Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 Hello Mumma-Moomaw researchers, cousins, family and friends - [If you don't care to receive future updates of this type, please send me a message and I will remove you from this distribution list.] It has been a while since I sent out a Web Site update and this one is long over due. Today I posted a revised database and wanted to make you aware of this fact and discuss a few other items. * The web site database continues to grow. It now exceeds 38,000 individuals, all of whom are Mumma ancestors, descendants or their spouses. Again I issue the warning that there are errors likely in the database since it represents a collection of information from many sources – some good and some questionable. Use the information only as a guide and do your own verification. I also ask that you do not submit data from the Mumma database, other than your own, to such groups as Family Tree Maker's World Family Tree project. That is miss use of data that is not yours to distribute. If you find that your data is different than what is listed in the database, please let me know so that I can document your evidence and make corrections as appropriate. * I have broken the link between Leonard Mumma and Johann Leonard Momma whom we suspect are the same individual. I did this because my research compels me to seek more substantial evidence in order to justify the link. I rushed too quickly to join them as one person and now I am proceeding with caution. I hope that some of the evidence I am seeking will be forth coming during my trip to Germany in late September. This change has been noted in the "Our Ancestors" area of the main Web page. * The Momma & the von Kettenis data are still in the database, you just can't reach it by going up any of the Leonard Mumma ancestor lines. In fact, a large number of additional Momma individuals have been added. Part of this is due to fact that some of the original data in Bob Moomaw's book, I inadvertently left out, and I have also added data from Stefan Momma and Dr. Udo Momma. Bob Moomaw, Stefan Momma, Dr. Udo Momma and I are collaborating in a effort to sort out the Momma-Mumma data and links. * The 'Momma Letter'. In May, I sent a personal letter to all of the Mommas that I could find in the German telephone directory and inquired about their Momma ancestry, discussed my Mumma/Momma interests, and requested any information that they were willing to share. The letter was written in German, thanks to the help of Stefan Momma. I was quite pleased with the results. Sixty one letters were mailed to Germany with reply coupons. Seven letters were returned due to bad addresses. From the remaining 54 potential respondents, I received 1 telephone call, 1 postcard, 6 letters and 5 e-mail messages for a total of 13 responses. That is a 22% response which is extremely good for this type of 'blind' inquiry. It is actually better than that because in some cases, the person responding was writing as the spokesperson for a family that received multiple letters. When accounting for known relatives, the response was over 31%!! Most people were very interested in the Momma surname research and tried to be helpful, however most had limited information about their ancestors to share. It has lead to my meeting Dr. Udo Momma who has been very helpful and I am still waiting for some material to be mailed to me from others. I wanted to share some of this initial information about the project with you and will issue a more detailed report at a later date. * All birth and marriage dates for potentially living people have been blocked from being viewed on the Web site. By potentially living people, I mean anyone born after 1900 for whom a death date is not known. Any birth or marriage dates for potentially living people has been replaced with a note that says "Private! Details withheld." There has been a fair amount of discussion in various genealogy articles and lists warning people about the dangers of "identity stealing" if people know too much data about you. This is of obvious concern and I don't want to see anyone have a problem because of the data on my Web site, so I made the decision to simply block out the birth and marriage information for living people. All dates are still maintained in my database and I will be happy to share these details if you wish to contact me privately by e-mail or letter. I simply don't want someone to be able to access all of this data from the Internet and use it in a harmful way. It saddens me to have to do this because I feel it removes a lot of useful and interesting information from the database. * I have added a new section on the Web site devoted to "Family Stories, Diaries, and other miscellaneous items". Here you can read about the trip that James Buell Mumma Jr. made to Grosskarlbach in February of this year. It is interesting reading. I too have posted a daily diary about my month long trip to the east coast in May & June of this year. I expect to post a report about my trip to Germany after I return in October. If you take a trip or find out some useful information that you would like to share, send it to me as a word processor file and I will make it available for everyone to read. * Our five week genealogy trip to Indiana, Ohio, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C. and Virginia was very enjoyable, yet very tiring. Much of this trip involved digging up information about my ancestors other than the Mummas. I did spend some time in Dayton, OH; Sharpsburg, MD; and Lancaster, PA looking for Mumma information. No really big discoveries were made, however small bits and pieces were added to the store house of knowledge. Thanks to the help of Roger Baur [husband of 217254316] and David Rempel Smucker of the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society, I was able to locate on a map where Leonard Mumma [2], George Anthony Mumma [21], and Henry Mumma [218], David Mumma [219] and Jacob Mumma [210] owned original land grants. I, along with Dr. Stanley Mumma [217507121] and his son, spend one day driving around Lancaster County visiting these pieces of land as well as many churches and graveyards. Of course we had to stop at the "Mumma Pretzel Company" in Lancaster and buy some pretzels. At a later time I hope to be able to post a "Mumma driving tour of Lancaster County" providing directions so that you too can drive to the areas where our ancestors originally lived, prayed, worked and are buried. Any help on this project from you by sending me maps, etc. would be appreciate. My wife and I also enjoyed meeting a few other close and distant cousins on our journey. We met with Jeanne Mumma Zigler, her daughter Beverly Zigler Hofer and Miriam Mumma Huff in Harlan, Indiana. In Dayton we stayed with my 2nd cousin, Gloria Mumma and visited Charles Mumma and his wife, Aloysia. We met Phyllis Harman (a Moomau descendant) for dinner in West Virginia, near Sharpsburg, Maryland. In Lancaster, I was also able to meet and visit with Lester Mumma [298221262] whose father is associated with the Mumma pretzel factory. Later, in Annapolis Maryland, it was enjoyable to have dinner with Michael Mumma [1111252122] and his wife. My wife and I will treasure these meetings. As previously mentioned, you can view a diary of our entire trip from a link on the Web site. * Reunions - While I don't have a family reunion area on the Web site at the present time, I will be happy to create such a page if there is interest. If your Mumma branch holds annual reunions that are open to other interested Mumma descendants to attend, send me a note giving the particulars about the date, time, place, point of contact, etc. and I will post it. * Useless Database information. For those of you who might have interest in trivia, listed below are some facts about my current FTM data file. It now occupies 29,815 MB on my hard drive. Needless to say, my hard drive becomes "full" quickly when I create a few backups and multiple versions. Even the GEDCOM file is large. GEDCOM Information ------------------ GEDCOM file size: 10578644 Number of Lines: 476418 Number of Individuals: 38054 Number of Families: 12818 Number of Surnames: 6642 *Tree Information* Individuals Descendants Top Person ----------- ----------- ---------- 30328 20124 Leonard /Mumma/ b. ABT. 1694 3087 2072 Jacob /Mumma/ b. 1685-1690 1158 779 Samuel /Muma/ b. 10 Sep 1784 664 452 David /Muma/ b. ABT. 1760 589 388 Christian /Mumma/ b. 29 Aug 1791 586 404 Peter /Mumma/ b. ABT. 1721 427 287 John /Mumma/ b. 27 Nov 1750 385 222 Frederick /Moomau/ b. 1 Apr 1796 337 222 Peter /Mumma/ b. ABT. 1772 167 101 Clais /von Kettenis/ 108 77 Jacob /Mumma/ b. 1810-1811 79 53 Leonard /Momma/ b. 1580 54 30 John /Mumma/ 46 23 John /Mumaw/ b. ABT. 1787 15 10 David /Mumma/ 12 11 Veryle Leroy /Mumma/ b. 1 May 1921 11 5 David /Mumma/ 1 0 An /.Example/ b. 1 Jan 1900 As you can see, there are some "unidentified" lines that we are trying to attach to one of the four original Mumma immigrant lines. Surname Frequency Information (with 49 or more names) ----------------------------- Mumma[2092], Moomaw[1821], Mumaw[893], {no surname}[479], Muma[314], Mumau[306] Johnson[261], Miller[260], Smith[230], Fox[218], Williams[188], Biller[167] Ward[153], Estep[138], Moomau[137], Brown[130], Davis[127], Thomas[127] Momma[125], Shillingburg[125], Jones[122], Mummau[122], Mumaugh[114] Tusing[113], Snyder[112], Cole[104], Weldy[97], Brubaker[96], Musselman[93] Beath[88], Nupp[88], Mummah[86], Hoover[83], Funkhouser[80], Thompson[79] Wilson[79], Roth[78], Hertzler[74], Hamilton[71], Pobst[71], Phillips[70] Bowman[69], Atkinson[68], Anderson[67], Cooper[67], Fretz[66], Lee[65] Moore[65], Myers[65], Howell[64], Taylor[64], Henry[63], King[63], Hainlen[60] Kershner[60], Lawrence[60], Weaver[60], White[59], Evans[58], Stahl[58] Allen[57], Crumpacker[57], Jackson[57], Reed[56], Conrath[55], Young[55] Zinn[55], Arnold[54], Baker[54], Geisel[54], Graybill[54], Scott[54], Cox[53] Pierce[53], Richardson[53], Newman[52], Engle[50], Lewis[50], Mewmaw[49] Thanks to all of you who have sent kind words and praise for the Web site. Your words and help have been appreciated. I welcome any suggestions for improvements or criticisms you may wish to make to make it even better. Thanks............Doug ========================================= Douglas M. Mumma 2123 Farmington Place Livermore, CA 94550 Phone: (925) 447-5164 e-mail doug@mumma.org 1