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Hello,
20 Years ago I was working at a Hotel near the Seattle
Airport. I drove a shuttle van and at
the end of my shift, I was cleaning the van and found a little keep-sake book
on the seat. The Book is about 1 ½
inches by 2 inches (very small) with a impressed picture of Teddy Roosevelt on
the cover with the words “Facts About the Candidate” The book was printed blank with the idea that
people write information in them.Inside this book it says in a child’s hand writing “this book belongs to Miss Josephine Machtemes”. The handwriting is hard to read, but that is my best guess.
The next 6 pages have small pictures from the early 20th
century pasted onto the pages with names written next to them.
·
L. Williams (a little girl)
·
Helen Speer (I might be wrong on the last
name. Girl in say Jr. High)
·
Gertrude + Josephine (two girls, a few years
apart)
·
Jacob (Dashing man in a hat)
·
Mary (Young Woman)
·
Anna (Young Woman)
·
Mary D (Written on a page with no picture. I might be getting the last letter wrong)
Nobody contacted the Hotel about it. I brought it home and kept it safe. I always thought it belonged to someone; a
bit of treasure from their family past.
I’ve looked on the internet a few times, but I was spelling the last
name Machtames. Its only today that I
decided the ‘a’ might be an ‘e’.
If there was a chance to find the owner or the family of the owner, I could scan and email the pictures,
Charles Erwin
Redmond, WA
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Hello Charles,
Well this is interesting.
First let me say you are a special person to have saved that
little book. Secondly to have figured
out that the spelling may be "Machtemes". And thirdly, you have managed to contact the
family genealogist! If it is not too
much trouble, could you scan and send me the pictures please. Here is what I can do... I can probably find the owner, a Miss
Josephine Machtemes. I have a large
database of Machtemes', both living and deceased, and I have active contact
with most of the Machtemes families in existence - most in North America, and
some in Germany and one in Australia. Some questions and comments...
1.
Could the name Speer actually be Sperl?
2.
My great uncle Jake lived in Sedro Wooley, WA,
till he passed in the 1960's. He never had any children of his own that I know
of, but it is possible that some of his step children could have taken his
name.
3.
Names that you have mentioned occur repeatedly
in my Machtemes family history- Gertrude, Mary, Josephine. I have most
individuals prior to the 1950's, but I have not yet concentrated on cataloging
the names of children since then.
So, I can probably track down the Josephine Machtemes who
owns this little book. I will send with this email a foto of Uncle Jake
Machtemes when he was younger - he was born in 1879, so he would have been a
young man in the early 1900's. I think this foto was taken about that time.
Thank you so much for taking the time to contact me,
Terry Machtemes
near Edmonton, Alberta.
(Foto provided by Terry in comparison)
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Thank you Terry,
I have scanned the book pages and pictures. I will put them into two emails because of
their size.
I also posted them on my picture sight which might be
easier.
I will let you judge if I got the spellings correct. I can certainly deliver the book to whatever
address I need to via the mail. I would
be happy to find someone to claim the pictures as family.
Charles
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Super Charles, thanks for those images,
The handwriting shows traces of German styling, and so I
think the writer is born in America, but with parents or grandparents born in
Germany. The long p's, capital M in
Machtemes, the second i in Williams with two dots over it, like the German
umlaut, capital H and G, the r's all show signs of Germanic influence. I put the two images of Jacob side by side
and it may be possible they are the same person - but it’s not certain.
I will make inquiries with my contacts and see what we can
find out. I do not recognize the ladies
as being anyone from my direct ancestry, and my album goes back about 100 years
or more. I'm confident I can find the
owner or a descendant of the owner, because the Machtemes name is very rare in
America. They all came from the Eifel
region just north of Trier and settled in Chicago or MN, and they all came
between 1850 and 1880. I have traced the
origins of all Machtemes in America, and I don't think I have missed any. Now I just have to get more details on the
descendants of those first immigrants who would have the name Machtemes. Of course the females changed their names at
marriage, but there are still two males who originally settled in Chicago with
descendants, and 3 males who settled in Nicollet and Stearns counties in MN
with descendants. I'm pretty sure it is
not from the Stearns group (my direct ancestry), so I will concentrate on
Nicollet and Chicago info.
Thanks again,
I'll let you know when I know something.
Terry Machtemes
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Thank you Terry and I look forward to finding a home for
these. Always nice to have a little
mystery in life; but only if they get solved.
Charles
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A solution is what it’s all about. I'm just in the middle of composing an email
to my longtime Chicago contact, Thomas Machtemes. He's usually quick to respond...
Terry
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Charles,
Check out this family listing. It's from a recent (just last week) posting
on a European genealogy site that I am a member of. Interesting that I've had this exact family
in my software - with the interesting note that I don't have the youngest child
- and that would likely be Josephine! I
did know that there was another child, but I had just put "unknown"
in the name slot! ...but Mary D, Jacob
and Gertrude are indeed there. There
were two families that immigrated to Chicago, and this is the one I know least
about and I only know about through contact with the cousins from the other
family. But I do have two of these
cousins on-line to help out - Thomas from Chicago and Sandi from New
England. I'm sure we will succeed. Also interesting that you should contact me
only about a week after I was alerted to this family posting below. Do you believe in ESP?
Terry
o
Gerhardt & Katherina KOOSE
o
Matthias 1860-1942 &1882
o
Barbara DU SARTZ DE VINGNEULLE 1862-1925
o
Catherine 1885
o
Anna K 1887
o
Jacob 1888-1943
o
Margaretha 1892-1923
o
Maria D 1893
o
Matthias John 1895
o
Barbara V 1899
o
Gerhart J 1901
o
Gertrude H 1905
o
Josephine S 1907
(Terry,)
This does feel right.
I think the ages in comparison in the book look to match those in the
family listing below. I’ll be interested
to see if the family has any matching photos.
Thanks for the work
on this. I suspect I need to go get a
nice, padded mailing envelope very soon.
Charles
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Quite likely Charles,
Do you feel like a good private detective or a Good
Samaritan. Now I have to identify the
children and grandchildren of those in these fotos, and see which one would
like to take possession of their heirloom.
Something similar happened a couple of years ago. I helped a Machtemes recover about 170
dollars from a stale bank account. There
was a radio spot on CBS about Canadian bank accounts in limbo, with smaller and
larger amounts of money just waiting to be claimed by individuals or their
descendants. People move, die, etc. and
these accounts are often forgotten about.
So a web link was given and I checked it out. I was hoping for a "rich uncle"
kind of legacy - although I know all my uncles, and they are NOT rich. Anyway, Machtemes came up in a search, and
since I have a large Machtemes database, I was able to make contact with the
lady's mother, and thus her daughter was able to recover a few dollars she had
forgotten about. I have never met these
Machtemes's personally, but I think they live in British Columbia; just another
interesting story about the benefits of genealogy. Hopefully one day such stories will have a
million dollar ending! And yet, the
descendants of these people in the fotos may not have fotos of their ancestors
and so these may be the only existing fotos - that's worth a lot - perhaps
they're priceless. Thank you again for
your care and trouble.
Terry
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