Boy Do I Feel Silly

I've been pursuing a may-yet-turn-out-to-be-true-theory that I spawned in an effort to explain what I _thought_ was a glaring absence from my Johann T Family Register: Peter was the only adult kid from the children of Johann to have surviving children who wasn't in the register.

I _thought_. Turns out it's probably a typesetting/layout/editing error. The information is there; the line in the list of sections is missing.

The theory is straightforward: the missing Peter followed his half-uncle Peter to become a Holdeman Mennonite/CGCM/Church of God in Christ, Mennonite. His first wife was the foster daughter of half-uncle Peter. The second wife was a US Mennonite from the Ohio area (and there's active Holdemans there) whose first husband was an Unruh. The third wife was a US Mennonite from Oklahoma, and I think also from an area with a lot of Holdemans. For suitable definitions of "a lot". The net effect was negative feeling with the rest of Johann's descendants (problem with this thesis: I'm not entirely certain _which_ branch of Mennonite they are, if they stayed KG or became something else and I am so far a little too chicken to contact someone and ask (my primary contact having been excommunicated for quite a while, and is over 80 and I'm not sure what his health status is currently).

That's the theory. It was a great theory. And I found what sounds like a memoir written by Peter, currently in the Glenbow Archive. I've sent them an email to ask them if they will make me a copy or otherwise help me get access to its contents without traveling. It'll be interesting to see if anything comes of that request.

ETA: Sweet! In exchange for a telephoned credit card number, I should be received emailed copies of the document (37 pages, and the pictures are on the website already) soon. Very exciting! In related (ahem) news, I found a T. Family Chronicle, 1900 in Preservings, No. 18, June 2001, page 97. I will probably be quoting from that in a later blog entry.

Denomination of the Day: Swedenborgians

Technically, let's go with:

The general church's website is here: http://www.newchurch.org/

The wikipedia page is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Church_of_the_New_Jerusalem

Inevitably, I mention this not because this is my first encounter with Swedenborg (and it's hard to forget a name like that, at least for me), but because once again, in the course of innocently engaging in genealogy, I've stumbled across (fourth? fifth? about) cousins who participate in an unusual religion. And this isn't one of those mentioned in an obit things, either. This is, went to a college of the church and was a secretary for a sub-organization and etc. Not _quite_ as cool as the woman who wound up in charge of the Theosophists for a while, but very cool, nonetheless. (Speaking of whom, the latest update to naturalization information in ancestry.com handed me a whole bunch of information about D.A., including her maiden name, kids names and birth dates, etc.)

Bonus, extra denomination of the day (totally and completely unrelated to the above!):

Evangelical Missionary Church of Canada

This is from an obituary notice for someone so distantly related I'm not sure even I'm prepared to count it. But I thought it was interesting, as an illustration of what happens when assimilated descendants of (P)Russian Mennonites are trying to pick a religion and it's not going to be one of the old-school denominations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelical_Missionary_Church_of_Canada

A member church in Red Deer (which is how I ran across it):

http://www.crossroadschurch.ca/index.php

That's kind of nice: returning to their "cousins", in a round-a-bout and faith oriented way, given the denomination including the modern day descendants of Swiss Anabaptists who came to North America earlier.

It's easy to get confused about some of these Canadian Anabaptist denominations. Some of them get to the anabaptist position via Stone-Campbell. I find those the most tantalizing, as a possible explanation for how my grandmother met my grandfather. But I doubt anything will come of that theory. I kinda like the mail-order bride, theory.