The Stiebens, Straits, and Margheims are getting my attention

I recently received a message from my genealogist cousin Kate Keller, letting me know one of her cousins on my mother’s side was married to one of my cousins on my father’s side. I was grateful for her lead and promptly drew up this chart showing the connections she referred to.

Since I’m “Mary Rebecca Margheim” in this chart, you can see that Leroy Stieben, my dad’s 5th cousin, was married to Juanita Grace Strait, who was my mother’s 2nd cousin one generation removed. I wrote a blog post about this here: https://beckysgraceandglory.blogspot.com/2018/07/dads-cousin-married-moms-cousin.html
As I filed this chart in my laptop, I noticed that I already had a chart showing this connection! I looked at my blog postings and noticed that I had written a story about this connection back in October 2012! This is the chart I composed at that time.

Two days ago on Facebook, I awakened to this Memory that Facebook shared with me from 2014.

This is the photo I have in my collection:

And this is the image of the back side of the photo:


I’m grateful that my dad typed this information after interviewing Mrs. Emanuel Flagler. If he hadn’t taken advantage of the opportunity to do that, I’d have no way of ever knowing who this beautiful photograph represented! Notice that Elizabeth Margheim is listed and noted that she married Henry Stieben. So 4 years after I posted this picture on Facebook, I’m again, just this week, reminded of the Stieben Margheim connection that my cousin Kate referred to a few days ago.
A few days ago I received a notification of “Hints” available for my tree at Ancestry.com. I only had time to review the Photo Hints, noticing that among them was this picture of Elizabeth Margheim, wife of Henry Stieben.

Now this morning I awoke to an email from Ancestry.com notifying me of available hints for Leroy Henry Stieben!

So in this past week,  (1) I was reminded by Kate Keller of the family connection, (2) I developed a new chart and wrote a new blog post about his connection, then (3) discovered that 4 years ago I’d prepared a chart and wrote a blog post about the same discovery. Then (4) Facebook reminded me of the photo and blog post I’d written 4 years ago with my dad’s photo and description, (5) this week Ancestry offered photo hints and I found Elizabeth Margheim Stieben listed, and (6) this morning Ancestry displays front and center in my email that I have hints to pursue for Elizabeth’s son Leroy Stieben! I think the Stieben, Margheim and Strait families are trying to get my attention. I need to follow up on all the hints available at Ancestry and see what else is waiting for me to discover!

Dad's cousin married Mom's cousin

I discovered recently that Leroy Henry Stieben, my 5th cousin once removed from my Dad's paternal family line married Juanita Grace Strait, who is my 3rd cousin on my mom's maternal family line. What's so special about that? Nothing. Except that as I grew up, I had no idea that anyone in my dad's family even KNEW anyone in my mom's family. Since my parents divorced when I was a toddler, my dad remarried and my step-mother created quite a chasm between my dad's family and my mother's family. In my mind they existed in two separate WORLDS! So as I've aged and have studied my lineage, I'm still awestruck when I discover that a member of my paternal family was integrated with a member of my maternal family. I think it's cool!

Connecting Strait to Margheim

I've discovered over the decade that I've been researching my family's history that the one thing that fascinates me the most about the work is finding connections that are surprising to me. 

One time I found, while searching a neighborhood on a census, that my birth mother and my step-mother were neighbors as children, so obviously played together as small children. That was a fact I hadn't known and was amazed by since they were not friends in later life. 

When I discovered that a 4th cousin of mine, Isaac Strait, in 1822 married a 5th cousin of my husband's, Phoebe Rush, I was astounded, since our families come from very different backgrounds.

When I discovered, again through census research, that my son's great grandaunts and uncles by birth were farming neighbors of his great, great grandparents by adoption, I was just stunned. What are the odds of that happening? 

Yesterday as I was looking at family trees on Ancestry.com, I was reviewing some information that had been submitted on the family of my maternal great grandmother Emma Cornelia Strait. Her great, grandniece, Juanita Grace Strait, in 1958 married Leroy Henry Stieben. I was shocked while looking at the family group sheet to see that Leroy's mother was Elizabeth Margheim. My maiden name was Margheim, so that's my paternal family line. 

I know there are those who will comment: "What's the big deal? We're all related anyway". I get so tired of hearing that. I guess "you just had to be there". When my brain is following one family line, as in my maternal line, and I see a relationship to my paternal line, I'm surprised and amazed. And I'm happy that I'm amazed by such simple discoveries. It sure makes this "work" fun and interesting. It opens the door to a new discovery every day!