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Dcn. Ed




Stoessel Genealogy Project

 

We have a lot of genealogy information but are always trying to expand our reach. This page will direct you to some current topics of interest.


Submit Data About a Person

 

If you would like to submit genealogy data, here is an easy to use form. I suggest you scroll through the form to see what kind of information you will want to have handy before you complete the form.

Take me to your form now.


Puzzlers

 

Here is where I will post genealogy puzzles and/or questions. Click on the link to be taken to the puzzle you want to view.


Photograph of Edward Otto Stoessel sitting in his office. [The majority of votes favor one year. I'm going to leave the puzzle up here in case anyone else wants to jump in and suggest a solution.] The problem is, "What is the date of the photo?" View the picture and a big fat clue, but what does the clue say?

This photo of a child had been mounted and framed behind glass. It came from my parents (Edward O Stoessel & Sarah Gjertsen) home. Anybody know who it is?


Gems

 

Sometimes we come across some gems we would like to share. At the beginning, these will be ad-hoc additions as I find something worth sharing. When I get enough of them, I'll have to actually organize this material. For now, just click on the descriptive links below.



Stoessel Oil Company Kerosene Tank Wagon.



John Henry Stoessel (1865-1950) Memoirs
This gem is a diamond! John Henry Stoessel, my grandfather, dictated his memoirs back in 1945. My father took the handwritten document and typed it on a typewriter back in the 1980s. My brother, John, thanks to first cousin Mike Kelly who had a surviving copy, and typed it with a word processor and cleaned it up very well. I took that product and worked it further and ultimately produced a totally electronic (PDF) version. The really cool thing is that this is a most interesting and entertaining read. It is a 50 page document with large font. With a PDF that has tabbed bookmarks, you can navigate through it very nicely on your computer. Or, you can print it and keep it next to your reading chair. You will be glad you did!

(To download the PDF, right-click [on a Mac, control-click] on the link and choose the option to download the document to your computer. It is about 8.5 MB.)


Albert T. Stoessel, Jr. and Edward O. Stoessel were first cousins. When Albert T. Stoessel, Jr. and his wife, Edna D. (Mottet) Stoessel, celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary (1914-1974) they took out a full page ad in the Ottumwa, Iowa Courier newspaper. It shows the house they built before they were married and lived in ever after. They had the same photographer who took their wedding pictures photograph the same bridal party 60 years later. All living then and doing well, including the photographer. The ad begins with the headline, "It takes a heap of livin'." The photocopy I have of the ad is not in very good shape, but it is readable and worth a second look. So I have given you 3 looks. They are:

Small view. Medium view. Large view. (You may need to click on the picture to see it enlarged to its full size.)


Reports

 

Though it is far from complete, my database has a great deal of information about our family and those to whom we are connected in some way. Just as samples, I've posted a few charts here so you can peruse them. They are in PDF format, generally as one large page, so you can zoom in or out for more or less detail and otherwise scroll around. You can even zoom in far enough to see a fairly detailed image of the thumbnail pictures that appear along with the genealogical data for the person. I recommend you download the PDFs and view them with Adobe Reader 7 or later.

This file is an extensively bookmarked PDF that lets you browse through all of the descendants of Frans Joseph Stoessel (b. 1776). He is the oldest ancestor bearing the name, Stoessel, in our records.

Lucian Bahan is the youngest leaf on the family tree. The file is a simple pedigree chart starting with Lucian and going back 9 generations to Franz Joseph Stoessel. Since it is a pedigree chart, it also follows all other lines back as far as my records go.

Similar to the above chart for Lucian, this chart also shows siblings at all levels. It is not as easy to follow as the simple chart. You will probably want to refer to the simple chart as a guide to this one.

Now that you have warmed up a bit, here is a chart that will (or should) impress you. It is a simple pedigree chart, but it covers 11 generations. At the bottom of the chart is my granddaughter, Catherine Louise Stoessel. It, too, goes back to Franz Joseph Stoessel on that side of the family. However, on my wife's side (Catherine Louise Cummings) through the Keeney branch, it goes back to Joseph Keeney (1666-1759). The fact is, I have MUCH more data than that. I have data showing son-father-grandfather-etc., etc., etc., all the way back to William de Kene (William the Conqueror) who led the last successful invasion of England in the year 1066! The spelling of the last name has gone through some evolution (Kene to Keney to Keeney) overa period of some 500 years or so. By the way, Joseph Keeney had a son named Alexander who lived to be 106. It is said that up to near the end, he led his helpers as they worked the field.

This chart is similar to the one above, except that it shows siblings.


Photo Albums

 

There are many groupings of pictures and other memorabilia. In some cases, I have produced  (or will produce) entire scrapbooks that have been saved. Where scanning is needed to reproduce these items here, I have been scanning at high resolution (800 dpi), 48-bit color. A single page scan with those settings is typically almost 400 megabytes! That's almost a CD per page. While I am preserving the highest resolution I have capability to do, I am downsizing the images so they can be uploaded to this web site and viewed by you.

When you browse through these images, you should be aware that you can get a close view by clicking on an image when you are viewing "thumbnails" of pages. The closeup should give you much better detail. Even that much detail may not be enough, so you have two more options.

  1. You can download a 300 dpi version of the file. Note the name of the file and note the folder where the album is located. For example, the first album is creatively named PhotoAlbum01. When you are viewing pictures in this album, the http:// location (in your URL location box of your browser) will be http://stoessel.com/genealogy/photoalbums/PhotoAlbum01/. This will be followed by some additional characters that refer to a particular image being displayed.  A quick way to get to the 300 dpi images is to change your URL location by changing it to read http://stoessel.com/genealogy/photoalbums/PhotoAlbum01/hires/. This will involve deleting some characters and replacing them with "/hires/". Note: The final slash, "/", is important.
  2. The other thing you can do is contact me for the truly highest resolution, the 800 dpi, 48-bit, rgb color Photoshop file(s).
Clicking the following link will take you to a page where you can choose which album you want to view and begin browsing.

Take me to the album selection page now.