Big Shake Up in My Little Family Tree

Sometimes you make genealogical discoveries that aren't all rainbows and unicorns. Sometimes you learn things about your ancestors that are so surprising they make your head want to explode with all the new facts coming out of left field.

This is one of those times.

It started with an email in my box. Someone sharing some marriage information with me. It was a marriage record for J. A. Lenertz. I have one of those, but I didn't think he married again after his wife died. My grandpa never mentioned anything about having a stepmother.

The subject appeared to be my great-grandfather, but I needed to confirm this for myself before I'd buy it. So I did.

Above is a 1936 marriage record for my great-grandfather, John Lenertz...and a second wife. He remarried after my great-grandmother died, yet this is the first I've heard of it.

Who was this lady? I found her in the 1930 census. She was a waitress in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, the same town where my great-grandparents lived.

In my hunting and snooping around, I revisited the death certificate of my great-grandfather. It included the name of his second wife.

How did I miss this? Well, to be fair, there are a ton of errors on most of the Lenertz death certificates I possess. Also, my great-grandmother went by many names other than her birth name. I just figured Genevieve was another one of her names. Besides, my grandfather was the informant on this certificate. Why didn't he mention a stepmother named Genevieve ever in the three decades that I knew him?

But wait...it gets better. And by better I mean worse.

My great-grandmother died December 24, 1935. My great-grandfather remarried on March 16, 1936. Yeah. Do the math on that mourning period.

This wasn't a happily ever after marriage, however. My great-grandfather died about 10 months later.

So there you go, family of mine. Sorry to stumble on this little surprise in the tree, but facts is facts. At least you have something to talk about at the next family gathering.

My question to you, family, is this: did you ever hear Buster talk about Genevieve?

Eleanor's Story

My great-grandmother Gertrude "Eleanor" Baerecke died when she was 42. With the exception of a death certificate and some census records, I don't have much in terms of papers that describe her life.

What I do have are lots of pictures of Eleanor. Way more than any of my other ancestors from this era. These photos tell a lot about my great-grandmother.

I've gathered some of them for a slideshow, which I'm putting here. I hope you like it:

This video is also available in a bigger screen at my YouTube channel.

I hope to do more of these in the future. I think they're a great way to tell family stories to a more technically oriented audience. [And as Rootsmagic pointed out in the comments, a less technically oriented audience as well.]

What should my next subject be? I'm thinkin' RootsTech, but let's just see how it all plays out.

Thanks for watching.

Note: Someone in the comments asked which program I used to make this video. It's Roxio Creator 2011. I have included an affiliate link here:

Then and Now

This is the home where my great-grandparents (John Arthur Lenertz 1889-1937, Gertrude Eleanor Barecke / Baerecke 1892-1935) and their only child lived in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. That's my great-grandmother in the front. This picture was probably taken in the last half of the 1920's or first half of the 1930's.

This is the same house as it was when I took the picture in 2008:

In the first picture, you can see there is no house to the right. Today, there are houses all around. It is an established neighborhood.