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Currently, the specifics of William Bryant's early life are unknown. This includes his parents, his age, and his place of birth. Even though we have recently come into a relative windfall of information surrounding William (considering all we had was a name on a headstone), he is still shrouded in mystery and there are many unanswered questions.
UPDATED 04/28/2020: See Ancestry DNA updates below this story.
Born in Binghamton, New York to a disabled veteran of the war of 1812, Sarah was one of 6 children and at least 5 step-children. The family moved to Ohio when she was about 5 years old. They seemed to spend a lot of her childhood living in the care of friends and depending on the next payment from pension. Around the age of 6 her father died. Her mother raised her with the help of the older children and remarried when Sarah was about 14. They moved to Pennsylvania where Sarah married stagecoach driver Rufus Dodge and the couple returned to Ohio. They had 3 daughters and raised them in North Ridgeville, Ohio; always sticking close to Sarah's family. Sarah died in 1897 around the age of 67.
Born and raised in Gunzendorf, Bavaria to parents currently unknown, Kunigunda met her husband and had her first child in Germany before they boarded the ship Waesland at the age of 23 and headed for America. 4 months after their arrival, she married husband Henry in New York City. In all they raised 8 children together in Manhattan. Kuni lived to be 78 years old.
Born in Zutphen, Netherlands, the son of a Jewish baker, Samuel relocated to Germany at 13 years old where he learned his father's trade. After marriage he would immigrate to New York City in hopes of a better life in Manhattan, where Sam would take up work as a news dealer and raise five children before his untimely death at the age of 48.
Bertha, as she was known, was born under the name Barbara Steinheimer to parents Heinrich Steinheimer and Kunigunda Fleischmann.1 Her parents were recent immigrants from Bavaria (Germany), arriving 7 years prior. She grew up with 3 older siblings and 4 younger siblings. They were brothers John, Henry, and George, and sisters Margaret, Gertrude, Rose, and Anna.
Philip Sternefeld was born 24 July 1891 in Manhattan, New York, New York, USA at 217 E. 122nd Street, East Harlem. His parents Samuel Sternefeld and Babetta "Barbara" Scheierman, were Jewish immigrants. Samuel had arrived in New York 10 years earlier from the Netherlands (sometime referred to as Holland) and Babetta 7 years before Sam from Germany.
