The Danenberg Family

The Danenberg Family

This is the family history of Peter Danenberg's family: where they came from, how they crossed oceans, and how we know. It joins four lines: two from the farms of Vidzeme and Courland in Latvia, one from Ireland and from Texas, and one from the Pacific Northwest, where the American lines met. Every fact on a person's page carries its source, and every family link says how strong its evidence is.

Four family lines

Danenbergs

Peter's father's father's line, from Courland (Kurzeme) in western Latvia. Arvīds Danenbergs (1913–1996) was an agronomist. In 1944 he fled with his wife, their small son and his mother-in-law to Germany, lived four years in the Haunstetten displaced-persons camp at Augsburg, and in 1949 sailed from Bremerhaven to Boston. In Ohio he worked on a farm in Liberty Township, Mercer County, and then ran a dairy farm near Tiffin until its 1965 auction, before farming in Michigan. His parents were Alberts Danenbergs and Zelma Forstmane.

Hall and McCabe

Peter's mother's father's line. Charles Henry Hall (1920–2001), a trucking maintenance manager who died in Orange County, California, was born in Vancouver, Washington, to Charles Hall, a Texan who probably served in the First World War, and Susan May McCabe (1886/1887–1972), born in Ireland, who came to America as a girl. Who their parents were is still an open question.

Estella, Alderson and Barnhart

Peter's mother's mother's line. Estella May Alderson (1916–2008) grew up in Portland as the daughter of Winter Scott Alderson and Carrie May Newman, whose own children, Lola and Elmer, were twenty years older, but she was adopted: her 1916 Washington birth certificate registers her in Seattle as Phillis May Barns. Her birth family is probably the Barnharts of Whatcom County, Washington, with Irene Mary Barnhart named as her probable mother.

How we know

The site is built from 963 sources: Latvian church registers, estate revision lists and citizenship decisions, displaced-persons records from the Arolsen Archives, US censuses, draft cards, naturalization records and passenger lists, Irish civil registers, newspapers in Latvian and English, two family memoirs, and family trees. See Sources.

Each parent–child link carries an evidence label:

documented
at least one record: a register, census, card, obituary.
tradition
only family memory or a family tree, so far.
probable
good evidence, not yet proven.
possible
a lead worth pursuing; not established.

What is not yet known is listed openly under Questions.

Recent discoveries

Everything added and corrected, by date

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