Found! My 40-year search for my Great-great grandmother

In 1974 I began my journey of discovery as I tried to create a family tree. Don’t let anyone tell you it is an easy path. I was twenty four years old and oh-so-earnest in my quest to track my family history. I soon discovered that there is no direct route. There will be dead ends and occasional road construction on the way.

My goal? To go from myself backwards to as many grandparents, great, great-great, great-great-great grandparents and beyond as possible. It has been such an interesting ride. I identified many of them within the first few years and soon had their history, migration, homestead, church, birth, marriage and death dates and cemetery information.

The great-grandparents were easy. There were enough older relatives to interview who could give me the needed information along with great stories that blew life into the names and dates.  They opened their photo albums so I could add images to my stories. Photos and stories allow you to really get to know your subject and appreciate their journey.

In the great-great grandparent category, the path has required more complex research. Libraries, archives, ship records, census records, citizenship, homestead, and church records all open doors and make for a different kind of experience.

Long ago oral interviews with great aunts and uncles made it clear that I descend from really interesting people. As I go back over those notes from 40 years ago I can still smell the fresh bread cooling on the cupboard. The savory dill and beet pickles they served with fresh bread, slices of thick ham and home churned butter – sometimes washed down with homemade wine or schnapps. Occasionally they would go out to the vine garden they called the Bashtan and pick a ripe melon or go down to the cool cellar and bring up a melon that they would cut into thick slices to go with the rest of the meal. Breaking bread seemed to be the best way for them to get to know me and decide if I was someone they wanted to share their story with. Most said that had nothing interesting to tell me, but with each sip of coffee and each bite of Fruit and custard kuchen they began to talk. It was slices of heaven to listen to them speak in their accented adopted language with many German words sprinkled in. Some words and phrases simply cannot be translated.

One great-great- grandmother has eluded me since her grandson, Julius Dockter, told me about her in a lengthy interview in the early days of my research. Christina Seeger Heine was born in South Russia in 1830. She married Johann Heine in 1851, had 9 live births, with only 5 surviving before she arrived at the Port of New York with her husband, Johann, and five daughters on the SS Lessing on November 15, 1873. We know that from there, they took a train to Yankton, Dakota Territory, where they lived until arriving in McIntosh County, Dakota Territory, in 1885, when Johann, at age 56, filed for a homestead claim. I have one grainy photo of Christina Seeger Heine standing in what looks like her sod house with a couple of vases of prairie grasses on the table next to her.

The fact that she raised four daughters (I’m still on the hunt for the 5^th daughter) who were strong and determined makes her all the more interesting to me. I’m related to her through my great-grandmother Katharina Heine Dockter, my mother’s paternal grandmother. Katharina was one of 23 women (out of 384 applicants) who filed homestead claims in McIntosh County, Dakota Territory in 1886. Katharina’s claim along Beaver Creek became the anchor site for that family and for generations of descendants who shared vivid memories of time spent on that farm. Her Timber Culture claim along the creek provided picnic space for the greater community long before state, county and city parks were created as public spaces.

Christina appears with her husband, Johann, in the 1900 census as living on his homestead claim just south of her daughter Katharina’s acreage.  Johann Heine died in April of that year leaving her a widow. A Declaration of Intent document following his death indicates that she decided to become a citizen – perhaps to be able to inherit and sell her husband’s homestead. A later document reveals that she sold that homestead to my great grandparents for $1000. Her grandson, Julius Dockter, was only three when she died, but he knew that following Johann’s death Christina went to live with her daughter, Karoline Heine Olson Heer, who resided some 50 miles west in Lamoure County near the small town of Kulm in ND.

When I began my search for her in 1974, no one seemed to know what happened to Christina Seeger Heine once she moved to her daughter’s home or when she died or where she was buried. Sometime in the 1980’s I stopped at the Lamoure County Court House, and after a search through the Clerk of Court records I found a record of her death in 1909 at the age of 79.

Since Christina Seeger Heine is not buried in St Andrew’s Cemetery in rural McIntosh County where her husband lies, I assumed she might be buried near her daughter Karoline Heine Olson Heer in the Kulm Congregational Cemetery. Another thing you should know is that assumptions and logic do not apply in genealogy research. I have walked through that cemetery more times than I can count and I never found a marker for her.

Fast forward to 2015. A historical society colleague and retired friend, Ray Reinhardt, offered to work on some of my mystery cases (all genealogists have them). I gave him what information I had about Christina Seeger Heine and he got to work. It is because of my good fortune to have such a kind friend with dogged diligence that the mystery has been solved. Poring over microfilm of the local newspaper, the Kulm Messenger, Ray noticed a note of condolence to the Heer family upon the passing of Karoline Heer’s mother, Christina Heine. The notice said the funeral was at St Paul’s Lutheran church.

Aha! My silly assumption that she attended her daughter’s church kept me from finding her for decades. After I finished beating myself up about it, I began to look for a cemetery attached to that church. I learned that St Paul’s had long ago closed its doors, but somewhere there had to be a cemetery.

I had hunted through the NorthDakotaGravestones.org website for churches and cemeteries in Lamoure County which has quite a presence on that website because of the efforts of Allen and Mary Lu Konrad. Their diligent recording of several cemeteries in Dickey, Lamoure, Logan and McIntosh counties is a gift to the families and to researchers. Together they have trekked from cemetery to cemetery to take photographs and upload them to the website with information about each grave.  The website is a volunteer endeavor which is why not every cemetery in every county is included. I checked for St Paul’s Cemetery in Lamoure County, since the church’s address was Kulm and Kulm is in Lamoure County. No luck! Flummoxed again!

Then, late one night when I couldn’t sleep I looked at the state map again and realized that Kulm, in Lamoure County, is a stone’s throw (maybe one mile) north of the Dickey County line. I booted up my laptop and pulled up the NorthDakotaGravesite.org website entering a request for Dickey County. I entered St Paul’s Lutheran Cemetery and it popped up! Then I typed in Christine Heine and with the click of my mouse there she appeared listing the section, township and range in Northwest Township .  Eureka!! I found her! At 2 a.m. I had no one to share this so-long-in-coming discovery, but I thanked the Universe for friends like Ray Reinhardt and Allen and Mary Lu Konrad.

Now to schedule a visit to the gravesite! An Arizona cousin, Marge Dockter Hestermann, and my brother and sister in law, Walt and Pat Just signed on to join me. On July 19, 2016, we met in Wishek, North Dakota, and picked up our Aunt Laverna Dockter Kaseman. Having no idea what shape the cemetery might be in, we borrowed tools (shovel, hedge trimmer, battery operated grass trimmer and gloves) and headed east to Kulm.

Let me tell you, it is not easy getting a township map. The woman at the Register of Deeds office at the Dickey County seat in Ellendale, ND, said she could not scan and email the map to me but I could stop by and pick one up.  Unfortunately, it was many miles out of the way. My brother, Walt, managed to get a township map sent to me by text, but it didn’t show any roads leading to the cemetery. Fortunately, Allen Konrad had an email address attached to his St Paul Lutheran postings to NorthDakotaGravesites.org. An email to him requesting directions to the cemetery resulted in this reply:  

If you approach Kulm from the north, on Highway 56, continue to the south edge of town and keep on driving south for one mile. At that point the highway will make a left bend to correct for entering Dickey County. Do not drive the bend, but turn left and drive the section line road one and a half miles. You will approach some trees on the north side of the road. If you go any farther, you will meet up with a slough that has covered the once existing road. At the trees, turn right and drive up the hill. Once on top, the cemetery is to the left.

Without those directions, I might still be driving section line roads.

I can’t really explain how I felt. Imagine – hunting for a grave for 40 years – knowing she had to be somewhere but not able to find her. As we headed to the cemetery that morning I could hardly talk. I realize it is sort-of a “nerdy” endeavor, but genealogists get it. I don’t know many people who can say they have been hunting for something for all those years and when it fell into my lap, I found myself at a loss for words.

Aunt Laverna had a bouquet of flowers from her garden ready as we made our way to the cemetery. Allen Konrad’s directions were completely accurate and thankfully the cemetery was mowed and trimmed. Still, we could find no marker to match the marker Allen Konrad had placed on the NorthDakotaFind-a-grave.org website all those years ago. We found the area where the earliest graves were located and decided to investigate an overgrown grove of lilac bushes. My brother ventured a few feet into the lilac bushes and, aha, there she was!! We clipped away at the overgrowth and sunlight flooded the beautiful stone that had been placed for her 107 years ago.

The stone is wobbly and needs to be secured and next to it is a large hole, probably the home of a badger. The lilac bushes have likely protected the gravestone, and maybe other stones, for years.

“I found her! I found her!” was all I could say. The cemetery in its remote location likely gets few visitors. I wondered when the last visit to her 1909 grave may have been, but I was comforted to know that Christina Seeger Heine’s great granddaughter and three of her great-great grandchildren paid homage to her on that day.

Genealogy is part mystery, part exploration, part collaboration and part satisfaction. On that day I could say, all four parts aligned and I felt only happiness and great satisfaction.

Carol Just

This essay appeared in the December 2016 issue of Heritage Review, a publication of the Germans from Russia Heritage Society.