Month: September 2022

Exploring histories mysteries, one leaf at a time.

On September 4, 1934, the body of William F. Miggins was found by five boys on their way home from school. He was discovered in the Sawkill Creek. It was unclear how long he had been there or what circumstances caused his death.

William F. Miggins was born in 1879 in Kingston, New York, the fifth child and third son of William Miggins and Ellen Haggerty Miggins. By 1900, the family had moved to Hallihan Hill in Sawkill where William worked as a stone cutter. On November 12, 1901 he married Mary E. Neenan in Kingston. The couple owned a house on Hallihan Hill in Sawkill and had three children.

By 1915, William and his three children had moved in with his brother Patrick, sister Bridget and brother-in-law William Birmingham. His wife, Mary passed away in 1912. In 1922, William started a blue-stone quarry with William Goldpaugh, the husband of his younger sister Jennie. It is unclear what happened with this venture.

At the point of his death, William was working as a foreman of town roads. He was seen a couple of times walking past a ball field the afternoon before his death by people who were attending a game and was also spotted in the village of Sawkill that evening. His hat was found in a cemetery that borders the bank of the creek.

At the location where William’s body was found, the bank was 15 to 20 feet high. The injuries on his body were consistent with him falling down the bank instead of drowning even though he was found in the creek. But, did he fall or did something more nefarious happen? Rain, in the morning, prior to the body being found obliterated all traces of what led to William’s death.

Ultimately, the coroner ruled that William fell down the embankment and fractured his skull. It was ruled an accident. Perhaps that is the case. William was obviously well liked within the community because the announcement of his death warranted an article on the front page of the local newspaper and his funeral was one of the largest ever held in Sawkill.

William F. Miggins was my great-granduncle and although we may never know what caused the slide down the bank that took his life, at least now we know his story.

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References

“Sawkill,” Kingston Daily Freeman (NY), 3 August 1922, p. 10, col. 3.

“William Miggins of Sawkill Found Dead,” Kingston Daily Freeman (NY), 4 September 1934, p. 1, col. 3.

“Local Death Record,” Kingston Daily Freeman (NY), 8 September 1934, p. 10. col. 2.

Exploring histories mysteries, one leaf at a time.

Yes, you read that right. I am related to Eva Braun. Not the Eva Braun you might be thinking of but, the name got me thinking if maybe my Braun family was related to THAT Eva Braun’s family.

The Eva Braun in my family tree was actually born Anna Eva Braun on August 8, 1729 in Tulpehocken Township in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Although she was born Anna Eva, she went by Eva. She was the first of her family to be born in the United States of America. Her mother and father both emigrated to America from Germany in 1710. Her father, Johan Philip Braun, Sr. came to the United States, at the age of 13, with his family from Undenheim which is in the Rhineland-Palatinate state of Germany. Rhineland-Palatinate is located in the central, western portion of Germany close to the borders of Belgium and France. Eva Braun Hitler’s family was from Munich which is in Bavaria, located in the southeastern portion of Germany. Undenheim and Munich are separated by almost 200 miles. So, they are not from the same area, but families could move around in 200 years. As it turns out, Anna Eva’s mother, Elisabetha Magdalena Loesch was born in Hernsheim in Bavaria but she married into the Braun family and was not a Braun originally.

Anna Eva grew up in Berks County, married Jacob Artz and had five children, including twin boys. She died in the same town where she was born in 1783 at the age of 53. She died just before the end of the Revolutionary War.

By contrast Eva Braun Hitler was born in 1912 in Munich, Germany to Friedrich Otto Wilhelm Braun and Franziska Kronberger. She was the daughter of a teacher and a seamstress. She was raised Catholic and became a photographer. She met Adolf Hitler in 1929 while she was working for a photographer for the Nazi party. They were married in Berlin in April 1945 as the Soviet Army was closing in. They both committed suicide shortly after their marriage. Eva Braun Hitler was 33 years old at the time of her death.

Although there is a possibility that we are related at some point, it is a pretty slim one. Eva Braun Artz and Eva Braun Hitler may share a name, and both died near the end of a war, but other than that, they are so disconnected by time and space that any family connection would have been dissolved over 200 years ago when my portion of the Braun family left Germany to embark on a new life in America.