When the genealogy bug bites, it usually bites hard. I guess it’s an age old thing to try and find out where you come from. If your last name is Weber, Smith, Jones, Miller or even Armstrong, well, good luck. What you need it a last name that isn’t quite as prominent. Still, you have to play the hand you are dealt. Luckily the name ‘Bonauer’ isn’t that common a name. In fact, we know we are related to all the Bonauers in Switzerland.
Our Genealogy Journey
Ben said that his father traveled a lot. Wherever was, he always looked in the local telephone books to see if he could find anyone else named ‘Bonauer’. He never did. It looked like the family had just popped out of nowhere. We were all we had.
Our search started while we were waiting for a boat at the Lake of Constance. It was a while ago, so there were telephone booths and in those booths there were telephone books. For a lack of anything better to do, we searched the telephone book for Bonauers. Low and behold we found 7 entries with ‘our’ name. I said I thought that was strange. Ben thought for a moment then said, not really, his grandfather was from that area.
We were in our 30s, way younger than most genealogists but we were hooked. We spent a lot of time at the post office going through German telephone books. The information wasn’t available on the internet back then. Actually, the internet was available back then. We knew that at some point we would have to travel to the different archives. We were going to have lots of adventures and meet some really interesting people along the way. I already wrote about when we went to archives in Freiburg in Breisgau with our stinky dog. I’m sure other stories will eventually seep into the blog, but this is how it all started.
Looking for Bonauers
Our first road trip was to where Ben’s grandfather had lived. He had lived in Germany on the other side of the Lake of Constance. At some point he had moved to Basel and became Swiss. So off we went to the lakeside town of Überlingen. We found the church and actually found his name in the church records. We gathered as many names and dates as we could. We found the family had come from the nearby town of Sipplingen. There we were able to link the 7 Bonauers we had originally found to our family.
It was pretty easy sailing until we found Michael who came from ‘Allmenstorf’ in 1618. Allmenstorf? We got out our trusty map and looked and looked but found nothing. Defeated, we decided to go home and figure out a new strategy. We took the ferry from Meersburg to Constance and when we drove off the ramp we had a slap-on-the-forehead moment. There was the town sign for ‘Allmansdorf’ and a church. We thought it very possible that the spelling of the town had changed since 1618.
We pulled in to the church parking lot. The church office was only open one half day a week: Thursday afternoon. Our lucky day, it was Thursday afternoon. Even more luck, they allowed us to look at all the old records. BINGO! The second entry in their oldest birth registry was a Bonauer. It was a proverbial beehive.
Of Kings and Rich Men
Of course everyone hopes to find Kings, or at least wealthy, prominent people in their family tree. We were no exception. Unfortunately our family were just ordinary farmers and laborers. Poor folk, trying to make ends meet.
It’s been years since we started our genealogy journey. We have found over 1,400 Bonauers that go back as far as 1556. Most people can’t go back much further than that because church records only started around 1600. So it’s really no surprise the oldest Bonauer we found wasn’t in a church record but in a criminal record. Oops.
Oh well, it is what it is. You can’t change the past. I guess every family has their mavericks.
-
-