October Update

I think I've mentioned that my current goal is the find all the census records of all the Stembel family members and enter the information into my family database.  I made a spreadsheet of all the major family members showing which censuses they were alive for.  When I find that record I show it in the spreadsheet.

I figure there are 870 family members so far and each was alive for an average of 5 censuses, that means I have to find over 4,000 census records.  Since Ancestry.com has all the records online I can do all the research at home (in my pajamas if I choose!).  I think I'm about 45% done, so I've got at lot more work to do, but even so I now have more information than I had when I wrote the family history that is on the Internet (at http://familyhistory.stembel.org/), so I've begun rewriting some of the chapters.  I began with a section of Henry Stembel's chapter where I had made a gross mistake (what are the chances of there being TWO William H. Protzmans, both born the same year, living in the Dayton, Ohio, area?  Pretty slim I would say, but of course there were two, and of course I picked the wrong one to write about originally. That has been corrected).

Don't be surprised if the website looks a little different in the future. I like to write my own HTML code so that's why it looks so plain.  I think it's time for me to learn some new HTML tricks and improve the way it looks.  Then again, maybe this old dog is too old to learn new tricks.  We'll see.

Comments

[Trakker]

Thanks for the information, Paul. Those dates confirms the dates I have for his stay in Des Moines. He moved to Chicago in 1905.

[Paul Hickey]

Dear Stembels,
Great history. I am Paul Hickey and I am from Des Moines, Iowa.
A Clarence P. Stembel and his wife Marion L.
Stembel claimed a mortgage of $3200 in March of 1901 that is in my home's abstract. The property was sold again in 1905.
Clarence worked as a supervisor or depot manager for the Chicago Great Western Railroad terminal here in Des Moines from what I gathered and I believe he built my house.
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