Grandma at one plus …

Thanks to an old photograph and modern technology, we can see some of our Russian ancestors with our own eyes. Pictured below are one-year-old Malinda Franz and her grandparents on her mother Sarah’s side: Jacob Epp and Margaretha Siebert Epp (i.e., sister of Sarah Siebert Buller).

As noted earlier, Grandma’s mother Sarah Epp Franz was the daughter of Jacob Epp and Margaretha Siebert Epp. Jacob was born on 12 November 1856* in Tiegerweide, a village roughly six miles northwest of Kleefeld in Molotschna colony. He was baptized at Neukirch, four miles east of Kleefeld, on 16 May 1877, then shortly thereafter emigrated to the U.S. aboard the S.S. Vaderland, arriving in Philadelphia on 29 June 1977 (remember that date). He passed away on 18 February 1921 in Henderson, at the age of sixty-four.

Margaretha Siebert Epp was born to Johann and Katharina Rempel Siebert on 26 March 1856. Her place of birth is not recorded, but it was likely in Kleefeld, since her sister Maria was born there three years earlier, and Johann held a full land allotment at that time and thus was unlikely to have moved during the interim. She was baptized sometime in 1874 and traveled, as was discussed earlier, to the U.S. with the majority of her family, including Peter P and Sarah Siebert Buller, in 1879. Margaretha outlived her husband Jacob by a little more than a year, passing away on 23 August 1922 at the age of sixty-five. Both are buried at the Bethesda Mennonite Cemetery (see photograph below; note the use of German on the tombstone).

Jacob and Margaretha would have been fifty-one or fifty-two when the photograph above was taken by Pont Soderberg of Sutton, Nebraska. Thanks to Suely and Dad for scanning and sending this treasure of a photo. Believe it or not, there are more to come!

* GRANDMA lists Jacob’s date of birth as 31 October but includes the note that “his n.s. birth date was 12 Nov 1856.” Why the discrepancy? Today we follow the “new style” (or n.s.) Gregorian calendar, which differs from the Julian calendar formerly in use. The older Julian calendar remained in use in Russia until 1914, so Jacob’s birth on 31 October (Julian) in Russia was the same as 12 November (Gregorian) in the U.S. (the U.S. and other British colonies converted to the Julian calendar in 1752). For more on the differences between the two calendars, see here. One wonders how many other ancestral dates from Russia are given according to the Julian calendar.