Generations 4 (paternal branches): Biographies,Obituaries, etc

This is second part of my housekeeping, where I am going through each generation of ancestors to see where there are ancestry dead ends, how much information we have about each ancestor, etc. You can read about Generation 1-3 here.

The digital portrait collection

The Wedding of Giles Simon Kirby and Angela Mary Julie Birtwistle 1952

This post is a version of my Genealogical dead ends revisted post, but it’s about the photograps and illustrations I’ve found of my ancestors rather than just their names. I’ll do one about places sometime, and also about biographies, etc. I have set up a photostream on FlickR so you can see all the images in a slideshow, and I will link to the individual photos from the names of ancestors I have identified below. 

German Connection: Beckmanns and Brockmans

Elfriede Sophie (Beckmann) Meissner and family in Iowa

As you can see below I haven’t been able to spend much time on this blog. My brother and I have got as about as far as we can with the George Goldsmith Kirby mystery, although we have had a bit more info from a genealogist. I may even blog about this if I get the chance, but I was thinking of closing the blog down. That was before I got an email from Ann Harrington, explaining that her great great grandmother was Elfriede Sophie Beckmann and that she is the sister of Charlotte (Rudolphine Louise) von Beckmann who is my great grandmother. Ann explained that Elfriede married Wilhelm Meissner (nephew of John A. Roebling who built the Brooklyn Bridge) and joined Wilhelm in the wilds of Iowa near Reinbeck (see picture above of Elfriede and her family in Iowa).