Parents with No Known Names - SNGF on October 18, 2025

Randy Seaver's suggestion yesterday for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun was this:

1. Sometimes we don't know the full name of both of the parents of an ancestor.  In our family tree, those ancestors with no-known-name parents are the end-of-the-line, at least as far as we know. [Some researchers call them "brick walls."]
2. Tell us about several of your ancestors that have no known-name parents, 
3. When was the last time you looked for these not known parents? 

This is a topic I havn't thought about for a while, but one I'm happy to revisit.  For the grandparents below, it's not for lack of searching that I don't know their names.

Henry Carl Meinzen is my great-grandfather, my maternal grandfather's father.  Henry was born in Prussia/Hanover/Germany in 1837 and died in Ohio in 1925.   Family lore claims Henry's father's name as Carl.  However, Henry's sister Sophia Meinzen Kropp's death certificate gives their father's name as Deidrich.  I've been unable to locate a document that tells their town or city of birth and have found no church records that I can definitively associate with Henry, Sophia, or their father.

John Froman is one of my paternal great-great-grandfathers.  He was born about 1841 in Germany and died about December, 1871, in Mercer County, PA.  He arrived in the U.S. in 1856 at the age of 16 as Johannes Frommann along with Werner Frommann, 54 years; Maria, 21; Anna, 12; Elisabeth, 7; Heinrich, 5; Caspar, 4; and Christiane, 23.  I've not found evidence of Werner Frommann in any other documents (even with spelling variants).  Writing this reminds me that I might find a death record for one of John's siblings that gives parents' names, not that a death certificate will positively identify a parent, but it's another place to look.  

Christian Gerner and Mary E. Stahl are my second great-grandparents, my father's great-grandparents, born about 1820 and 1824, respectively.  They immigrated to the U.S. in 1852 with one child; other children followed in 1853.  I've found no information for either of their parents.  Both were born in Germany, as far as I can tell, and married in Germany, but I don't have a city or town name where they were born or married to help.

William Doyle is my third great-grandfather, born about 1802, probably in Northumberland, and died in 1838 in Northumberland, England.  I haven't yet been able to identify his parents.  With only a name, and a common one at that, and birth year, I'm still searching.

Robert Laws is another third great-grandfather.  He and William Doyle were in-laws: William's son and Robert's daughter married in 1863.  Robert died in 1881.  There were several men named Robert Laws in Northumberland, possibly relatives, but I haven't found a hint for Robert's parents' names yet.  (How I wish British church records included names of parents!)

Making this list reminds me that I need to search for the parents of these individuals again, possibly using the names of several/more of their children to help.  For some of them it's been at least 10 years.  A lot can happen with online records in 10 years!

Sometimes I think I have too many ancestors!

Thanks for the fun, Randy.

—Nancy.

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