For years my paternal first cousins got nowhere with attempts of identifying with validation who the parents were of a great-grandfather I will identify as Henry.  I was up for the challenge and began with looking at family trees created by DNA match first cousins in July 2023. I began with the research question: Who were Henry’s parents?

I had no clue at the time as to what Henry’s country of origin was for certain. What I could find in the form of Social Security and naturalization documents didn’t match up to one cousin’s thought that it was “somewhere in Germany – the Mecklenburg-Schwerin area.” 

A number of family trees on Ancestry.com identified his parents as William and Ottilie. My research question by September 2023 changed: Were William (aka Wilhelm) and Ottillie Henry’s parents? I also was curious as to where family tree owners got the idea that this couple were his parents. No one seemed to know.

I was interested in going back to William and Ottilie’s origins before they emigrated to the Wautoma, Wisconsin, area where they married, lived and died.  The research process started with locating the couple’s obituaries to get some idea who their children were.  

I was able to get this information both online (Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, FamilySearch to name a few) and through a library from the Wautoma area.  The librarian was very helpful in locating obituaries that GenealogyBank.com didn’t have, including those of the couple’s children.

I recorded my findings on family group sheets, hourglass charts and Google Drive documents and spreadsheets, citing sources along the way.  But, the information from obituaries for William and some of his children didn’t really add up.