Most MHS '68 folks will find their ancestors in this database:
Mishawaka Small Trees

For about 420 MHS '68 folks, there is information about your ancestors at that link. For some, the information extends for several generations and has information such as passenger records from the ship that they were on when they crossed the Atlantic Ocean to reach the USA. As of July 2024, the database includes over 49,000 individuals and over 137,000 attached records.

The information varies. The research and database creation have been done by AMB over a span of about a quarter of a century. For all MHS '68 folks for whom AMB has done basic genealogies, the attempt is to show five generations, meaning back to the person's great-great-grandparents.

The genealogical research on MHS '68 folks began with efforts to find contact info in advance of a reunion that happened in 1998. To find someone, AMB would begin with the last known info and work from there. Most people are connected to other people in some way -- parents, siblings, cousins, spouses. She began with the known and worked back into the unknown. She stored the data using genealogy software that was familiar to her as a genealogist.

The hunt began with the 1967-68 student directory -- a gold mine because it has birth dates and 1967 addresses. (Connie Shaffer and helpers put together that student directory back in September 1968.) Also used were some old reunion booklets with names of spouses and children, the commencement program, and the '65, '66, '67, and '68 yearbooks. And there was an old scrapbook that had been kept by Karen Broomall (who died in 2014): In the early years after high school, Karen kept a scrapbook with news clippings of wedding stories for people from the MHS '68 group. She had shared that info over the years, and the news clippings gave info about women's married names.

As years passed, when someone would send word that someone's parents had died, AMB would enter that info in the database and add whatever info might be in an obit. A few people from the MHS '68 group specifically asked for some genealogy help: Judy Greenlee had heard that she was related to Carolyn Schwartz and Christine Carlson, but she had no idea how. Turns out that Judy and Christine are half-2nd-cousins, and that Carolyn is a cousin to Christine, but a stepcousin to Judy. ... Dawn Housand ancestral tree was pulled together in an effort to offer cheer by email. ... Ken Brugh suspected (and hoped) that Chuck Hoffman was a distant cousin. Lots of looking found that the paper-trail says they are 4th cousins. ... Some of AMB's old, old friends from the MHS '68 group wondered about their ancestors, and that info was pulled together. Some other MHS '68 folks asked for help, and it was offered when possible.

Because some of those people were interconnected, that database was growing considerably.

As AMB was planning and coordinating the 2018 reunion, the challenge became doing basic trees for 50% of the group. Once that goal was reached, AMB increased the challenge for herself. By July 2024, the database has basic trees for all except five people from the MHS '68 group:  Jeff Barcus and Robert Lynn (both who were adopted), Eleanor Allen (whose maiden name may have been Eleanor Hitt), Suhaila Shamsuddin (no access to records from her country and no language ability), and one person who is intentionally omitted from the database because he is an asshole. (Yes, AMB really typed that.)

These days, not only are census records available thru 1950, but, for Indiana, there also are marriage and death records until very recent years, and birth records thru 1944. The available records vary by state, but Indiana is easy to work.

Along the way, AMB figured out various cousin-connections for MHS '68 folks. Most of them are listed on this page (below).

In a few instances, there were DNA tests that people asked AMB to look at and puzzle thru: In one case, the DNA proved that an MHS '68 woman's great-grandfather was not the man she believed him to be. Circumstances may have resulted in the truth being hidden, but the DNA reached across 100 years and spoke the truth.

In another case, an MHS '68 woman grew up being told that she was Italian, thru her mother. The woman's confusion was that the DNA ethnicity analysis showed no Italian. Her mother's Italian surname came from her father (first-name Raymond), who got his surname from his mother (first-name Jessie). (Raymond was born out-of-wedlock and carried Jessie's surname.) The hidden confusion? Jessie got the surname from her FOSTER parents, more specifically from her foster father -- whose parents were Italian immigrants. The MHS '68 woman herself? No, she has no Italian ancestors.  

Another case was all paper-trail genealogy: An MHS '68 man had an unusual story. He claimed that his father's mother (i.e., his paternal grandmother) was Jewish and had abandoned her husband and young son (his father) to run off to Chicago and marry a Mafioso mobster. He said that he went to both Catholic school and Hebrew school (weekly Hebrew lessons) when he was a kid. When he was in 8th grade, a grandmother (more correctly, his father's stepmother) counseled him that he must decide Catholic or Jewish, that trying to "ride the two" would not work. And, he decided to be confirmed as a Catholic. The reality is that his paternal grandmother was NOT Jewish. ... But, that's what the man believed when he asked for "a bit of help" with his genealogy. ... It turns out that his father's parents had divorced when the father was very young. Both of the father's parents re-married, and there was some custody fighting over the boy. Eventually, the father's father got the upper hand, and the father ended up in Mishawaka, as a teenager. ... I.e., the father knew absolutely that his mother was not a Jewish woman who had run off with a Mafia man. Indeed, the father would have known that his mother was a Catholic woman. The grandmother's grave and basic genealogy documents proved the situation. However, it was the reveal of the 1950 census that suggests WHY the MHS '68 man's father told the lies: By 1950, the grandmother of the MHS '68 man was living in a mental institution. It appears that's where she spent the last four decades of her life. Thus, the lies.

As a genealogist, AMB has communicated with various relatives of MHS '68 folks who made contact because of the database. In one instance there was collaboration with a cousin of Dave Nevel, and the collaboration resulted in some answers about one of Dave's great-grandfathers. 

In another case, a young woman who lives in northern Indiana figured out who her father is because of info in the database: She had done a DNA test and found that she had matches with people who had some ancestors in that database. She made contact with AMB, and some puzzling determined who her father is. Her father is the 1st cousin of one of the MHS '68 men. She and her father have met.

One MHS '68 man's parents divorced when he was very young. He never really knew his father, and he had no photo of him. He was one of the really hard ones to do a tree for. It took years even to figure out who his parents were. Finally, with lots of piecing and puzzling and looking at old Mishawaka city directories, the answer was found. AMB then turned up a photo of the man's dad as a young man in the military. The MHS '68 man looks just like his father. The MHS '68 man carries the surname of a man who was his stepfather for a few years. We who were part of the MHS '68 group never knew this man's original surname.

A few MHS '68 folks have been so estranged from their families that they learned of a parent's death via an email-blast sent to MHS '68 folks.

A few have asked for help finding their "Indian ancestors." For all but one, the answer was, "You have no Indian ancestors." ... For that one woman, there is a document from 1908 that identified her grandfather as having a mother who was "1/2 Indian of the Chippewa Tribe." The document was her grandfather's "Application for Enrollment in a Nonreservation School." Count the generations and the fractions: That means that the woman had one great-great-grandparent who was a Chippewa Indian. That great-great-grandparent was a woman born in 1838 in Quebec; that woman herself had a "well-integrated" ancestry of Chippewa and French. ... Short version: Of the MHS '68 woman's 16 great-great-grandparents, one was some mix of Chippewa and French. One out of 16 is just over six percent, and the paper trail says that it was not a full six percent, meaning that the great-great-grandmother herself was of "mixed" ancestry. Long before 1840, the Chippewa people living in Quebec were well intermarried and intermingled with the French, who had arrived in Quebec as traders in the 16th century.

One MHS '68 man was convinced that he is one-quarter Comanche Indian. By 2008, he was being paid $ to give "social justice" lectures to audiences of predominately people of color -- usually black, but maybe a few Amer-Indians. Something about "empowering people" and about how "white people have harmed us." He explained that he would begin his speeches by saying, "You look at me and see a white man, but my grandmother was full-blooded Comanche." The story as he told it did not ring true. Some basic genealogical research proves that there is zero truth to the story that he was telling people. The documents were shared with him; he never replied. ... Ancestrally, the closest connection that MHS '68 man has to Amer-Indians is that he had a great-great-grandfather who served in a U.S. military unit that engaged in some battles with Seminole Indians in Florida. ... On another note, another of his great-great-grandfathers (mother's father's mother's father) was listed as a slave owner on the 1860 census of Bell County, Texas. ... But there he was in the "woke world" of the early 21st century making money lecturing to "people of color" as he falsely claimed to be one-quarter Comanche Indian.

You are welcome to see what has been found about your ancestors in this database:
Mishawaka Small Trees

AMB built that database. It has over 500 "trees" and includes trees for some Mishawaka-connected folks other than MHS '68 people. Most public libraries have free access to the site. That database will survive. Long after AMB is dead, your great-grandchild could be doing genealogical research and find the work AMB did on your ancestors. Any person from the MHS '68 group is welcome to contact AMB and request an "invite" to the database. The "invites" are totally free. With an "invite," you can look at the database anywhere that you have access to the internet. Free advice: Use a laptop computer or an IPad. The screen on a phone is be too small for you to see the data well enough to make sense of it.

If you'd rather not ask AMB for an invite, if you have access to ancestryDOTcom (either by subscription or at a public library) do a "member search" for the user name "GoodWitchGoodWitch." Go to the profile page for GoodWitchGoodWitch. (Should there be another person with that user name, you'll be able to identify AMB from the profile page.) On the profile page, you'll fine over 100 trees built by AMB. Look for the tree named "Mishawaka Small Trees."

Info in the database has come from public sources, including the following:

• 1967-68 MHS student directory.
• Published obits.
• Marriage records from Indiana and some other states.
• Social Security Death Index.
• Social Security Claims.
• St. Joseph Co. Public Library obit index.
• Obits at the St. Joseph Co. genealogy web site.
• Birth records from Indiana and some other states.
• Death records from Indiana and some other states.
• Occasional published divorce records.
• U.S. censuses, state censuses, draft registration cards, military records, immigration records, and other records and info found at ancestry.com.
• Will and probate records.
• Old newspaper stories.

As the database grew, an additional challenge became seeing where trees overlap -- i.e., finding cousins. Here are the results.

First, there are nine sibling sets:
Barber, Eberlein, Fisher, Jasiewicz, Locke, Natali, Nisley, Reith, Van Camp.

Then, there are the cousins, at various levels. Matches are included here only if it is what the paper-trail shows. Likely guesses are not included. See a note at the end of the list that explains terminology:

• Kathy KLOTZ and Marty ZEMIALKOWSKI: aunt/niece (Klotz/Williams).
• Curt ADAMS and Lewis GUSHWA: 1st cousins (Gerard/Mallory).
• Terry DeMAEGD and Alan DeMAEGD: 1st cousins (DeMaegd/Warnier).
• Greg BALDONI and Jimita BALDONI: 1st cousins (Baldoni/Farabegoli).
• Debbie WERBROUCK and Larry KARNES: 1st cousins (LaCava/Arnot).
• Connie KELLY and Randal KELLY: 1st cousins (Kelly/Long).
• Byron ALDRICH and Walt EAKINS: 1st cousins (Eakins/Patterson).
• Linda JASIEWICZ and the JASIEWICZ twins: 1st cousins (Jasiewicz/Bujwid).
• Bob LESE and Jimmie TROVATORE: 1st cousins (Trovatore/Iavagnillio).
• Deborah STRETCH and Robert STRECH: 1st cousins (Stretch/Rockett).
• Barbara RILEY and Cheri FRAZIER: 1st cousins (Riley/Haack).
• Pam CRAIG and Cindy WAIDNER: 1st cousins (Waidner/Fleck).
• David HAMMAN and Connie HUBANKS: 1st cousins (Hubanks/Hamman). Note that this is on David’s maternal side; David’s maternal grandmother was a HAMMAN; his paternal grandfather also was a HAMMAN; however, the two were not related.
• Greg DEITCHLEY, Keith DeLARUELLE, Thomas DeLAURELLE, and the NISLEY brothers: all share one set of great-grandparents (de laRuelle/D’Hondt). Greg and the Nisley brothers are 1st cousins to each other (DeLaRuelle/Doens). They are 2nd cousins to Tom and Keith, who are 2nd cousins to all others in the group of six.
• Joyce MABIE and the VAN CAMP brothers: half-1st-cousins (Webber).
• May COPP and Janet JOHNSON: 1st cousins once-removed (Copp/Warren).
• Dawn HOUSAND, Jimmie Christine HECKAMAN, Steve HAZEN, and VanCAMP brothers: all are Housand/Bain cousins. Jimmie Christine and VanCamp brothers are 1st cousins; they are 2nd cousins to Steve, and Dawn’s relationship lies between that for all of them.
• Penny REYNOLDS and Tim KOBB: 2nd cousins (Kobb/Hattel).
• Penny REYNOLDS, May COPP, and David HAMMAN: 2nd cousins (Warren/Thompson).
• Penny REYNOLDS & David HAMMAN are 2nd cousins once-removed to Janet JOHNSON (Warren/Thompson).
• Jerry HEISER and Claude RODGERS: 2nd cousins (Heiser/Sanger).
• Kitty KLAER and Mike SQUIBB: 2nd cousins (Squibb/Sullivan).
• Gail MYERS and Debbie CLAEYS: 2nd cousins (Myers/Reimer).
• Larry GEE and Paul HUYVAERT: 2nd cousins (Pauwels/DeClercq).
• Marie PALMER and 1st cousins David HAMMAN & Connie HUBANKS: 2nd cousins (Hamman/Booher).
• Nancy CARNER and Keith DeLARUELLE: 2nd cousins (Wachs/Klein).
• Marsha HONOLD and James CARNES: 2nd cousins (Newcomer/Keil).
• Toni BEEHLER and Barry SPRINGS: 2nd cousins (Beehler/Klein).
• Christine CARLSON and Judy GREENLEE: half-2nd cousins (Zoe Ella Johnson, dau. of Valentine Johnson & Rebecca Powlson).
• Greg COOK and the EBERLEIN siblings: 2nd cousins once-removed. (Eberlein/Gill).
• Jan MILLER and Brenda SNYDER: 2nd cousins once-removed. (Miller/Rarig).
• Bev VANCE and the EBERLEIN siblings: 2nd cousins once-removed (Eberlein/Gill).
• Rich PUTZ and 1st cousins Curt ADAMS & Lewis GUSHWA: 2nd cousins once-removed (Gerard/Kleckner).
• Bev VANCE and Greg COOK: 3rd cousin (Eberlein/Gill).
• Greg COOK and Greg DEITCHLEY: 3rd cousins. (Deitchley/Rapp).
• Randy MARKS and Judy GREENLEE: 3rd cousins (Berry/Cook).
• Carolyn SCHWARTZ and Christine CARLSON: 3rd cousins (Carpenter/Hanville).
• Rich Putz and Jan MILLER: 3rd cousins (Gerard/Bright).
• Connie MULLINS and 1st cousins Pam CRAIG & Cindy WAIDNER: 3rd cousins (Scheibelhut/Reichert).
• Jan MILLER and 1st cousins Curt ADAMS & Lewis GUSHWA: 3rd cousins once-removed (Gerard/Bright).
• Paula LAMPERT and the BARBER siblings: 3rd cousins once-removed (Dreibelbis/Engle).
• Josephine KOZLOWSKI and Jim THOMAS: 3rd cousins once-removed (Myers/Smith).
• Nanette SCHNAIBLE and Mary RHOADE: 3rd cousins once-removed (Matz/Berger).
• Margo LEE and the BARBER siblings: half 3rd-cousins (Conrad Zimmerman).
• Craig SALYER and Ruth Ann SALYER are complex cousins. They are half 1st-cousins once-removed, AND they are 3rd cousins once-removed. Both descend from Mary Watson b. 1882; Craig descends from Mary's 1st husband (David, who died young), and Ruth descends from Mary's 2nd husband (Grover). Mary's two husbands were SALYER 1st cousins.
• Mary CARTER and Will POOLEY: double 4th cousins (both Troyer/Holley and Queer/Troyer).
• Ken BRUGH and Chuck HOFFMAN: 4th cousins (Brugh/Workman).
• Bob CULP and Linda FORBESS: 4th cousins (Culp/Garringer).

TERMINOLOGY:
1^st cousins share one set of grandparents.
2^nd cousins share one set of great-grandparents.
3^rd cousins share one set of great-great-grandparents.
4^th cousins share one set of great-great-great-grandparents.
"Once-removed" means one generation off. I.e., the child of your 1st cousin is your 1st cousin once-removed -- NOT your 2nd cousin.
"Half" means sharing only one ancestor at that generation; i.e., same grandmother, different grandfathers because grandmother had more than one husband.

AMB has found that she has 16 remote cousins among MHS '68 folks:

• Keith Smith: descent from Mr. GRIMES, who had sons born in 1774 and 1779.
• Sandy Young and Sandy Eberhardt: descent from Jacob GREIB, b. 1711.
• Ron and Don Hixenbaugh: descent from Thomas WISE, b. 1726.
• Tammy Reed and Dawn Housand: descent from Johannes KEIM, b. reportedly in 1675.
• Doug Overman: descent from Stephen ULRICH, b. abt 1680.
• Pat McGee: descent from Thomas SANFORD, b. 1608.
• Ron Wise: descent from William BUNNELL, d. aft. 1-May-1654.
• Mike Hass: descent from Joshua HOTCHKISS, b. 1651.
• Sharon Gill and Pat Semprini: descent from George SOULE, b. 1595 (Mayflower).
• Larry and Chuck Van Camp: descent from William BRADFORD, b. 1589 (Mayflower).
• Spider Draves: shared ancestry not yet known, but DNA proves that Spider and AMB share DNA on her paternal side.

Totally by chance, in 2008, Alice stood with three remote cousins.
At the time, the ancestral connections were unknown.
It was just four old Camp Fire Girls,
from the Mishawaka Council of Camp Fire.
Sharon Gill, Tammy Reed, Alice Beard, Pat McGee.
Wo-He-Lo!