Dear Ziegler-Listers,
I wanted to report on my progress in tracking down my great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson
Ziegler (1846-1903) since I thought it might help other researchers.
I was finally able to track down my Ziegler great-grandfather. He was in the Cumberland
Co., Pennsylvania census of 1850 as "Thomas J. Zeigler", in the Rock Island Co.,
Illinois census of 1860 as "Thos. Jeff. Zeigler," the Washington Co.,
Pennsylvania census of 1870 as "Thomas Zeigler" (as the last entry on a page,
and his wife at the top of the next page is "Nancy Zigler" where the
"Z" is so fancy it looks like a "G", which means that maybe some
Zieglers might be hidden in the census indices under the name "Gigler") and
finally in the Ashland Co., Ohio census of 1880 (and 1900) as "Thomas J.
Ziegler".
Whenever he wrote his name, he spelled it (correctly, at least in German) as
z-I-E-g-l-e-r, whereas others wrote it as z-E-I-g-l-e-r or just plain z-i-g-l-e-r. His
tombstone apparently has Zigler, which reminds me of the joke of the somewhat fearful man
who was walking across a cemetery one night when he hears a faint plink, plink, plink. He
looks around and sees someone with a chisel working away on a tombstone. Boy, am I glad
to see you, I was so scared crossing the cemetery at night. No problem, said the other,
I'm just fixing the stone here. They spelled my name wrong...
I hope this little history of the highs and lows of my research helps the rest of you.
Best,
Jeff Richards
Münster, Germany