Epilogue: A Work in Progress ...

And God blessed them, saying "Increase and multiply..." (Genesis 1:28)

This is the story of the Jahn family as we know it. (Well, actually, we probably know a little more; we're still working on getting everything put on this website.) But there is so much that we don't know.

• What about Karl's other children? We know about Kurt Jahn (son of Oskar), from whom we learned about Edward's parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters. Recently we have come upon some very exciting information: we now have the names of Kurt's mother, sister, wife, daughter, and other relatives (see Master Chart). Through Kurt's daughter Gertrud, we have opened a connection to link us back to descendants still living in Meuselbach. We are eagerly awaiting the results of this research, which would open up another whole line of Johann's descendants.

  We have a little more information now about Edward's brothers and sisters. We know some of their birth dates, some of their descendants, and the names of the cities where they lived. Our contact in Meuselbach is a grandson of Emil; we are hoping he will be able to fill in some details.

• Did Karl have any brothers or sisters? He was born six years after his parents' marriage, which means he was probably their third child. We continue to search for evidence of other children in the family. We know that either Karl or Rosalie must have had a brother who emigrated to America. Our story of Edward Jahn begins in Philadelphia, where he was a baker's apprentice for an uncle. We searched the 1880 census for Philadelphia and found a Bernhardt Ehle, baker, born in Germany in 1832, which would make him 4 years older than Rosalie. He could be the uncle that Edward came to live with (although there is no mention of Edward being a member of the household). But we also found information about a Frederick Jahn who was a baker in Philadelphia at the same time. Frederick was born in Rudolstadt and lived in Meuselbach before coming to America. He was about 7 years younger than Karl. His father is listed as Johann Georg Jahn and his mother as Johanne Barbare Moellen. This could easily be the same person as Anna Barbara Moeller, given the difficulty of deciphering handwriting. We think there was more than one Johann Georg Jahn in Meuselbach, but it's not likely that they would both be married to women with similar names. Even more convincing, however, is the story told by a young lady whose family operated Grandpa Jahn's bakery in Philadelphia until recently. She told of finding an old wooden trunk in the bakery, inscribed with the name "Edmund Jahn"!

Taking all these things into account, we feel there is a strong probability that Frederick and Karl were brothers, and that our chart should begin like this:

Documents pertaining to Frederick Jahn and his descendants have been collected by his great-great granddaughter, Dorothy (Jahn) Grant.

Edmund Jahn's trunk	David Roth, a descendant of Frederick Jahn, and his wife Jeannie.	Dorothy (Jahn) Grant, genealogist for Frederick's family, and her husband Bob
(Click on pictures to read more.)

• We found a ship's passenger list for June 15, 1872, that includes nine people named "Jahn," one of whom is "Ed," age 15. This is most likely our Edmund Jahn. The others were Carl, age 46; Rosalie, age 40; Georg, age 22, Paule, age 20; Bertha, age 15; R. [male child], age 13; Ottilie, age 10; Helmuth, age 3. Who were these people? Was Edmund traveling with this family? They are not his immediate family--the names and ages don't match. Could they have been cousins?

• Moving forward into the 21st century, we would like to thank all the relatives who have provided updated information about deaths, births, marriages, and children since Eighteen Cousins was published in 1988. We'd like to fill out the branches of this tree as much as possible and pass it on to future generations. With the wonders of the internet, there is no limit to what we can do now. We ask that anyone with information about any of the families herein contact us. We hope also that we might have provided some information to other genealogists who are researching families that may intersect ours at some point. We are happy to provide links to these other families' web sites.

• Copies of Eighteen Cousins are available free to any family member; just send us an email with your snail mail address. (The reprint of the original 1988 edition does not contain updates; we may tackle that project next for those who don't have internet access.