Hi everyone!
It's time to get to know another one of our wonderful WikiTreers. This week's member is Michael Kerstetter.
Michael became a Wiki Genealogist in October 2022. He belongs to our Germany, Palatine Migration and Quakers projects.
What are some of your interests outside of genealogy?
I’m a retired Aerospace Engineer for a major US manufacturer. Towards the end of my career, I was involved in the early research efforts into artificial intelligence and machine learning and retain an interest in what’s going on in the field these days. I’m an avid reader of sci-fi and collector of first editions in the genre. I also enjoy playing golf, albeit poorly, and singing… Christian, jazz, pop, theater, opera… whatever strikes my fancy.
When and how did you get interested in genealogy?
My interest in genealogy started developing when I was in college. My curiosity was piqued by one grandfather’s stories of being raised in a bilingual, English/German-speaking Pennsylvania Dutch household in Pennsylvania, and the other grandfather’s stories of growing up in the Ouachita Mountains of NW Arkansas. Just imagine the dedication to tradition involved to still be speaking German TWO HUNDRED years after the Kerstetter immigrant landed in America in 1727! Also, I’m addicted to the HUNT, the mystery of who, what, where, when, why! I might have been a good detective in another life.
Do you have a favorite ancestor or brick wall breakthrough story?
If I can believe what I find on FamilySearch, I’m a direct descendent of Pocahontas and if I can manage to substantiate that, she’ll certainly be my favorite ancestor. My favorite breakthrough story starts with the obituary of my 3rd ggf G. Frederick Miller. Besides some important vital information, Frederick’s obituary contains some stories about his father, unnamed, and his grandfather, Henry, that are clearly erroneous or difficult to verify, such as that Frederick’s unnamed father died falling out of a pear tree and that Frederick’s father was born after the death of his grandfather. I was particularly aggravated they didn’t name his father because I never have found a record explicitly naming Frederick’s father. But then one day I’m blindly paging through Northampton County death records just trying to identify male Millers who were of the right generation to be Frederick’s father when I come across a church record for Godfrey Henry Mueller, buried in their cemetery, who “died falling from a pear tree”!! Finding Godfrey Henry led me to finding a 1753 New York City church birth record for Gottfried Henrich Miller whose father, Johann Gottfriedt Miller, died 6 months before his son’s birth. Still, the lack of a record explicitly linking Frederick and Godfrey Henry left me having to justify an implied relationship. So I created a free-space page with my entire chain of reasoning, including secondary links. I’m now faced with a new brick wall, but at least it’s two generations further back!
What is your toughest brick wall currently?
Hands down my toughest brick wall, or at least most frustrating, is my great great grandfather Washington Irvin Richardson (1832-1915). He is by far the shortest of all my lineage lines. He just seems to appear whole cloth in NW Arkansas in 1869 when he marries my great-great-great-grandmother. His age seems to change with every record so I’m unsure of birth date. Census records indicate a birth place of South Carolina, but I can’t figure out how to narrow it down or find parents.
How long have you been on WikiTree?
I’ve been a WikiTreer for a year and a half. John Lindemuth told me about WikiTree. He is a volunteer at a historical society in Pennsylvania who was helping me with one of my lines. Turns out we shared the same family and he told me he did all his work on WikiTree. I find that I, too, have largely quit tree building on FamilySearch and Ancestry, using those services mainly just to find sources and get hints. What I love about WikiTree is the dedication of most active users to be conscientious and meticulous in their research, sourcing and tree building, something I find sorely lacking on the other services.
(interview continues in comments)
