So, I’ve been working FORWARD in time on the descendants of Henry Mathias Bussdicker and Margaret Maess. As I suppose I’ve said many times, forward is weirdly different.
On ancestry.com, I was looking for details about the birth of Henry M., Jr. and they had a great copy of the Campbell County, KY birth records. They sent me to a certain page and I looked and looked and could not see it.
BUT I saw the damnedest thing: a birth of Catherine M. Myer on 22 Sep 1857 to H. W. Myer and M. M. Matting. One of the brothers who arrived in 1843 was living with a “Taylor” named H. W. Myres in Newport. The 14-yr-old kid was listed as Henry Beshdigger… the second-coolest misspelling so far, IMHO. And “Matting” … well that sure sounds close to the Mettings who escorted the 3 siblings to America!
So I ran back to the 1850 census for the H. W. Myres family and, lo & behold, there was a Mary, listed just below H. W. along with 2 kids, Henry 3 and Eliza 2, and, apparently, Mr. Myres’s mom, Mary. Plus Henry Beshdigger… could he be my Henry who was really age 18? Note: by 1860, all of this family’s ages got really weird, so maybe they were messin’ with the census enumerator.]
But on the passenger list — which I also hurried to revisit — Mathias Metting was age 40 and listed next was Mary Metting, age 25. I thought she was his wife, although it only labels her as “Women.” It appears that Mathias Metting died in 1844 in Farmers Retreat, so she would’ve been free to marry again. Yet she’s buried (ca 1896) back in Farmers Retreat.
Amazing! And, after one last look at this page of Newport births, I did indeed find Henry M. Busdecker (hard to tell what spelling they were shooting for though) born 10 Aug 1857 to Henry M. Bussdicker and Margaret Me*s where the * is actually the long, tall, script S used in German. They indexed her as “Mess.” Six slots away in this record book! I wonder why.
