Schmutz Family of Switzerland-Utah: fixing the past
As do most genealogists, I have a few (well, many) projects that I have floating in the back of my head, waiting to be finished. One of these was to compile the descendants of my Swiss ancestors, Johannes (John) Schmutz and his wife, Elisabeth Lehmann. In this day and age, with the fears of identity theft, I know that it’s next to impossible, but we can always dream.Â
In any case, as an individual with LDS heritage, I had ‘inherited’ my family history in its ‘complete’ form. After proving this theory incorrect more times than I could count, I decided to ‘clean’ up some of my family groups - find the original sources, make sure the birth dates and christening dates and places were accurate, etc. And so I began with the Schmutz family. I found all the entries for the children of Johannes and Elisabeth, and continued on to their generation. After I’d gathered all of Johannes’s siblings’ information, I began working on their parents, and made a startling discovery.
I had found the marriage record for Johannes’s parents, Johannes Schmutz and Anna Schuepbach. Everything seemed fine until I read the line that stated that Anna’s father was Bendicht Schuepbach. I paused. That didn’t seem right. I turned to the pedigree chart I had pulled up in my computer program, and realized I had discovered a problem. The information I had inherited listed Jakob Schuepbach as the father. This was a dilemma that needed to be solved.
I decided to look up the death entry for Anna Schuepbach. There in May of 1867, it listed her: Anna Schuepbach, daughter of Bendicht Schuepbach and Anna Hofer, wife of Johannes Schmutz. Birth date: 17 Nov 1798.Â
I looked in the birth records, and found an Anna Schuepbach, born in Hasle, Switzerland, daughter of Bendicht Scheupbach and Anna Hofer. Everything definitely indicated that I had found the correct ancestor. But how could the previous researchers have gotten it wrong?Â
I did a bit more digging. I found that the immigrant John Schmutz’s wife Elisabeth Lehmann (Anna Schuepbach’s daughter-in-law) had completed LDS temple ordinances (see here for explanation), and listed the 17 Nov 1798 birthdate for her, indicating that I was onto something. For some reason, between this date of 1877/1884, when Elisabeth remembered and wrote down what she knew about her mother-in-law, and the 1930s, when the genealogy was compiled, our ‘real’ grandmother was replaced, whether by accident or by faulty research (my vote is on the former), with another woman. I learned a valuable lesson in this experience - don’t always accept the information you have. As in my case, a great portion of it was exactly as it should have been. But that one link, that one missing piece, can erase years of erroneous research.Â
December 17th, 2006 at 11:55 pm
I am interested in finding out the result of your research, since Jakob SCHUEPBACH (b. 12 Apr 1754) or as you have possibly discovered, Bendicht Scheupbach, is my 4th great - grandfather.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Dave Schmutz
utahschmutz@yahoo.com
My ancestry is
Charles Andrew Schmutz son of
Andrew Gottlieb SCHMUTZ (AFN:6P8J-1T) son of
Gottlieb SCHMUTZ (AFN:1RC1-BL) son of
John (Johannes) SCHMUTZ (AFN: 1LML-5K) son of
Anna SCHUEPBACH (AFN: 3STP-D9) daughter of
Jakob SCHUEPBACH (AFN: 9BPC-6P) or should it really be Bendicht Scheupbach
January 19th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
I am a descendant of the Schmutz’s and can dig up some info if your are interested.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:34 am
I am Shane Schmutz, son of Duane Schmutz (son of Howard and Elna Schmutz). I’d be interested in the Schmutz family geneology.
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I am Douglas Schmutz, son of Ray Schmutz, son of John Henry Schmutz. I also am a descendent of this Anna Schuepbach, and would be very interested in receiving the information and images of records that clear up this dilema. I asked my mother from whom I’ve inherited a lot of genealogy, and she said she’d heard of this issue but hadn’t resolved it to her satisfaction, so she was leaving it to me and my sister who’s also doing research now. Please reply to dschmutz1@comcast.net
February 25th, 2008 at 2:20 am
I am also a descendant of Johannes Schmutz and Elisabeth Lehmann and therefore of Johannes Schmutz and Anna Schüppach. I am the sister of Douglas Schmutz who has also left a reply. I did exactly the same thing you did. I started looking at our family lines and wanted to learn how to do research, so that’s where I started. It just happens that the first thing I looked for in trying to learn the mechanics of ordering and reading films was the baptismal entry of Johannes Schmutz who married Elisabeth Lehmann. Immediately I saw the same thing–that Anna’s father was Bendicht and not Jakob because he was listed as a witness to the baptism of the child. I too found the death records eventually and found the real birth date. Next I searched the Höchstetten records because the marriage record said she was from there. When I couldn’t find her in Höchstetten, I next thought of Hasle since Höchstetten and Hasle seem to be the places where most of the Schüppachs come from, and then I found one record in the IGI for her sealed to the correct parents and indeed they were from Hasle. I now have the Hasle films ordered and am excited to find the rest of her family. Have you already done that?
I have found lots of mistakes on our lines–children put in the wrong families and even a few children that were missed. But inspite of that, it is quite amazing how much we have that is correct, considering those who did most of it had no access to computers and also did it before microfilms were available from the Church.