Tragic, Sad, Depressed and Brave Female of the Month

Genealogy - Prompts from her blog
# 11 Category From The Accidental Genealogist. - Tragic, Sad, Depressed, Female. At the same time brave.

In Photo view above from left to right- Annie Seil in rear. Front row- Gustav Jaeschke and far right Elisabeth or Lizzie Seil Jaeschke. This photo above disturbs me to no end. Maybe you will understand why after I tell you the story about
Annie Seil and her mother Lizzie Seil.


I'd like to share the story of Lizzie Seil, the birth mother of my grandmother Annie W. Seil. Memories about Lizzie stays the most in the back of my mind and surfaces regularly as I write my Meyer family history. The category fits her figure in history well, because she was a brave lass and maybe her bravery failed at times and her life became sad, depressed and tragic.


Thoughts of her come now and then as I reflect on my interacting life with my children and their father.

Often in Thoughts of my father, I can't help but think of how his life was affected by the actions of Lizzie in her life.
The Gentleman in the middle row on the far left is Annies Husband, Herman H. Meyer. He is holding who I believe to be my father born 1918, If Lyle it would he be born 24 May 1913 . Looking at her husband and child is his wife Annie Seil a few people down to the right. Directly behind her is her grandfather August William Seil. On her other side is her step brother and front right of him is Anna Vogel Seil. I have cropped this picture yet another time. The occasion is unknown. Remind me to do a time line.


His father and mother had moved from Iowa to start a new farming life, on land of their own in Minnesota. That was one reasonI know for sure that he was raised away from the other relatives. I know he saw the others from Iowa occasionally, but just not as much as if he had lived in Iowa. He had a fondness and interest in all the Iowan family history. He had learned the hard way not to speak of it.

He and my mother, probably in agreement, t kept it private. Not much spoken, It may have been the german way. Or it may have been because of his grandmother Lizzie Seil's influence on every ones life. Especially on his mothers life. Anna Wilhelmina Seil Meyer and on his great grandfather August William and his wife Anna Vogel Seil.

I have written many of my blogs about my grandmother Anna Wilhelmina Seil, whom I never knew in person, only by stories and by the photos I have seen. I think she must have been a wonderful caring mother of him and his brother and a good wife for Herman. Just recently I mentioned while writing a post about a statement he made at the time I was planning my wedding date. He had hopefully asked me to consider January and then told me then that it was tradition among the family to set the wedding date for January. Thinking about this, while doing some research, I glanced back into some family records to see those who had followed this tradition in their first steps towards wedded bliss. I have made note of those I found and have seen a few for runners as possible the original trendsetters of the January marriages.

One of these maybe he knew about was his own Mother and father's marriage. His mother had married his father shortly before her eighteenth birthday in January 1911. [My father was born in 1918.]

I can't say for sure, but I think as far as his thoughts on the Meyer family in America goes, it starts with the birth of Anne Wilhelmina Seil in January of 1893 in the vicinity area of Farnhamville. Her birth might not have occurred in Iowa if her mother, Lizzie Seil had not been a brave young lass to come by herself and her baby to be to join her father in the flat plains of Iowa.

Lizzie bravely left her country of Himbergen, Uelzen, Luneburg in 1892 at a time that there was a dreadful sickness circulating in the European countries. In fact many ships had been detained at harbors due to the spread of the disease. Others died or were returned to their homelands. She and her unborn child were lucky and managed to continue on to Iowa.

She was a young lass born 1873 at Gross Thondorf, Himbergen, kreis Uelzen to a mother and father who maybe had married to legitimize her birth. They married 10.03.1872, and shortly after maybe about 1873 sometime, I suspect that her father left for America. I think so because he was naturalized by 1880 in Joliet Illinois. I am unsure if her fathers mother and father of Dahlenburg went with him when he set sail. [ I think his father had died there and just his mother went with him]

After he left she may have had other father figures in her life, Her mother had remarried in a few years to a person by name Carlsson who may have been Swedish or from northern Germany. She might have had some grandparents and cousins.

Sorry you will have to wait for More on Lizzie and the Meyer - Seil family in the next post.

Note: Further post about the information on Lizzies birth date and her parents marriage is coming up.

just me jo