Finding Clara

The one thing I knew for sure was, the more family history I found, the more I knew there was more to find! The question was asked if our ancestors came from England on the Mayflower. I answered no, “Our English ancestors sailed into Cambridge Harbor, Massachusetts in 1638, instead!” Finding Clara is a result of a single genealogical lead, that became a family mystery in 1972. Jeri Fuller’s great-grandfather, Charles Emery Fuller and first wife, Martha had a daughter named Clara in 1875. She was born in Northfield, Minnesota. My mother did not know that he had been previously married, because there was no family history, stories or photos handed down of Clara or her mother. Jeri solved the mystery of finding Clara, old school, by writing to relatives and obtaining copies of vital records. She provides intimate details of Clara’s life, where she lived, attended college, who she married and her children, after she traveled to Northfield in 1997. Her get-up and get-personal research method gets results. While completing Clara’s biography she found that Charles Emery Fuller had served in the Civil War. She tells where she obtained a copy of his mustered-in and mustered-out record and the narrative of where his regiment served. Finding Clara reveals the discovery of numerous Fuller family connections to Northfield’s unique history. One ancestor witnessed Northfield’s famous attempted robbery of the First National Bank by Frank and Jesse James and the Younger Brothers in 1876. Some ancestors served as volunteer fire fighters for Northfield’s Hook and Ladder No. 1, some attended either Carleton or St. Olaf College. The connections of her family to these places and events are amazing. Jeri recounts her Fuller family history, alongside America’s history from colonial New England to the eighteenth-century in the Mid-West. She tells of how Chauncey C. Olin supported the Underground Railroad in Wisconsin. She goes on to solve seven family history mysteries. Using the strategy of her family’s naming convention, she identified her Violet Barber who was born in 1796. Her inspiring stories of tenacity and perseverance are insightful. Her research located her family’s American Revolutionary Soldier, who moved to Canton, New York in the early 1800s. She includes eleven generations of her Fuller family tree. The staff at the Flint Public Library in Middleton, Massachusetts provided a map locating Thomas Fuller’s home built in 1684. These stories in Finding Clara can assist any novice or expert genealogist find inspiration to complete their family histories.

Eve goes missing. Twenty-seven years later Clara is found. Upon realizing that her life is a lie, Clara searches for who she used to be. There are a new family and an old love to deal with, as well as the question of how to combine Clara and Eve. The new family gives her a headache, and the old love is rekindled. Clara needs to find herself, and while searching she discovers her real home.

“Meticulously researched and plotted like a noir thriller, The German Heiress tells a different story of WWII— of characters grappling with their own guilt and driven by the question of what they could have done to change the past.” —Jessica Shattuck, New York Times bestselling author of The Women in the Castle For readers of The Alice Network and The Lost Girls of Paris, an immersive, heart-pounding debut about a German heiress on the run in post-World War II Germany. Clara Falkenberg, once Germany’s most eligible and lauded heiress, earned the nickname “the Iron Fräulein” during World War II for her role operating her family’s ironworks empire. It’s been nearly two years since the war ended and she’s left with nothing but a false identification card and a series of burning questions about her family’s past. With nowhere else to run to, she decides to return home and take refuge with her dear friend, Elisa. Narrowly escaping a near-disastrous interrogation by a British officer who’s hell-bent on arresting her for war crimes, she arrives home to discover the city in ruins, and Elisa missing. As Clara begins tracking down Elisa, she encounters Jakob, a charismatic young man working on the black market, who, for his own reasons, is also searching for Elisa. Clara and Jakob soon discover how they might help each other—if only they can stay ahead of the officer determined to make Clara answer for her actions during the war. Propulsive, meticulously researched, and action-fueled, The German Heiress is a mesmerizing page-turner that questions the meaning of justice and morality, deftly shining the spotlight on the often-overlooked perspective of Germans who were caught in the crossfire of the Nazi regime and had nowhere to turn.

The "Gentleman's magazine" section is a digest of selections from the weekly press; the "(Trader's) monthly intelligencer" section consists of news (foreign and domestic), vital statistics, a register of the month's new publications, and a calendar of forthcoming trade fairs.