“The old lady”  has barely come up for air!! I’ve begun research on a family with (so far) little information. I just thought I might put a smile on your face when I announce the surnames. I’ve been working with FINGERLE and a daughter married William TOOTHAKER. At first, I thought I was seeing a misprint. No, these are not individuals in my Old German Baptist Brethren “forest of families.”

This journey started because one of my Brubaker cousins adopted a child with the surname “Fingerle” but changed his name with the adoption. “The old lady”  was curious and never dreamed the search for information would require hours of searching. You ask why I bother? I love the challenge of finding information that may have eluded other researchers (or maybe “they” just didn’t try to find documentation).

(The preceding two paragraphs published at 7:40 PM.)

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Yes, eleven PM and I can’t walk away from the computer. I’m weeping with joy because the struggle to find and document “Fingerle” information brought me right back to the Frantz family. It is uncanny how there’s a “Frantz wife” in every surname associated with the Old German Baptist Brethren (faith and church). To make a point: I do research systematically. I started with the oldest child for search and documentation; twelve children with three wives. The last one to capture my attention, the next to youngest son, took me back to a second-cousin-three-times-removed. Even more precious: That orphan young man was in the home of the grandparents of the man who introduced me to my Frantz ancestry and my Old German Baptist cousins.  ~~~~ I’m so blessed!!