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Mary Ann Knoke and Jim Andris: Second Cousins Once RemovedA grandfather foundIn February of 2002, I received an email message from Mary Ann Knoke. She had been searching on the internet for information on her grandmother, Lillian Covey. In Mary Ann's own words:
I have reason to believe that Daniel Fickeisen was my grandfather. My grandmother, Lillian {Covey} Baltz, told my mother, Goldie, that she fell in love with a young man named Daniel Fickeisen and when she became pregnant he disappeared.
I was cautious about Mary Ann's proposal at first, mainly because I knew how many Daniel Fickeisens there could have been around the area at that time, and I also knew of a Daniel Fickeisen from Pittsburgh. However, as I began to research the subject, the possibility became a probability. For one thing, the 1900 census records showed that Dan Fickeisen was living on Pleasant Ridge in Washington Co., Ohio as the head of the household. This is about 15 miles from Marietta. He was unmarried at the time, although he later married a Margaret Burris around 1908 and had a child, Lula Fickeisen. I ventured this story to my mother, Lorene, and she was even more skeptical. I could tell by the tone of her voice. However, as the year rolled on, I continued to correspond with Mary Ann. She wrote that she and her sister were looking through a journal that their mother kept and came across some names, pictures and a place named Sitka. Goldie had written in her journal that
his [Ed Baltz, her stepfather] saw mill is inside a large building where he sawed lumber in all sorts of pieces which you use in building a house etc. He had a planing mill, a gristmill where he ground corn into meal in the winter and folks from all around would come and buy his stuff.
There was also a picture of Ed Baltz's house, built very near the sawmill, in Goldie's journal, and Mary Ann wondered how close this was to where Daniel Fickeisen was living.
In February of 2003 I heard from Mary Ann again, and she sent me the pictures of her mother, Goldie, and of she and my mother, Lorene, shown on this page. I have looked closely at these pictures, and I think the family resemblance is there, especially between Mary Ann and my mother, and some of my mother's first cousins. |