23 October 2013

When Is Ernestine Trautvetter Not Ernestine Trautvetter?


This is the entry for an Ernestine Trautvetter as is appears in the "United States Germans to America Index, 1850-1897" on FamilySearch. The entry was of interest as there are Ernestines in my own Trautvetter family and the name combination is not all that common. The date of immigration was also "right in the middle" of when various members of my family were immigrating.

I went to Ancestry.com to view the actual image. The problem was that a search for Ernestine Trautvetter did not produce the entry as indicated on FamilySearch. After some doing, and searching based only on first name, I found the following entry that I'm pretty certain is the individual referenced on FamilySearch.

The problem is that the last name isn't Trautvetter. It's close (in a loose definition of the word), but the other details of the person matched--first name, age and date of arrival.


Sure enough, that's the last name on the entry. I was pretty certain that this entry is the one FamilySearch was actually referenced because not only did first name, age, date of landing and name of ship matched, but this person also died on board.


Death on the ship was not uncommon.

A manual search of the manifest did not locate any references to Trautvetter or other Ernestines that could have been the one to which FamilySearch was referring.

It is always worth your time to view the original.

This was one Trautvetter that wasn't.

All searches and images were made and obtained as of the date of this post.