A Tobolt by any other name may still be kin, whether a Tobold or a Tobald, a Toboll or a Toball, a Tobol or a Tobal, a Toboldt, or even a Toble or a Boldt or a Bolt. Truth be told, the Tobolts held little proprietary interest in the spelling of their name.
My search for Tobolt kin began with nothing more than the names my mother carefully recorded in the family Bible maybe 60 years earlier for my father's family ... nothing more ... but also nothing less. At least I had a place to start. Adding a ship manifest for a life-changing 1882 journey to the United States, and U.S. federal census records for the initial decades of the twentieth century, and my Tobolt family was growing. Growing on paper anyway, but where were my cousins?
I had to have cousins ... everyone has cousins ... even if lost in a sea of Tob*s. Some settled into farming in the U.S. and others continued their emigration from the U.S. to Canada in the early 1900's in search for their own land to farm. Looking for the Tob*s in Canada was made more difficult by the "language barrier", meaning a completely different government and a vastly different set of government records. And, as it turned out, the family name had morphed again.
To find my Tob* cousins, I had to stop looking. I added my areas of research to my profile on Ancestry.com and turned my focus to other family lines. Then two years ago ... two years ago YESTERDAY ... 29 September 2012, Sharon Frizell sat down to her computer in Canada and sent me a message.
Today we are a group of Canadian and U.S. Tobolts looking for more Tob* cousins. We are creating here on the Internet a home, so you, our Tob* cousins, can find us. Sharon Frizell, Gloria Boldt Gifford, and Elaine Gordon Fleck are the Canadian contingent, and I'm Kate VanderBoom, the U.S. contingent. Gloria's father, Clayton Boldt, is a very special member of our research community. For many years Clayton searched for Tob*s south of the Canadian border, just as I longed to find Tob*s in Canada. How I wish Clayton and I had met then.
Our common ancestor is Martin Tobolt, who was born in about 1840 in Prussia. Martin and his wife, Augusta Witte, arrived in America in 1882 with five Tobolt children, settling in Nobles County, Minnesota. The Tobolts arrived at their new home in Minnesota via Wisconsin ... a diversion, we believe to be family related. According to the ship manifest, the previous home of the Tobolts was Krummenflies, Flatow, West Prussia. Today this place is known as Krzywa Wies in Poland.
The Canadian and U.S. cousins have celebrated two reunions, the first in Langley, British Columbia, near the city of Vancouver, in June 2013. For the second reunion, Elaine, Sharon, Gloria, and I met in Arizona in May 2014. Tobolts together at last! //Kate VanderBoom
