The Search For Justina Continues

My great-grandmother’s birthplace and therefore the identity of her parents and ancestors will remain shrouded in mystery for a while longer. After a second day spent searching through the documents at the National Archives in Washington, DC, I am no closer to determining when and where she entered the U.S.

Part of that is because her date of immigration is a moving target. I mentioned in my earlier post that the 1920 Census listed her year of immigration as 1889, two years prior to what we had originally thought.

The 1910 Census lists her as coming to the U.S. in 1886, three earlier than that. The archivist in the library of the Archives said this is not unusual at all and to go by the date on the earlier census, since it was closer to the actual date. I searched the 1900 Census data and here is where I ran into problems.

Since Oklahoma was not a state then, its census data is not as searchable on the ancestryintitution.com website. Therefore, delving into the microfilm is required, using the Soundex Coding System to locate surnames.

The system probably looked better on the cocktail napkin it was drafted on but that was before the census officials got drunk and spilled beer on it, thus rendering their notes illegible. The next morning they tried to recreate the system through hangover-addled minds and this is the convoluted process of indexing family names they devised.

To find your ancestors, you have to reduce their surname to a code. It starts with the first letter of the name and then reduces the rest to a three-digit number. For example, ‘Keil’ becomes K400, ‘Dick’ is D200, and ‘Goeringer’ is G652.

Which begs the question: What’s wrong with just alphabetizing them?

Apparently, the good ol’ alphabet which is more than sufficient for everyone else in the country was too much trouble for the census officials. The Soundex system is based on the say a surname sounds, so researchers can locate names that may have been recorded under a different spelling, like BROWN and BROWNE. According to this system, ‘Keil’ sounds like ‘Kelley’ or ‘Kimmel’, ‘Dick’ sounds like ‘Dukes’ and ‘Goeringer’ sounds like ‘Greenworth’. It does make it easier to find alternate spellings, but much more difficult to find the names with specific spelling.

(By the way, Jason, there were a lot of Kimmels in Oklahoma territory in 1900.)

But the code system is only part of the nightmare. Each family’s information is recorded on a separate file card with the code written in the upper left corner. Even here within a single code such as K400, the much more efficient alphabetic order is eschewed. There is no rhyme or reason to the order in which the cards were transferred to the microfilm. It’s as if the census bureau officials stacked the cards together and shuffled them before the feeding them through the microfilm recorder. Some names that don’t even come close to sounding like the others of the same code are mixed in.

(Marla, 81 year-old Jacob Swartz was living in Washita County in 1900.)

(FYI, Carol. Abraham Balzer and his young wife Agnes were also living in Washita County that year.)

And the nightmare continues. On some of the census bureau’s data lists, officials made notations (for whatever reasons) by scribbling numbers and symbols over the family surname! This practice essentially renders the entries illegible. It’s not as if there was plenty of room in the left margins next to the children’s names.

This ludicrous system may be why I could not locate any of my relatives that I know were living in Oklahoma in 1900. The 1910 data show George and Justina had two children over the age of 10 and lists their birthplace as Oklahoma. Peace Lutheran Church in Bessie was established in 1893 and its archives clearly list George Frederick Dick as a founding member as well as a number of Goeringers.

So why aren’t they on the 1900 Census? Washita County may have been very rural at that time but it was hardly overlooked with half a dozen enumerative districts established between the Cloud Chief and Union townships.

The day was not a total loss. I was able to ascertain that Justina did not enter the country by way of Baltimore, Boston, Canada, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia or San Francisco. It’s very likely that she arrived in Galveston but those records are incomplete. Don’t blame it on the hurricane though. She did her own brand of damage in 1900 so look to the sea captains with illegible handwriting and lax attitudes about record keeping. They are the reason there are very few records between 1871 and 1894, the time period Justina arrived.

(Since 'Keil' is close to 'Keim', Adam, I noticed quite a few of your ancestors coming to New York each year. They could've got together and booked the Queen Mary.)

There is another disturbing aspect that may not be the fault of the census bureau officials and their hatred of the ever-pesky alphabet. I cannot find Justina’s brother Conrad, his wife Sophie or their son Phillip in any of the U.S. Census from 1910 to 1930. It’s as if they never existed.

Family of George Frederick Dick

Back row (L-R) Amelia, Emil, Hanna, Herman

Front row (L-R) Hulda, Justina Keil Dick (wife), Mary (on lap), Friederich (father), Mary Elizabeth (mother), George Frederick, Sam, Freda

(Friederich and Mary Elizabeth are my great-great-grandparents!)

For now, great-grandmother Justina’s origins remain obscured and nearly all leads have dried up. I hope that something will turn up in the future that will allow me to continue my search.

The Search for Justina - National Archives

After our visit to the National Archives last week, Mom and I felt empowered enough to search a branch of our family tree about which we know so little. My great-grandmother Justina Keil was one of many Germans who lived in Russia before immigrating to the United States.

My great-grandparents George Frederick and Justina (Keil) Dick

When Catherine the Great (a German princess) rose to power, she encouraged Germans to settle in Russia. The Germans did by setting up townships and schools that were more advanced than what the Russians had at that time.

After her death, the political environment deteriorated for the Germans so they began to move westward to the United States in search of a better life, i.e. an unoppressed one. Nearly all of my ancestors were among those Germans that settled in Russia before immigrating here.


My great-grandmother Justina came to the U.S. when she was a mere whisp of a girl of sixteen. She traveled with her brother Conrad, his wife Sophie and their infant son Phillip. When they left, Justina's mother told her that she was dead to her.


They never saw her again.


Now the question is: When and where did they arrive? I went to the National Archives to find the answers. The entrance for researchers is on Pennsylvania Avenue across the street from the U.S. Navy Memorial. If you want to see the Declaration of Independance, the Bill of Rights, etc. you enter through the south entrance on Independence Avenue. I was issued a temporary badge signifying that I was ther doing research.


The amount of information stored here is overwhelming. I started with the documents of immigrants arriving at the port of New York from the records of the U.S. Customs Service, 1820-1897. There is a CD-Rom of Russians to America from 1850-1896. There are also several volumes of a printed series: Migration from the Russian Empire: Lists of Passengers Arriving at the Port of New York.


Justina apparently did not come to America via New York.


I turned to Ancestry.com which offers their services for free within the National Archives and Records Administration building. There I found her on the 1920 Census in Washita County, Oklahoma. I was surprised to find the year of her immigration to be 1889. We thought it was 1891.




Maybe she told the family it was '91 to knock a couple of years off of her age? The librarian in the Geneaology section of the Archives asked if she would have done that. I wouldn't know because she died exactly 26 years before to the day I was born, but looking at the women in my family, it is NOT a stretch of the imagination, by any means.


I spent 5 hours searching records and came up with nothing, so I will have to refocus my efforts and look elsewhere. Maybe at the Archives, maybe some place entirely different.



But I will find her.