Christmas is not a just day. Instead, it is a 12 day celebration that begins (in some traditions) on December 25th and continues for 12 days (until January 6th). As a reminder, we have the 12 Days of Christmas carol.
For each of the 12 days of Christmas, I will be posting one event / person from my genealogical research that relates (sometimes in a rather convoluted way) to the particular gift of that day in The 12 Days of Christmas. If you wish to peruse the entire schedule, check previous posts for Days 1-6 and Days 7 – 12.
January 3 - Nine Ladies Dancing (Day 9)
Dancing is often in our genes. (Unfortunately, my wife will tell you that it is not so with me.) Most of us (even me!) have learned to do the genealogy “happy dance.” Do you remember your first genealogy “happy dance?” Write a post about what led to that dance. Or, pick another “happy dance” time and write about it.
Before I got serious (= addicted) about genealogy, I translated a letter that had been sent to my g-grandfather, Edward Herman Mieding. The letter was sent from his uncle, Eduard Schaar, in Germany. It took me most of the Summer to transcribe the letter from Old German script to contemporary script and then translate the result from German to English. When completed, I asked a cousin who taught at a university to check out my work with someone in the German language department. The German professor indicated that he couldn’t read the Old German script very well, but thought that my translation seemed reasonable. I didn’t know about the genealogy happy dance at that time, but I am sure that I must have done something that faintly resembled it.
After I began to be more serious and intentional about researching my family’s history, I decided to do a Google search for Eduard Schaar. He had owned a brewery (Schaar Brewerei) which he son had taken over upon his retirement. Not only did I find information about the brewery (it had been bought out by the Rose Brewery), but I found a picture of Eduard.
All of a sudden Eduard became a “real” person, not just a name on a letter. Whenever I see this picture, a part of me does a happy dance.
