We are blessed to have a city home with a large backyard, and a neighbor who keeps it filled with plants and flowers. We also have a kitchen door with four little windows, perfect for enjoying the whole view of the yard and the alleyscape beyond.
One day last year I was at the door, when I saw a brown rabbit in the garden bed. This happens a lot in the city. We two were having a quiet moment—me the hidden watcher, while this unaware bunny hopped between the dahlia stalks.
And then I thought: I bet the pheasant happened like this.
Planning the big genealogy trip that I’ve been talking about for years.
“The profession of “fact-finding“ is mostly encountered in companies where people are sent to investigate. … From an artistic point of view, fact finding is about working with first-hand experiences, not with references. The important thing to keep in mind is that the truth is not the ultimate goal in this process.” — Alex Bodea, operator of The Fact Finder art gallery
This spring we finally made it back to New York and Brooklyn. It was the first time my husband and I had managed to get there since 2019, with two cancelled attempts between then and now. It was far past time.
Unlike our previous trips, this time I planned no genealogy activities. I wanted this visit to be purely vacation. So no to archives, libraries, or spontaneous research sidetracks that erode people’s patience and time. Yes to museums and tea shops and bakeries. Yes to getting a slice, and a detour to Coney Island. Yes to an Italian restaurant that felt very much like being at someone’s house. Yes to a trip about life, not the dead.
We did visit a cemetery, but one without any of my people in it. It was fine.
And yet.
On our way to LaGuardia I caught sight of the old Domino Sugar factory, and thought wistfully again about Benjamin Huppler. My 3x great-grandfather, he was a Swiss confectioner who ran a candy shop in Brooklyn for many years.
As I’ve mentioned, Brooklyn is the core of my proudest genealogy work. The borough was home for two of my great-grandparents, and the nebula of family around them. I knew none of this history while I was growing up—but without any documented history, this branch has been mine to explore. From the one name I started with I now have generations. I have brought entire people back to light, even the smallest and the forgotten. And while I’ve been able to uncover a few things about Benjamin Huppler, it’s never been enough.
My great-great-great grandfather.
I found myself saying out loud the thing that I’ve said on every single visit: “I should just spend a week here, and just work on genealogy.”
This time my brain came back with: “You could DO THAT, you know?”
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And my brain was right: I absolutely could. I’m lucky to have a generous vacation policy through my employer, so getting the time off is not a problem. I’ve traveled solo before. With some planning, the expenses could be managed. I can handle the MTA. The whole thing is entirely doable.
In the weeks since the idea crystallized, I’ve started to conceptualize what this trip might look like. I keep using that word for it, “conceptualize,” as if I were designing a jungle adventure for 100 people instead of a trip to archives and libraries for just one person, who is also me.
Seeing the sights, hitting the heights
I’ve also told people that it’s a fact-finding tour, which sounds impressive, like I’m carrying a briefcase and fixing a crisis.
But after reading that Bodea quote, it fits. I’m going in person because while online research can be amazing, it’s nothing like standing in the church your great-great grandparents attended. In person, I can have the first-hand experiences that shift genealogy from research into time travel.
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The Plan as it Stands
People-Focused: There are three particular relatives I want to know more about.
3X great-grandfather Benjamin Huppler, the candymaker mentioned above.
Great-granduncle Gus Weinpahl. Semipro ball player in Brooklyn, Sayville, and Connecticut, from about 1895-1910. He later went on to run his own candy shop and then a café. I bet he had a time.
Gus
Gus’ father and my great-grandfather Justus Weinpahl. German immigrant, Civil War veteran. Buried at Green-Wood. He operated a liquor-dealing business (like a wholesaler) for almost 40 years. My hunch/hope has always been that this kind of business could have put him in connection with government officials and also less savory types (Brothels? Bars? Race tracks?).
Hence my theme: “Candy, Baseball, Alcohol.” Because doesn’t that sound fun?
If I can’t learn about these men specifically, I want to know more about their worlds. Ideally, I am hoping to connect with some experts in these histories. I want to hire them for an hour so I can ask questions and learn more.
Location-Focused: On a broader family level, I want to visit some of the spots around Brooklyn that might have more resources than I can access online. That would be places like the Othmer Library, the church that I mentioned, and other places I can identify ahead of time. (And this time, I’ll be making strategic visits to investigate specific research items—no fishing expeditions.)
I may also take a day to go back to Green-Wood Cemetery and hunt down some of the graves that eluded me on my previous visits. With enough time, maybe I could visit TWO cemeteries.
That’s the strategy, for now. It occurred to me just today that I could probably also squeeze in a trip to the New Jersey town where my grandparents met. No doubt the plans will continue to shift as the months roll on.
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The one thing I can’t plan—and don’t like to think about much—is what happens when this trip is done. I can’t imagine being done with Brooklyn, but if this trip is meant to answer some of my longstanding Brooklyn questions, what comes after that?
I also know that there is a finite amount of facts and information out there for me to uncover. What if I’ve already found most of it?
I have the rest of my mom’s family materials. It’s a lot to unpack.
Last week, someone asked me what genealogy projects I was working on, and I made the mistake of telling the truth out loud.
“Oh not much right now,” I said. “Some stuff has gone quiet, and other projects I’m dragging my feet on.”
I forgot that the ancestors were in the waiting room, and they could hear me. Because I also forgot that I was already planning to take back some boxes of stuff left from when my mom had died.
I sealed my own fate.
The boxes were more of the things I just could not deal with when we cleaned out her apartment. The boxes were hastily packed in 2018, and stashed in my sister’s garage since then. (That sound is a dozen professional archivists rolling their eyes in unison.)
This year, I felt like now was the time to retrieve them. So during my most recent visit we did just that. We dragged out the two boxes and reopened them on my sister’s dining room table for a quick scan and weed.
Yes, that is a tortilla bag.
Pretty quickly, I went from feeling “willing” to “burdened.” It wasn’t just the idea of two more large boxes of unsorted papers and photos from a dozen decades. It was that quite clearly, a significant amount of the photos had not been my mother’s at all. They had come from her last husband—they were HIS family’s photos.
Which meant I would need to sort them from my mom’s photos, and then find his family members, who I haven’t spoken to since the early 1990s.
It felt like a Jacob Marley chain being laid on my shoulders.
But I also have todo this. I have a situation in my own family, involving photos I may never get to see. It has been a source of tremendous sadness to me. I just can’t do that to someone else.
We tossed a few things and packed it all up. I shipped some, carried some, and this past week I’ve been sorting it all out. Even if I had had time to sort it all in 2018, I couldn’t have. The larger of the two boxes was 28 lbs. of paper and photos. And my mother’s “filing system” was rudimentary at best.
The Stuff, a Partial List:
59 blank postcards, 1900-2000s; everywhere from the White House to the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
About a dozen written postcards, including some from globe-trotting Aunt Edith. Also one slightly racy postcard my mom sent to her husband (ew).
A spoon someone stole from the Greenbriar Inn. What!
A temperance pamphlet about Thomas Edison.
The mortarboard tassel from my sister’s law school graduation.
A resume my mom wrote, full of 100% lies about her qualifications and achievements. Definite keeper!
The quilt above, made by Edith’s sister Bessie, my great-grandma. I know: It has been in this condition for my whole memory.
More old silverware to go with the old silverware we already weren’t using, as well as a set of mini silver salt and pepper shakers.
A full shoebox of photos from my mom’s last husband.
Six or eight files of genealogy notes written by my great-grandfather and his sons, on fragile onionskin and fastened with rusty paper clips. Sometimes they used shirt pins.
Memorial guestbooks from two funerals.
Photos, various, c. 1880s-2000s. Most unlabeled. Oh goody.
Letters, postcards, manuscripts. Some are important, some are not.
This sampler, which might be from WWI or could be from 1976. I have no idea.
This doll. Also have no idea.
The good news is that, with my husband’s help, I have already tossed two full grocery bags of stuff. I’m being ruthless with the weeding. Photos without people, photos without recognizable relatives, photos with recognizable relatives but terrible or blurry, a pile of greeting cards—they all go.
So many Polaroids of nothing and no one.
Nothing of value has been lost, so far. And now I can dig into what remains. ☗
On Wednesdays we go way back. This week’s photo is my mom Nancy (the baby), between her mother Elise (left) and her grandmother Sarah (right).
I love unposed moments like this, when people were just being themselves. But I also can’t see it without some poignancy.
I know what they can’t: That Nancy would adore her grandmother, but struggle with her own mother, all their lives. She was caught between them here, and would be often as she grew up.
Sarah and Elise were actually stepmother/stepdaughter, and their own relationship was frosty.
There’s a lot of frustration in this photo. There’s a lot about love, mothering, disappointment, failure, and the ways we keep trying.
How to start with not even a name, and end up at a love story.
Last week my ancestors—probably in cahoots with the algorithm at FamilySearch.com—slid another surprise birth certificate in front of my face. “Let her try this one…” I’m sure they snickered.
Mystery “Weinpall” birth certificate from New York City Municipal Archives.
Well they should, as it didn’t list a name or even indicate the child’s sex. It granted me only a birthdate from 1881, and the names of my great-great grandparents, at their home address. It was just enough information to get my attention, and not enough to exactly match any established relatives. The ancestors know what they’re doing.
But despite their best efforts, I found it, and fast. And then I discovered an array of records. Piecing those together revealed a life unlike anyone else I’ve researched so far, and unlike anyone else in my family.
Graveyard Snoop 