One of the people mentioned frequently in my grandparents’ letters is Floyd. Floyd was my grandfather’s youngest brother. Floyd was the outlier in the family.  All of his siblings were born relatively close together between the years 1897-1904. Floyd’s older siblings were born fairly regularly, 2-3 years apart.  My grandfather was born in 1904, and then, Floyd wasn’t born until 1911, almost 7 years later. My great grandmother Lovina was 35 when Floyd was born.  By modern measure, 35 isn’t that old. I had my youngest child when I was 38. I don’t know if there were any other pregnancies or miscarriages between the birth of my grandfather and my great uncle.  There is no left who remembers as their generation is gone.

I’m sure at some point I met my Great Uncle Floyd when I was little but I don’t remember.  When I first started with my genealogy obsession, I contacted Floyd.  He was the one who was actively searching the family’s genealogy.  We exchanged several letters in the mid to late 1990s. He passed on some great information he had gathered on some of the other branches of the family.  He gave me information on the Schwartz side of the family. My great, great grandfather Christian Yegerlehner married another Swiss ex-patriot named Elizabeth Schwartz. Floyd also passed on information on the descendants of John Yegerlehner and Rosina (Yegerlehner) McCormick, siblings of Christian. He also helped me to identify people in several photographs.

One thing that Floyd had searched for years to locate was the ship manifest.  We knew that the Yegerlehners had arrived in America around 1851. But Floyd was limited in his access to records.  He had to search the old fashioned way.  He had to travel to libraries and archives, hoping to find the right depository.  It wasn’t until after he died that Ancestry added digital images from ship’s manifests.  I did finally locate the manifest which had eluded Floyd for so long.  I wish he had been around for that discovery.

Letter transcription:

Tue 1715

Dear Mother-

I missed a letter today but I think it’s due to the change in address, etc. I got your letter with the letter about Carl Koon in it last night after I had written you. I’ll send it back and you can call him and have him take it to whomever he wants.

Since we are located where we are it isn’t so necessary that one has a car – it is only 2 blocks to the car line. I’m

I’m wondering if you might plan on coming down in a week or ten days. Maybe Ruth & Floyd would come over and get the kids or you & Dorothy or Lucille might take them over. We are pretty uncertain as to how long we might be here. Some have been here 10-12 weeks and some only 2-3. We could talk over the living down

(page 2) here business much better if you were here. You should plan on staying about one week at least so that almost let makes it out of the question for anyone to drive you down. They probably wouldn’t want to stay that long. Week-end is the best time since I have Sun. off. Only ever so often we have to be on duty Sun. I’ll find out. I know next Sun. is free but I don’t know about one week from Sun. yet.

You be thinking this thing over and let me know what you decide. I think the train would be better and of course a Pullman. I wish we had inquired as to the amount a Pullman cars.

Well, the above is food for thought

Love Daddy

©2012, copyrighted & written by Deborah Sweeney