Forebear Friday – Dr. Fred Seemann

Frederick August Seemann, son of Hans and Maria Seemann of Clinton county, Iowa, was born 01 Apr 1866.  He left the farm to pursue his dream of becoming a physician.  He spent a number of years practicing in Dubuque, Iowa, and later Sioux City.  He married Alta Shepherd, a Kansas native, in Wisconsin, and they were the parents of four children: Ember, Frederick, Howard and Helen.

During his years of professional practice, he worked with brothers Carl, Henry and Will as they also became physicians.

The following advertisement, from The Dubuque Herald issue of Saturday, September 22, 1900, refers to him as “The Renowned German Doctor.”  The advertisement also mentions that he “has had years of training in the great hospitals of the east.”


Between 1903 and 1906, he moved his family and his practice from Dubuque to Sioux City, Iowa, specializing in diseases of the eyes, ears, nose and throat.  His wife, Alta, died in 1908, at the age of 37, probably from consumption; he married Ruth Trumhauer, a nurse, about 1910.  By 1930, they had moved to National City, California, where Ruth died in 1937.  She was buried at Mt. Hope Cemetery in San Diego.  Dr. Fred died in California in 1939 from cancer of the esophagus.  His body was returned to Sioux City for burial at Logan Park Cemetery, with his first wife, Alta.

Using OneNote as a Research Tool

In a recent ProGen discussion group I attended, someone mentioned the usefulness of a “notebook” program for doing research, specifically taking notes or abstracting documents.  This piqued my curiosity, and already having OneNote*, a notebook program in the Microsoft Office collection installed on my computer, I decided to investigate it further.
There are many tutorials for OneNote on the internet, so I’ll skip the “how-tos,” except to say it was a very intuitive program, and I needed very little formal help to get my first notebook up and running.
I do a fair amount of internet genealogy research, so my bookmarks are of considerable importance to me.  I also use different browsers, and oftentimes run them in a sandbox when I’m unsure of the trustworthiness of any particular website.  Of course, when you bookmark a website in one browser, you have to bookmark it in any other browsers you use; also, bookmarking a site in a sandboxed browser doesn’t bookmark it in an un-sandboxed version of the same browser, as I learned the hard way.  As a result, it was difficult to keep track of which websites I might need for research.  To complicate the matter further, I recently got a new computer, and in the process of transferring files, my research bookmarks disappeared.
Enter OneNote… for those unfamiliar with it, it is the digital version of those handy 3 or 5 subject notebooks we all used in high school, except it’s not limited to 5 tabbed sections.   The notebook can be stored locally, on your network, or on the internet, making it available from your laptop, if you’re traveling, as long as you have internet access.   Your notebook can also be exported as a .pdf file.
After opening the program, I created a notebook which I named “Genealogy Research”, and started making tabbed sections for each area of research I might need to do – General Research, Military, Newspapers, Books, Resources, Miscellaneous, Community (message boards, etc.), Death, Burial, Land Records, Maps, Photos, Immigration, Families, etc.  Each of these tabbed sections holds links for the websites I might need while doing my research.

So far, I’ve found it extremely handy to have my Research Notebook open while I’m working.  When discovering I need a particular piece of information, clicking on the appropriate tab to see what databases are available, and then having the link right there is making the most of my research time.  In addition, when I stumble upon a new link, I can easily add it to the appropriate section or sections.
I have not fully explored all that OneNote can do, but looking at a few of its capabilities, I can see this being a useful tool for more than organizing bookmarks.  One of the next applications I’ll be looking at is its usefulness for organizing data on the families I’m researching.  Besides adding hyperlinks to the pages, you can add photos, freehand draw or write, etc.   Perhaps a “Brickwalls” notebook is next?  I am envisioning a section for each of my “brickwalls” with notations about where I’ve looked, what I’ve found, what I know, copies of documents I have, etc.; this is data I’d love to have all in one place, with my thoughts recorded there as well.

As I mentioned, OneNote was included in my software package on my new computer, but there are numerous other Notebook applications available for download, either for a fee, or free.  If you haven’t investigated using a notebook program for genealogy work, it might be worth looking into. 

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*I have no connection to Microsoft, except being an end-user.

Forebear Friday – Hans Seemann

Hans Seemann, along with his brother Detleff, were the first of their family to leave Germany bound for the United States.  Hans was the son of John Henry and Maria Seemann, and born 23 Jan 1825 in Schleswig-Holstein. 
The brothers settled in Clinton county, Iowa, sending for their parents, siblings, and fiancées, who were sisters, the following year.  They all lived together for several years, until each of the brothers obtained his own farm and set out on their own. 

Hans and Maria raised a family of nine, seven of whom lived to adulthood: John, Anna Maria, Andrew, Henry, Fred, Carl, and Will.  Four of their sons became physicians, and practiced medicine throughout the upper midwest.


In 1884, Hans and Maria sold their farm in Clinton county, and purchased another in Union county, South Dakota.  On 05 Sep 1893, while visiting his son Fred in Dubuque, Iowa, Hans became ill, and died at Finley Hospital of pleurisy, complicated by lung cancer.  After his death, Maria made her home among her children, passing away while at the home of her son Carl in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  Both Hans and Maria are buried at Riverside Cemetery, rural Akron, Plymouth co., Iowa, which was just across the state line from their South Dakota farm.

Above: The family of Hans and Maria Seemann, taken at the farm in South Dakota, when all of the kids came home for their father’s funeral. 

Bathing Beauties

 

My grandfather, Bill Knutz, found himself a couple of special “hood ornaments” on one hot and sunny summer day in eastern South Dakota – his future wife, Lillian Christensen (right), and her cousin Ruth.   This photo, taken in 1935, depicts a common scene at the farm of his parents, Will and Virta Knutz, where their teenage children would stop up the creek to make a “swimming hole,” which was popular with all of the young people in the area.

Forebear Friday – Marx Seemann

Marx Christian Seemann was born 15 Nov 1868 in Jackson county, Iowa, the son of Detlef and Elizabeth (Petersen) Seemann, and among the first generation of the family born in the United States. 
Marx operated a tourist bus on the route between Seattle and Vancouver, but had the misfortune to drop a tire jack on his foot, an accident that eventually resulted in gangrene and amputation of his leg in 1923.  He then moved back to Jackson county, Iowa, to the home of his brother Henry.  Henry died five years later, and Marx then went to Green Island, also in Jackson county, where he purchased a small farm.  After his retirement, he moved to Bellevue, Iowa.  He had “arteriosclerosis of the brain”, and became violent to the point of having to be sent to the State Hospital for the Insane at Independence, Iowa.  He died there, just a few weeks after his arrival.
His obituary, from the Sabula (Iowa) Gazette of Thursday, May 31, 1951:
FUNERAL SERVICES HELD FOR GREEN ISLAND MAN
Funeral services were held at a Bellevue funeral home Monday afternoon for Marx C. Seeman, 81, who passed away at 6:15 p.m. Friday at Independence.  The Rev. Laurence Nelson officiated and burial took place in the Reeseville cemetery.
Mr. Seeman was a son of the late Detlef and Elizabeth Petersen Seeman and was born in Jackson county Nov. 15, 1869.  He had lived in the Green Island community for many years.  He is survived by one sister.  Preceding him in death were his parents; a brother, Carl, and a sister, Mrs. William Roe.

Forebear Friday – Detlef Seemann

Detlef Seemann and his brother Hans left their native Germany in 1853, looking for a place to relocate their family.  The brothers settled in Clinton county, Iowa, and the following year, their parents and siblings followed, as well as Detlef and Hans’ fiancees, sisters Maria and Elizabeth Petersen.  The extended family lived together for a few years, with Detlef and Elizabeth eventually buying land in Jackson county, just to the north, in Washington township.

Detlef died of “heart trouble” in 1899, and Elizabeth lived another 9 years, passing away in 1908 in Haileyville, Oklahoma.   She was initially buried there, but was moved to Reeseville cemetery in Jackson county, Iowa to be buried with her husband and other family members.  I do not know, at this time, why she was in Oklahoma.  Thomas B. Schultz, a descendant, wrote an excellent history of this family in 1990, entitled, “The American Descendants of Gottfried and Maria Schultz of Schleswig-Holstein Germany”.
Detlef and Elizabeth were the parents of nine children: John Henry, Anna Maria, Mary “Lena”, Peter, Louisa, Marx, Carl G. “Charlie”, Sarah Elizabeth, and Roseltha.

On a trip to Jackson and Clinton counties of Iowa, we located Reeseville cemetery, which sits on top of a hill, with a beautiful view of the surrounding country.  Except for the occasional sound of a passing vehicle on the road below, it’s an exceptionally peaceful and serene location.  Detlef and Elizabeth’s son Marx is also buried here, as well as other Seemanns whose connection is not yet certain.

Wordless Wednesday – Halloween, 1958