THE MISSIONARY TIMES No. 7 Friday, 7 January 2011
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Dear visitor,

  • Here at last are THE FRED GAISBERG DIARIES - Part 1: USA & Europe (1898-1902). An extensive introduction will be added soon.
    To clarify matters I have added footnotes, where and when I thought necessary.
    I made sure I cannot be accused of holding back on the amount of footnotes.
    The diaries can be found both in the PIONEERS section (under: GAISBERG, Frederick William) and in the DOCUMENTS section.

  • A number of items in the text are highlighted in yellow and underscored.
    They are links to a number of interesting documents, which were too large to incorporate into the main text.
    Anyone seeking relaxation away from the main document can click on these “sideshows”.
    Here are the extra links:
    • A Family Tree of the Gaisbergs
    • A Family Tree of the Berliners
    • The turbulent departure of John Daly, The Alice Nielsen Opera Company and Belford Royal from New York in March 1901.
    • Some vintage articles from The New York Times on the “Atlantic Garden”.
    • The situation at Eydtkuhnen-Wirballen, the German-Russian frontier, in 1920.
    • The full text of a fine song entitled “Those Wedding Bells Shall Not Ring Out”.

  • Four pioneers are highlighted in green.
    George J. WERNER and Frederick Charles BURT were brought to my attention by the ever watchful Paul Cleary of the British Library.
    Martha Kelley, a dyed-in-the-wool American RAOGK researcher, helped piece together their vital statistics and boat trips.

    Geoffrey O’HARA is mentioned in an article by Scott Malawski.
    It is about the connection between a 1913 French daily newspaper, an Edison cylinder (#2451) and Navaho Indians.... uh.... native Americans.

    And finally some more biographical details on George Henry BURT and his brother Alonzo. And also on Werner SUESS.

  • Volume 3 of THE LINDSTRÖM PROJECT is being put together.
    A collection of authoritative articles on the activities way back when of Lindström-related record companies, written by experts from all over the globe.
    From what I have seen so far, it looks as if a lot of questions are going to be answered this year. Even questions that have not yet been raised.
    Planned publication date: May 2011. To be published by the GHT (Gesellschaft für historische Tonträger) in Vienna, Austria.
All good news so far.
  • On the down side, the grandson of pioneer Emil Watzig very kindly sent me scans of the diaries of his grandfather, but unfortunately these only begin at 1913.
    He wrote:
    Most of my grandfather’s things were thrown away or sold by people who were renting his farm back in the 1960s and early 70s. My mother and father were not very vigilant on protecting his belongings that were stored in the barn. When I was very young, I remember boxes of old glass plates (photographs), old tools and who knows what else. All disappeared. The attitude back then was it was all junk ...

    And - quite unexpectedly - I also received an e-mail from T. J. Theobald Noble’s granddaughter, saying: Sadly my grandfather’s memoirs and all his photographs that were given to me by my father, perished in a storage warehouse fire. I was really delighted to stumble across your site.
Anybody else out there with cheerful news?
  • But there is always hope.
    Last summer my partner directed my steps to 23 almost mint quality Berliners on a fleamarket in France.
    Viewed on a yearly basis, a poor score (only 0,0630 Berliner a day), but still ... Anyway, we keep hoping we will have more luck this year.
    Or maybe you will strike it lucky in 2011, who knows!


Hugo Strötbaum



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