There is so much romance attached to ancestors coming through Ellis Island in steerage, that you may be surprised to know that the 1st and 2nd class passengers could skip the whole Ellis Island scene and were left off first in New York.
It may surprise you to learn that your ancestor actually didn't make just one trip, but several back and forth before having taken care of all their business in the old country, such as selling property, settling old mom - too old to immigrate - with relatives.
It may also surprise you to learn that there were other, busy ports, including Canadian ports, or that your ancestor may have taken a trip to Argentina first, checked it out, and then decided to come to the United States. Your ancestor may have also come on a ship that wasn't one of the big-line steamships. There were people coming in as crew. There were still sail ships operating coming into smaller and unofficial ports. You may have checked all the available databases out, straining through near unreadable handwriting, missing manifests, and so on; all you know is that they are suddenly on a census.
If you find their naturalization papers, you will probably learn that they declare the date they arrived and the name of the ship. For some, obtaining evidence of this voyage, if they didn't still have a ticket /paperwork still on them, was a step towards naturalization. Even if those ship manifests or passenger lists no longer exist they will name the date and ship and often place.
During the pre-aviation era, ships were the way to go. The romance of immigrants coming in by ship sort of negates what else was going on. Such as people who were traveling back and forth to Europe on business, such as spending sprees for fashionable clothing, banking and investments, and visiting relatives or taking long vacations for pleasure. People walking across borders. People who skipped Ellis and questions about disease and mental health. If an immigrant wanted to bring a sibling along who probably wouldn't pass through Ellis, say because they were "slow," they might suggest the person was a shy twelve year old rather than a budding fifteen.
What reminded me of all this was a relations question about our great-grandmother. By using oral history about the age of the first child, said to be in her mother's arms when they arrived to meet up with our great-grandfather, I had not found her on my first efforts with microfilms of ships coming into New York. I assumed New York. The assumption turned out to be right. But I calculated after finding the first child's birth date on the Social Security Death Index to another date. This time the first microfilm I rolled had them there. Previously I had found great-grandfather's immigration. Yes he was there before she was. My relations questioned the parentage of this first child. Without knowing if she was possibly born premature or late, and based on her strong resemblance to him, I had not doubt she was the child of our great-grandparents. Yet, this made me go back into the ship manifests to check out other men with the same name.
As it turned out I was able to verify that indeed great-grandfather had made two trips. On one ship manifest it says WHERE DID YOU LEAVE? Since this village was near the larger town that both referred to as having come from, well.... on the first trip it says WHERE WERE YOU BORN? In this case the man with the same name gives a different answer. He refers to a larger region that contains the village that he left, and this lead me to realize that he was probably not BORN exactly where he left. This actually has opened up the place I can look for records of his birth and possibly their marriage.
In any case, though two trips makes sense, I won't consider this proofed until I can prove that two men of the same age, name, and region, did not exist at the same time.
C 2018 Ancestry Worship Genealogy BlogSpot
22 August 2018
18 August 2018
JEFFERSON DAVIS - AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT : DVD FILM REVIEW
JEFFERSON DAVIS - AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT The Life Story of the First and Only President of the Confederacy a Kultur DVD
ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW:
This 3 DVD set was so enlightening! I promise I will watch the film in its entirety one more time! I realized just how ignorant I was of the Confederacy. In this portrait of the man, I learned that until the Civil War Davis first and foremost considered himself an AMERICAN. He was an Army officer, a congressman, the Secretary of War, and a two term Mississippi senator, and one of the greats who found the Smithsonian Institute, and "largely responsible" for the current design on the U.S. Capitol. As things turned out Davis was on the wrong side of the Civil War and lead years of life afterwards in which he struggled to support his family or again live to his potential. Jefferson Davis also had a profoundly tragic personal life, like his old colleague Abraham Lincoln. His life spanned that of the 19th century.
_____
Personally, I dislike that various confederacy statues and historical displays are being taken down. Just because the South lost? Or because there is an assumption that the South, and all who were on that side, were all about racism - rather than economics. I realize this is not a politically correct opinion, but I think that if this continues, all the California Missions will be taken down too. Off the go to "graveyards," but some day they will be refound and unveiled; this has happened in other countries.
Leave them up and learn history! A tour guide can always make such things part of a discussion. For instance one tour of a California Mission I took was guided by a fake Franciscan Friar in his brown garb with the rope belt and sandals whose personal opinion was against the Catholic Church. Believe it or not. Yet I've met a couple Native American ancestry people who think that they are better off because they became Catholics - this is Arizona.
GENEALOGY DOCUMENTS sometimes prove that things taught in classrooms are not true. For instance, I was taught Mexicans and Native Americans were always friends.
Some Americans believe all Native Americans were peaceful and unified when it fact some of them warred with each other. Some Native Americans owned slaves, some married them, and I've seen that on census records. The Civil War issues split up some families.
So I like to say that history is "niche specific."
ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW:
This 3 DVD set was so enlightening! I promise I will watch the film in its entirety one more time! I realized just how ignorant I was of the Confederacy. In this portrait of the man, I learned that until the Civil War Davis first and foremost considered himself an AMERICAN. He was an Army officer, a congressman, the Secretary of War, and a two term Mississippi senator, and one of the greats who found the Smithsonian Institute, and "largely responsible" for the current design on the U.S. Capitol. As things turned out Davis was on the wrong side of the Civil War and lead years of life afterwards in which he struggled to support his family or again live to his potential. Jefferson Davis also had a profoundly tragic personal life, like his old colleague Abraham Lincoln. His life spanned that of the 19th century.
_____
Personally, I dislike that various confederacy statues and historical displays are being taken down. Just because the South lost? Or because there is an assumption that the South, and all who were on that side, were all about racism - rather than economics. I realize this is not a politically correct opinion, but I think that if this continues, all the California Missions will be taken down too. Off the go to "graveyards," but some day they will be refound and unveiled; this has happened in other countries.
Leave them up and learn history! A tour guide can always make such things part of a discussion. For instance one tour of a California Mission I took was guided by a fake Franciscan Friar in his brown garb with the rope belt and sandals whose personal opinion was against the Catholic Church. Believe it or not. Yet I've met a couple Native American ancestry people who think that they are better off because they became Catholics - this is Arizona.
GENEALOGY DOCUMENTS sometimes prove that things taught in classrooms are not true. For instance, I was taught Mexicans and Native Americans were always friends.
Some Americans believe all Native Americans were peaceful and unified when it fact some of them warred with each other. Some Native Americans owned slaves, some married them, and I've seen that on census records. The Civil War issues split up some families.
So I like to say that history is "niche specific."
C 2018 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot
15 August 2018
14 July 2018
FIVE SISTERS ALL HAVE A DIFFERENT MAIDEN NAME FOR MOM : GENEALOGY RESEARCH QUESTION
QUESTION FOR ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY
My mom, who was born in the 1930's, died a few years ago. I started doing the genealogy for her family. My four sisters and I got together and we all have remembered a different maiden name for mom. Three of the names begin with a the same letter.
I took a DNA test - maternal - and mom said she was Italian - but no Italian showed up on the test. Ukrainian, Polish, Slovak areas did.
Your advice, Please!
ANSWER
The situation isn't as uncommon as you may think. I suggest you proceed with standard research methods and see what comes up. Mom may not have known her own ancestry, she may have been adopted - and not been told, she could have been lied to or her own mother might have been. Or she could have been born with one name and her own mother might have remarried and her new husband adopted her.
1) Get a copy of her death certificate and/or burial and see what maiden name is mentioned.
2) Get a copy of her birth certificate and see what maiden name is listed.
3) Send away for her original application for Social Security which she probably applied for in the 1950's for her first job.
If the maiden name is consistent on these three, or appears with a slight variation, it's probably correct.
Consider the following: That the maiden name was pronounced in another language but could have been assumed to be spelled a certain way by the person who was writing it down. That a formal or informal surname change may have occurred. Run an Internet check on the surname and see if it comes up as clearly Italian or Ukrainian or what ethnicity it suggests. See if you can find one of those on-line translators that also has a voice that pronounces the word and think about how you'd spell that. Find the meaning of the name. Consider that the name might mean the same thing - or similar - but in different languages. Or changed to reflect a pronunciation that is "easier."
I've encountered the following: An S added to the ending of the name. A common name in Hungarian turned into the same meaning in English ie. Szabo is Tailor. The suffix of a name, such as ski, szke, son, dottar, removed from the name to make it shorter. Siblings with different surnames due to being half siblings - which they knew but descendants did not. Silent first letters of names eliminated in pronunciation. Surnames that are changed to eliminate confusion of multiple consonants.
4) Since she was born in the 1930's let's get her on the 1940 census and see if we can follow her parents or siblings back to the 1930's, 1920's, as far back as we can go. If the confusion continues, well, try to find her parent's marriage certificate. Did they marry in the Old Country or here? In the Old Country, their marriage may be in a church record rather than a civil registration.
Finally DNA is proving how nomadic or mobile humans have been and how much ethnicity and race are mixed. Quite possibly your mother's ancestors simply moved from a Central-Eastern European country to Italy and considered themselves culturally Italian.
I can't wait to hear what you learned!
Christine
My mom, who was born in the 1930's, died a few years ago. I started doing the genealogy for her family. My four sisters and I got together and we all have remembered a different maiden name for mom. Three of the names begin with a the same letter.
I took a DNA test - maternal - and mom said she was Italian - but no Italian showed up on the test. Ukrainian, Polish, Slovak areas did.
Your advice, Please!
ANSWER
The situation isn't as uncommon as you may think. I suggest you proceed with standard research methods and see what comes up. Mom may not have known her own ancestry, she may have been adopted - and not been told, she could have been lied to or her own mother might have been. Or she could have been born with one name and her own mother might have remarried and her new husband adopted her.
1) Get a copy of her death certificate and/or burial and see what maiden name is mentioned.
2) Get a copy of her birth certificate and see what maiden name is listed.
3) Send away for her original application for Social Security which she probably applied for in the 1950's for her first job.
If the maiden name is consistent on these three, or appears with a slight variation, it's probably correct.
Consider the following: That the maiden name was pronounced in another language but could have been assumed to be spelled a certain way by the person who was writing it down. That a formal or informal surname change may have occurred. Run an Internet check on the surname and see if it comes up as clearly Italian or Ukrainian or what ethnicity it suggests. See if you can find one of those on-line translators that also has a voice that pronounces the word and think about how you'd spell that. Find the meaning of the name. Consider that the name might mean the same thing - or similar - but in different languages. Or changed to reflect a pronunciation that is "easier."
I've encountered the following: An S added to the ending of the name. A common name in Hungarian turned into the same meaning in English ie. Szabo is Tailor. The suffix of a name, such as ski, szke, son, dottar, removed from the name to make it shorter. Siblings with different surnames due to being half siblings - which they knew but descendants did not. Silent first letters of names eliminated in pronunciation. Surnames that are changed to eliminate confusion of multiple consonants.
4) Since she was born in the 1930's let's get her on the 1940 census and see if we can follow her parents or siblings back to the 1930's, 1920's, as far back as we can go. If the confusion continues, well, try to find her parent's marriage certificate. Did they marry in the Old Country or here? In the Old Country, their marriage may be in a church record rather than a civil registration.
Finally DNA is proving how nomadic or mobile humans have been and how much ethnicity and race are mixed. Quite possibly your mother's ancestors simply moved from a Central-Eastern European country to Italy and considered themselves culturally Italian.
I can't wait to hear what you learned!
Christine
C 2018 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot
07 July 2018
WHEN DID COUSINS STOP MARRYING IN YOUR FAMILY?
NEWSCIENTIST : STUDY ON COUSIN MARRIAGE
EXCERPT: Joanna Kaplanis at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK, and her colleagues, collected 86 million publicly-available profiles from Geni.com. Users on this crowd sourcing website create family trees, which are then merged with others when matches occur.
*****
Basically, in the 19th century people started living further away from each other but cousin marriage persisted for about another 50 years.
Another article based on this same study by another publication, which I'm not linking to due to the ads, said that the tree goes back 11 generations, the participants (willing?) were 85% North American or European, and BEFORE 1750 the spouse was found within 6 miles. (So read those census records around town!) After 1950 the geographically desirable were within 60 miles. (Makes sense to me. You are now willing to drive an hour each way to date!) Before 1850 it was socially acceptable and common. 1800 to 1850 people traveled further but it was still OK. After that it became less acceptable to marry your cousin. But you'll have to read the study to know if they mean first cousin or fourth!
04 July 2018
20 June 2018
16 June 2018
FAKE GENEALOGY IS ALL TOO COMMON
Recently I was reminded that fake genealogy is all too common.
In a few books about the Bouvier sisters - Jacqueline - who was to become Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and her sister Lee - who was to marry a few times but is best known as Lee Radizwill, it is reported that Jackie's own father presented a mythological genealogy to the daughters that both believed, elevating a French immigrant cabinetmaker - a very good one by the way - into nobility. Then Lee herself falsely claimed to have the Lee family of early Virginia as ancestors. Apparently she even had a big genealogy on a wall that she could point to. As I read it, apparently Lee was so good at reporting the historical accuracies of this family, though her connection to them was not, that she was still accepted as a kind of honorary member of the family.
Ah well, what reminded me was that someone I'm related to by marriage, told me not to bother doing the genealogy for her family as cousin So and So had already done it, all the way to "Queen Antoinette." She meant Marie Antoinette, a German brought to France, who had four children, none who lived long enough to reproduce, meaning that Marie Antoinette left no direct descendants. Could this "Italian" family actually have German and French nobility in it's chart?
I don't normally do someone's genealogy who doesn't want it done, but because the children of this marriage are related to me, I put a little time into following the surnames of their grandparents, and discovered that very likely they started out as Sephardic Jews who left Portugal, went to Salonica, Greece, and then to Calabrese Italy. Could Marie Antoinette be covering up all that?
Though there are those who fabricate illustrious connections because they are snobs, there is probably more fake genealogy out there due to ignorance on how to conduct genealogical research. I once met a woman, a member of a Santa Barbara, California genealogy club who told me that she traced the wrong family for a decade out of ignorance. She had made a leap very early on, not documenting properly, and so it went.
So there are three things I want to express to my readers here.
First, if you are new to genealogy and a do-it-yourselfer, it's a good idea to document every way you can, and remain skeptical of what the family oral history is until you find those documents.
Secondly, if you have been away from your genealogy for some time, go over everything once again, making the connections where they are, questioning yourself.
For instance, I had great difficulty finding an oath of allegiance to the U.S. in New Jersey for an immigrant because the New Jersey swearing in did not require a lot of information, the surname was common, the witnesses must have been friends, not family members who already had their citizenship, and the place of birth was within the county left behind but not the same as what it said on the ship documents. Through a process of elimination I was able to be about 95% certain that the swearing in I found was correct. However, there is no mention of all the other family members who also got their citizenship that day along with "dad," and I suspected one of the children got his in another state, because he immigrated separately and lived separately. I have looked through records from multiple counties and states and records held at the National Archives and cannot find any evidence for this person being naturalized, and so I assume - but am skeptical - that he was included in on his dad's.
It does not matter though in terms of proofing his lineage.
The problem is finding that dad's lineage in another country where again I have search numerous church records and for which nothing is coming up. I'm doing everything right. The information simply may not have been preserved. The problem? He was born during an uprising.
Third, it's a good idea to have a professional go over all your research looking for information that can proof. If you can't afford the pro, team up with someone else you trust and go over each other's work.
A person who worked to help people into the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution once told me that some members had been asked to leave because information that had been provided long ago was now considered questionable. You don't want that to happen to you.
C 2018 Ancestry Worship Genealogy Blogspot
In a few books about the Bouvier sisters - Jacqueline - who was to become Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and her sister Lee - who was to marry a few times but is best known as Lee Radizwill, it is reported that Jackie's own father presented a mythological genealogy to the daughters that both believed, elevating a French immigrant cabinetmaker - a very good one by the way - into nobility. Then Lee herself falsely claimed to have the Lee family of early Virginia as ancestors. Apparently she even had a big genealogy on a wall that she could point to. As I read it, apparently Lee was so good at reporting the historical accuracies of this family, though her connection to them was not, that she was still accepted as a kind of honorary member of the family.
Ah well, what reminded me was that someone I'm related to by marriage, told me not to bother doing the genealogy for her family as cousin So and So had already done it, all the way to "Queen Antoinette." She meant Marie Antoinette, a German brought to France, who had four children, none who lived long enough to reproduce, meaning that Marie Antoinette left no direct descendants. Could this "Italian" family actually have German and French nobility in it's chart?
I don't normally do someone's genealogy who doesn't want it done, but because the children of this marriage are related to me, I put a little time into following the surnames of their grandparents, and discovered that very likely they started out as Sephardic Jews who left Portugal, went to Salonica, Greece, and then to Calabrese Italy. Could Marie Antoinette be covering up all that?
Though there are those who fabricate illustrious connections because they are snobs, there is probably more fake genealogy out there due to ignorance on how to conduct genealogical research. I once met a woman, a member of a Santa Barbara, California genealogy club who told me that she traced the wrong family for a decade out of ignorance. She had made a leap very early on, not documenting properly, and so it went.
So there are three things I want to express to my readers here.
First, if you are new to genealogy and a do-it-yourselfer, it's a good idea to document every way you can, and remain skeptical of what the family oral history is until you find those documents.
Secondly, if you have been away from your genealogy for some time, go over everything once again, making the connections where they are, questioning yourself.
For instance, I had great difficulty finding an oath of allegiance to the U.S. in New Jersey for an immigrant because the New Jersey swearing in did not require a lot of information, the surname was common, the witnesses must have been friends, not family members who already had their citizenship, and the place of birth was within the county left behind but not the same as what it said on the ship documents. Through a process of elimination I was able to be about 95% certain that the swearing in I found was correct. However, there is no mention of all the other family members who also got their citizenship that day along with "dad," and I suspected one of the children got his in another state, because he immigrated separately and lived separately. I have looked through records from multiple counties and states and records held at the National Archives and cannot find any evidence for this person being naturalized, and so I assume - but am skeptical - that he was included in on his dad's.
It does not matter though in terms of proofing his lineage.
The problem is finding that dad's lineage in another country where again I have search numerous church records and for which nothing is coming up. I'm doing everything right. The information simply may not have been preserved. The problem? He was born during an uprising.
Third, it's a good idea to have a professional go over all your research looking for information that can proof. If you can't afford the pro, team up with someone else you trust and go over each other's work.
A person who worked to help people into the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution once told me that some members had been asked to leave because information that had been provided long ago was now considered questionable. You don't want that to happen to you.
C 2018 Ancestry Worship Genealogy Blogspot
03 June 2018
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