I love Find-A-Grave!

I received a gift in my email inbox today! A kind volunteer in Brooklyn took pictures for me of gravestones for some of my maternal relatives. I've recently spent some time trying to research all my maternal lines forward in time to find cousins with whom I could exchange family information and hopefully get identifications of relatives in old photos I've inherited.  A lot of this work has paid off already and I've exchanged information with new cousins in two lines. Thanks Jason and Lori and Drew!

Two days ago, I was finally able to convince myself I was following the right family for another cousin in the census records.   This line is descended from the oldest half-sister of Bertha Helene Zerull, Wilhelmine Emilie Zerull who was born in Garnsee, West Prussia in 1842. From some family records, I knew that Wilhelmine (known as "Emilie") married a man named Schultz and had children Martha and Harriet Schultz. I also knew that Martha married Julius Schiller. And my searching finally paid off and I was able to locate this family in the 1900, 1910, 1920 and 1930 federal censuses. Emilie's husband's first name was Hermann.

I looked on Find-A-Grave early yesterday and located some of these descendants in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY but there were no pictures of the tombstones. I submitted the request for pictures of these graves and received the links to them today from a kind volunteer who photographed the graves! Dates from the tombstone confirmed that these were my distant cousins.

Now I just need some luck in finding descendants that are still alive and I may have more 'new' cousins to exchange information with. Someone must know who these people are with my grandmother!

My grandmother, Minna Badendick Veith, 3rd from left

Are these Schiller relations? Or Schultz? Or are these Lemke/Lamken cousins descended from another half-sibling of my g-grandmother? I'm determined to find out!