done it the day before. So when you think about it, it's not like you're hopping on the I-5 or whatever and just go into he had to like travel, find the plot, say yes, come back, and then he had to go back. Back, found a different plot, uh, got the land, and then he married somebody that was, I think, the daughter of the farmer he worked for in Red Wing. So he married her, not Albertina, Albertina's wife number two. Oh, yes. So married her, and then they had to hack their way through the woods to get to the place with their covered wagon. Because if it was just a horse, which he had before, he could go. But he had a whole wagon of stuff. And it was two oxen that were pulling the wagon. And so we're talking like pioneer organ trail level wagon, right? And it there in the story, it says it took him a whole day to go to a mile and a half.

Crista Cowan: 19:17

Because they had to chop their they they were building the road as they went.

Lisa Elzey: 19:21

Yes, yes. But think about a mile and a half, that's not that far of the whole day. And so I just can't even imagine how tiring that must have been.

Crista Cowan: 19:30

I d uh, that'd been really hard. So they're living essentially in the wagon as they're making their way to their project.

Lisa Elzey: 19:37

Yeah. So they're working their way there. So they get there, and it was lot number 34 in a place that was called at the time Florence, uh, Minnesota. And he was the first one to have a homestead there, very first. And so later that area became known as Freeburg, and it was named after Freeberg in Germany, because I think everyone there was probably German or at least near German. Um, so he was married, but his wife died shortly after. So think about it. You just got out here, you finally have a home. They lived in a like a dugout kind of thing situation. Um, I think he cut down some logs and started to create a very makeshift cabin. Now, when I say cabin, it's a shed. It's just it's four walls and a roof, and it was reeds from the from the lake that was the roof. Like it wasn't shingles or and um and then she died. And so I thought that's just no children, no kids. Um, they just barely were married, right? So really sad. Uh, but other people were moving in and the neighbors were the Eichstads. So Albertina was the neighbor girl. And by neighbor, like uh that could still be miles away. Yes, neighbor's not like, you know, like it is now, right? It's definitely far away. Uh, but he married someone from the community, uh the Eichstadts, and uh again from Germany, surprise. And that's who he had the five kids with. So Amelia did not know her mother, and so I wished I'd knew more about her, but Alice, who wrote this, never, of course, knew her. And so we didn't get any information about her. But she continued to write about John, the dad, my great-great-grandpa. And um, things like he would be fishing in Fish Lake, and I guess the fish were so abundant you could just reach in and grab a fish. Like it was just and that's called fish lakes. Yeah. Go get fish. And we're fishing for food, not for sports. Yes. Oh, yes, right. But then I guess there were indigenous folks that were also uh in the area that were friendly and they became friends and they didn't really speak the same language, obviously. But I guess at one point, and again, this is Alice writing this, there was an indigenous man that was pointing to a rooster that my great-great-grandpa had pointing to it, and was like gesturing about his feather, the feathers of the rooster. And just it was like apparently this beautiful rooster. And so I guess when the rooster died, my great-great-grandfather kept the feathers. And so the next time the man came by, he gave him the feathers as a gift. And so, you know, that's just the first thing. I'm like, he is Charles Ingalls. I it just all these things. Um, he built the schoolhouse on his property, the first schoolhouse. He was the first schoolmaster. He built it on his property. He wanted the kids to have a school, he built it. Um, he was the postmaster because the road, the main road passed by his home because he homesteaded first. So he was the post office. In fact, Alice talks about how her house was the post office for about 10 years as a child. Can you imagine? Like the males coming, you know, we're the males here. So he was the postmaster. He helped build, I think, five bridges all around, because you know, thousand lakes, right? There's so many lakes in Minnesota and lots of rivers and things. So he helped build five bridges. He helped survey roads and built roads. He was one of the founders of the Lutheran church in the area. I I mean, you cannot talk about this area without talking about my great-great-grandpa. And it's just, it's amazing. I'm reading these stories and thinking this isn't real. It was like, it was like a movie. It was like I was reading a movie script because it just seemed so far-fetched that one human could do all of these things for their community and be so beloved and so selfless. It really summed it up when there were many articles written about him in newspapers. Um, they lowered the flag to half staff and had a holiday, a day off school when he passed away. That's like how revered he was in his community. He stood over like six foot one. He was very tall, big guy. Uh, had a kind of a gruff voice, apparently, and he always had a beard, very long beard. I think at the time my grandmother met him, it was a beard down to his belly and it was all white. It was white. Yes, it was all white. And so he lived like Santa Claus. My grandmother talks about how she, when she visited that one time, she caught a fish for the first time because she's from Spokane and lives in the city and you know, the city and uh caught a fish. Her cousin showed her how to do it, and she cooked the fish and he ate it just for her. It's just a really lovely tale, this all these pages. Um, so I just in my head had this beautiful version of this person I never knew. And I had this vision of who he was. I guess he had a corncob pipe. That's a thing, that's a real thing. I I was like corncob pipe and a button nose and twice made out of coal. Like, that's no he's frosty. I know. Christmas, again, it's a theme. But I'm like, I again, that's a thing. I'm like, that's really he had a corncob pipe that I apparently he always just puffed on, just like puff, puff, puff, and he's sitting in a rocking chair. Think of all the stereotypes of out on the planes or and he was all those things. And so it was just, I don't know, it was just really awesome to find out the personality of someone I never met through the eyes of his daughter, but also through the eyes of the community. Um, and then she talked about at the end of the life sketch, which was pages, by the way. She also wrote, she goes, my sister Mary, so Mary, the oil one that has all the money and the chauffeur. Um, my sister Mary says I should write about what life was like on the farm. So there's three more pages about how they did things. And what a treasure. Right. Like just how they how they got warm or how they cooked, or she talked about inventions that her father, that John Seba, made to help with farm work. And um, just little things like this that you just don't think about, you know. And um, I'm so grateful. It's such a treasure. We it we the whole family has it. And um, we have a picture of him with this beard and everything. But uh, that's all we knew about him. My mom, of course, never met him. He died shortly after my grandmother's visit. He died just very shortly after that. So he's very sick when she visited him. Um, so we don't know a lot about him. So my mom, I know my mom was trying to find out more about the Siba family. And now here we you know he came in like 1870s. He was in Minnesota in 1870 census. So he's working in Red Wing at the time. And then he homesteaded in about 1872 when he got married. And then later married Albertina, then Albertina died. My great-grandmother was born, so she died shortly after that, and then he married Emma Wenstrom, who's his third wife, and then had Alice. So, you know, a couple like a year later. So we're almost at the turn of the century. So all of that, where are you from in Germany is kind of gone. Uh, so my mom was trying to find it, and it's this is in the eight 1980, I think, is when she was trying to find this. And I don't know how she did it, but she's trying to figure out where Hanau is from or Hanerau. And uh, I think she kind of gave up because she had written letters to different places, and uh, she just kind of gave up. And so that's kind of where I jumped in right around college and thought, I want to figure this out. Where is he from? Now, this is about 1997, where I'm thinking, oh, it's 97. I could totally do it now. Oh, the internet's a thing there, and it's a thing. Lexus Nexus, right? Or whatever. And uh, and I was at school at the time. It's a huge library at Brigham Young University, and I thought, oh, there has to be a map, something that's gonna help me. So I went to the family history library actually in Salt Lake, uh, and went to a German specialist person that was like a missionary or somebody, and they pulled out this big map. And we looked at all of the places in Germany that look like or sound like Hanarau or Hagenau. There's about 30. But didn't it say something about a river? It did, two rivers. Okay. Kiel Canal, again, I'm probably slaughtering this. So anyone who's German or is from this area, I apologize. But the Kiel Canal and the Elby River. So the Kiel Canal cuts across Germany like horizontally, and the EBay River kind of goes from the northwest and goes down, you know, to they and they intersect? They intersect kind of, yeah, one leads into the other. Yeah, the Kiel Canal can lead into the eBay. So you're thinking, okay, it's gonna be right over here, right? So the guy at the counter said, I think it's this place. And there was a place called Hano. And again, they all sound the same. So don't ask me how they're spelled. But it was right in that little pocket. And I thought, oh, there's gotta be gotta be it. And uh, so I just focused all my research on that. Like for I think years, trying to figure out where can I get records. And I remember going through reels and reels of uh birth records uh at the time. From that town. From that, uh, from that province. Yeah, from that town, from that area. And uh, nothing, couldn't find anything. And I was really frustrated because I knew his birth year, it'd be his birthday actually, uh like the day in the month, and um couldn't find anything. And again, you know, at that point I was graduating or I had a kid or whatever. And so it was always something that I was trying to do, trying to figure out.

Crista Cowan: 28:55

I love how we talk about I've had this brick wall for 20 years and really we've worked on it for like six hours in those 20 years.

Lisa Elzey: 29:02

But boy, it's really strong. It's you know, no, I mean, I think, yes, I've had it for a long time, but I think most people can relate. Yeah. So I work at Ancestry, that's no secret. It's we have a lot of people who are retired or that have a more time to spend on a brick wall. At the time, I was finishing school. I had a one, I had one child at the time. I was a very young mom. And so I my responsibilities and time were elsewhere. So I would get involved with family history when I could here and there. So I didn't have a lot of time to devote. So, but I always was like, I want to know where he's from because that was where it ended. Like it was just my great great grandpa. That's it. I didn't know anything past that. And uh, I was just really curious and bummed out. So my lesson is patience with this story. That's that's my lesson because Ancestry is going to put some records online, but it wasn't until 2016 really that that it broke it open.

Crista Cowan: 29:59

Which is Like 20 some odd years later, right?

Lisa Elzey: 30:02

Yeah. Yeah. And it was 20 years later. And um, there were all these stories of where he was from and and what what who his parents might be, and and all where were those stories coming from? They're coming, I think, from family search, from at the time, you know, PAF, or people saying, Oh, I think it's this or I think it's that. Uh, he had two brothers that came out that had a different last name than him. So uh we knew that his mother's name and her they were younger. They were younger. So she remarried. She married, uh-huh, and had a different last name. And her name was uh again, I'm ruining the name, but it's I think it's Gasika. That's her name. Uh that's John Siba's mother's name. So my third name. Her maiden name or her second last name? I don't know. I that's her first name. And then Oh, that's her first name. Yes, that's her first name. Oh my god. I know, right? I don't know how to say it. I'm like, God's good, I've never asked. So that's her first name, and then her last name was listed as Koch, K-O-C-H, Kotch. Catch, right? Or Khuch. Um, and we knew that was the mother. So I had a mother's name. I had two half-brothers with a completely different name. Wellbrock was the their last name. So that was her married name. And um, that's it. So, okay, now I have a mother's name. Great. What do I do now? So people just didn't know where they were from. So the the records came online on Ancestry. And I was able to type it in and it popped up. Like again, we talk about these letters my mom wrote, all the time she took, me writing out to the mailbox. My mom, I even have a letter of my mom writing uh that she wrote at the top. I it's a letter coming back from a German archive. It's in German. At the top, my mom's handwriting, she has beautiful handwriting, handwriting that says such so-and-so interpreter, translator, and the phone number. So she can take the letter to go have them say, this is what the German letter says, you know, and then the second page that's stapled to it, because my mom's was meticulous about all of the research, has word for word, like the German word and an English word above it. And like she's trying to figure out what is this person saying? And essentially it was saying, ma'am, Hanover is a really big place, and you probably need to pay for a genealogist to help you figure this out. It was kind of one of those letters, you know.

Crista Cowan: 32:18

So the time, yeah. I mean, the hours and hours scrolling through microfilm. And sometimes that microfilm we would have to go to Salt Lake to access. Sometimes we would have to pay to have it sent to our local family history center. Yeah. Like people who can just hop online today and type stuff in do not understand the value of that subscription.

Lisa Elzey: 32:38

It's it's crazy. Like again, I I want to stress it took four seconds to surface. Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 32:44

When you searched it.

Lisa Elzey: 32:45

I did. Which I put John Siba, mother's name, and I put the year around and the date, and I put Germany. I think I might have put Hanover Germany, because in in um the the live sketch it said Hanover, and it popped right up.

Crista Cowan: 33:01

So where what was the record collection?

Lisa Elzey: 33:03

Okay, it is they are christening records. Okay. And marriage records, Lutheran church, yes. Okay. And it is Hano. H-O with umlad. So I that's an o sound, right? Hano, I think. Again, totally slaughtering. Um, H-O-Umlad N A-U. Okay. Hano. And it is in what is now Lower Saxony. That's the word is now. Um, but but that was after the 40s. Any words near those two rivers? Yes. But not right there. And what says near, you're like, are you near? Like it's like two hours near. But I've but you think about it, if you're a farmer, rivers are really important. So when he's talking to his children about where he's from, he's probably gonna tell you the two main rivers that kind of fed into the rivers that they farmed with, right? Near is relative, but it is in that pocket. It's in Lower Saxony now, but at the time it was part of Hanover, uh, Prussia. And so um that's why he she said Hanover. And so, but we were focused on Hanover. And we're looking at post-World War II Hanover, which is not 1860s Hanover. No, because it's Lower Saxony. So all those records are now in the Lower Saxony. That's the other thing, right? You have to know the history of a county or the history of where these records are, I mean, just West Virginia, Virginia. There's just all these things that you need to learn. And um, I still learn, I still learn to this day. But I, you know, movies don't teach me as much anymore, as much as you, but um, or as much as just doing research. But it's it's really fascinating how we're always learning and how we're always improving. And there's always something that's going to surface at some point. I we don't know when. So we found the record. So now get ready. This is where the like salacious bit comes in. I mean, more salacious than Aunt Mary and the chauffeur. And the chauffeur. Um, but John's mother, last name Koch, right? I'm gonna say it the American way. Uh, Koch, I found John's in that quick search, I found John's christening record. And it's in complete German, of course, and in all the swirly kind of front derflet. Ooh, and in German. So I needed somebody to help me read it. But what's awesome is Ancestry had already indexed all the bits that mention names. But here's the kicker. His last name wasn't Seba when he was christened, it was Kotch.

Crista Cowan: 35:30

He was illegitimate.

Lisa Elzey: 35:32

Yeah, I was like, what's going on? So his name is Johann Heinrich Kotsch. So John Seba, but I'm like, where is Seba coming in? But if you look at the record, over on the left-hand margin, in German is written this little like blah blah blah blah blah, and then it says, Johann Dietrich Sieba.

Crista Cowan: 35:50

So they had identified the father.

Lisa Elzey: 35:53

I get and again in German. And so it's like, I don't speak German. So I took it to somebody that did, and they helped me figure out what it was. So, yes, so she was not married. She was an unmarried, so it's like they called you out back then in this record. It's like hardcore. It's like, you know, Gassica Koch, unmarried daughter of, and they get this. Her dad's name was Klaus, as in Klaus. Just saying. I'm just saying. My great-great-grandpa might be Santa Claus. So Klaus, unwed daughter of Klaus Koch and Margaretha, you know, it's just like totally calls her out, and then illegitimate son Johann Heinrich. Um, and then over on the side, it said essentially, I'm not, I don't know the exact wording, but essentially said that he was recognized by his father, and his father is Johann Dietrich Seiba. And I think Johann was married at the time when he had this affair. I think. So Aunt Mary was just following her father's grandfathers, it'd say. Yeah, maybe, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. So he was recognized as a as a Seba, um, but I don't think that he ever had him as a father. So I think his, I think she was kind of a single mom. But he still chose to use that lesson. He did. He did. And I think that I don't, and that was the only son they had. They, you know, they didn't have any other kids. And that's and then she got married, like I said, to Wellbrock and then had two more sons. And so John, Johan, had two brothers. But I had no idea there was an illegitimacy going on. In fact, my grandmother, um, all the stories were like, oh yes, his mom his dad died when he was really young. Like that was what was said in the family. His dad died when he was young. He didn't die. He was very much alive, the the father. It also said in that record that my great-great-grandfather, John, finished his catechism. And I'm like, Catechism? I didn't know Lutherans had a catechism. They had a whole thing, and pretty much saying, like, he's well educated.

Crista Cowan: 37:58

He knows And that he's connected to the church. Yeah. Because a lot of times those children who were deemed as illegitimate, and I hate that label, but but that the shame that was often heaped on them in those communities um sometimes separated them from the church. Yes. And so to have that.

Lisa Elzey: 38:14

It was and it was put later, right? So this is his christening record. They're making the priests are making that. Yeah. So they went back in, they're like, he's a good one. He's a good egg. And he was because, again, Charles Ingel's embodiment, right? Like he was just that person. And so I like to think that he was taught by his mother because he didn't have a father present, or maybe his grandparents, maybe Klaus. Maybe Klaus. Uh, or Klaus. Um, maybe that's how he learned his work ethic. Maybe that's how he learned to serve other people in his community. It was a very strong Lutheran community, you know, church and and that that community was very important uh to their culture. And he was devout Lutheran. My great-grandmother was a devout Lutheran. Uh, when she died, uh, we had a Lutheran. She died at 98, my great-grandma Amelia. And we had a graveside service just with like our family. My mom's an only child at the time. She knew it's an only child. Go watch episode 58. Um, and she's an only child, so it's just my mom and my dad and my family, and my grandma, and the pastor or priest or whatever. And that again, this is the first time I learned when she died that she's Lutheran. Like, oh, wait, what? So all these little things just piling in, and then Ancestry just kind of brings it all together with a record. Not only did I find his christening record, that led me to her marriage record when she got married. That also led me to my third great-grandmother's christening record, and then her parents' marriage record. This just opened up two more generations of family in Germany. And they were in this place in Hanau-Lindorf. Is that that's the name of the place, uh, for like four generations at least. So I'm just like, it just blows my mind that I could just open one little thing and it just, it's like a Pandora box, but in a good way. You know what I mean? Um, I think I cried, I'm pretty sure I cried. Uh, and I called my mom immediately. I'm like, mom, mom, we know where it is. And I have copies of maps from that day at the library with highlights, like this, like with all the little dots of the different cities that sound like it. And I'm like, we don't need to wonder anymore. We know where it's he's from. And uh, she was so excited. And it's so weird because we've never met him, but we feel like we know him. Yeah. Because of the stories that were told to us, um, how he was re was revered in his community, how he really helped build that community. And uh that area, it's like a Fergus Falls area, if anyone knows Minnesota. But I looked and to see, it's just like two and a half, three hours north of Walnut Grove. It's really not that far from where Laura Ingalls was. And I was like, he really was Charles Ingalls. He really was. And uh, so I had my own like movie in my own family that just my own TV show, my own TV series. Uh, and uh it just, I don't know, it really brought it to life for me at a young age and then to have it connected all the way to 2016 when that uh came online, and you know, just kind of crazy.

Crista Cowan: 41:21

And the interesting thing is that the discoveries don't necessarily end there, right? You've taken all these years to discover who he was and where he was from and kind of put together this, you know, built on this foundation that Aunt Alice laid with this memoir she wrote about him. But there are new newspapers coming online every day. I know. There are new archives coming online every day. There could be more records about him, more stories about him.

Lisa Elzey: 41:49

And now we have, you know, and now we have it's incredible. I took that letter that my mom had to take to the translator, but it within like three seconds, it translated on Google Translate. Three seconds. And I was like, oh my gosh, my mom, like, she's 82 now and she loves family history, but she's kind of passed the torch long ago. And I wish she could have done that. You know, I wish she could have like found it. Sorry, I'm getting really stupid emotional. But um I love that I could find it for her, and I love that like we could be excited together. I mean, 2016 is not that long ago. I was here. I think I was here. Yeah, you will. I was at Ancestry, yeah. So um as we're filming this on your ancestry anniversary. This is my anniversary. I know. I've been here 13 years, and it's kind of funny because 13 is a lucky number in our family. So um I'm really lucky. I'm really lucky. We are so I love my job. I love that I have the joy of discovery every day. Um, and sometimes it's for myself, right? It's a lot of times for other people because that's my job. But once in a while I get to have some joy about my own family that connects me. And my mom on her mantle of the fireplace has a steeple clock. And that was my great grandfather's. And my grandma before she passed, um, she passed in 2019. Um she told, you know, she would always tell about her mother telling her, because again, she didn't know her grandpa, but her mother got the clock. Um, and she would tell my grandmother, Nida, every night he would go and wind the clock above the fireplace. And then he'd get his corn crop pipe and he'd puff on his pipe of the rocking chair. But every night he'd wind it. And so this this sound of that every night, my great-grandmother remembered. And so my grandmother told it to my mother, and my mother has told it to me. My mom's getting older, and they start planning.

Crista Cowan: 44:00

It's the weirdest time of life. My my parents just bought cemetery plots.

Lisa Elzey: 44:04

Okay, yes. Thank you. I don't like this. I really don't. I don't like this moment where it's like, okay, so when I'm gone, and I'm like, eh, she's like, what do you want? And I'm like, oh my gosh, we're not gonna be, you know, I feel like it's Christmas Carol rifling through Scrooge's things, you know. She's like, well, what do you want? And my mom is a collector of antiques. She has so many things. She sells antiques. It's kind of her, it's kind of her hobby/slash side hustle. She's very, very good at it. Um, and she has collected like depression glass sets that she's for my sister and I, like just beautiful things that she loves, and I love them because she loves them. But she has so many trinkety things. It's like, what do you want? It's like, well, none of that. I know. I'm like, that's you love that. I don't have space, you know. And she's like, really? Like, no, but you know what? I really do want, mom? The steeple clock. The steeple clock. And she's like, of course. Of course you get the steeple clock. And my sister was like, Yeah, because you need the steeple, you know, there's no, there's no one in the family going, I want the steeple clock. And so that will be mine someday. And I hope to pass that on to my daughter. Um, we come from a line of strong German women. That grandma Amelia, who's doesn't like the neighbor because she's too whiny and, you know, and raising her kids in the depression on her own. And my grandmother was, you know, divorced at a very young age as well, and had to make it. And then my mom with my brother, uh, my brother's my half-brother, and divorced when he was three and was a single mom for a long time. Like we just come from a lot of women who've had to just get out there and do it. And I come from that. And I know part of that is from John Zipa. I know part of that is from my Santa Claus. And um, and that's Minnesota. That's what Minnesota helped bring to pass because the land was hard, but it was beautiful. The people could be hard but beautiful. A community, again, hard but beautiful. And I think that's a lot of that area still to this day. I have never been. I need to go. I have been. And I have heard nothing but wonderful things about those communities and those people. They're just the most neighborly. The, you know, you got the Minnesotan little like thing that everyone makes a joke about, but I just hear that they're wonderful. And to know that my heritage is connected to that just really warms my heart, I guess you could say. It just really makes me really proud.

Crista Cowan: 46:37

Well, thank you for sharing John with us and Amelia. And um, and the journey that you took as well. I think sometimes we don't appreciate that the family stories that get passed down have so much value and so much richness, but that there is still more to find.

Lisa Elzey: 46:56

There's more to find. And who knows? Who knows what what tomorrow may bring. And uh I just hope that maybe one day I get to go to those places and walk where they walked because I feel like there's a connection there that I don't have yet. So maybe that's my next step is not waiting for records, but going to the place and then feeling that connection in Minnesota. Studio sponsored by Ancestry.