Marriage Redone

I had a poor copy of a marriage return from New Jersey for Newark in 1888.  Viewing the microfilm at the Archives in Trenton was no better.  The information that I really wanted was the birthplace of the groom and his parents.  My copy looked like this:

Some original records are kept onsite in the manuscripts area, currently open in the afternoons only.

The staff was able to find the original blue marriage return and copy it for me.  It's a much better reproduction than what is on microfilm.  The place of birth now looks like this:

This looks like Sachsen.  I have more work to do to discover the area within Sachsen and possible records.

As a bonus, the back of the marriage return contains signatures of the bride and groom.  The back of the document is not microfilmed and can only be obtained from the manuscripts room.

The marriage itself did not last the year.  Bridge and groom separated in November of 1888.  The details of the divorce will be in an upcoming post.

More Relatives

My father's DNA relative finder results grew this morning at 23andme to 419.  He has several predicted 4th and 5th cousins, while my mother and I have mostly distant relations.

I can compare my genetic matches with both parents now to see which parent's tree holds the common ancestor.  There are still some people whose DNA I share, but neither parent matches.

Paternal Distant Relative Matches

My father's relative finder results seem to be partially complete at 23andme.com.  He has only 142 matches.  For comparison, my mother and I have over 1000 distant relatives in the database.  Ironically, I have only a few generations documented on my mother's lines, but so much more on my father's lines.

There are several connections who have extensive genealogies and are willing to comb over our trees to search for a common ancestor.  These results have shown me that I have so much more paper documentation to discover.

Genetic matches for David Lutter in the 23andme database.