I just found more Kirschsteins. But now that I have a whole new line to follow, the local LDS library will be closed for the month of August. Things never progress as fast as we might like in genealogy, but this gives me more time to search other sources and then order microfilmed parish records to verify what I’ve found.

I have learned but not verified (UPDATE: now verified with the lovely marriage record above) that Friedrich Kirschstein and Florentine Braun, the parents of Bruno Kirschstein that I discovered last week, were married in Rawitsch on 20 Oct 1847.

I suspect there may be some other children born between 1848 and 1851 when Bruno arrives.

I think it’s interesting that there were no other Kirschsteins in that small village. Friedrich must have come from somewhere else and I have a few leads that I can pursue, but again I need those parish films. I have a good feeling that soon I’ll have more Kirschsteins than I can shake a stick at.

Friedrich’s wife, Florentine Braun, is surprisingly easy to find, despite the common last name. Fortunately, she and her family stayed put in that small village. She was baptized on 29 Dec 1814 in Rawitsch, with her parents listed as Carl Samuel Heinrich Braun and Johanna Juliana Trenkler (Trenckler). Johanna Juliana had three sisters. The Trenklers lived in Rawitsch for at least three generations before Johanna Juliana, marrying into other Rawitsch families.

The more I work with these European and Scandinavian records, I marvel at all eight of my great-grandparents. They all emigrated from seven different places (and six different countries) and yet they all ended up in Chicago:

How brave they each were to undertake such a monumental change! And without their daring, I wouldn’t be enjoying a privileged life in the United States.