Research update

I still have not received notification about the Trusinskis records arriving in Oakdale. I think that there will be some very interesting and useful information in those records. Their usefulness will be limited, however, because I think they are going to be primarily in Russian. It takes much longer for me to identify names and it is very, very difficult for me to gather much more information from them. *sigh*

I have received another communication from the gentleman from Germany. He is originally from Latvia, and, like my father and his family, left Latvia when he was very young. He has extensive knowledge of the Gangnus family line and it seems may have some that might overlap with some other areas in which I am researching. For example, he mentions an "Alexander Till" and his marriage to someone. I will be curious to find out more about this particular Till, because I have one that was born in the same year (Eugene Alexander Till) but I have specific records about him having another marriage at a preceding time. Maybe there was a second marriage or, more likely, it is some other Till. The Till line that I have amassed thus far is from Johann Samuel August Till who had 9 children. I've only established a line from one of those children! From that child (August Theodor Till) who had 11 children, I have found three who have been married and a couple who had died when they were young. Of those three marriages, I have only one that continues another generation. That one has 7 children all of which were married at some point.

My point is that there are a lot of Tills out there for which I have been unable to find information. So, who knows who this "Alexander Till" may be...

Speaking of Tills, I have a death record for August Theodor Tills second wife, Katharina Elisabeth Puls. The record lists her as being married, not widowed, so that means that August T. Till was still alive at that point! Also, it lists her birth place as Riga, so that is where I must look to find more Puls records. As a part of my research, I am trying to play closer attention to "witnesses" in birth records. If they appear, that means that they must still be alive, which helps me in establishing a death date for said individual at a later point.

Other than the obvious limitation of how far I can go back in time to find records, I am going to have to figure out how to go about finding when these Tills (and others) left Latvia for Germany and elsewhere... I really, really want to find a link to some Tills who are currently alive in Germany -as does my Dad! In fact, it seems as if that is the goal in which he is most interested.