Browns from Barkerville

Doing genealogy requires you to be part sleuth and part blood hound. After 38 years and a Masters in Library Science I’m still learning new tricks on how to do research.  If you listen carefully to how someone else found their ancestors you can pick up clues on how to do your own research. I’m a member of the South Cariboo Genealogy Group. On Thursdays from 10-1 I volunteer helping other people doing their family history. We have a small library, but the public library, where we are located, also offers free access to Ancestry, the major holder of records worldwide you can access online. There is also several other online genealogy services, familysearch.com, findmypast.com and individual countries provide access, some for free and some for a small fee.

Let’s get started with Maria Catharina Moeckel, who you say? Ah, that would be Maria Catharine Brown, my great grandmother. My grandmother was Mary Louise Tegart, her daughter. So now you figure out where you are on the tree.

Let’s start with the family and how I missed a major clue for a couple of decades. You can access the Canadian Census for 1881 at Archives Canada. The Browns had been living in Barkerville for ? By 1891 they were in Victoria, but returned to Barkville in 1894, two years before Henry Brown died. I was delighted to find them on the 1881 Census

Brown, Henry 31 Germany

Catharine 28 Germany

Annie  7 US

Katie 6 US

Elizabeth 5 BC

Emman 3 BC

Mary 1, BC

Mickel, Mary K. 51 Germany

Mary 13 Germany

I want you to pay very close attention to the name Mickel, because when I ordered Catharine’s marriage certificate for her second marriage to John Parter Fraser in 1898 it gave her maiden name as Michael. Which then made sense that the women also listed with the family was actually Catharine’s mother. So with a little bit of luck it was off to Germany with the name, thank heavens for soundex, which provides search capabilities for names that sound similar, but spelled differently.

And now you have two more generations.

Maria Catharina Moeckel born 27 November 1852; Evangelisch, Langenhain, Oberhessen, Hesse-Darmstadt. Father: Johann Heinrich Moeckel and Mother: Maria Katharina Werner.
Stay tuned, for more information on Johan and Maria and an interesting note on a birth certificate.