King - Kong

Henry and Barbara King

I've spent about 40 years trying to figure out where I came from.

I know the biological part, I did well in science subjects in school.

What I didn't know was who came before us that got us to this country, how they got to the town where we lived, and why they didn't amass a fortune to leave to me so I could spend my days pasting stamps into albums.

And the "King-Kong" reference in the blog title has nothing to do with evolution...read on!

As part of a social sciences class in college, I embarked on a genealogical project that soon came to a stop when my grandmother (the only grandparent alive at the time I started working on this) couldn't remember much about her parents or siblings.

Her inability to come up with facts wasn't due to dementia or Alzheimer's...she just never paid attention.  As the youngest of 11 children, she was busy trying to keep up with the crowd and was much more interested in having fun.

She also wasn't hearing many of the family stories.  Some of her older brothers and sisters had married and moved out of the house before she started grade school.  There was that big of an age difference from eldest to youngest and her brothers wanted their own farms and her sisters married.

Before I go on, note to my boys here: they moved out!

My grandmother did remember that her father was in the Civil War, that he was brought to this country from Germany as a child, by his parents, and that he fell off a wagon in his latter years.

Nothing to do with drinking, he actually tumbled off a farm wagon and seriously injured himself.  That spill did him in and ended any possibility of anyone else finding out how he got to America or who his parents and their families were.

Another problem, as my grandmother started talking about her childhood?  Her father's name was Henry and she had two brothers named Henry.

Henry, the first son with that name, died young and when the next boy was born he became Henry.  People do that sometimes.  So, when I asked about Henry, depending upon which Henry she thought I was talking about, I could take quite a trip around the family tree, wondering why one day Henry was in the Civil War and the next day Henry had died before he was 10.  No, Henry lived to be an adult, got married and lived on the farm.  Henry the father or Henry the son? Yes.  Turns out those facts are correct for both, same farm, just different years for each of them.

The other issue that had to be dealt with was the change in the family surname from there, Germany, to here, New York.

In Germany, the family name was Koenig.  In America, King.

Now, it so happens that Koenig is German for King, but it wasn't until I saw a recent document that I may have gotten a clue that the name was changed for them, rather than they going to the English version.

For years, I searched for immigration records.  I looked at Koenig and King records for over a generation.  I searched via mail, filling out countless forms and, when it became available, on-line.  Searching ship manifests, going on the basis that Henry traveled with his family, as a  young boy.  I came up with his parent's names early on, Andrew and Elizabeth, but couldn't even get a hook with that.

Then, I found a census record that indicated Henry came over from Germany in 1845...he would have been about 5 years old.  That fit with the family story and I set off to search records with that new information.

Try as I might, no Andrew and Elizabeth, with Henry in tow, Keonig or King.  I pressed on.

The other day, somewhat frustrated, I decided to go through any ship's manifest I could find coming out of Germany where the last name started with "K", with an Andrew, Elizabeth and Henry and was struck still when I saw Andrew Kong.  1845.  From Germany.  Wife Elizabeth and son Henry, aged 4, with a sister, Marianna, aged 3.  Henry had a sister just two years younger...we knew her as Mary.  And Henry would have turned 5 just three weeks after landing in New York City.

I was able to print out the record and check it against the manifest that was replicated and found "Andrew Koenig."  The person who transcribed it for storage had changed Koenig to Kong.

Perhaps, as they gave their names for the manifest, they Koenig, the clerk said, "Kong," they heard "King," and here we are 165 years later living the lives of Kings!

Henry's father, Andrew, had a farm (go ahead, e-i-e-i-o), and then Henry had one that he left to his son Henry, who then sold it off when he had no one to take it over.

They were sustenance farmers, pretty much using up stuff and, apparently, the money on-the-go, and we were left with stories.

Some stories were funny, like the one about how my grandmother and her sister, as young girls about aged 8 and 10, had put chicken manure in the cider barrel and then watched her father, older brothers and uncle drink heartily from it one hot summer day!  They weren't feeling too well the next day.

Others were tragic.  In a day before penicillin, her brother was racing through a field in his bare feet and ran a Goldenrod stalk up into his foot.  He developed an infection and died from lockjaw.

I think that some who search their family histories are hoping to strike gold.  I wonder if Andrew and Elizabeth, who boarded the boat in Bremen in the summer of 1845, with their two children, Henry and Marianna (aged 4 and 3), thought that they were going to America to find gold.  It seems they had intentions of doing well.

Another family story was that Andrew and his family were on their way to California to become beer and wine makers.

Andrew had brought yeast from Germany with him to start the process.

But, once they landed in New York City, while the manifest checker called them Kings and they must have thought they had really made it, they had to turn over what monies they had to pay for the items they brought with them.

Finding they couldn't pay the freight to get to the West Coast, they found their way to upstate New York where friends beckoned them, hearing that their dream of barrels of beer and vineyards was dashed and that they were penniless from having to pay out what they had at the duty port.

Upstate, they did what they knew from the homeland and took up farming.

The Koenigs became the Kings, though the immigration agent called them "Kong."  They gave up their fermentation dreams, due to having to leave their cash at the piers in New York City.  It turns out, twas duty killed the yeast!

Civil War, Or How To Keep Peace At Home

That title was just to get your attention.

I wanted to get a jump on all of the celebratory things that will soon start, as the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War approaches.

An attack on Fort Sumter, on April 12, 1861, got the whole thing going and for the following four years we had a big family dispute.

For about forty years now, and given that amount of time you'd think I'd have things in better order, I've been working on our family genealogy.

Along the way, I found a number of family members who were in the Civil War and even have copies of federal military documents to prove it.

I've also been able to find some pictures of great-grandfathers who were in the war, and one that I believe is a relative of my great-grandmother, pictured in the upper right.

Unfortunately, people didn't write on the backs of pictures a lot so his identity is lost to us.  Perhaps some Civil War expert could identify the unit he was in, based on uniform, but it's a blurry sort of picture so the words on the hat and buttons are unreadable.

We've made two trips "down south," from here...one to Gettysburg and another to Fredericksburg.  If you haven't been, both are well worth your time.  We traveled there to check out the military and history offerings, but there's plenty else to do there if you're not on a Civil War bend.

Should you be interested in the Civil War, and Gettysburg in particular, here's the site of the National Museum in Gettysburg...it's quite the place:

http://www.nps.gov/gett/index.htm

Henry and Barbara King

My great-grandfather, Henry King, was in the Civil War.  He was a bugler with Company "A" of the 134th New York Infantry.

There's a book about their exploits and I heard, via a family story, that up until they sold their farm in Glenville his Civil War uniform and bugle were in the house.  Well, the house is gone as are the war artifacts.

The only picture I have of him is his wedding photo, here on the left, taken in 1868...he married after the Civil War, was wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg, survived the balance of the war, and then settled into the life of a farmer.

His records show exploits that took him from Schoharie County, New York all the way to Savannah, Georgia!

He was a bugler, an infantryman, a coxswain at Fort Chemung, and apparently did a lot of walking.  After all of that activity he was honorably discharged in Savannah, Georgia and had to find his own way home.

Then there was Great-Grandpa John J. Cunningham.  He did the military thing twice.  First a stint in the Civil War, 3rd New York Infantry, and then he re-joined the Army in 1871 and was stationed out West at Fort Buford, in the Dakota Territory.

His adventures seemed much more personal in nature.   About the only thing that shows up regularly in his military records are statements of "three days in brig for intoxication," "five days in brig for intoxication," "week in brig, intoxication," and "returned to unit after unknown absence."

John J. Cunningham

Hey, some of us are fighters, some are lovers!

I'll publish some stories later on about the many wives and children of John J., but for the meantime, I'll just share some pics of him in his uniform (or one that was made for him later on, I think he put on a few pounds over the years), as he looked nearing the end of his days in the New Jersey State Soldier's Home in Kearney, New Jersey.

This is he on the right during those later years.

He was a traveling sort of guy.  The picture below, on the left, is one that was taken when he was out West.

He had written home and said he met Bat Masterson, and Wild Bill Hickok and even knew Belle Starr (the latter was most likely true).

But I digress...the point of this was to "kick off" the coming four years of a re-look at the American Civil War...seems many people can trace themselves back to someone who was involved in that great confrontation.

John J. Cunningham, Ft. Buford

I don't have any diaries or family stories that come down about the Civil War...just that they were in it.

The military records and pension papers I have note little about daily activity, the things they saw or did, or where they ended up, but more about the condition they were in later on in life.

During our trip to Gettysburg, we visited the National Museum there and hired a tour guide who took us around the battlefields...well worth the money!

The minute I showed the guide the name of Great-Grandfather King and the unit he was with, he changed up the whole tour and led us around from the vantage point of what he might have seen or dealt with that day, from the start of the battle to the end.  He knew where the regiment was placed during the battles, what divisions they fought, and more!

Seems Great-Grandpa King held off the southern troops for two days.  I guess he had some help, but he was in a prominent position at the front of the battle.  Shot on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, he was soon off to a hospital to mend and then back to the war after a short healing period.

The stories the guide told us would probably have been similar to those of my relative, as he related his days in the Union Army, and especially at that epic battle, to his family.  None of his immediate family survive, so those personal stories are lost to time.

However, he did have eleven children, so perhaps his days on the battlefields prepared him for any possible civil unrest at home!  And, when the kids complained about how far they had to walk to school in a snowstorm, in Glenville, New York, he could drag out a map and show them where Savannah, Georgia was!