- I thought you did big cycle tours every two years, on odd-numbered years only. Why a tour this year?
- Why are you posting this on "Stumbling" instead of on "Faint of Heart" (your cycle touring blog)?
When we were preparing for our 2019 France trip, we spun off a separate trip for this year to do a "Bike and Barge" with Brent's brother and niece. By the time the "Bike and Barge" plan fell apart, I had already told some long-lost cousins in Germany that I was coming to meet them in 2020 (an add-on to the Bike and Barge), so Brent agreed to a "bonus tour" this year to go meet my cousins.
When I decided to write this article, I had to decide where, exactly, to post it. I thought about "Faint of Heart", and I decided no, although meeting the cousins will happen on a cycle tour, it's not at all a post about cycle touring. I thought about posting it here on "Stumbling Around the Rockies", because there's definitely a lot of "stumbling" involved. I could, of course, start a new blog, "Stumbling Around Genealogy", but that would mean I'm going to write more articles about genealogy, and I probably won't do that. Since I've posted about stumbling around more than just the "Rockies" in this blog, I've decided this is where I would put it.
Anyway, on with the story of how a random stranger from the internet became a long-lost cousin.
Anyway, on with the story of how a random stranger from the internet became a long-lost cousin.
In 2018, thanks to my colleague, Cindy, I got interested in Genealogy and my family history. Then I discovered that "Germans from Russia" was a thing and I was hooked - I wanted to know as much as I could about these immigrants to North America (and other places) as all four of my sets of German great-grandparents were, apparently, from Russia. WHO KNEW!!?? (Well, except for almost everyone from my mom's side of the family, but... I digress).
I did a tremendous amount of research, and learned so much. I was able to trace some of my ancestors all the way back through Russia and to Germany, and created this beautiful (if I do say so myself) diagram of my family migrations, including some historical information about what was going on in the world during certain periods that triggered the migrations to Russia and then North America:
If you're really curious, you can see a PDF of the whole glorious thing here. I also created a "Me in the Middle" diagram showing the origins of my Germans from Russia ancestors (fanning out from, you guessed it, me, in the middle) that you can see here.
I hit a road block, though, on my father's maternal grandmother, pictured here with her family (she and her husband are in the middle of the photo, my grandmother sits to her left - on the right, of course, for those looking at the photo):
If you're really curious, you can see a PDF of the whole glorious thing here. I also created a "Me in the Middle" diagram showing the origins of my Germans from Russia ancestors (fanning out from, you guessed it, me, in the middle) that you can see here.
I hit a road block, though, on my father's maternal grandmother, pictured here with her family (she and her husband are in the middle of the photo, my grandmother sits to her left - on the right, of course, for those looking at the photo):
A lot of my research was done on Ancestry.ca, and through my cousin Jody's Ancestry tree, I found my great-grandma's name, Caroline Lagai. I also got copies of the genealogy research my mom had done in the 1990s - a set of handwritten pages (such painstaking work - wow). It showed great-grandma's name as Caroline Luggi in some places and Caroline Laggi in other places.
I knew that Caroline, and her husband, George Schneider, had come to Calgary from Crimea. I have discovered, as has every other descendant of Germans from Russia, that the records of our ancestors have gaping holes in them from times when they were lost, destroyed, are being withheld, or have not been translated into English, so that was where my information on Caroline ended.
I was endlessly vexed by Caroline Lagai/Luggi/Laggi. None of those names is even remotely German-sounding, and I could find absolutely nothing for any German people carrying any of those names. Every month or so I'd get a bug in my ear and I'd spend an hour or five researching like crazy for a clue to this woman's family, with no success.
Towards the end of 2018, I was poking around on LocateFamily.com and I found several German people with the last name Laggai. This wasn't an exact match with any of the variations I had for Caroline, but it was surely close enough to be very promising. I promptly fired off emails to all twelve, explaining who I was and that I was trying to find information on, and/or living relatives of, my great-grandmother. Naturally, five minutes after firing off those twelve emails I started checking for replies, but none came.
By the time I'd essentially given up on hearing back, in January of 2019, I received a letter from a German man named Guido Laggai (a son of one of the twelve people I'd written to). He told me that he was in contact with another family of the same name in the east of Germany and he introduced me to Dietmar Laggai. Guido and Dietmar told me that:
1) Guido has theorized that the Laggai family was originally Huguenot, and the last name had been La Quay in French;
2) While Guido's family (catholic) had remained in Germany, Dietmar's family (protestant) had also been in Russia, in fact, in Crimea!
I exchanged several letters with Guido and Dietmar. Dietmar theorized that his grandfather and my great-grandmother were siblings. I remained hopeful but unconvinced and suggested a DNA Test. I could almost see Dietmar's reaction from way across the pond - horror-stricken, and arms raised in a defensive gesture. I dropped the idea, and we continued to write, and research, with other available resources.
One invaluable tool that we had was what Dietmar calls the Mühlbergrolle. This is a larger-than-life printed family tree of Laggais (aka Laggey aka Laquai) that a family member named Heinz Mühlberger created by scouring the church records in Neuenweiler in Hanau:
1) Guido has theorized that the Laggai family was originally Huguenot, and the last name had been La Quay in French;
2) While Guido's family (catholic) had remained in Germany, Dietmar's family (protestant) had also been in Russia, in fact, in Crimea!
I exchanged several letters with Guido and Dietmar. Dietmar theorized that his grandfather and my great-grandmother were siblings. I remained hopeful but unconvinced and suggested a DNA Test. I could almost see Dietmar's reaction from way across the pond - horror-stricken, and arms raised in a defensive gesture. I dropped the idea, and we continued to write, and research, with other available resources.
One invaluable tool that we had was what Dietmar calls the Mühlbergrolle. This is a larger-than-life printed family tree of Laggais (aka Laggey aka Laquai) that a family member named Heinz Mühlberger created by scouring the church records in Neuenweiler in Hanau:
The Mühlbergrolle shows, way over on the bottom right-hand side, sons of Johann George Laggai. Unlike the other people on the tree, these sons show birth details but no other information. Through my research on FamilySearch.org, I found birth records for Laggais in Crimea where men with the names of these sons were listed as the father. This would explain why there were no further records in Germany for these sons - they all immigrated to Crimea and started their families there.
Unfortunately, the records from Crimea during those years are spotty. There are three Laggai birth records in Neusatz, Russia (Crimea) in 1884 and 1885 (to three of the sons), but no other records outside of those years. Caroline was born in 1888, and we don't know which year Dietmar's grandfather was born. The records from those years are either lost or destroyed.
Dietmar was told that his family had lived in a village called Kambary. From George and Karoline's immigration papers, I could see that they had been from a village called Awell, which was close to Kambary. Perhaps Karoline was from Kambary and moved to Awell when she married George? Or perhaps Dietmar's grandfather and Karoline were cousins, not siblings, and lived in different villages?
Now that we are going to meet these folks, it has gotten pretty real. I was very pleased one day to get a message from Dietmar suggesting a DNA test through Ancestry. Pleased, but also nervous. What if we were wrong about Karoline's name being Laggai? What if Karoline had been married before George, and Laggai had been a married name (she was something like five years older than him, so it was possible that she could have been widowed)? How would things play out if Ancestry said we are NOT related!? I had invested so much time and energy in researching the Laggai family, and connecting with Dietmar, I would have been pretty deflated if the results were negative. Dietmar sent in his DNA kit, and a week later I sent in mine. Not long after, Guido sent one in as well.
Well, the results for me and Dietmar have come back POSITIVE. Ancestry has declared us to be 4th-6th cousins. We are still waiting for the results on Guido, but it is pretty unlikely that we are not related.
Laggai is such an uncommon name that it has been a pretty big deal for all of us to have discovered one another. I'm sure that if I found some long-lost cousins through some of my less obscure lines, the discovery would have been met with much less enthusiasm. I can't wait to go to Germany and meet my long-lost cousins!
Re-told in German here.
Unfortunately, the records from Crimea during those years are spotty. There are three Laggai birth records in Neusatz, Russia (Crimea) in 1884 and 1885 (to three of the sons), but no other records outside of those years. Caroline was born in 1888, and we don't know which year Dietmar's grandfather was born. The records from those years are either lost or destroyed.
Dietmar was told that his family had lived in a village called Kambary. From George and Karoline's immigration papers, I could see that they had been from a village called Awell, which was close to Kambary. Perhaps Karoline was from Kambary and moved to Awell when she married George? Or perhaps Dietmar's grandfather and Karoline were cousins, not siblings, and lived in different villages?
Now that we are going to meet these folks, it has gotten pretty real. I was very pleased one day to get a message from Dietmar suggesting a DNA test through Ancestry. Pleased, but also nervous. What if we were wrong about Karoline's name being Laggai? What if Karoline had been married before George, and Laggai had been a married name (she was something like five years older than him, so it was possible that she could have been widowed)? How would things play out if Ancestry said we are NOT related!? I had invested so much time and energy in researching the Laggai family, and connecting with Dietmar, I would have been pretty deflated if the results were negative. Dietmar sent in his DNA kit, and a week later I sent in mine. Not long after, Guido sent one in as well.
Well, the results for me and Dietmar have come back POSITIVE. Ancestry has declared us to be 4th-6th cousins. We are still waiting for the results on Guido, but it is pretty unlikely that we are not related.
Laggai is such an uncommon name that it has been a pretty big deal for all of us to have discovered one another. I'm sure that if I found some long-lost cousins through some of my less obscure lines, the discovery would have been met with much less enthusiasm. I can't wait to go to Germany and meet my long-lost cousins!
Re-told in German here.
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