Do What You Do (I Don’t Know What You Do)
When I was eleven years old, my parents purchased a video camera. Soon my sisters, cousins, friends, and I were making home movies. The films, with titles like The Detention Girl, had loose plot...
Author: Andrew Hagenbuch
Andrew Pierce Hagenbuch: Farmer, Milkman, Carpenter & Builder
Every branch on our Hagenbuch family tree has a story, and one of the goals of this site is to share as many of these stories as possible. Several weeks ago, I heard from...
Beechroots Progress: Discoveries Made, Mysteries Solved
My father, Mark, and I are actively working to document our Hagenbuch family in America—the descendants of Andreas (b. 1715). I once compared this task to the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, each of...
Making Sense of Christian Hagenbuch’s Family
Last year, we explored how two Christian Hagenbuchs of about the same age were living in Ohio during the mid-1800s. These were Christian (b. 1770) who was the son of Michael (b. 1746) and...
Uncovering an Illegitimate Child: Julianna Hagenbuch
Love child, illegitimate, and bastard—all describe a child born to unmarried parents. Today, these words don’t ruffle as many feathers as they once did. Yet, for our ancestors they carried significant social stigma and...
Discovery: Joseph Hagenbuch’s Baptism Record and Parents
Our Hagenbuch genealogy has plenty of gaps, mysteries, and other unknowns. In August of 2018, we introduced one of these: connecting the descendants of Joseph (b. 1811) and Lydia (Hahn) Hagenbuch (b. 1812) to...
Henry Hagenbuch’s Revised Birth and Death: The Impact
As my father, Mark, and I have often written, genealogy is much more than names and dates. But what happens when a crucial part of our family’s story is dependent upon one or two...
Henry Hagenbuch’s Revised Birth and Death: The Evidence
Genealogy is like a giant jigsaw puzzle—one where key pieces are missing and a clear picture of what is being assembled is unknown. This article, the first in a two-part series, will examine a...
Family On The Move: 1840–1900
Like many Americans, our Hagenbuch family story is about leaving one place for another, often in search of a better life and new opportunities. The first part in this article series followed our family’s story...
Family On The Move: 1800–1840
The first part in this article series followed 300 years of family history from 1500 to 1800, as our Hagenbuch ancestors moved first from Switzerland to Germany and then to America. One line of...
