About Me

My great-grandmother was Mary Alice Seeber (that's me in her arms in the photo). When I was a young boy -- I think it was 1954 -- my parents hosted a gathering of the descendants of Mary Alice and her husband, John Fisher. At the reunion, I overheard some of the older relatives talking about Seebers who served in the Revolutionary War.

Even at that young age, I was interested in history. After the reunion, I asked my mother and grandmother about the Seeber family. My mother didn't know very much, but my grandmother wrote down what she knew on a couple of sheets of paper and gave them to me. They are still in my files, a treasured memento of my grandmother, who died in 1957.

At the top of the first sheet, my grandmother wrote: "This is some of the history that I have, but it is not connected too well." She was right about that -- she had generations and names mixed up, and some dates were inaccurate as well. But her notes were what started me on my lifelong quest for information about Seebers and many other families.

As with most genealogists, except possibly those who do it for a living, the time I had available for research has varied over the years. Marriage, children and work took priority, and I was only able to do Seeber research from time to time during those years. But after retirement I renewed my interest in genealogy and became active again in the Rochester Genealogical Society, which I have served as president, treasurer and historian/genealogist. My wife and I are also longtime staff members of the LDS Family History Center on Westfall Road in the Town of Brighton, near Rochester, New York.

My principal interest in the Seeber family, and the focus of my research, is the European origin of the family. It has been a frustrating search, filled with dead ends, but in 2010 I had a breakthrough. In the International Genealogical Index (IGI), a database developed by the genealogical division of the LDS Church, I found an entry for Johann Wilhelm Seeber, baptized on 19 November 1721 in Bischwiller, France.¹

The name and date in the IGI entry are consistent with information about Johann Wilhelm in the Seeber family Bible, discussed elsewhere on this website. I started investigating whether the Seeber family might have come from Bischwiller. The more I looked, the more convinced I became. What I have found during the past decade is summarized and analyzed on this website and in my public member tree at Ancestry.com.

Like most genealogical research, this is an ongoing project. I would enjoy hearing from other Seeber descendants and researchers. Please contact me at Peterbushgenealogy@gmail.com if you have comments, criticisms, insights or information about things discussed on this website or in my member tree at Ancestry.com.