13 December 2007

Working on the Descendants of Barbara Haase

I have written before about the estate settlement of Anna Haase in Hancock County, Illinois, in the 1950s. Anna died with no descendants and this wonderful probate lists all her heirs as of the time of her death in Novenber of 1955--over forty heirs. Anna had five siblings who pre-deceased her, and several of her neices and nephews were deceased as well, only increasing the number of heirs.

Anna's mother Barbara Siefert Bieger Fennan Haase Haase (died 1903 Warsaw, Hancock County, Illinois) had children with Peter Bieger and Conrad Haase. Her estate settlement in the 1950s essentially is a genealogy of her mother's descendants compiled fifty years after her mother died.

The probate lists the heirs, their relationship to Anna, and their address. Also listed were how the heirs were related. My initial attempts to find these individuals has been somewhat successful. Generally speaking, I used census records online at ancestry.com to find the family groups in 1900-1930 census records where possible . The estate settlement did not mention spouses or ages or places of birth and census enumerations were helpful in obtaining approximate ages to allow me to more effectively search other records. This also helped me put together more complete family groups and get details on individuals that did not appear in the estate settlement.

I searched for these various family members at:

World Vital Records, using in particular their:

GenealogyBank, using in particular their:

Given that many of the males were required to register for the World War I Draft, I used the database of World War I Draft Cards at Ancestry.com as well. There were other databases used at Ancestry.com that I also used, but the census records and the World War I Draft Cards were particularly helpful for my problem.

I too am a relative of Anna Haase, but I wasn't alive when she died. Her oldest sister, Franciska Bieger Trautvetter (1851-1888) is my great-great-grandmother.