McLaughlin Family

The Philippe family is part of the Atckison family. Mary Elizabeth Johnson who married John A. Atckison mother was Magdelena Philippe. In many records she went by her nickname, which was Emma. That’s how Virginia Nelson and I ferreted out the first marriage to Oscar Ervin Johnson, and found the birth certificate of Mary Elizabeth. Virginia found it on a personal visit to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Magdelena left a strong legacy among her Atckison granddaughters. They often visited her on the farm as girls.

She almost outlived her oldest child, Mary Elizabeth, dying 26 July 1940. Mary Elizabeth died six days later in Los Angeles, California on 1 Aug 1940. The picture to the left was taken in Melrose, Minnesota during the middle of the 1920s based on a hand notation from Margaret Mary Atckison.

Magdelena provided a lot of information to Margaret Mary Atckison that enabled me to bridge the Atlantic to France on Joseph Philippe. Joseph Philippe was her father. Magdelena did not provide quite enough information to do the same for her mother. You can read about her father and that research in the Philippe, Joseph page.

It always appeared odd to me that according to my grandmother, Mary Margaret Atckison, that Elisabeth’s surname was also Philippe. I thought that perhaps the information on Elisabeth’s father was also in error because his given name Wendel and they lived in Saint Wendel Township, Minnesota. I’ve subsequently come to know his German equivalency is Wendel, while his French name is Valentin.

Elisabeth’s mother’s name was given as Magdelena Stoll&#233, and it always seemed a likely name. I knew they were married in Ohio but not quite where they were married because all I knew was that they were married in Saint Mary’s Catholic Church. There are a number of Catholic parishes with that name in the state of Ohio. Moreover, I didn’t have a place to look, or siblings to look for a related group in the immigration records.

Earlier in 2009, I ran across a web page that appeared to be a match. In fact, Mike Schwitzgebel had a manual extract of the Saint Mary’s Catholic Church made by Robert Shimek in Morges, Ohio. There was that illusive marriage record from Saint Mary’s Catholic Church, and records of the birth of the first two children. That let me know that the family first settled in Ohio, and the place name Lichtenberg where they were from in Europe. The web site said Germany but my grandmother said Alsace-Lorraine, and so did the census records. It turns out that they’re from Lichtenberg, Bas-Rhin, France.

It was short work from there. I found their immigration records through New York on 6 Aug 1845 from La Harve, France. A trip to Salt Lake City, Utah and the LDS Family History library let me find Elisabeth’s genealogy as far back as film records go. For reference, Wendel in German translates to Valentin in French, and Magdelena Stoll&#233 translates to Madeliene Stoll&#233. You can find this Philippe family under the Philippe, Valentin page.

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