EUPHORIA!
On the tail of my last post about genealogy screw ups, let me tell you that on Sunday December 12th, 2021, around noon, I had a long awaited and hunted breakthrough in my own personal genealogy. In fact, I'm writing this post a couple hours later, while the elation I feel is at a high, for future posting. OK, I'm congratulating myself on my endurance and patience as well as my know-how. I'm thinking this post will be a positive start for the new year, 2022 and maybe it will inspire you.
During Covid shutdowns I did a lot of personal research using archives in other countries and saw documents that HAVE NOT BEEN SOLD OR SHARED to any of the "big" database companies that so many have come to depend on too much. I think these countries are right to keep possession of their archival documents and I want to honor their volunteers as well (although I caution you that some of them are not reading correctly and posting widow's married name rather than their maiden names on remarriages, which should be corrected.)
One of these countries is Poland though this line of my ancestors lived in Galicia which was Austria at the time.
The cell phone I downloaded on became defunct since then but on it I had downloaded dozens of pages "of interest" because what I wanted and needed and looked all over for - page by page in some cases - hundreds of pages - was not coming up. I eliminated the possibilities of finding birth records and a marriage record where they "should" have been - and read a wide range of villages which appear to have their own churches as part of a larger parish system. Then I got busy and failed to review what I had downloaded in the spring and summer of 2021. Until the evening of December 11th and the morning of December 12th - the first day of Christmas.
If I had not, on a trip over 20 years ago, gone to see a relative and asked her a couple questions about my ancestor's maiden name and heritage - which she strained to remember. If my great grandmother had not reported a dream - a visitation - she had to this same relative (a few months before she died) which caused her to reveal that she had an older half brother and that they shared a mother - I might not have realized what I was looking at.
What if my great-grandmother had not had the dream?
What if she had not told my relative?
What if I had not asked my relative while she was still alive?
So here is the story.
My great-grandmother was an "orphan." Her children never met an aunt or uncle. When I asked my relative what had happened to great-grandma's parents, she said her mother reported that one of them was "killed on the road" and the other "burned up in a fire." She was repeating what my great-grandmother had told her in Polish, trying not to elaborate.
From that day on, I was trying to find out what town fire - or maybe it was the home hearth - might have burned up my great grandmother's mother. I thought it made sense that the mother would burn up and the father would be killed on the road but I still do not know. I imaged my great grandfather as a merchant traveling through the Carpathian mountains into Hungary, perhaps being surprised by highway robbers who wanted his silver... I look forward to finding death records of these ancestors which might have some notes.
My mother (and her sibling) seemed not to know anything much about their own grandparents, whom they never met. They seemed satisfied with moving forward into their own lives as if no one else had ever made this possible. In fact my grandmother had told them not to look back.
I once rejected renting a wood house because when I got inside it, as the wind blew and it creaked, I thought, "This place is a fire hazard! I once rejected living in a certain apartment because the big window looked over the roof and I thought "If there is a fire, how can one escape across a hot asphalted roof?" Not that I think I was once the woman who burned up in another life, but knowing I had such an ancestor in my lineage scared me. I would not want to live in an all wood house.
The not knowing who your people were is not so unusual actually. It's one of the things that has propelled so many to do genealogy in the first place, to solve mysteries and set the record straight.
My great-grandparent's immigration documents and naturalization documents repeated the names of a few locations. I looked at maps going way back, the districting of parishes. I was sure that my great-grandmother's wedding - that of an orphaned girl who was match-made by friends - had been the creation of a caring priest, because who might attend?
So of course I immediately went to those mentioned places, those records and documents, and around them, on guard for genealogy myopia, looking at the correct dates or a few days, months, or years either way, and NOTHING! Would it be my luck, my fate, that the very pages I needed were somehow missing? I'm terrific at figuring out bad handwriting and misspellings - that was not it. Or had these people been too far up in the mountains to come down and have an actual baptism in a church? (On some records the midwife is named as the person who baptised.)
In genealogy deductive reasoning is good so long as you detail your path.
On my immigration posts full of advice last year I mentioned you should GO TO THE ADDRESS THEY GAVE ON THE SHIP and see who is living there. I did this years ago, using microfilm and now old fashioned methods of finding an enumeration district per census year.
To my amazement I found the half brother (or someone with his very same name) and two other men there with the same surname as my grandmother. However, these names were fairly common in the area they mentioned coming from. I concluded that my great-grandfather might simply have headed for a boarding house where other men he knew in the Old Country headed but I hoped they could be related or intermarried somehow.
As the records did not show up where they "should've" been, as volunteers in Poland continued to give of their time to create databases that did not yet have death records, I relied on marriages and births and I began to go page to page, reasoning that if these people had siblings, then probably siblings would show up somehow. I ran into common names and dozens of candidates.
Using the information on the census of 1910 at the address in the United States my great-grandfather had headed, I took down the names, ages, and marital status of other men living there. *** He was no longer there - having already moved to another city for work.
As it turned out this is the very thing that made all the difference.
I looked for all documents taken at the location in Poland where my great-grandmother listed herself as having been living with a "sister" before coming to America. It turns out that someone from that very town actually ran a boarding house in the same area that my great-grandfather had gone to. My great-grandmother lived there while he took a train into another city for work!
Using all those saved documents held in Polish archives on the cell phone, I read one after another again, taking notes by hand. I FOUND THAT THE HALF BROTHER and one of the other men at that boarding house with my great-grandmother's maiden name as a surname DID INDEED HAVE THE SAME MOTHER. Using their marriage records rather than my great-grandmother's missing record, I determined her mother's maiden name. These men's marriage records give their ages and also mention that the parents are deceased. They were the men at that boarding house in 1910 - the census ages and their ages on birth records match. Therefore, I learned they too were orphans at the time of their marriages and I now have the names of my great-grandmother's birth parents and my great great-grandparents on that line.
Additionally, by reading around and around records for the big parish church mentioned verbally as the place of their marriage - which has not been found - I have learned that my great-grandfather's surname was quite rare in that location, but there is ONE marriage of a person with that name and he is listed as in the military at his marriage. As a military man he probably wasn't living where he was born or his family lived. There is also a mention of a child being born who would be about two years older than my great-grandfather that has a mention of a village nearby - the village he listed as his birth place. It may be a little soon to conclude on this line as well, but I have a sense that I may have found my great-grandfather's line.
In the many years prior to these databases being uploaded by volunteers in Poland, I could have written to archives in Poland and paid genealogists there, and if I'd had the money, I probably would have. Although the archivist would be more familiar with the records, they would have looked at the records I'm looking at myself... gone to the dates and places given... found nothing... sent me a bill or asked me if I wanted to spend more...
THERE IS ALWAYS THE POSSIBILITY MORE WILL BE FOUND THERE and that some things will only be available by special requests. However, I now have so much more information to provide when I write.
By reading these records I noted that in towns where the Greek Catholic church prevailed, Roman Catholic children are recorded in the "big parish" nearest with a note of their village. I have tripped over two curious listings that are not related to my family. In one it is noted that a child has been born illegitimately - the woman is a convert and her Jewish father's name is listed. In another, it is noted that a Jewish father, who did not marry another woman whose child is illegitimate, did show up for the baptism and want his name recorded. In these cases there is a strong story about changing times - Fiddler on the Roof times - in which there was forbidden love and lust.
A dozen lemon menthol cough drops later... still overjoyed!
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