The Kaski & Untiedt Family Trees

A lot of Untiedts look alike. Determining which similarly featured Untiedt is pictured in these archived albums is a challenge. Plucking from his memory, my uncle, Don Untiedt, labelled what he could two years ago. The following were labelled as either Don Untiedt or his father, Paul V. Untiedt, but they also looked like they could have been Keith Untiedt. I've stared at a lot of side-by-side compares to known images of all three possible persons: Don, Paul and Keith. One day I think I know, then the next I'm unsure. I mean, doesn't the middle above and the far right below look like the same person; oh, no I mean the far left and the bottom mid. Using some of the best consumer photo apps didn't consistently distinguish accurately when I loaded images of known Untiedts, so it's not fully reliable for definitively labelling any archives. I also spent a lot of time comparing the slight ways the Paul CS Untiedt front porch changed over thr years And so my Unlabelled, Un...

Many Versions of Bertha My great-grandmother, Tillie Anderson Morud, was the child of John Henry Anderson and Bertha Olson. Tillie told me that her mother came to the US alone from Norway and didn't speak the same dialect as her spouse and had no family in the area. Unable to communicate, living on a rural homestead, she birthed 6 children, enduring what must have been a very difficult South Dakotan farm life. For decades, I've tried to research her and trace her roots. Likely due to her lack of English skills and limited ability to read and write, each confirmed record told different versions of the same facts. The 1925 South Dakota census shows her as "Betsey" while the 1935 South Dakota census lists her as "Bertha". Other spellings are "Bertina", "Brita", and "Betsy". The U.S. Census records from 1900 to 1940 indicate that she was born sometime between 1858 and 1865. And then, there's when she immigrated to the U.S.; the ...

If you were born in Minnesota prior to 2002, your birth data is publicly available, along with the other 3,000 Minnesota-born persons in our family tree. For a family researcher, like myself, this data is gold. Very useful as it provides your full legal name, date and place of birth, and your parents' full names. But, from the perspective of a hacker, or identity thief,  you might be a more vulnerable candidate. For example, if you have a password reset hint using your mother's maiden name, that account has likely already been hacked, because it's very easy (and free) to find that data about you. Check out the link below for more details. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Minnesota,_Birth_Index_-_FamilySearch_Historical_Records

Continuing the prior posts about  Bernice's Birthday Book , ( Mar & Apr ) below are the May birthdays that Bernice Mann Untiedt held most dear (at least around the 1940-1950s). May 1, Mann & Untiedt: Betty Mann and Barbara Untiedt Betty & Barb are two very special ladies from Bernice's life, both who we've been blessed to still have with us here on Earth. Both who also made their careers as school teachers. Betty (Soutar) Mann married Bernice's brother-in-law, Verlyn in 1952. Betty's a fellow family historian but also a historical advocate for Rock County, Minnesota. In 2022, Betty was honored with a lifetime achievement award for her history work (see  news article  for details). Barbara (Untiedt) Spalinger is Bernice's middle daughter. Barb, my aunt, has made her life in Kodiak, Alaska, with her two children, dogs, and husband, Al. More recently, she's added "grandma" to her list of joys and accomplishments. May 4 & 5, Mann: Rober...

I consider myself to be a family history archivist, not a digital content creator. As an archivist, I've been pretty hesitant to edit historical pictures beyond the basics: cropping, rotating, or an occassional straightening. This is despite owning Lightroom and using it for own personal photography projects. I try hard to find the original picture if available. When I can't, I try and start with the best copy that I can locate. Then, I very carefully scan with the highest settings and save initially as high-quality TIFFs comparing carefully the digitial and print versions. I tell myself "if this photo was destroyed tomorrow, did I get the best reproduction possible?" Properly archived, I can then start sharing the best possible jpeg version, keeping the character as is (sun-damaged, wrinkled, torn, or finger-printed).  But, I had an important photo of my great-grandparent Mann's wedding. The best print had some oily fingerprints. After the initially scans showed ...

I am always fascinated when I see that two people in my family tree end up in essentially the same place at the same time when there is no logical shared connection to that location. I'm not talking about someone from South Dakota bumping in to someone from Iowa; things a little more off the beaten path. It is as though there is more that might draw us to a place than what we instinctively process. Like the way the North American monarch butterfly can find its way to its ancesteral nesting ground.  What innate abilities might we possess that draw us towards each other, or to the same places? I've come across many such instances in my research. I'll use this single post to start documenting them. So if this also interests you, bookmark this link and come back in a few months, and see what other cousins you could have walked right by and never knew. Same Place, Case #1, Stroh descendants (Part I) Added: June 16, 2025 Jurgen Stroh was born in Germany in the early 1800s. In 185...

I've gone off the deep end on a side project. My eldest daughter, Carmen, has a close work friend who was adopted during infancy. Work friend, let's call her "L", recently took an Ancestry DNA test and asked for my assistance to see if I could help her find her birth sister. I said "I'll give it a try" and have now built her a family tree of 1,897 persons, biologically connected to her, but none can be confirmed as her birth parents or birth sibling. Yikes! It's been quite an adventure and stalled all my work, research and scanning related to my own family tree lines. First, she has no close DNA matches. Her closest match is listed as "LastName" and has no tree, no information, and no other close matches. One of her parent's appears to have come from a family of 9 siblings, none who have DNA tested and all who have been pretty good at locking down their data. I've loaded L's DNA to other genealogy sites (with her permission, of ...