January 1, 2019: First

The January 2019 themes are:

First

Challenge

Unusual Name

At the Library

My first attempt at genealogy was back when I was in college.  I put together some facts and figures to help my niece do an ancestor report for school.  At that time my Aunt Rosemary was starting to research her family tree.  She gave me some help, and I talked to my Dad’s brother Eddie who gave me some information also.  I didn’t have a full picture of my ancestry, but It was a start.  My Aunt Rosemary did fabulous research. Remember, this was pre-internet!  She would write a letter, and then find a translator. She wrote to Germany and Quebec, so had to find someone to translate German and French. I am not sure what library resources were available.  My crotchety bachelor uncle gave some facts, but he wasn’t sure of dates. He mostly just liked to argue with my dad, saying we were Russian not Polish. He wasn’t far off the mark on some of the other information, and we eventually got the facts straight.

Then, in 1998 my sisters and I took a road trip to NYC.  The focus was to go to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and look for our grandmother’s name on the wall. The four of us had a great time.  Ellis Island Museum was great, the statue was impressive, and I went about ¾ of the way up before I had to go down (fear of heights). We also went up the World Trade Center, all the way to the top.  I wanted to drop to my knees and crawl.  I stayed up there a while, then went down to the courtyard to wait for Rose, Joan and Linda to come down.  After 9/11 I was glad, I had gone up, but frankly, the swaying in the wind thing was not my favorite part of the trip!  We also went up the Empire State Building, and I was doing quite well until I went around a corner and got hit in the face by a gust of wind… down I went to wait for the sisters.  We rode the Staten Island Ferry and walked and walked the streets of New York.  We rode the subway, we laughed, we bickered, we got tired of all the togetherness, and went home.  Only after we were home did we discover that Grandma Lyskawa came into the states via Baltimore, not New York. Still, it was a memorable trip.

After a bit I got busy with other things and put genealogy aside.  I didn’t even know that the research had a name…. Years later, my Aunt became very ill, and my sister Linda and I talked about our aunt’s worry about someone carrying on her work.  We jumped into it, as ignorant as they came, but we had that wonderful tool, the internet.  When we first started, we were amazed at how quickly we found information.  We started with Ancestry.com and from there we found more web sites and places to find information.  We both joined the Genealogy groups in our own community, and eventually joined each other’s too.  We took a research trip to the LDS Library in Fort Wayne, IN and then to Salt Lake City, UT.  Now, several years later, we are still tracing information.  It is more of a challenge now, we have the basics: name, dates, baptisms, marriages.  Now we are finding out about our ancestors in a more personal way.

In 2017 Monroe County, MI celebrated 200 years of early settlers.  Since our ancestors had been in the area longer than that, we filled out the forms and provided the documentation to receive a very nice certificate stating we were descendants of those early settlers.  (We also requested one for each of our siblings too). I researched my late husband’s family and was able to get certificates for both my children through his family.  I am now working on documenting the lineage for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution (finished and turned in) and trying to find a War of 1812 ancestor too.  My daughter can join the Daughters of the War of 1812, but the lineage in on her Dad’s side.  The certificates are just a fun way to note our research.