{"id":99,"date":"2019-01-04T15:41:33","date_gmt":"2019-01-04T15:41:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/porterfieldjunction.net\/blog\/?p=99"},"modified":"2019-01-07T17:09:26","modified_gmt":"2019-01-07T17:09:26","slug":"finding-my-bull-ancestors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/porterfieldjunction.net\/blog\/2019\/01\/04\/finding-my-bull-ancestors\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding my Bull(ish) ancestors"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Until recently there have been two mysteries concerning my great grandfather (my mother’s maternal grandfather). The first mystery concerned the exact birth place of “Fred” Bull. I knew he was born in Germany, but the family lore did not provide an exact location. The little bit of information that I had was confused by various spellings of the name of his home town.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/a>

Johann Friederich Theodor Bull<\/p><\/div>\r\n

Eventually I did narrow the options down to one town that I thought was correct, but I could not find any accessible records for that town at first. Then I discovered a restricted microfilm at Family Search. With the help of some friends, I gained access to this microfilm on-line. The first find was the birth record you see here for my great-grandfather “Fred” Bull. His full name is actually Johann Friederich Theodore Bull. He was born in Brudersdorf, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. The birth date on this record matches the birth date shown on his tombstone. Other information that I found on the same microfilm convinced me that this was the correct birth record for my great-grandfather.\u00a0 You can read a transcript and translation of this birth record here.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Of course there were other “finds” on this microfilm. I have been able to identify both of “Fred’s” parents and all four of his grandparents. I also learned that he had one younger brother (who died at the age of 8 years) and two older sisters. I have not yet started to look for descendants of Fred’s sisters.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

That leaves me with just one mystery to solve about Fred Bull. I know that he died in May 1896 after being hit by a train. That fact is recorded on his death record, but that record was not filed until December 1896. Why was there such a delay in filing of his death record? I would also like to learn more about this “train accident.” Surely there would have been a mention of this death in local newspapers, but so far I have not found any mention of his death other than his death record and some evidence of legal action against the railroad company.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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 <\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until recently there have been two mysteries concerning my great grandfather (my mother’s maternal grandfather). The first mystery concerned the exact birth place of “Fred” Bull. I knew he was… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,2],"tags":[10],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/porterfieldjunction.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/porterfieldjunction.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/porterfieldjunction.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/porterfieldjunction.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/porterfieldjunction.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/porterfieldjunction.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134,"href":"http:\/\/porterfieldjunction.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions\/134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/porterfieldjunction.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/porterfieldjunction.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/porterfieldjunction.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/porterfieldjunction.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}