Since finding the Konzens in Lellig, Luxembourg, the three of us have only come up with more questions about the Konzens.  Such as are Catherine and Angela Susanna the children of Peter’s brother Wilhelm (born 1797)?  If so, where were they born and who was their mother and when did they come to the US?  We haven’t been able to find any records of their immigration (other than estimates that they gave census makers).

I’ll explain more about the Angela Susanna and Catherine mystery in my next posts, but I wrote a letter to the Catholic churches in Lellig and Herborn, Luxembourg, asking for more information about the Konzens and their descendants and ancestors.  I haven’t received a response from either of them, yet, but I’m still hopeful.  I’ve also ordered in a bunch more microfilms of records (civil and parish) in Lellig and Herborn in hopes of finding Angela Susanna and Catherine or Wilhelm and his family.  So far (and I have a bunch of films to still look through) we’ve only found some random Konzens and Kons – and they could be related, but since the records we’ve found them in don’t give any details about them except their name and the date of the event (birth, marriage, or death).

However, we have found some more information on Elisabeth Konzen (daughter of Theodore Konzen & Catherine Scholer and sister of Peter Konzen).  Paula – who is the queen of web searches – found a link for Elisabeth on a German genealogy site http://gedbas.genealogy.net/datenblatt.jsp?nr=1029977294.  There’s a family tree entered for Elisabeth on the site and it says that she married Matthias Michels, had eight kids, and then died in Trierweiler, Germany.  The site continues to list descendants of most of Elisabeth’s children.  I’ll be adding this to the blog’s family tree (once I finish with our Konzens) and hopefully we’ll make contact with Elisabeth’s descendants one day.

I’ve ordered microfilms of parish records for Trierweiler in hopes of finding more information on the Konzens – even if it’s just records for Elisabeth’s kids and their families.

Peter Konzen’s parents are Theodore Konzen and Catherine Schuler/Scholer/Scholersch and they were married in Lellig on January 28, 1778.

Theodore and Catherine had seven children that we’ve found in parish records so far.  The first child was Wilhelm Konzen was born March 17, 1783 in Lellig and then Peter Konzen born November 15, 1784 in Manternach, Luxembourg (a town next to Lellig).  Next, Elisabeth Konzen was born January 21, 1787 in Lellig and our Peter Konzen was born on April 28, 1789 in Lellig.

On January 14, 1794, Joannes Konzen was born in Lellig and he died on July 7, 1796 in Lellig.  A baby girl (her name looks like Marie on the record) Konzen was born on July 8, 1795, in Lellig and she died there on the same day.  Then another Wilhelm Konzen was born on April 23, 1797 in Lellig.  We’re assuming that the first Peter (born in 1784) and the first Wilhelm (born in 1783) both died before 1789 and 1797, respectively.  It would explain why Catherine and Theodore named two of their children Peter and Wilhelm since it was a common practice to name during that time period to name children after one of their recently deceased children.

This Lellig information combined with the Kruchten records and family group sheets has led us to believe that Angela Susanna and Catherine Konzen were children of Wilhelm (born in 1797).  We’re hoping to find some proof of that soon!

Here are the rest of the Lellig and Manternach birth and death records:

Sorry, it’s taken me awhile to write a new post, I’ve been caught up in our Konzen search.  So some more news about the Konzen search.

Michelle, Paula, and I have been hard at work attempting to unravel the mystery of the Konzens.  Sometimes we start thinking that it shouldn’t be this hard to find them and when we are far past frustrated we – well, maybe it’s just me – start throwing around crazy theories to explain why our Konzens are so hard to find.  Some of my favorite theories are that the Konzens must have been running from the law, they were trying to thwart the efforts of their future descendants, or that they never stayed in one place for more than one generation.

In the microfilms of Kruchten’s parish records, we found out that Mathias (we’d thought he must have been one of their kids since he arrived on the same ship as Peter, Theresa, and Theodore’s family) was a child of Peter and Theresa Konzen.  We also found three more children of Peter and Theresa – Marie, Anton, and Margaretha.  At first, we’d believed that Marie was Catherine because their birthdates were so close, but then we couldn’t also find a record for Angela Susanna.  So Michelle wrote to the Catholic Church in Kruchten and they sent her some family group sheets.

According to the family group sheets (which were compiled from parish records), Peter and Theresa only had six kids – Johann Mathias, Theodore, Joannes, Margaretha, Marie, and Anton – and Marie and Anton died in Kruchten.  So Catherine and Angela Susanna are not children of Peter and Theresa, as Michelle, Paula, and I – along with many other people – had thought.

This family group sheet page shows Peter and Theresa’s children and their son Theodore’s family.

 We’d heard before that Angela Susanna may have been born in Ralingen or Forhen, Germany.  I searched through the Ralingen microfilm of parish records (years 1712-1900) and found some Konz/Konns/Kuns/Konzens named Angela, Susanna, and Catherine that could possibly be our Angela Susanna and Catherine, but we don’t think those baptism records are enough proof to make us believe that those Konzens are Angela Susanna and Catherine.  But we might eventually find more proof for those people.

Michelle searched through a film of a Fohren family book, but she didn’t find Angela or Catherine either.  I’ll let you know about some more developments soon!

Here are some more pages from the Kruchten family book:

Pictures of the Kruchten catholic church.

The Kauth/Kout Family – Margaretha Konzen’s husband Mathias’s family.

Margaretha Konzen & Mathias Kauth/Kout and their children.

The first page of Theresa Wolff Konzen’s family – her parents are Karl Wolff & Margaretha Muller/Schmitz.

The second page of Theresa’s family. It says that Theresa’s sister Maria Theresa was also married to Peter Konzen, but that’s a mistake and it doesn’t show it on the Konzen page.

Recently, Michelle, Paula, and I decided to further our Konzen search by ordering some German microfilms of parish records through the LDS Family Search center.  We ordered films for Kruchten, Konzen, Ralingen, and Fohren, Germany.  So far, I’ve gone through the Kruchten film searching for more records of Theresa, Peter, and their families.  I’ve found a number of records for Kouts and Wolffs and a baptism record for Johan Mathias Konzen.  According to the record, Johan Mathias is the son of Peter & Theresa and his birth date matches up with the information we have on the Mathias Konzen we’ve suspected of being another of Peter & Theresa’s kids. 

The baptism record for Johan Mathias Konzen

Unfortunately, we still haven’t found any records for Angela Susanna (sometimes known as Margarthe) Konzen being a child of Peter & Theresa.  But, we haven’t given up the search.  And now that we have documentation showing that Mathias is the son of Peter & Theresa, it seems even more likely that Angela is also their child.  If Peter & Theresa would name one of their children Johan Mathias and another one Joannes (my great great grandfather) – so they basically named two of their sons John – then it seems very likely that they could have one daughter named Margaretha and one named Angela Margarethe or Margarethe Angela. 

Michelle, Paula, and I probably won’t ever stop trying to prove that Angela is Peter & Theresa’s daughter even if some DNA testing – or even body exhumation – ends up being involved : )

While scouring the Kruchten records for Angela, I came across two baptism records for children of Mathias Konzen and Catherine (or Anna Catherine) Schaetz.  Mathias & Catherine are not Peter’s parents since since (according to his marriage record) his parents are Theodore Konzen and Catherine Schuler.  Mathias’s last name is not obviously Konzen from looking at those baptism records, but in Peter & Theresa’s son Johan Mathias’s baptism record, one of his sponsors is Catherine Schaetz-Konzen which confirms that Catherine Schaetz’s husband Mathias’s last name is Konzen.  So Mathias Konzen might be Peter’s uncle and his children Peter (1781) and Catherine (1791) would be Peter’s cousins.

The baptism record for Peter Konzen son of Mathias Konzen and Anna Catherine Schaetz

The baptism record for Catherine Konzen daughter of Mathias Konzen and Catherine Schaetz

We’ve also discovered that Theresa’s sister Anne Marie Wolff married Cornelius Sondag in Kruchten on Feb 22, 1810.  Anne Marie and Cornelius had seven children (that we know of): Anne Marie (born 1821), Franciscus (born 1823), Matthias (born 1825), Marie (born 1826), Carolus Matt (born 1829), Wilhelmus (born 1832), and Peter (born 1835).

Anne Marie Wolff and Cornelius Sondag's marriage record

Anne Marie and Theresa are both children of Charles Wolff and M.Catherine Muller.

I also noticed while going through the Kruchten records that some of the Kouts were from Mettendorf where John Konzen’s wife Catherine Pitz was from.  It seems that the Konzens are all even more related than we thought.  I’m currently trying to make mini family trees for the Kouts and Wolffs from the records so we can figure out how all the Kout and Wolff families in Kruchten are related to each other.

I haven’t finished going through the Kruchten records and we haven’t started on the Konzen, Ralingen, Fohren, or Oberbettingen microfilms yet so you never know what we’ll come up with!  I better get back to organizing the Kruchten records, but I’ll make sure to keep in touch about our progress with the Konzens.

So far this is what my genealogy buddies and I have found out about Peter and Theresa Konzen.  In 1815, Peter Konzen (born in 1789) married Theresa Wolff (born in 1789) in Kruchten, Germany.  They had at least 5 children: Margaretha (born Aug 1820), Theodore (born 2 Feb 1823), John (born 1825), Anton (born 29 June 1828, died 27 Jan 1829), and Maria Catherine (born 2 Feb 1829).  According to Theodore’s baptism record, Peter & Theresa were tenant farmers for Theodore Buchholt of Giesdorff and Anna Wolff of Kruchten.

We also believe Angela Susanna Konzen (born Feb 1822), the wife of Peter Hansen, to be another of Peter and Theresa Konzen’s children, but we have not been able to find a record of her birth, yet.  Vernon Auderer wrote some books about Peter and Theresa’s children and descendants and he also came to believe that Angela was their child.  However, Vernon doesn’t remember how or why he came to that conclusion.

The three of us also think that Mathias Konzen (born June 1818, died 10 Oct 1900) is a possible child of Peter and Theresa.  Mathias came to America on the same ship as Peter and Theresa and their son Theodore’s family.  Then he temporarily settled in Dubuque County, Iowa, where Peter and Theresa, Theodore, John, Angela, and Catherine settled.  Mathias probably moved to Chickasaw County, Iowa, in the same time period as John.  And later, Mathias, John, and Margaretha are all next to each other on the 1860 census.

It’s been harder than you would imagine it to be for Michelle, Paula, and I to find information on our Konzen relatives.  I think modern day con men could learn a few lessons from the Konzens about not leaving a clear trail to their past for anyone to follow.  A few times during our research, I’ve mentally thrown my arms up in the air and decided that our Konzens were obviously hiding from something because they made themselves so hard for us to trace!  I don’t actually think that’s what is going on, but the Konzens really didn’t make any of this easy for us.

If anyone has any information on the Konzens – or any questions, please let me know.