Foreign Traditions May Alter the Way We Look At Our Biological Lines
After a post I copied from a genealogy Facebook page talking about "accidentally telling grandma she was adopted", it got me wanting to post about a very surprising and frustrating find while doing my research. My great grandma's maiden name was Kuhlenschmidt. She loved being a Kuhlenschmidt! She loved our large family, how we seem to be related in one way or another to anybody (mostly because of the large German population of Evansville), and she loved our German ancestry. After my research (which I will explain), I had the hard task of informing grandma that we aren't even blood Kuhlenschmidt, and we are, in a sense, 'adopted' into the name. She took it surprisingly well, and seemed to be in as much shock as I was when I first found out! It's easier to tell the story from the beginning of the genealogy line... Hans Kuhlenschmidt was born March 10, 1771 in Langenholzhausen, Lippe, Germany. He first married Anna on April 22, 1792. Anna was born in 1765. A...