Family History and The Art of Inquiry

by Jim Graupner

We begin this endeavor on the 153rd anniversary of the birth of Friederich William Aufderheide, born in Laengerich, Westphalia, on December 8, 1853. Fred emigrated from Germany to America when he was 17 years old, first to Cincinnati, in 1870, and then to New Ulm in 1875.

Fred was a well-known manufacturer of brick and tile, president of the Farmer's and Merchant's Bank of New Ulm, and a very enterprising businessman. Fred married Elise Maria Schapekahm on May 25, 1881, in New Ulm. To this union were born five children: William, Emma, Karl, Herman, and Hertha. Fred died on May 11, 1926, in New Ulm.

Friederich William Aufderheide
The Keepers is but one step in the process of preserving and communicating a family’s history. Creating the actual blog is a big step for me because I consider myself fairly technologically-challenged, so the viewer will experience a number of changes as we go along. The intention is to have frequent postings on family-related topics of interest; these postings are meant to be dynamic and discussion is encouraged. The viewer may join in the discussion much as they would with e-mail banter, because there is an opportunity at the bottom of each posting to submit comments. Comments may be of any length.

Then, again, the blog is a shared, cooperative endeavor among all who have an interest in experiencing and sharing information on the lives and times of our relatives. We encourage you to submit articles, stories, anecdotes, genealogical information, artifacts, photographs, links, narratives, etc., in digital form to facilitate postings.

The first series of postings will include accounts of family historians and others currently interested in exploring family history, like Jim Aufderheide, Darcy Boock, Marilyn Boock Schmidt, Philip Graupner, Tom Aufderheide and myself, to name a few.

But, one cannot jump into this adventure without recognizing the pioneers of our of family’s story who created genealogies, archived family photographs, wrote stories of their recollections, translated letters, and saved important family documents and artifacts. In my experience, these people have included: Emma Aufderheide Boock, Albert Peter Boock, Gertrude Boock Graupner, Fritz Glaser, Johanna “Hanni” Graupner, Gerald Liepert, Carol Gieseke Baer, Natalie Rosenfeldt, Janet Larson, Esther Solsrude, and others.

The Art of Inquiry:

Worthy endeavors seem to follow a path from compulsion to philosophy, method and review. Sophocles observed that reason is Man’s crowning achievement; and so, it is the essence of Western Civilization.

As in scientific endeavors, the Greeks applied reason to human experience to produce the first histories, written by Herodotus and Thucydides. These pioneering historians developed a discipline to record events based on observable, reliable information and communicated in written form, as distinguished from the oral traditions of mythology and lore.

Still, reporting upon the human experience is replete with subjectivity; questions of bias, intent, interpretation, meaning, purpose, validity, reason and sufficiency of information inherently challenge professional historians. Family historians understand how central the application of the forensic method is when working with the quality of the information before them, much of it derived from stories, lore, anecdotal information, interviews, obituaries, letters, photographs and accounts.

We shall see how the use of an on-line blog helps to facilitate inquiry and communication, generate evidence and understanding, and produce a level of archival durability that will secure for future generations the story of our family. Such is the work of The Keepers.