This all started yesterday when Regina sent me a message about a "John George Rödiger" who married a Maria Eichenbrodt at St. John's Ev. Lutheran Church in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania on 12/25/1863.
It was just a hint from a fellow researcher, suggesting that maybe I could find a home for him in my tree.
The ride has been interesting to say the least.
She put me in contact with another researcher who was born in Hazleton, 15 miles from Tamaqua. I will call her DSH. DSH was the one who originally found the marriage record. Hazleton, as you may remember was the setting of another deep dive into Rödiger relatives. See A Tangled Web.
So, this piqued my interest. Plus, I do NOT like loose ends. And John George Rödiger was definitely a very loose end. For some reason, initially I could find no other records about this man that would tell me where he came from, what happened to him after his marriage or who any of his relatives were.
DSH was actively researching her Eichenbrodt family when she stumbled into Mr. Elusive. And he was an enigma to her as well. The woman who married John George Rödiger was a widow of an Eichenbrodt. So, the Rödiger connection was really outside of her focus, except for the possibility of learning something about Maria (neé?) Eichenbrodt-Roediger's death and place of burial.
Though I couldn't see how this guy could fit in with our Rödigers from Tann, I was not about to just ignore the challenge. So I dug in.
I went back to the St. John's Church records and found George Rödiger as a Communicant between 1876 and 1879. And squeezed in just below his name was an August Rödiger who took communion between 1878 and 1879. This was encouraging. Maybe George didn't just drop out of the sky after all.
A little more research in the church records showed that George and Maria (Eichenbrodt) Rödiger had a son, Johann Christian August Rödiger in 1864 and that August was married to Anna Dorothea Herbig in 1856 and they had a child, Anna Catharina who was born in 1854.
At this point I had no proof, but hypothesized that August and George were brothers. Since records for George seemed pretty elusive, I turned to hints about August from other Family Trees on ancestry.com. That is when I cam across an obituary in Junction City, Kansas from 1919 that pretty much answered the questions I had been asking.
I am much indebted to a fellow researcher (Scrubjay81) on ancestry.com for posting the three part obit. from the Grand Junction Union Journal and the photo of Johann August Rödiger:
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| Johann August Roediger (1899) |
Junction City Union Journal (1919)
From this obit I learned a number of things germane to my research:
1) August was born in Scherbda, which today is in the German State of Thuringia (Thüringen). A look at Google Maps shows it to be about 40 miles east of our ancestral home of Tann.
2) August arrived in New York on 8. July 1854, lived near Albany NY, Philadephia PA and New York before taking a job on the coal mine near Tamaqua for the next 23 years.
3) August enlisted in Co. B., 16th Pennsylvania Volunteers (probably in 1861)
4) August moved his family out to Alida, Kansas, in 1877 where he bought a 160 acre farm. (Another article in 1891 which extolled his virtues as a farmer stated that his farm had grown to 600 acres, with about 375 acres in cultivation, an orchard of 15 acres and timber enough to last for several generations. Not bad at a time when farm mechanization was still a thing of the future.
5) Surviving him when he died on 25 August 1919 were 7 of his 11 children, one of whom still lived in Tamaqua and a brother, George Roediger, of Tamaqua.
Back when I was just beginning my Roediger research, I examined every census record I could find in the 1860s 70's and 80's looking for Roedigers in the US. I still have those censuses and a niche in my tree where I have put the Roedigers from Geary Co, Kansas. When I saw the name August Roediger in the Tamaqua Church records this morning it made me think of the August Roediger I had seen in those records, but dismissed it as a big stretch. But it turned out to be true after all.
So, I have come full circle, starting with George and ending with George. The obit has confirmed what I suspected: August and George were brothers and that they were not from Tann and thus not closely related to us "Ohio" Roedigers.
But the 40 mile distance between Tann and their hometown of Scherbda makes the possibility of sharing a common ancestor worth looking into (at least for me).
To do that, I have messaged all ten of the owners of family trees on ancestry.com having Johann August Roediger amongst their branches. It runs like this:
My name is Stephen Roediger. I have been researching my family for about 10 years. I have often wondered if the Roedigers in Kansas were related to me. This morning I found Johann August Roediger's obit and learned that he was from Scherbda. My family is from Tann (36251), just a few miles north of Bad Hersfeld. So the distance between the two "hometowns" is about 40 miles. I am looking for a Roediger man who would be willing to take a y-DNA test to see if we have a common ancestor. Since you have Johann August in your tree, I am hoping you might be able to put me in contact with either a direct male descendant of Johann August or a fellow researcher who might be better able to help me with this. Your reply would be greatly appreciated.
So far, I have had two replies that said that they were unable to help, but wishing me luck.
I have a Plan B, but will only use it as a last resort. The people on ancestry.com understand where I am coming from, but Plan B would require me to call or write to the current crop of Roedigers in Junction City, Kansas and the that general area. As you can imagine, there would be strong misgivings about cooperating on this level with a total stranger who claims to be searching for the long lost DNA connection. But if it comes to that, I am not afraid to try. Maybe I'd even take a road trip.
Right now, the only match I have with my personal Y-DNA test is my third cousin Michael who was kind enough to take the test so I could verify that there wasn't something wrong with the test itself. I am happy to say that his test of whether we share a common Roediger ancestor came back positive.
If there is a Kansas or Tamaqua, PA Roediger who agrees to take the Y-DNA test, we should be able to determine if we share a common ancestor (and hopefully not as far back as Noah--just kidding) but probably not who that common ancestor is. To do that, we would need a paper trail and that comes to a screeching halt about 450 years into the past unless one has royal or aristocratic blood. I am pretty sure we don't have von Rödigers in the family.
But maybe, just maybe, when the dust clears, I will know whether to dub these Roedigers in Tamaqua and Junction City with the title "Cousins".
To all my cousins everywhere,
Stephen Roediger
