How to begin the presentation of our family tree information?  Where to start?  The obvious choice would be Mom (Margaret Janet Dutcher Fluke) and then go back to Grandpa (Ray Woodruff Dutcher) and Grandma (Margaret Vollmer Holpp Dutcher), but for me it starts with Margaret’s mother, Rosa Schmitt Holpp.

I guess it’s because of the way that I began the process.  In 2015 I visited Mom and Dad and found that Mom was sorting family pictures into collections to give to the relevant people.  Among the photos was a collection of 19^th century portrait cards, pictures of my mother’s grandmother, great aunts, and uncle.  The pictures were identified in Grandma Margaret’s handwriting, but also some in Great Grandmother Rosa’s.  Rosa’s sisters Charlotte (Lottie), Amelie, and Julia all died after Mom was born, so she would have encountered them although I doubt they came to the Walnut Ave. house much with Grandma Dutcher in residence there.

I think maybe I vaguely recall seeing these pictures before but I didn’t make much of them at the time, just a curiosity.  Maybe you have to reach a certain age, or face the imminent loss of your parents to wish to know more about ancestors.  All I can say is that these pictures spoke to me that day.  Fortunately, Mom was willing to let me have them so that’s what started the quest.

The internet is a wonderful thing—it makes it possible to access information from the privacy of your own home.  I opened an Ancestry.com account and start searching for Rosa and her family.  Right off the bat I found them in the 1870 and 1880 census information.  I was able to give first names to Rosa’s parents Joseph Schmitt and Margaretha (Vollmer) and they all came alive.  The next breakthrough was finding the Schmitt family grave plot in Green-wood Cemetary in Brooklyn, NY.  There were names on the stone that did not fit into the family tree in an obvious way. Who were these people were and why they were buried with family members?

I’m going to lay out the family tree with as much of the supporting information presented as I can.  It’s hard to understand who a person was from the cold facts of date of birth, residence, and date of death but you have to start somewhere.  Just knowing and speaking their names means a lot.

I have family trees on Ancestry.com and also FamilySearch.org and will keep fleshing them out as I find new things.  There may be inaccuracies as I have likely made wrong assumptions along the way (there are a lot of people named Joseph Schmitt!!!) but I’m correcting them as I learn more.

I will make a post for each person with links between posts.  Each family will be identified by the father’s last name in the menu at the top of the page.  I suggest you start with Rosa Schmitt Holpp and see where you end up.