March 12, 2010
Mel Schapker
Genealogist has compiled family tree with nearly 75,000 names
Mel Schapker studies family tree information that he has compiled over the last 25 years. (Message photo by Mary Ann Hughes) Click for a larger version.
By MARY ANN HUGHES (Message staff writer)
When he was a young boy, Mel Schapker would listen as his parents talked about their families. Their aunts, their uncles and their cousins. And sometimes his mom and dad would talk about the relatives with religious vocations.
Now that he’s in his seventies, he’s spending a lot of time documenting the lives of those relatives — and thousands of others.
About 25 years ago, he began to take a serious look at his family tree, and over the years he has gathered nearly 75,000 names. Not all of those names are his blood relatives; some are in-laws and their families too.
Back in 1986, he bought his first computer. It was an IBM and he smiles as he remembers how limited its space was.
In those early days of his family tree work, he started with immediate family members, and then looked at church records in Evansville, Haubstadt, Elberfeld and Newburgh. Eventually, his search expanded to parishes in towns such as Biblis, Darmstadt and Worms, Germany.
One of the things he has discovered during his 25-year quest is the large number of extended family members who were priests, deacons and religious sisters.
He found 61 priests, men with last names like Bastnagel, Brenner, Dewig, Endress, Erbacher, Foster, Gries, Herr, Kissel, Knapp, Koch, Niehaus, Reis, Reising, Schmitt, Steckler and Zenthoefer.
He discovered links to 12 deacons in the Diocese of Evansville including Deacon Francis Hillenbrand and the three Seibert men, Deacon Joseph, Deacon David and Deacon Michael.
He found 54 women religious in his research, sisters at both the Benedictine monastery in Ferdinand and at the Franciscan monastery in Oldenburg, Ind.
Their last names include Beckerle, Dewig, Elpers, Emmert, Gansman, Kercher, Maurer, Miller, Mueller, Preske, Raben, Rietman, Scheller and Seib.
He credits others for helping him compile all the names, including Father David Nunning, now pastor at St. Agnes and Sacred Heart churches in Evansville, who has also done extensive family tree research.
Mel also used the resources compiled over the years by the late Charles Browning.
“Eleanor Glenn Tenbarge got me interested,” he said, “and she took me to Mount Vernon and to the Spencer County courthouse. Pam Heathcotte Gries gave me information about the Gries family tree.”
As he continues to update his research, he checks out the birth and death information in the local newspaper, and has connected with other family tree researchers on the Internet.
One researcher has information dating Mel’s family back to 1360.
Doing research is a natural for him, he says, “because I’m interested in history.” He also has a wonderful memory. “That’s an advantage,” he says of the information he has stored — not only on his computer — but in his mind.
The “ah ha” moments are fun, he says, and there have been sad moments too as he found evidence of American family members fighting German family members in both World War I and World War II.
Doing family tree research is “like filling in the blanks of a crossword puzzle,” he said. “It’s like being a detective.”