American Cemeteries Memorializing U.S. Soldiers

My research of the Christian Monath family has been an interesting yet time consuming, adventure!  Not that I am complaining, but maybe my husband has thoughts on this.  I spend too much time on the computer and driving to places to spend more time than I find information.  But that is research, right?

Last Friday he and I visited the Maryland State Archives.  After several hours on their database, we came home with about eight death certificates.  Yes, just eight.  There is a saying, all good things take time.

When adding the death certificate information to my database, I looked closer at my great uncle Augustus Monath's life.  I learned that his youngest son, Walter August Monath, died while serving in the   U. S. Army during the First World War. Needing to know more, I checked Ancestry.com and then did a Google search.  The search led me to a website that features records of approximately 200,000 U.S. servicemen who were killed or missing in action during World War 1, World War 2, and Korean Conflict and buried or memorialized on foreign soil.

Walter served as Sergeant in the U. S. Army, 19th Field Artillery Regiment, 5th Division and is buried in the St. Mihiel American Cemetery in the St. Mihiel American Cemetery, Thiaucourt, St. Mihiel, France.  His grave site is noted down to the row and plot. He was born in August of 1897, and killed in action on September 26, 1918.  

I came another step closer to learning about my Monath family. 

Social Media and Genealogy Research

I violated the one social media rule that I lived by when I worked, and it was regularly making updates to blogs.  My Monath family genealogy blog was severely neglected, and, honestly, I have reasonably sound excuses.

• After one false alarm and the real deal, we became grandparents to our 5th grandson.
• Helped two sons move into their new homes.
• Our home vegetable garden is now done for the season, and weeds pulled where they once rooted in my flower gardens.
• Most importantly of all, I am realizing that the Monath family descendants are slowly dying out and difficult to find.  

I began and started this project so often, and this past July got serious enough to stick with it.  While preparing my research list for a trip to the Maryland Archives, I took another look at the newspaper clippings (obituaries), and to my surprise found a living Monath descendant on Facebook.  So I sat and deliberated over 'do I or don't I contact this lady' and 'will I regret not contacting this person later'?

So, I will take a chance and hope that this person is also researching her family roots, and will contact me when she sees this picture that I found among my parents' photos.

This is one picture of my mom and dad's photographs that I thought was really cute!  On the back, the name Phillis (aka Phyllis) M. Monath is written with the date of 24 April 1938.  That is all that I knew for a long time.  Until today.

Using U. S. Federal Census reports and newspaper clippings that were found at the York County Heritage Trust, I am 99% sure that her name is Phyllis M. Monath-Emgee, daughter of William Wesley Monath and Mary Elizabeth Sullivan-Monath.  Grandparents would have been William H. Monath and Ida May Yingling.

So, I think that I will sit on this for a bit and hope that the lady who is on Facebook might see this and make the first move.  I by no means am posting this photograph for no other reason but to make a connection. 


Finding two bits of information, no matter how small or insignificant, makes for a satisfactory day of research.

Thanks for reading!

Psalm 90.12

"So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."

The Bible reference above was noted in the Death Church record for my g-g grandmother, Maria Monath in the last column of the page below.  I am not familiar enough with the ways of our German immigrants and am finding interesting things like this in my research.

The church record was found in a collection for the Trinity United Church of Christ, located at 3229 York Road in Manchester, Maryland (a.k.a. Zion Lutheran Church, 1760, for German Reformed and Lutheran congregations). 

As I continue to research my Monath family, I plan to continue to learn about this practice.  Should you have clues to this mystery, I would love to hear from you.  Just send me a quick email message. 

I hope to hear from you.

Sailing the Ocean Blue

 

 

In July 1852, the vessel Orleans arrived into a New York port with a crew and passengers, several of whom are my ancestors.  On one particular document, I found it interesting to learn that Christian was a man servant, perhaps to pay for his voyage to America.  (This is one of several loose ends that needs to be clarified.)

 

 

According to the documentation below Christian, his parents, and several siblings traveled to America.  I cannot read the first sibling, who was age 17 at that time.  When I began researching this family, I found evidence of a brother George and three sibling sisters, Elizabeth, Susanna, and Dorothea.  Again, this needs further research before I can go any further with this research.

  

 

 

 

Before I travel to New York, I hope to find answers to my questions at the Maryland State Archives.  Because, if what I found is true, the family largely lived in Baltimore, Maryland. 

 

 

So, many questions and loose ends need to be tied before I accept any of this as gospel.  I hope that social media will help connect me to families with connections to Johann Christoph Monath, Christian, and all his children.  So, I invite readers to comment on what you may know about this family.  My personal email is staubmk@gmail.com.  Hope to hear from someone.  Thank you for reading about this Monath journey.

 



From New York to Baltimore ...The How and Why

Welcome to my new blog, The Monaths.  Over the past few years, I dabbled off and on with this family, and now have the opportunity to dive right in to learn more:

• about their arrival to America.
• the why and how they ended up in Baltimore, Maryland.
• who might be still living descendants of this mysterious family.
• and to locate the holder of a large wooden wheel with names and pictures of my Monath relatives and ancestors that was at the last of the Monath reunions (1974 or 1975) that were held at Big Pipe Creek in Taneytown, Maryland.

I had clues that helped me to launch this journey: 

• according to the passenger list, the family arrived in the Port of New York on the ship, Orleans, dated 21 Jul 1852.  My ggg grandparents signed as Christoph (age 50) and Dorothea (age 50).  They brought with them three children - Christian (my gg grandfather who was 15), Dorothea (age 4), and one other name that is not clear (age 17).  I am finding others but am not 100% certain how they connect.
• Christian married twice - wife #1 Marie Catharine Landgruber/Landgarber/Landgraber (I am named for her), and wife #2 Catherine Krentzer. 

The names that I found connected to this family include:

• Warehime
• Wildasin
• Mang
• Ebert
• Metzger
• Ochse
• Hughes
• Beaver
• ...that is enough for now.

That being said, I appreciate new readers to my blog, information connecting me to more descendants and possible relatives of this family, and ideas on how to connect the dots.

I am on Facebook in a group specific to the Monaths. 

Thank you, everyone!!  I look forward to hearing from you.