Went Out West: Migrations in the Detling Family.
This is an updated introduction to a family history publication on the Detling family:
Producing a family history at first may seem an almost overwhelming task. Many people fear writing to the point they have difficulty describing their own family, let alone those of their ancestors. Putting words on paper has always come easily for me, more so with each passing year of experience in college, as a journalist, and as a professional public administrator. Writing a family history, however, is much more work. First come the details–the cold, hard facts of births, marriages, deaths–that must be collected, distilled, and organized.
Fortunately, the development of personal computers and well written software programs in the latter half of this century has made organizing the genealogical history of a family much easier, and many have the capabilities of producing a self-published family history such as this one. Writing such a history even under these conditions is a labor of love; to learn and preserve one’s background for the benefit of one’s current and future relatives is genuinely satisfying.
I first became interested in tracing my family tree in 1960–when I was 12 years old. My father, Howard Detling, told me his grandfather, Fort Brott, was a Union Army veteran of the Civil War. I had been doing a homework assignment on the Civil War, and learned one could write the National Archives in Washington, D.C. for a copy of a veteran’s military service records. I did, of course, and waited patiently for the answer, which in due course came: No record found. At age 12, trusting that surely the Federal government couldn’t have made a mistake, I simply concluded, as did my father, that the family story of Fort Brott’s military service in the 1860s must have been an error. Except for one thing; we had a record of his membership in the Groton, South Dakota, post of the Grand Army of the Republic. That puzzle remained with me for years.
When my son Robin was born in 1978, I knew it was time to pick up the fallen limbs of the family tree. The intervening years had meant graduation from high school, college, marriage (actually two) and settling into a profession of public service in local and regional governance in my native state of California. Robin’s mother’s interest in her family history rekindled in me an interest in mine, especially when I learned that my cousin Sherianne Valdez Killion was tracing her family tree. Of course, this included my mother’s ancestral family. Sherry sent me copies of everything she uncovered.
I had a rather discouraging conversation with my father, who, although he shared with me everything he could remember about his family, actually knew very few specifics. He insisted, however, that I continue to research the family in the hopes that one day we would be able to trace his family past his paternal grandparents, Joseph Hilyer Detling (actually, my father remembered his name as "Hilarious" because that was a family joke) and Mary Anne Bloedell, and his maternal ones, Fort Brott and Francelia Louise Roblee.
It was not until after my father’s death in 1993 that I made substantial progress, discovering Fort Brott’s true name, thus learning the link to the Bradt family, one of America’s oldest, and connecting to the Roblee research still proceeding in the northeast. By examination of the 1880 Census records from New York, I was able to find a Brott family that included the names of my grandmother, Carrie, together with her three sisters, as children. Thirty-five years after my initial inquiry, I was able to obtain Civil War records for Sybrant Fort Brott. Then I learned that Cynthia Brott Biasca had produced a monumental genealogical work on the Bradt family, and I was able to connect my family line to her work, which included my great-grandfather. In the process, I "met" various cousins using the Internet and by mail. Simultaneously, I was expanding what was known about my mother’s family, tracing the Winslow, Bunker, Wells and Archer surnames. With these lines, too, I made contact with others using electronic mail and plain-old-fashioned letters (snail mail in Internet parlance).
Sherry Killion and I exchanged more information. Some time previously, she had obtained details about some relatives from Janet Williams Hinkley of Cambridge, Ohio. I wrote Janet, and learned we were fifth cousins, once removed. The family tree grew slightly, and Janet’s interest spurred me on. My data base grew to more than 6,500 individuals, many unrelated. I kept adding, correlating and correcting, pruning the tree until I was satisfied I would have something meaningful regarding my family history.
In late 1996 I concluded I could do a publication on the descendants of Sobriety Bunker, my 5th great grandmother. The Bunkers, like the Bradts, are one of the oldest families in the United States. Here was a real challenge, since the various published Bunker genealogies didn’t trace the descendants of female Bunkers. After I joined the Bunker Family Association, Gil Bunker, BFA President, and Bunker cousins Janet Hinkley, Berniece Thompson and Nancy Porter convinced me to pull it all together by describing Sobriety’s descendants as much as could be done. Frances Goodnough Smith, another of Sobriety Bunker's descendants, contributed her work, as did others (Janet, Berniece, Nancy and Fran are all fifth cousins). I was contacted during the same period by Dan Earl, another Bunker/Winslow descendent, about his work tracing the family of Nathaniel Winslow, who married one of Sobriety’s daughters (Dan and I are third cousins).
Dan and I concluded that there was plenty of work to do, and we exchanged data freely. The result was publication in 1996 of Dan’s The Winslow Family and my Descendants of Sobriety Bunker, which almost immediately needed updating. The BFA asked me to "represent" Sobriety’s lines in its genealogical work, and in 1997 Gil Bunker asked that I begin to develop and maintain the Bunker Family Association's Internet site. Joining Dan and fellow Bunker cousin Nancy Porter in this continuing effort to identify the parentage of Nathaniel Winslow are Marcia Witham Dahlke, Robert Forrest, Mathew Hefty, John Scamahorn, Alvin Winslow and Susan Harrsch Witham, all Winslows or related to Winslows. The results of these exchanges of information are included in my family tree data base.
But there was still work to be done, tracing my Detling and Bloedell ancestors.This work, thanks to Margaret Buller, John von Haden and Susan Laubenheimer, has been substantially completed. Collaborating with Linda Reeves and Loran, Paul and Stanley Archer (distant cousins), the Archer lines of the Detling family are now largely described, with descendants added in January 2001 with the help of Jim McDowell and Michele Archer. Marlyn Duff and Terri Duff Walton have helped filled out the Duff lines related to the Archers. Soule ancestors were added thanks to the help of Joan Verdoorn, and to members of the Soule Kindred organization. Although some documentation remains to be done, and although the Detling line comes to the United States from Germany in the 1800s, my family now can trace some ancestors to the Mayflower, and to others among the earliest colonial settlers of New York, Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.
In a hobby such as genealogy, there comes a time to move from collecting information to sharing it (though it is clear that more information will undoubtedly be developed from time to time). The result was the publication of Went Out West: Migrations in the Detling Family, produced for my brothers, Martin and Wade, and my sisters, Adrienne and Valerie. I hope they will share it with their children, as I have done with mine. It is affectionately dedicated to our mother, Wilma Wells Detling, and to the memory of the best dad anyone could ever have. I would be remiss if I didn’t, once again, thank my wife Manuela, for her support. Although she doesn’t share my fascination for "digging up bones," she graciously understands my desire to share it. I only wish I could do as much justice to her family lines in Mexico, no less puzzling than some of my family mysteries mentioned here.
The book contains an ancestral chart for Douglas Detling and his brothers and sisters. Following that is a register report for each of the children of Howard and Wilma Wells Detling. Then, beginning on page 47, is an ancestral report for Douglas Detling using the Ahnentafel numbering system. All ancestors in this chapter are given a number from the Ahnentafel system, which uses a unique number for each position in the pedigree chart regardless of whether it is occupied by a known person. The starting number 1 is assigned to Douglas G. Detling. The father's number is two times the child's number, and the mother's number is always two times the child's number, plus 1.
I can be contacted as follows:
Douglas G. Detling
2473 Corona Ave.
Medford, OR 97504-4730
home: (541) 301-1025To aid in sharing family information, I am coordinating the following surname mailing lists at Rootsweb.com: BRADT, BROTT, BUNKER, DETLING and ROBLEE.
Most graphics courtesy of CS Designs
Last updated on April 17, 2008 by Douglas G. Detling © 1997-2006
