Boedefeld Genealogy

Here is where I keep a list of my Boedefeld family research, including the Worsley and Selgrath family lines, who are the maternal lines that married into the Boedefeld lines in two consecutive generations. The Boedefelds and the Selgraths came to Pennsylvania from Germanic states in the 1830s. The Boedefelds were from Stockum, near Amecke and Balve, in the Arnesberg region of Prussia. The Selgraths were from towns in the contested coal lands that are now the Saarland, but then they were either in the hands of the French or controlled by Bavaria. The Worsleys came from Lancashire, England in the 1840s.

Boedefeld Stories:

(See also Bee Boedefeld and Her Friends) 

• What Was Katherina Doing There? (Katharina Selgrath Boedefeld and my other great-great-grandmother, Barbara Oliphant Worsley)
• The Shoemaker of Pottsville (Ferdinand Boedefeld and his son Jacob)
• Poor Isabella (Isabella Josephine Boedefeld Hamilton)
• Beatrice Boedefeld and the Yellowstone Summer, 1916
• Katharina Selgrath Boedefeld—Finding and marking her grave
• Diary of a Wylie Savage, part 1—Bea’s 1916 Summer in Yellowstone, in her own words
• Diary of a Wylie Savage, part 2
• Diary of a Wylie Savage, part 3
• Diary of a Wylie Savage, part 4
• Diary of a Wylie Savage, part 5
• Return to Yellowstone: A Comedy of Misadventures—Bee, her mother, and her fiance Frederick B. Andrews attempt a trip to Yellowstone in 1920
• Aunt Ruth, Affectionately (my wonderful great-aunt, Ruth Boedefeld)
• Aunt Ruth Boedefeld’s career, traced through The Evidence of the City Directories
• Aunt Ruth’s Jewels (a fun look at the Boedefeld family jewelry)
• How My Family Came West—includes the story of how the my branch of the Boedefeld family ended up in Oregon

Selgrath Stories:

• Mixed Up Marriages (John Selgrath and his son Francis)
• Drifters (about Lewis Selgrath and his son Malcolm)
• The Otherwise Forgotten (Nicholas Selgrath’s grandchildren William and Margaret, and the end of Nicholas’s line)
• Who Is Sadie Firman and What Happened to Maggie? (a matter of perspective in researching Margaret Selgrath and her husband, Fred David Breining)
• Unscientific Thoughts on the Selgraths (family of Nicholas Selgrath)
• Curious Facts and Tales of Frank and Susanna Selgrath and Family (the six children and their progeny)
• Ancestors at My Kitchen Table (found: my immigrant ancestors Jacob Selgrath’s and Gertrude Schmelzer’s parents in St. Ingbert, Bavaria)
• Of the Vinegar Makers (the occupations of Jacob and Peter Selgrad of St. Ingbert, Bavaria)
• Was He Murdered?! (the curious death record of Peter Selgrad, 1832)
• Was Vincent the Villain? (Elisabetha Schmelzer and her husbands, 1800)
• Ferman, What Have You Done? (another of the lost Selgraths)
• Nicholas Selgrath Died in a Town That Disappeared (a World War I soldier, the 1918 'flu pandemic, and Amatol, New Jersey)

Worsley Stories:

• Ben Worsley, part 1
• John and Barbara Worsley—Bea’s maternal grandparents
• Ben Worsley and an Oddly Sad Ending (Ben Worsley, part 2)
• Barbara Oliphant Worsley—Grave
• How Mrs Worsley Went to Oregon in 1863
• How My Family Came West—includes the story of how the Worsley family ended up in Oregon