My Newest PenPal, Maria Unrau

My story last week went over well with several of you, my long-time Friends/Roses. I don't want to wear you out, but there is another chapter to the saga.

I see that I called her Mrs. Unger last week (that's what I thought I heard over the phone). Yesterday I got her letter and the Money Order for the book, which I had just managed to get printed and bound last week. It arrived about noon, so I studied it over lunch, and was grateful that though she wrote in High German, she used Latin or English letters, so I didn't have to study the Gothic script all over again to make it out.

Interestingly enough, she told me more about herself and her ancestors. She was born a Friesen too, and gave me the names of her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, and the Friesen name goes up both her Dad's and her Mom's lines. She was curious to know where she fit in.

Well! That happens in my ancestral lines too! I've long held a theory that eventually, when I can go back another generation or two I'll discover that both sides have a common ancestor.

On Dad's side we go back 6 generations (7 counting me) to an Abraham von Riesen in Teigenhoff, Prussia, (b.1756). On Mom's side we go back 10 generations (counting me) to a Johan von Riesen (b.1724) in Stebbendorf, Prussia. (Prussia is now Poland). On an old map of Prussia, I found out some years ago that those two villages were only 7 miles apart.

I believe that back in the 1700s Mennonites were very willing to walk 7 miles to visit relatives - probably on a Sunday afternoon. So...since about 1999 or 2000 I have been collecting the earliest ancestors of others who know something of their Friesen roots. All to look for a clue that will bring my two Friesen lines together in one person.

In 2005 I had put together a book of these charts and all the others I had collected up to that time. There were 30 Friesen lines! So I called it, "Our Friesens & Assorted Friesens." Last winter I updated that to prepare to sell it from my genealogy website as an ebook.

Guess what, as I double-checked these Friesen lines in my GRANDMA database I found that some of those lines had discovered still earlier ancestors, and some of them were a match. So I combined them, and my 2021 edition now only has our two Friesen lines, plus 18 others. So the gap is growing more narrow!

Back to Mrs. Unrau; I answered her letter yesterday and took the book parcel to the post office to send to her. When I got home I phoned her and told to expect it in 7 business days, or next Monday or Tuesday. We had another long visit on the phone. I explained the above to her, and that when I checked for a Maria Friesen in my GRANDMA database, (names are entered according to the maiden name), I found 1048 of them!

(SIGH!) I knew it would take me many days, even weeks to check each one to see if that Maria had the same parents and grandparents as what she mentioned in her letter. So I asked her orally and in my letter to provide some dates. That would speed up my search.

Are you keen to get in on this research of Friesens? I recommend you go to: eBooks-Shop and buy the ebook edition of "Our Friesen & Assorted Friesens." Note, that you can do name searches of the book on your computer to zero in on a certain name. But if you choose to print out all the pages, it will fill a 2 inch binder!

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