Genealogy: Sieferts and a few others

 Howdy all!

The Old Man here.

In my last blog I covered a lot of the Vaskie/Frederick lines, so this one will talk about the Sieferts, Hookers, Bowlins, and maybe a few others. The Siefert line is from Grandma Ige, or Mildred Eileen. First things first. Do Not Ever Call Her Mildred, Millie, or any other nickname for Mildred. Even though she's been dead for over a decade, I can promise you she still hates her first name. I don't remember her getting mad a whole lot, but calling her Mildred would flat out piss her off. We thought it was funny. In this line, I am fortunate that was given the awesome opportunity to be around and know a great grandparent. Not a lot of people get to meet their great grandparents and, as a kid, old people tended to creep me out a bit. Luckily, I didn't feel that way about my great grandparents. I thought they were cool. 

The Siefert line in Jackson County Illinois started off with John Michael Siefert, but apparently he went by Michael.  He was born in Germany in 1822. Almost nothing is known about Michael's life in Germany, other than he told people he served in the German Army for 3 years before he came to America. I haven't found any documentation to support this, but according to family accounts, this is what he told people. He came to America in the fall of 1846 through the port at New Orleans at 23 years of age. He made his way north along the Mississippi River eventually stopping in Hannibal, Missouri and Belleville, Illinois for a short while before settling in the Old Du Quoin, Illinois area. Michael's wife, Elizabeth Schrader, was born in Germany in 1827. Her background is much the same as Michaels, there's not a lot of info about her life in Germany. It is known that she came to America at the age of 16, on her own, after her parents died. In 1848 they were married and through the years they had seven children: Charles, John, Henry,  Edward, Anna, William, and Elisabeth. Edward died at the age of 7 when the shawl he was wearing got caught in the gears of a local mill he was at, and he was crushed to death. The rest lived to adulthood and had families of their own. The second oldest, John, is my great great grandfather. Michael and Elizabeth were married for over 50 years, and they both died in December of 1905, three weeks apart. 

John Siefert was born in 1851 in Belleville, Illinois. I don't know a whole lot about John, but I'm hoping my next trip to Murphysboro will remedy that. He married a gal named Margaret Melissa Bowlin in 1876. Margaret's family, the Bowlins, will have a blog of their own, because their history is pretty immense. John and Margaret had three boys: Alva, Theodore, and William. Theodore was my great grandfather. Everybody called him Ted or Grandpa Ted, and he was a dandy. 

Theodore Siefert was born in 1879 and was the middle son of John and Margaret Siefert. He grew up in the Old Du Quoin area and, being the Sieferts were farmers, worked on the family farm. In 1900 he married Alice Hooker. Her parents died when she was very young and she was raised by her oldest sister and her husband. When she reached her teenage years, she went to work as a housekeeper for William Siefert, Teds uncle. This is where Ted and Alice met and eventually they got married. This union produced seven children: Lela, Robert, Louis, Russell, Thelma, Genevieve, and Mildred. Mildred was my grandmother. There was an 18 year span from Lela to Grandma Ige. Robert died at 2 years of pneumonia. The rest lived to adulthood, got married and had families of their own.  According to Pop, he never knew Grandpa Ted to ever have a regular job. He had the farm in Dowell, Illinois and, apparently, he was a master at bartering. He hardly ever paid for anything, he traded for it. I remember Grandma Ige telling me that her family never had much money, but they never wanted for anything. They butchered cattle, pigs and chickens for food. If the kids needed shoes, Ted would trade for them. Pop used to tell me how he loved hanging around Grandpa Ted. I remember as a kid when we would go down to Murphysboro and visit Ted in the nursing home. He was deaf as a rock by this time and had one of those hearing aids with the amplifier in his shirt pocket and the wire going up to the ear plug. The amplifier was turned up so loud that you could hear your own voice blaring into his ear, and he could still barely hear you. Needless to say, conversations with Ted were pretty loud. One time we went to see him and he asked Pop, "Mikey what are you doing these days?" Pop told him he was a printer at a newspaper and Ted replied, "Tax collector???? I never thought I'd see the day my own grandson would be a damn tax collector!!" Pop told me that when he was a kid, Ted once told him that there would be a day when people would have to pay to watch TV, pay for bottles of water, and man would walk on the moon. He went 3 for 3 on those. I was fortunate to get to be around Grandpa Ted until I was 9 years old. He died in 1974 at the age of 95. He was buried in the Old Du Quoin Cemetery next to Alice, who predeceased him in 1962. 

Ted's wife was Alice Hooker. Yes, we have hookers in the family and yes we have joked about it forever. She was born in 1879 in Jackson County, Illinois. It is believed that the Hooker home was in the De Soto, IL area. She had 8 siblings, but other than her oldest sister, Martha, not a whole lot is known about any of them, or their parents. What is known is that she went to work for William Siefert as a housekeeper when she was a teenager. William was Ted's uncle, so that's how he and Alice met. I don't know a whole lot about Alice, but she is going to be a subject that i am going to research. 

As I grew up, we were living in Putnam County, which was about a 5 hour drive to Murphysboro, so going to visit the Sieferts was always a special time. Sometimes I would go with Grandma and Grandpa, but most of the time with Ma and Pop. I was so fortunate to grow up around, and remember, these people. Out of all the Siefert siblings, Uncle Russell was the one I was closest to, other than Grandma Ige. Russell was married to a hoot of a gal named Lucille Holliday. They were married in 1930 and had two kids: Jane and Donald (Donny). Russ liked to smoke Swisher Sweet cigars, and drove a Plymouth Grand Fury. He was also hard of hearing leading to all of the men in the Siefert line having what is called "Siefert Hearing". Pop had it for sure, and I get accused of it from time to time. It was nothing new to walk into their living room and see Russ sleeping in his chair with a cigar either in his mouth or in his hand. I remember like it was yesterday, every time I would see Russell he would yell out, "Well helloooo Johnny!!" I'm not sure why, but I loved that! He was a printer, postmaster, tax assessor, and was active in local politics. Lucille was something else. She worked a shoe store in downtown Murphysboro for years, selling ladies shoes. She, like most of the family in southern IL, was a huge St Louis Cardinals baseball fan. Through the years, she befriended Joe Buck, the Cardinals announcer, and they would talk over the phone about the state of the Cardinals. When she died, the Cardinals organization sent a flower arrangement to her funeral with a card proclaiming her the Cardinals #1 fan. She, like everyone else, could never understand how I could be a Cubs fan. My favorite Lucy story takes place in the summer of 1989. My ex was pregnant with my youngest daughter, and we came to Murphysboro for the Siefert family reunion. We were all staying at Russ and Lucy's house, so Ma, Pop, and my sisters were already there. After saying our hellos out on the porch, Pop told me to go in the house and and say Hi to Lucy, but talk really loud because she was going deaf. I go into the kitchen where she was, and yelled, "Hey Lucy!" She turned around and said she knew that voice from anywhere and asked how I was doing. "Fine! How are you?" I yelled. She then looked at me and asked why in the hell I was yelling at her. I told her that Pop had told me she was going deaf, she laughed and told me that Pop and Donny played me for a fool, and that she was going blind, but her hearing was just fine. Like I said, she was a hoot. Lucille passed in 2006.

Donny is Russ and Lucy's youngest child. He was 6 years older than Pop, and they basically grew up together in southern IL. To say they were tight would be an understatement. Their parents would go on vacations together, and eventually bought vacation houses in the same area of Florida. While there were a lot of similarities between Donny and Pop, there were even more differences. Donny was college educated, Pop was not. Pop loved everything there is about horses, owned horses, became a farrier, etc... Donny liked western movies. Donny loves to fish and hunt. His nickname is "The Fish Magnet", and for a time in the 70s, he was a professional bass fisherman. Pop could care less about fishing or hunting. Donny was a teacher. Pop was a mechanic. One thing was for sure, they loved each other dearly. Donny married Nancy Loy, and they had two sons: Richard Michael (Mike), and Steven Russell (Steve). Mike is 6 years older than I am, while Steve is two years older. Even though we lived a days drive apart, we got together quite a bit and, while the parents went out, either Mike or Steve would watch us. With Mike he sometimes took us out to Lake Kincaid to their houseboat and we would go fishing and stuff like that. When Steve watched us, it was a bit chaotic. As brothers go, they are about as different as you can get. Mike is quiet, cerebral, and calculates his every move. Steve is hyper, loud, and improvisational. An evening with Steve usually devolved into he and I lip synching KISS songs and him spitting ketchup all over the kitchen in his best Gene Simmons imitation. Clean up was fast, furious, and never good enough. We always got caught, no matter what. By this time Mike had graduated HS and was doing his own thing. We visited one year during my freshman year and Steve's junior year. He had big plans of going out with his buddies and chasing after a gal he had the hots for. On his way out the door, Nancy told him he had to take me with him. You could just see the wind leave his sails. There is no doubt we loved each other as family, but bringing your freshman cousin cruising chicks and drinking with your upper classmen pals was not to his liking at all. On our way to wherever it was we were going, he came up with this crazy idea that I was a foreign exchange student from Poland named Johan, I didn't speak English, and I was staying with his northern IL family (my actual family). I was just happy to be hanging out with HS kids in a different setting from Putnam County, so I went along with it. The plan was, basically, for me to sit there and smile and nod whenever he said the name Johan. If anyone would have just thought for a minute and asked why an exchange student who couldn't speak English was going to HS at Putnam County, our ruse would have immediately collapsed. Funny enough, they all fell for it, even the gal Steve had the hots for. So the night went on without any problems until one of Steve's friends broke out a bottle of whiskey and started sneaking me drinks. I was starting to feel pretty good, it was one of my first HS drinking experiences, then Steve caught on that his buddy was supplying drinks to his freshman Polish exchange student cousin, and put a stop to that. We got back to their house and went right down to Steves room in the basement and crashed. We still talk about that whenever we get together. Sadly, when we moved to Oklahoma in 1981, I never would have thought that it would be almost 30 years before I would be reunited with the Siefert boys. About 7 or 8 years ago I became Facebook friends with Donny and Nancy, and she gave me Mike's email address, so I zapped him a quick note just to see if he would answer. About a week later he answered me back, we exchanged digits and fired our relationship back up like it was before. Even better than before. He called me one day and said he had a conference in Oklahoma City and wondered if he came in the weekend before, could he stay with us and hang out for the weekend. I believe "Hell Yeah!!" was the PG-13 version of my response. He showed up a few weeks later and the rest is history. We started going to their place on Memorial Day weekend when they lived in Columbia, Missouri. It was only a 7 hour drive, so why not. Then one year Brook and I were talking about doing something different for Thanksgiving, and I suggested we go to Murphysboro and hang out with the Sieferts. It had been at least 30 years since I had been to Murphy, and that long since I had seen Nancy or Steve. Donny had come up north for both Grandma Ige and Pop's funerals, but those were not great opportunities to play catch up. I sent Mike a text, pitching our idea, and he answered back that I had just made Donny and Nancy's year. So now every other year we go to Murphy for Thanksgiving, and the opposite year we go up in the fall for Praise the Lard, the big BBQ competition that is a qualifier for Memphis in May. I got reaquainted with Steve and got to know his wife, Amy, and kids. Mike's wife, Pam, was well known to us by then, and we got to meet and know their son, Colby and his wife Stevee and their kids. We have so much fun when we go to Murphy, I wish Ma and my sisters would come down and hang out as well. 

As far as I am concerned, all is right in my Siefert world, and I couldn't be happier. More family stuff later.

Till next time......

The Old Man