name: Elan Carman
death date: 22 Jun 1866
death place: Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
gender: Male
race: White
death age: 74 years
birthplace: Philadelphia
marital status: Married
occupation: Labourer
street address: Huber Street above Montg.
place of residence: Philadelphia 20th Ward
cemetery: American Mechanics Cemetery
burial place: Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
burial date: 25 Jun 1866

Being the youngest in my family I am sensitive about telling family stories accurately. Growing up it always seemed that everything happened before I was born or was old enough to remember, so everyone else in the room remembered the story better than I did.  So, while I enjoy reporting facts and finds on this blog, I have for the most part avoided telling stories about my family history. I do not want to get it wrong.

I’ve realized however that I do hold some things in my head that possibly no one else still alive knows. Writing family history is in some ways an attempt at immortality for our ancestors. Even if what I remember is not entirely accurate, I can share my imperfect memories of my family and through that they might live on a little longer before fading into that obscurity to which we all will inevitably succumb.

In that spirit, I am going to share what my grandmother told me about the picture below which happens to be my favorite photograph of her. She told me this story many years ago, so my telling is in my words not hers.

My grandmother, Naomi Carman (left) & best friend Marie, 1922

My grandmother and her best friend Marie were hanging out in their neighborhood in Philadelphia. Two young men happened by. They were in a musical group and had their instruments with them. Someone had the idea that it would be fun to take a photo of my grandmom and Marie posing with the instruments. And why not wear the young mens’ hats as well? My grandmother laughed as she told me this story, saying that neither she nor Marie had any idea how to play. This story and the photo gave me a glimpse in to a happiness I did not always see in my grandmother. And looking at that smile, how could this not be my favorite photo of her?

Here’s something I found about Elon Carman (b1829).  I don’t know how/if this Elon is related to my family.

From The Genealogy of the Sharpless family p1217 (1882):  Thomas Elwood Farra was married to Katie Carman in Philadelphia in 1883. She was the daughter of Elon Carman and Mary Lowry.

Not much, but Mary Lowry is new to me, and this will help me track them all down in the census, which I’ve had a fair start at. More on those findings later.

In case you haven’t come across it, the Internet Archive has many old books digitized which may be of interest to genealogists. Their related Open Library site has a “search inside” books option as well. (Warning: it defaults to an “OR” search and I can’t figure out how to get it to search using “AND”; this means if you search for Elon Carman you get matches for Elon College and matches for Carman where there’s no Elon) (Disclaimer: I found the Genealogy of the Sharpless Family via a web search on another site and later searched the title on Internet Archive to find it there)

Elon and Catherine Carman had three children. My great-grandfather Joseph and his brother Jacob survived into adulthood. Their sister Caroline did not. Elon’s Declaration for Pension (1910) listed the three of them, with the word living after Joseph and Jacob and dead after Caroline. Census searches indicated that Caroline probably died sometime between 1870 and 1880, at a young age. She was born in 1869.

Recently, I discovered Caroline’s death certificate. She died in 1872. She was only 2 1/2 years old.

I am always struck by how common death in childhood used to be when I find these relatives of mine who didn’t make it to adulthood, and how fortunate we are that medicine has progressed so much that such deaths are now rare.

This week I am going to highlight someone who is not really related to me, but I am fascinated by the name. Maria Sara Knieriemen was the wife of my first cousin five times removed. (My computer program, TMG, figured that out for me). I had never heard of this name before, so when her marriage to David Horneff on January 7, 1845 showed up in my genealogy this week, I thought I would look into it.

Like many names, Knieriemen has many variant spellings. The Knierman DNA Surname project includes these variants in their project: Knearem, Knerien, Kniereman, Knieriemen, Knierim, Knierinm, Knierman, Knireman, Nearman, Niermann. In their description of the origin they state: “The German word Knerem is defined as a shoemakers’ strap or stirrup, a cobbler, Knieriemen.”

A search on Knieriemen also brought up the Ancestry surname page. They didn’t have a meaning for Knieriemen, but they did have some other statistics. In 1920, there weren’t very many Knieriemen households in the United States, with 3 each in Ohio and Indiana, 2 in New Jersey and 1 in Maryland. Places of origin gathered from the New York Passengers Lists shows they were from Germany. In the United States in 1880 they were farmers, and there was one Cobanus Knieriemen who fought for the Union in the Civil War.

Maria Sara Knieriemen was born about 1818 and was the daughter of Conrad Knieriemen and Katharina Albrecht. She married David Horneff in Otterberg, Bavaria.