Kissing cousins

Last week one of my cousins asked me to help her with her family tree. I already had plenty of information for her mother's side of the family (our common ancestors), so I decided to do some research on her father's family. One of her father's ancestors was a man named Andrew Francis Wolf. The only info I had for him was his name, but no dates of birth or death. Since Andrew, Francis, and Wolf are all very common names I didn't have much hope of finding him.

I did have one piece of information about Andrew, though, that was very helpful. I knew that his wife's name was Elizabeth Buchinger. Since that was a rather unusual surname, I decided to start with her. Searching through the census on Ancestry, I was able to find her pretty quickly. In 1900 she was living in Baltimore City with her parents, Vincent and Mary Buchinger.

Once I had found Elizabeth Buchinger, I turned my attention to Andrew. I did a search on Ancestry and checked the results for the 1930 census. There were 5 Andrew Wolfs living in Maryland at that time. One of them caught my eye: Andrew F. Wolf and his wife Elizabeth. When I viewed the image of the census record for this Andrew Wolf, I discovered 3 other people living with Andrew and his wife and daughter: Mary Buchinger and her 2 daughters! So I knew that I had the correct family.

According to the census, Andrew was born about 1896. I next turned my attention to the World War I and World War II draft registrations on Ancestry. I discovered a Frank Andrew Wolf, who was born in August 1895 or 1896. Fortunately for me, Andrew had not moved between 1930 and 1942, so I was able to confirm that Frank Andrew and Andrew Francis were one and the same person.

Once I had some more information about Andrew, I checked the earlier census records to see what I could find out about his parents and family. I found an Andrew F. Wolf in the 1900 census, who was born in August 1895 and was the son of Joseph and Barbara Wolf.

I did not have any luck finding an Andrew Wolf in 1910 or 1920, so I decided to search for a Frank Wolf born about 1895. Sure enough I was able to find Andrew again, living with Joseph and Barbara. His address in 1910 and 1920 was the same as that for Frank Andrew Wolf in the first draft registration, so I was able to confirm that Joseph and Barbara Wolf were Andrew's parents.

In the midst of all this, I remembered that years ago I had researched another family named Wolf. I decided to go back and look at my previous research, on the off chance that there might be some connection between the two families.

My grandfather's grandfather, Johann Georg Imhof, came to Baltimore in 1850 from a village in Baden called Landshausen. Several of his relatives immigrated to Maryland about the same time. Among those were three brothers named Joseph, Matthias, and George Wolf.

Matthias Wolf was born in Landshausen in 1824 and was married in Elsenz, Baden, in 1845. He and his wife had 11 children. Their ninth child was Johann Joseph Wolf, who was born in Baltimore in December 1864.

I checked my family tree database and discovered that this Johann Joseph Wolf had a wife named Barbara and 7 children. I was shocked when I saw the name of their third child: Andrew F. Wolf, born in August 1895!

So it turns out that my cousin's father and mother were actually related, though I'm sure they had no idea. My genealogy software has a tool for calculating the relationship between two individuals, so I was able to determine that her parents were seventh cousins!