 Hello everybody and welcome. Oh, I probably shouldn't do that. I've got the special background up but it kind of makes a funky. So welcome to day three in the 12 days of Elfmas. This is the third day of Elfmas. So we're very excited and we have with us our special elf, Danny Gutnacht. Welcome Danny. Hello. Hello and we also have joining us just now is Jeffrey Wall. Jeffrey was trying to join us so hard yesterday. It was- Yeah, I think that was the Internet of the Library. The Internet of the Library just was not working for you, eh? Hopefully today goes better. Hopefully today goes better. Yes, that's right. And of course my trusty sidekicks, Christine and Kathy are here who have been, I've got to say, they've been doing amazing work keeping things organized. Cause you know, we have over 120 Elves, 128 I believe, right? That was at the last count. 120- Sounds about right. Yeah, 128 Elves over 300 wishes, almost 350 actually when you add them all together. That's a lot of things to keep organized. And so they've been doing a great job. Christine's been going through the free space page and categorizing the ones that have been solved. Cause even though we're on the third day of Elfmas and this is the third wish that we're revealing to all of you, actually secretly we've solved a lot more than that. So Christine, give us the number, give us the update. How many have been solved? Which of course I didn't, I spring on her. So she's looking, you're muted, we can't hear you. I don't have two monitors either. I have one screen to look at. I don't have that power either. Oh, no, the power. I'm up to 31 solves. 31 solves, wow. That's getting close to the total number we solved last year. I think. Oh, I don't remember. I don't remember what we solved last year. But we only had half the wishes. We only had 160 wishes last year. 162, I think it was. Oh, okay. So we've succeeded the wish list. And I have five that have been officially brick walled. So if anybody wants to look at the free space page, I've moved that progress. All those progress profiles down to the bottom of the page. It's still in the table of contents. But if you find that you've solved the wish or you've completely brick walled up against in a wish, then mark that you can move it. I've just, I'm keeping them in numerical order. But let us know. Let us know on Discord how you're doing. If you need any help. And yeah, you guys are going gangbusters. It's fantastic. It's fantastic. That's great. So yeah. So yeah, thank you to everyone. And for, I didn't actually introduce this again, or introduce the whole topic. This is the third day of alfamus because we're working on a special challenge where wiki treeers, genealogists, are solving wishes for other wiki treeers, other genealogists who've had run into problems and they just need a little bit of help. So we have lots of generous people who are giving of their time doing research. And so up until the 12th day of alfamus, which will be January 6th, where the grand epiphany and revelation of all of the wishes will be revealed at our Saturday morning, 10 a.m. live cast Eastern time. But today for the third day of alfamus, we'll start off with it. We always start off with a little bit of a song. So on the third day of alfamus, I'm good elf gave to me three generations. On the last day, we'll sing all 12 verses together. But for these little mini videos, I thought we'll just do the verse and then we'll just leave it there. So the wish was, this is Jeffrey's wish. So yesterday, this is actually great because yesterday Jeffrey helped solve the wish that we highlighted. And this day, he gets to see how someone solved his wish. So I'm going to share my screen here. And Jeffrey, why don't you read out to everyone what your wish was? Can you see that? Yes. So it was wish number 35. And I am hoping one of Santa's elves can help add profiles for the parents' siblings and half-siblings of my third great-grandfather, Plymouth Hagan, seven. His baptism record found on Archeon was kindly added by another wiki tree earlier in 2023. About 20 years ago, someone from Germany sent me a pedigree going a ways back on this line, but I am not familiar with German records or how to find them on Archeon. I would be grateful for any assistance in extending this branch on wiki tree. Excellent. And as it turns out, Danny, who's also joining us here, was that kind elf who did solve that. And let me just, I'm going to put it up there. So here is the profile for Frederick Wittem and Edward Plymouth Hagan. And just so that you can see what I was, here he is. And you can see from the fan chart what was added was three generations going back. Now, even there's more than that as well added, but there's the three generations. That's why we called it, that's why. This qualifies for the third day of Elfness. But I'm going to go back to his profile. And Danny, take us through what you did and I'll drive the ship. If you just tell me what you want to highlight where you want me to go. So let's start with what was there already. I made some notes so that I'm not confused with all the other wishes. So obviously there was also the birth record, already the birth record provided from some other member of the German project, I think, earlier this year. So actually it was not very hard for me, but of course I tend to always double check what was found. Because if you have an immigrant to the US, it is very hard to really prove that it's the right guy that you find back here in Germany. And what played in our hands here is that the name is very rare even for a German. And this makes, made things very easy. Which part was it? The Kleimanhagen? The Kleimanhagen name, yeah. Okay. And you can imagine if you have someone called John Smith or so. Right. Then you need very specific hints that you can follow. So what we had to prove this is, I think there was the find the grave page which had at least a year of birth. And then there was some census records that also gave this birth here. And what was really important is the naturalization record that you have there in the middle somewhere. Yeah. It's only the index, but it had I think the whole birth day. Yes, January 17th. And then you have something very specific, but it didn't give any place. So we still stick with Germany till here. What I'd end it is to look for any passenger lists. Okay. Because this is a very, very rare name. And if you are lucky and they did not get butchered by the clerk that write it down, then you can actually find it. And so if you go to ancestry for instance or some other platform that has the passenger lists, then you can search for it and you will find this guy with his family which is also a strong hint that we can follow. And you'll see in the middle of it kind of, I hope. Yes. Let's see if you find it. So there's, it looks like him. Yeah, that's the first one actually. Third one. Klayman Hagen Wilhelm and his wife Caroline or Carolina, we are in German and the kids. And it's very, very, very strong hint that it's the right family because you will not have two families with this rare name and the same combination of parents and children. And the important thing here is the, let's see, it's the in the middle kind of under his Herwig of Hohenot. There is some scribbling that says they came from Herrenbreitungen. I'm not sure if there is this. Oh, what was the heading that you were talking about? The heading is Bisherig of Hohenot. Yeah, this is the. Oh, here it is. I see it. Yeah, and you go down and there is this, how do you call it? Bracket around all the names and then there's the scribbling. Yes, it looks like scribbling. But it says Herrenbreitungen, it's not easy to read. So that's an H, that's a fancy H at the front. That's a fancy German H, yes. We can do some more of this scribe things tomorrow, maybe. Okay. Obviously we will have another session. Yes. So, of course, if you are German and you know the country, then you will probably recognize it. But if you are not, then you will not be able to make something out of it. Jeffrey, have you ever heard of Herrenbreitungen? Only from what my 20-year-old pedigree had. I have no idea where it is. If you cannot read it and you have such a rare name, then you can use a fancy page. I will send you the link on Discord, I think. Okay. Then you can open it. Okay, I will. Because this is a really nice tool. Okay, there we go. Okay, so I'm gonna copy that. And I will put it in the chat for people who are interested. And I will put it, I will open it up here. It works, yeah. So this is a kind of a database where some names are in. And you can have a name distribution map. Is that the right spelling? Climbinhagen, not quite the same. Looks right. And then you go around this here and then you will see that there is not much. There's a few dots there? Yeah, there's a few dots. And you see a nice cluster in the middle. You can go more deeper inside. There are some points here and there and then there's this nice cluster. And if you are looking for your rare named family members, you might start there. Wow. And actually it fits. There is a place called heaven python right in this spot. So I think this is proof that this is the right guy. Now we can look. Wow. That's a lot of work just to get to the point where you think, okay, this is the right guy. Yeah, but it's better to do this and be sure, sure. Not that you put a lot of work and then you have a total stranger branch that you worked on. Right. Okay, very cool. So then once you've got, you know what a great person is. So then you have to of course find the records and this is also a really hard thing to do for German. Has a very, very difficult history with regards of territories and shifting borders and so on. And just to give you a clue about this, I will share another. Okay. Do I have it? As you can see this cluster here in the map is where nowadays Turingia is situated. But if you know the history of Germany, then you will realize that Turingia was only established after the Second World War. Very late in the history. And before that, we had a lot of territory splitting and shifting. And this cluster actually lied in Hesse, Hessea. Okay. And not in Turingia at the time we are looking for. And this Hessean territory looks a little bit like that. You can have a look here. If you look for territories and cities in Germany, you should also go to the German Wikipedia page because there's a lot more detail on it. You can just translate it with the browser translator. Yes, what do I do? Oh, here we are. And you have this map on the right side. If you click on it, it will become large. There you go. And then you see every color is a different territory. This is just a little part around the cluster. It's not the whole country. That's very cool. Difficult thing is that the same colors are also the same states. So you see you have this big brownish, brownish territory which is Hessean castle at that time. But it consisted also on all the small brownish blobs that you have in the other parts. And you see on the right side of the map, there is this green territory with SM for Saxon mining. And in the middle of Saxon mining, there was a little exclave or enclave, depending on how you look at it. So-called Schmalkalden enclave, it belonged to Hessea, but it lied in the middle of Saxon mining. And this is where your ancestors come from actually. So you have not to look in Turingia for the records, but in Hessean. So they're part of this little wee Schmalkalden? They are just north of Schmalkalden. Wow. And they belong to Hessea, but lie or were surrounded by Saxon mining. Just to get a feeling for what we have to deal with here. So then if you know that, then you can go to Archeon actually and I sent you the link for direct. Okay, so here is the, I clicked the link from the birth record. Yeah, we can have a look at this in it. I just want to show you the whole page for this Ehrenbreitungen. Okay, okay, there it comes. There we go. So I'm putting the links in the comments as well, so people can play along at home if they want. That's all always fun too. It's always fun, yeah, that's right. Look at the territories. Look at this. So there I have you, the page for Ehrenbreitungen. You'll see it's in the archives of Hessean that's on beneath the name of the location on the right side. On the right side. And then... Oh, there we are, here we are, yeah, Hessean. This is the route that you would have to go for to reach the Ehrenbreitungen. It belongs to Schmalkhalden and in the territory of Hessean, even if it's in the middle of Thuringia now. Okay. And the church actually kept also this whole territory structure till now, so the church books especially will not be in Thuringia now. And this is a list of all the church books that survived till today. Okay. And then you can just, if you search for, let's say a baptism, which would be Taufer in German, the last ones. Oh, okay. And then you have the timeframe that the books go from and then I would just open it and search for it if you're... And then you come to this page that you already had opened. 63. So we would look in the second one here, yeah. And then we would have to search. And then you have to open it and scroll through the pages. And I'm going to just take a shortcut and go straight to the one where you, the image that you have. Except we can, we can have to have people look into it. So that's right. Uh-huh. And there's 63. So this is also, you will not be able to read anything. So this is very hard if you are not experienced in the script. Yes. You might be familiar with the German script is actually another one. We have also the Latin alphabet, but we had the German alphabet before, which is a different thing. And you need a little bit of experience to read it. And then it's also handwritten. So this is a very nice handwriting here. That's nice, Andrew. Well, yeah. We will see tomorrow some very, very bad ones. Some ugly handwriting tomorrow. Yeah, but this is in, this is the basics. This is where I go through. It was quite easy. If you have the right place and the right timeframe and the family did not move a lot, then it's just, it's just looking for it and decipher it and then translate it and put it on O5. So which one of these records is actually the one? The second one right beneath the here. Oh, right. Okay. There we go. And so it will have, it'll obviously have the baptism of the, it'll have his parents, right? It has the parents, yeah. In the first column, it's the place. Actually, if the house number. With the house number even. Yeah. That's nice. And then the second will be the birthday in written. So you also will not recognize it if you search for a number or also it's just out, it's just out written. Yeah. And the third is the baptism day. Then comes the name of the child. And that it is a boy. And very fancy is below the name. You see the number of child it is for the father. And in this, in what marriage. So this is, it's just saying, I think I cannot really read it from here, but I think it says it's the seven child and the first of the second marriage. Wow. So that's very specific. That's very specific. It's also, it's the second boy and the first from the second marriage. So this is very specific. And this is, I think also where the wish came from that he wanted to have all the siblings and half-siblings because it was already known that there are a lot of them. Then came the name of the parents. And sometimes also with the occupation of the father. And it's also stating that it's the second marriage and that the mother is Anna Elisabeth. Oh, I can see the Anna there and I can see there's the Elisabeth. Elisabeth, yeah, and then come to the knee. Kind of. Yeah. And Koenigsof for the second, for the name. And then this little thing is actually very important. I will say something to this later. Actually, I did not find sadly the marriage for this couple. But I found all the other kids from this father and their first wife and put them all in. So the family is complete, but I just don't know where the second wife came from. But this is something we probably can solve because of this little word in the end. Right. Yeah, and then it just says something about the God parents. Okay. This was a very important one. I think he was prison ward and worked on the court actually. So the family seems to have some reputation in this village. Right. Well, that's good. Now, would it be typical that the marriage like would take place in the village of the bride? Yes, in Germany, this is actually the usual thing. So if you don't find the marriage in the same book or in the same village, then you have to assume that the bride came from another village. And it's just not recorded here but in the other village where they were. And in 1863, did people travel far or were they pretty local? No, normally not. If you are not a merchant or so that you travel anyways long ways, then of course you will have your wives from, you can have your wives from anywhere in the world. Just he was farmer, I think. Just a normal farmer, you would stay at least in the serenity and also not often marry outside the territory you belong to. Especially if it's already an enclave inside something else. Yeah, this makes it more likely that you will marry outside the territory because this village actually is surrounded by villages that already belong to the other state. State borders were not so protected or closed that you could not go there. And if you have another farmer right across the border then you probably also have a marriage with the daughter of there. This is quite likely for this because it says where the parents are mentioned that the father is of reformed confession and the mother is of Lutheran confession. And it was so that Hesse was reformed at that time. It's both not Catholic. So it's quite similar but there are nuances just between them both are evangelical confessions. And Saxony and the territory that it was surrounding this exclave they were over and actually so the wife came actually most likely from one of them sucks the mining and we can see this later also. So this is one sample and I went backwards in time searching for all the children and put them here. Also put also all the baptism records for all the children. You have to go just to the children. Yeah, so before we like just look at how beautiful this profile is. Like with the biography there, I love how you've extracted all the information and put it into a nice little paragraph there. The obituary, like and then all the sources. This is just, this is really nicely done, Danny. This is very nice. And then you went back to Johann. So his father and you found his marriage, both his, there's both his marriages or both his wives. You don't have- I just, you can open the second wife if you want and you will see that there's nothing actually about it. I wrote some ideas that I have regarding to the Lutheran confession and that she's probably from the surrounding territories. But the ancestors of the father, they are nice and easy trackable because they stayed in the same village for a long time. That was very kind of them to do that. Makes things easier. And the oldest one, the oldest one, this Hieronymus that you have right here. That's an interesting name. I haven't seen that name for a long time. It's actually quite typical for that time. Is it? Yeah, it's a German name. And you can see this is also an interesting guy actually. He was a soldier. I remember correctly. And he was in the first battalion of the Hezern Guard. There he is. It's very famous by itself, the Hezern Guard actually. You might also know it in the 1700s. There were a lot of Hezern soldiers coming to the United States or to America. What became, what will become the United States later because the sovereign of Hezern sold his soldiers to the English to fight in the independent wars and so. So you will have a lot of Hezern soldiers in the ancestry of the Hezern soldiers. People from the United States. This is one that actually stayed in Germany. Right, so this one stayed, but a lot went. So, so Jeffrey, you have a lot. You probably have lots of cousins over there. You don't even know. Probably, yeah. Yeah, actually he became also a mayor of Hezern Breitungen later, so. There he was. He was the mayor. Look at that. Very impressive. Wow, this is great work, Danny, and what do you think, Jeff? Where you can go a little bit further back, even because the first book, if I remember correctly, it starts at 1640 something. So this is the time that you also can go to 100 years more. We have to do, but it will take a while because the scribbling will become more worse the further. I don't know how to read. Well, I've got good news about that, Jeffrey, because Danny is going to come back because he's also the elf who granted the wish for day four. And what we're going to look at tomorrow is how to translate the scribbling into, you know, figure out what the letters are and then transcribe and translating that. So stay tuned for a little mini lesson on deciphering. Well, I'm pretty good at early English wills and Norwegian, Danish writing in the 16th, 1700s, so German can't be that much different. I just don't speak German, so. Yeah. You will see tomorrow. You'll see tomorrow. I look forward to it. Well, this is great. Thank you very much, Danny, for this. And thanks, Jeffrey, for coming on and joining us and to my fellow elves. So tomorrow, we will be doing same time, same bat channel. It'll be a 3 p.m. Eastern time or 8 p.m. UTC for the fourth day of Elfmas. And thank you for everyone who's joining us, who live and in the chat, as well as those who are watching this after the fact and have a great day and we'll see you tomorrow for the fourth day of Elfmas. Once I find my intro. Hope to you all. Bye. See you tomorrow. Bye. Bye. Bye.