The Stories Go On and On and On
The scenarios could have been very different over the past 50 plus years. I may have had no interest in our Hagenbuch family’s history. Uncle Perce may have never latched on to me as a boy (and me on to him) to take Oak Grove Church cemetery walks, where he explained who was buried there and told me curious facts about those people. Uncle Perce may have never cared enough about family to talk about his relatives, and I may not have had the historical bones in my body that fostered a memory which can remember (among the thousands of genealogical trivia) great great grandmother Lindner’s maiden name—Messersmith or Messerschmidt). Yet, I still can’t remember where I put that snippet of paper with the password on it!
The scenario where Bernice (Hagenbuch) Bogart shared her love of genealogy with me may not have happened; or she, along with cousins Bruice, Andy, and Julia hadn’t pulled out well worn, blue lettered papers from a distant cousin in California that traced our family back to Andreas Hagenbuch in 1737 Germany. I eventually spent countless hours with those four first cousins of my father, identifying photos of long forgotten relatives which had so many stories attached to them.
Mark Hagenbuch’s great Uncle Perce waiting to walk in the graveyard at Oak Grove Lutheran Church, c. 1965
These experiences laid the groundwork for even more situations where my mind turned and twisted, so that I memorized names, dates, and places for our relatives of the past and present. I placed everyone on charts which helped those people coming alive in my thoughts. I could imagine (and still can, even more so) what Andreas Hagenbuch looked like. I could put together in my mind the personalities and relationships of my great grandparents, Hiram and Mary Ann (Lindner) Hagenbuch. The unique experiences which led to scenarios came full circle and strengthened my desire to learn more, to research more, and to gather more, and more, and more stuff that related to all things genealogical.
However, once I married in 1974 and got set up in my career as a teacher, my passion for genealogy was tucked away—until 1979 when Linda and I visited her sister and family in Germany. I found that “Hagenbuch” is not an uncommon surname in that part of the world and those experiences that had already been nourished here in the States, had a larger context than I could have imagined. For a few years after that trip, I kept in contact with Regina Hagenbuch and her family who lived in Edesheim, Germany. Although I could not link Regina’s family to our group which is descended from Andreas Hagenbuch, I realized that our family history took us back to Germany, and I had a few stories to back that up. Well, mostly the story that we Hagenbuchs were still present in the Fatherland.
Original family sheet for Peter L. Hagenbuch compiled around 1980
This is all well and good, sort of like a boy playing with a few of his toys and bragging that no one else has anything like them. But then something clicked, and I’m not sure when or why. The scenarios came together to form something more. Most likely it was because I enjoy telling stories, and I had exhausted the stories about my immediate family. These were stories that were told at the Hagenbuch reunions or when some family members had found an unidentified gravestone or name on a document. I started writing down stories that needed their most basic elements recorded. Hence, as written about in my last article, I started recording every Hagenbuch and associated relative on the LDS (Mormon) forms. The previous scenarios grew more important, and a small room in the apartment that my wife, Linda, and I rented in Herndon, PA became cluttered with LDS forms, family charts, letters to relatives, and family photos that found their way to me.
Being proud of the work I was accomplishing, I wanted to share it with others; and I mainly wanted to share with our large family the stories I was unearthing about other groups of Hagenbuchs who mostly lived in the United States. By 1980, I had subscribed to some genealogical magazines and was networking with other genealogists who were publishing newsletters. Believing that my writing skills weren’t all that shabby, I brainstormed the idea of a family newsletter. I would publish it four times a year, keep it to about eight pages back to back, fill it with information from the LDS forms (which Andrew and I now call the Paper Archives), and share stories about those people. Well, before I knew it, the idea had grown into a part time job.
Cover page of the June 1991 edition of “The Beech Grove” newsletter
There was a charge to subscribers because of postage and copying, although at $1 a copy, one can imagine I was not supplementing my teacher’s salary much! As I’ve written in other articles about The Beech Grove, the publication had about 140 subscribers over the years. This really isn’t a huge number considering other family newsletters were pulling in 500 or more readers and were much more professional than my crude drawings, filler pieces (jokes, quotes, puzzles somehow related to genealogy), and images of newspaper clippings which never copied all that well. It was certainly an amateurish endeavor, but it did serve a purpose. The newsletter functioned as a transition from the LDS records (the Paper Archives) to the present Hagenbuch.org site which contains over 500 published articles.
As The Beech Grove evolved, I found it more difficult to keep a strong interest in putting it together. In 1988 I reduced the number of issues per year to two, and I asked cousin Diane (Rathburn) Brosuis to organize each issue for me. But, even with these changes, The Beech Grove was certainly, in my estimation, becoming less professional. Folks were sending me news clippings to add, I was adding United States historical information as filler, I was including articles written by other Hagenbuch genealogists, and I would list names and addresses of subscribers in an attempt to have relatives make contact. However, I realized that people wanted to read about their ancestors in the newsletter but did not necessarily wish to participate in writing the newsletter.
Page from the June 1991 edition of “The Beech Grove” newsletter
Take a look at some of the pieces in one of the last Beech Grove newsletter from June of 1991. On the front page under “Editor’s Notes,” I decry the fact that there seems to be a waning interest not only from subscribers, but also from me. A large part of this newsletter is advertising information about the 50th Hagenbuch reunion, which certainly was a huge success with 147 attending. Another bulk of the newsletter was an article written by cousin Ann (Harris) Brandt about her great grandfather, William Stahl, which really only interested a small number of readers. Then there is a large section which appeared in numerous newsletters “Around the Beech Tree” where I included the news clippings sent to me. Admittedly, most of these were difficult to read and acted as fillers. The final Beech Grove was rolled out in 1992. I was not happy with its looks, subscriptions were decreasing, the costs to send out the newsletter were rising, and I was running out of ideas.
Thus, came the desert years from 1992 through 2014. During these years, I basically did no genealogical work at all. I’ve written about this time and the things that kept me busy: three children as well as their involvement in school and other activities, my all encompassing career as elementary principal, and possibly the largest genealogical interference of all—living history reenacting. Throughout those 20 years I would, at times, look at the bound Paper Archives, I would sort through some old photos and receive some photos from relatives who wanted me to continue my work. I even stopped going to Hagenbuch reunions. All those scenarios from the past lay separated and provided mostly nothing to the building of what has now become, in my opinion, one of the largest, unique, and most comprehensive family history projects out there today!
Page from the June 1991 edition of “The Beech Grove” newsletter
The many scenarios noted above were finally brought to fruition when Andrew contacted me in 2014 about creating an online version of The Beech Grove. This resulted in the founding of Hagenbuch.org, and the rest is history. Those scenarios from the past are the building blocks for the stories we have and continue to write about. After 10 years they will continue, they will be added to, and they will be updated. This article, in itself, is one of those scenarios; a part of our family history that is unique only to us. And, no matter what happens scenario-wise, come aging, health changes, varied interests, or other life events, no change to Hagenbuch.org will detract from the tremendous story of this American family.
