29 November 2022

How it Started: Piecing Together Stumpf Families in the Banat


Some Background

My grandfather's family are Donauschwabens, ethnic Germans whose ancestors settled in the Banat region of Austria-Hungary in the mid- and late-18th and early-19th centuries. (This Eastern European region is now split between Romania, Serbia, and somewhat in Hungary.) I’ve been researching the genealogy of these families for a few years now and have made some interesting discoveries.

My STUMPF Research

The STUMPF line, however, has been a brick wall for me. From documents the family had, I knew my great-grandfather, Michael Stumpf, was born in Kathreinfeld and his father, Michael Stumpf, in Klek. With the help of some family books and finally researchers in Serbia [1] checking the archives for me and breaking the first brick wall of my 2xgreat-grandfather's parents. The older Michael’s parents are Johann Stumpf from Kathreinfeld and Katharina Hoffman from Klek!

Most likely due to a gap in the records in Klek, however, the marriage record of Johann Stumpf and Katharina Hoffman has not been found, nor has the baptismal record for their first son Michael. I’m stumped at Johann. (Lol, see what I did there.)

On the other side of the figurative genealogical brick wall I can see lots of STUMPF families in these villages and nearby villages, but I didn’t know how they are all connected nor how Johann might connect with them. Many times the families would be in one book with younger kids and in a different book with older kids. To make matters worse, some family books covered early 1800s and some late 1800s, with a gap in the mid-1800s, so that you can’t always connect the older generations across the missing generations to the newer generations. It was super confusing and impossible, really, to follow the families.

My Cut and Paste Job

With the hope of overcoming the record gap in Klek, as well as getting a better visual, I needed a different approach. I made copies the STUMPF families from over a dozen area family books (2 Kathreinfeld, Lazarfeld, Klek, Grossbetschkerek, Rudolfgnad, etc. plus Grabatz), Banat church records, and US immigration (especially Dave Dreyer's ship extractions) and other data. I then physically cut them out and pasted (taped) them onto old fashioned large index cards, organizing by lineage. This was in 2019.


Family groups, pasted onto orange-ish cards, and laid out on a table in family order.

More family groups pasted on orange-ish cards. Handwritten notes have been added. One family that was in two different family books with overlapping information has the second copy taped over the first so that it can flip out of the way to reveal the other information.

Orange-ish card with family groups pasted on. Each family is indented under its parent family. In some cases parentage and other notes are written in.


Another photo of the families pasted onto the orange-ish cards.  Families are indented under their parent family and align in generations down the cards. Trying out a hypothesis, Johann's family (with lots of Post-it notes with question marks) between the Johann Michael family and the Michael and Margareths Kollinger families.

Copies of Stumpf families from Banat family books. The top family is Melchior Stumpf and his wife Maria Anna and their 10 kids. The next family is their son Jakob with wife Katharina Bartl and 6 kids, followed by Peter and his wife Anna Maria Neurohr and their 7? kids found in different family books. The last two families are Johann Michael and wife Anna Maria Putz, with Trish's notes wondering if he goes with Peter's family. The last family is of Johann Stumpf with more Post-it notes about parentage.

Sources used in First stages of the cut and paste project. The list includes the family books for Lazarfeld, Sigmundfeld & Rudolfsgnad, Katreinfeld & St. Georgen, Lazarfeld, Klek, Katreinfeld, Elisenhain-Josefsdorf, and Grabatz. Also listed are church records for Kathreinfeld.

My hope was to find a potential family for my 3xgreat-grandfather Johann. Did I just make a different mess? Some families came together really well, while others not so much, while others didn’t connect at all. After some time, the note cards were getting shuffled and a new confusion set in. Also, no family jumped out as being a slam-dunk for Johann.


Footnotes: 

[1] I had help from two researchers in Serbia: Marta Istvan and Staša Cvetković.