Karn Genealogy Archives -

My wife posted the above photo from Ancestry.com on my Facebook time line yesterday and described my status as being genealogical heaven. She was correct and her Valentine’s Day gift to me was the reason.

Probably a year or more ago through Ancestry, we found the marriage of my great-grandfather Henry Karn. He married Pauline Hechler in Brooklyn New York in May of 1886. We never got around to ordering the certificate from the city though. The hope was that his parents names would be listed on the certificate. The only thing I knew was his father’s name on his death certificate was listed as Andrew.

As far as I knew Henry came to the US from Hesse Germany in 1882 by himself. In the 1890s he was in the Philadelphia area and by 1895 he was living in Bridgeboro NJ. I have never found any Andrew Karn in any Federal Census in either the Philadelphia or New York areas.

A Valentines Day’s Gift leads to Karn Genealogy Discoveries

Anyway, for Valentine’s Day, my wife contacted a researcher in New York and he went to the City Archives and got the certificate. To our surprise,his parents were listed. His father’s was not Andrew, it was Kaspar! His mother’s name was Katherine Sohl.

Edward Researches on Ancetry.com

On Thursday I was busy because we were picking up Oliver and then taking him and Zoe to play bingo at our elementary school. Sometime later that evening, I discovered a birth certificate on Ancestry among the Hesse Lutheran Church records. It was for a Peter Karn born in 1872. His parents were listed as Kasper and Katerina Elisabeth Sohls Karn. He was Henry’s brother!

A few more minutes of searching revealed a second brother named Andreas. Andreas was born in 1875 . Both of the brothers were born in Oberaula, in Hesse. Next I found the children of Peter and Andreas. Peter had three girls Katherina Elizabeth, Anna Barbara and Martha Pauline.

Andreas had only one child listed in the database. A daughter Anna was born in 1906. Sadly, she died in 1907. Andreas died a year later in 1908.

The database, which had all this information, only covers births until 1901. I haven’t been able to find any of the children of Barbara who married Heinrich Moller or Katherina who married Johannes Braun in 1919 and then William Seiple in 1924.

The Research Leads to Ancestors in Oberaula Hesse in the Early 1800s

The final find was the death certificate of mother Katherina Elisabeth, Kasper’s wife. Katherina was born in 1838 and her parents were Johannes Sohl and Anna Maria Roth. While I have not found any death certificates for Johannes or Anna, based on Katherina’s birth year, they would have been born in the early 1800s.

So thanks to my wife and Ancestry.com in two days I went from knowing only my great grandfather came from Hesse Germany to knowing who his parents and at least two of his siblings were and where they lived in Hesse! Now that I know that my roots go into the early 1800s in Oberaula, I can do some more online searching using German websites. Wish me luck!

Here is a link to Oberaula with some interesting pictures of my ancestors homeland.

A few weeks ago, my daughter Elizabeth went to Target and when she checked out the cashier, an older gentleman, asked her for identification, since she was using her family team member discount card. After he checked the name, she thought he said “Karn, my mother’s maiden name was Karn”. When she came home and told us what he said, my wife and I couldn’t figure out the family connection. With not many Karn’s around the area, we knew he had to be related, but there was no one that we knew of who could be his mother! We needed to find out!!

The only way it would work is if he actually said that his grandmother’s maiden name was Karn! In that case his grandmother was probably Emma Karn, my grandfather’s sister. Emma married Fred Neuman and they lived on Creek Road in Delran. They were actually the next-door neighbors of my long-time boss Wayne Lippincott! Emma and Fred had three children two duaghters and one son, Fred. Since the name of the cashier was Fred, it was a good bet that the above case was true!! Fred and I often talk at the check out and he calls me “Young fella” telling him once that I’m old too, he said – but not as old as me and he is right, I’m ten years his junior!

Anyway a few days later, I went into the store and sure enough when we talked he said that he had told my daughter his grandmother’s maiden name was Karn, and she was Emma Rose Neuman!!

It’s really cool to connect with that side of my father’s family, because I never knew them. My grandfather, born in 1898, was the youngest of the five children of Henry and Pauline Karn. The oldest child Harry was born in 1888, followed by Emma born in 1890, Anna in 1891, and Charles in 1894. I don’t remember any of them well, including my grandfather who died in 1953. Of that side of his family my father was the closest to the children of Charles – Gloria and Charles. I do believe that we also visited Anna and my mother amd father were friendly with her daughters. But we were estranged from Harry and his children as well as Fred and Emma. One of causes of the estrangement between the family and Harry, I believe was, that my grandmother would not let Harry in to see my grandfather after one of his heart attacks. Another cause involved Fred and Emma, I always heard the story that the family was mad at them because they got money from the PSE&G easement that went across the family land on Creek Road. Ha – it’s many times about the money!

Anyway, I am looking forward to sitting down with Fred after the holidays and talking about his family. I hope that he can identify folks in some of the family pictures that I have as I don’t even know what Emma looks like!! Bottom line it’s a small world!