Scrapbooking Andrew Blum

I finally finished two scrapbook pages yesterday on the Andrew Blum family.  Andrew was my dad's grandfather on his mother's side of the family.  He came to America at the age of 25, from Germany.

  Andrew was born August 18, 1851 in Kondringen, Baden, Germany, to Karl and Marie Barbra (Schiller).  He lived in the home of his parents and aided them in their struggles until the age of twenty.  He then obtained work in a brewery where he remained until the year 1876, when he secured passage on a frieghter at the French Port of LeHarve. He shoveled coal for the boilers to produce steam to propel the ship.  The ship traveled by way of Africa before landing in New York City.  Andrews well muscled back aided him in getting work as a maltster in breweries.  A maltster, as explained by Andrew, is one who observed one of the brewing processes.  Andrew worked in breweries in New York, and Cincinnati as he migrated westward.  He worked in the Anheuser-Bush breweries in St. Louis, Missouri from the years 1876-1880.  He then traveld to the Omaha-Council Bluff area where he worked in the breweries as a maltster.

In 1880, when Andrew arrived in the Omaha/Council Bluffs area, He stayed at a boarding house where he met a man by the name of Adolf Storz.  Andrew taught him the fundamentals of the brewing business, with the use of malt, hops, barley, yeast, and water. From this friendship and the advice of Andrew, Adolf Storz started his own brewery which was named after him, the Storz Brewing Company.

Learning to Blog

I'm new at this blogging thing and really don't have a clue as to what I'm doing.  So in my learning frenzy I'm bound to make a few mistakes, but in the meantime, hope to make some progress too.  I want to use my blog to talk about  my family history and share news of findings with others out there that may be interested.  So if there is anything I need to be doing, and am not doing, I do hope someone will tell me.  (I'm sure some one will, people LOVE to point out your weaknesses!!)  Everyone is a critic.

So I guess to get started let me tell you who I am and a bit of where I come from.  I am the 2nd daughter, 3rd child of Cecil and Peggy (Nutsch) Pierce.  Cecil is a decendant of Alexander Pierce from the Virginia's.  Peggy is the decendant of Paul Nutsch, a german immigrant that came to Kansas for a visit when he was 12 years old and never returned to his home land.  As my grandpa would say "I guess he's still a visitin!"

My dad's mother was a Blum, decendant of Andrew Blum, a german immigrant that came to America at the age of 21, and one by one helped to bring over the rest of his family.  He homesteded in the South Dakota plains, before settling in Nebraska. 

There is so much to tell I won't go into great detail at this time, but will little by little add bits and pieces of family history, to help paint a picture of the lives that lead to me, my children, and my grandchildren.