I have a LOT of family group sheets. But until about a year ago, I had never seen family group sheets with footnotes! What a wonderful idea! I’m always wondering where a certain piece of information came from, but I don’t always have my software with me. So I’ve been working diligently to update my group sheets to have footnotes.
I have a group sheet for Andrew Dabestein and Alvina Carsten – my husband’s great-great grandparents. On this group sheet, I have 6 children listed, complete with dates of birth and dates of death and burial locations. The only problem is that I have 1 sibling that I cannot find a SINGLE source for! He is not listed in my genealogy software or on my tree in Ancestry. He only exists on my group sheet.
I have Hans Dabelstein b. 27 Dec. 1881, d. 6 Mar. 1903 buried in Concordia Cemetery (where most of the family is buried) in Chicago. He would be the 2nd child out of 6. I have no idea where this information came from.
He is not in a single family census record – perhaps because of the missing 1890 census records. In the 1910 census, it says that Alvina had 5 children and 4 were still living. If Hans really belongs to this family, she would have had 6 children by 1910.
If the date of birth is correct, he would have immigrated with his family in 1883, but I only find a record for his parents and older brother. Where did the date of birth come from? It’s pretty specific! I have found the Cook County birth certificates for the younger 4 children. But if Hans was born in 1881, he would have been born in Germany, so no help there.
I can confirm the date of death in the online Illinois Death Index, but that in no way connects him to this family. And how do I know he’s buried in Concordia? None of this family is listed in Find-a-grave. He is not listed (that I can find) when I explore the death certificates available at the Cook County Genealogy Web site.
This one really is driving me mad!
