Genealogy Jottings

Katherine, Katherine. Who were you and where did you come from?

This ancestor of mine reportedly died in Indiana right after the Civil War. My family knows virtually nothing about her. All the information I have came from my great-aunt, Bertha Reed Evert, who was our ancestor’s granddaughter. Bertha was born twenty years after her grandmother died, so anything she knew was hearsay.

She told this story: Katherine Staninbaugh/Stanabaugh/Stillenbaugh Sherman was a German girl who immigrated to the U.S. when she was eight years old. She married Thomas Sherman during the Civil War. She died in Indianapolis shortly after the 1865 birth of her daughter and only child, Anna Petronellia, Bertha’s mother.

That’s all we know. No record of her marriage, death, or burial has been found. Nothing is known of her birth family or where they may have lived besides Indianapolis.

We do know that the Shermans resided for a time during the 1860’s in a small community south of Indianapolis, in Johnson County, Indiana. They had German neighbors named Stilgenbauer. Was Katherine one of them?

Several cousins and I have spent years trying to unravel this mystery. Despite our diligent efforts, we have found no clues as the identity of our mysterious Katherine. My Dad’s DNA test tells us he has some northern European ancestry although he is mostly English, so some German ancestry for him would make sense. He received 1/8 of his DNA from our mystery woman.

I find this search for Katherine long and frustrating because we never seem to make any headway. Still, I would really like to locate a family for her, so I will keep working on it.