Walt Steesy

Ancestors

Descendants

Problems/Questions Profile managers: Walt Steesy [send private message] and Mary Steesy [send private message]

This profile is part of the Olmstead Name Study.

Walt Steesy is of Swiss descent

Biography

Last Name At Birth

My actual family name (at birth) is Stuessi. See discussion below under "Stüssi." It is my choice to use my legal surname Steesy for all communications and citations in genealogical records.

Walt Steesy was a Californian.

Biography

I grew up in a Navy family on the west coast -- San Diego, Stockton (CA), Bremerton (WA), and Adak (Alaska). My folks were from the mid-west and the first time I ever met relatives (other than my grandmother Katherine Walter) was on our cross-country drive to Norfolk in 1952. In 1955 we moved from Norfolk to Washington, DC via way of a summer in San Diego, again by automobile. Needless to say, a few hour visit at an aunt or uncles their mid-west home didn't do much to cement relationships with cousins.

Mary, on the other hand grew up on a dairy and beef farm in the southern tier of New York in a three-generation household. Sunday was often a day to visit relatives within an easy hours drive and there were many to visit.

We met at Salem College in West Virginia. Me a suburban city boy from a large high school (638 in my class) and Mary from a small town city school (38 in her class) at a college with only 600 students, that grew to 1200 before we graduated in 1962. I took a job in central Pennsylvania for four years before we moved back to live near her parents farm. We stayed there until a move in 1972 to our present home near Interlaken in the center of the Finger Lakes region that was more appropriate to our growing family and my travel ability as I was a district sales manager covering upstate New York.

Walt Steesy is a New Yorker.

I had started doing genealogical research and I often planned my travels to be able to visit areas that I needed to gather information. In doing so I started helping others with their research needs and thus was born our Heart of the Lakes Publishing with a focus of providing New York local and regional works to aid genealogists. Over the 45+ years we produced over 300 books until the Internet evolved providing information at little cost.

We have an large 1808 home (built by Rev. War Veteran Rev. Abraham Brokaw) on three acres that I'm still rehabing so there is always a lot to do both outside on the lawns (3 acre to mow) and gardens and inside. We added a large office for our HLP business in 1987 when we had five employees -- now it is my own genealogical research area. In 1990 we started taking groups on cruises and did so for many years -- Alaska and Europe are our favorites. The Covid-19 Virius put a stop to that as well as our increasing age related mobility problems. We hosted an annual USAF reunion (1990-2022) for over 33 years and moved it around the northeast. Now in semi-retirement, we spend three weeks in Kissimmee (timeshare) each Jan/Feb and four months of winter at a home that we built over a ten-year period on 24 acres at the base of the Blue Ridge in north central North Carolina; it is our future retirement location.

Olmste(a)d

At my wife's 1967 Olmstead family annual reunion I asked the question "Why is 'Uncle Ralph' an uncle?" I quickly learned he was her grand-uncle. As I grew up in a military family away from my parent's mid-west home area, I never knew any cousins or other relatives. I became intrigued with the relationships of individuals and started researching Mary's Olmstead family line and two years later published my first genealogy (1969) covering over 500 members of her family going back to a Stephen Olmstead, b. 1790. He became the "brick wall" that I have yet to resolve. The search brought me to research all Olmste(a)ds in the US and Canada and becoming the genealogist for the Olmste(a)d Family Association. I now have data on over 135,000 Olmste(a)ds and their descendants. I have chosen not to follow collateral lines as that would quickly swell my files many times over. I freely share appropriate portions of my file with connected individuals. I'm now working on putting my records, or at least basic birth, marriage, death date and place data on WikiTree; this way individuals will be placed in the family tree and others are encouraged to add biographical and source information to the records.

I'm also serving as webmaster for the OFA's website www.olmsteadfamily.org. With over 100 pages of "interesting things Olmste(a)d" and more to come. Special effort was spent starting in 2017 in the development of pages honoring those that have served in the military from 1635 to the present; the Civil War pages have over 500 names listed with dates or birth and death, service, and links to WikiTree and Find-a-Grave. Dee (Olmsted) Poole has written more than 150 biographies with source data for Civil War veterans with profiles on WikiTree.

We also have a organization page on FaceBook. Olmstead Family (the one with the family crest of the deer head over the shield) is beginning to draw some attention. You can "follow" it and posts from our page will show up on your feed but your posts will not show on our page. If you have something that is appropriate to post on our page, it will be reviewed before it becomes public. I try to post an interesting "Olmste(a)d" story when they arise; those that do not do FB can find the posts under the News tab on our website.

In the fall of 2022 I became the administrator of the Olmste(a)d group at FamilyTreeDNA. The purpose of the group, in addition to learning ethnicity via DNA testings, is to enable members to learn of "cousins" and help them to connect. Individuals testing with other firms can copy their results to FTDNA and join the Olmste(a)d group at no cost.

WikiTree

My goal on WIkiTree is to see that profiles are created for all those with the Olmstead, Olmsted, or Omstead family name. As of 30 December 2022 over 16,000 profiles have been created; I did not create them all. Additionally there have been over 35,000 new profiles added that are spouses, parents of spouses, and direct descendants and their spouses of many other family names. I appreciate that others add their connections that will enable me to add to our Olmste(a)d master file.

In many of the profiles that tie to the Olmste(a)d family you will find a source Olmste(a)d files of Walt Steesy. I often have more information, including census extractions, etc., that I will gladly share upon request. Sometimes these are mentioned in brief citations on profiles; there will be enough that you can find the original source on ancestry or family search -- you are highly encouraged to read the actual document or indexes and not just copy someone's tree information as many individual have posted the wrong data.

Another citation often appears as 1912 genealogy Olmsted Family in America (we are trying to standardize to the "Space" page that lists more details and where the volume can be found on the Internet) followed by ID number and page(s) for persons listed in the work. The complete citation for that work is: Olmsted, Henry King, and George K. Ward. Genealogy of the Olmsted Family in America. New York: De La Mare Printing, 1912. I published a reprint including four supplements issued by the Olmsted Family, Inc. in 1914, 1920, 1923, and 1928. Interlaken, NY: Heart of the Lakes Pub., 1993. I (HLP books) also published an all-name index to the 1993 reprint. Both are currently out-of-print. The 1912 volume without supplements is available on the Internet from a number of free sites.

Stüssi

To add my own personal confusion of our family name, which we pronounce "Ste' cee," in 1954 my father created Steesy as everyone was pronouncing Stuessi in the correct Germanic "Stu' ce." Though I have found one record of one person in Wisconsin in the 1910s, I believe that the eleven living members of our family are the only in the US (and maybe the world) currently Steesy.

I'm also the Stussi/Stuessi family genealogist. A cousin had been "our family" collector of records for many years so I stayed in the background until 2010 when I compiled the first extensive Stüssi/Stuessi set of records some of which are posted on MyHeritage. I'll eventually post it all on WikiTree as time allows. I will also try to correct the spelling of our family surname for all records of families in Switzerland before 1900 to the Germanic spelling of the surname as Stüssi -- there should be an umlat (two dots) on the "ü"; when the name is converted to an English form, i.e., Stuessi, the "e" is added to retain the sound. All Stüssi/Stuessi can trace their lineage back to Glarus, Switzerland and it was my goal to lead a group back to that Canton and the beautiful Linth River Valley but there was never enough interest by others my age and ability now limit my own travel.

Walt & Mary Steesy -- Interlaken, NY -- waltsteesy at aol . com

Sources