It’s the Little Things!

A few years ago I was scanning some microfilm of old issues of the Burlington Standard Democrat newspaper for something on my great grandfather Albert Carl Schwedler when I came across one sentence that caught my eye.  It said that Albert and his wife drove to Milwaukee to visit his brother.  Until then, I had no Idea that our family lived anywhere other than in the Racine County area.  Upon searching the censuses in Milwaukee (city and county) I found my great uncle Rudolph, his wife Bertha (nee Millrat, Millratt, Millradt), and BINGO, my great-great grandmother Fredericke Schwedler.  This filled in a few blanks for me. 

One of the questions that remained was “Where are they now"?  I found out about a website called www.wisconsinancestors.com and on there I found that they had the obituaries for both Rudolph and Bertha.  The both indicated that the bodies were interred in Wanderers Rest Cemetery in Waterford.  Breakthrough right"?  Wrong!  There was never a cemetery by that name in Waterford.  The Funeral director was listed but they were no longer in existence.  A quick look at Google Earth I found the cemetery in Wauwatosa (Milwaukee county) but the name had been changed to Lincoln Memorial Cemetery.  I was able to contact the office of the cemetery and confirmed that these three family members were indeed buried there.  They also furnished me with the location of the graves, who paid for the lot, birth and death dates, and a map of the cemetery.  On Memorial Day 2011 my wife, grandson and myself were in Rochester and made an unplanned (yeh right) side trip to locate these relatives.  They were right where I was told they would be. Here’s proof:

 

One of these days, I’ll figure out how to do word wrap and how to place the photos side by side in this program.  That’s it for today.  Until next time, Happy Digging.

Ken