journey to Aurora, Illinois

Hey Friends!

Took a ride out to Aurora, Illinois today to photograph some headstones of relatives I've just recently discovered had lived out that direction.  I've been working a little bit more on the mystery that is the family tree of my 3x great-grandmother Ruth Hodgetts.  Mostly I've been working on trying to expand on her brother Samuel's side of the tree which lead me to his daughter Annie, her husband William Rollins, and their whole clan.  Turns out the whole family lived in Aurora, where my great-grandmother grew up.  Still working out some kinks there because the family is a bit confusing but Annie & William, as well as their daughter Edna, son Ernest & his wife Julia are all buried at Spring Lake Cemetery so I decided to pay a visit.  I'd been to the cemetery once before because my grandmother's namesake is buried there; so I'm mildly familiar with the place.  I went into the office and the same women I talked to last time was there as well as a gentleman, maybe her husband, who also works at the cemetery.  When I asked if they could assist me in finding some headstones, they said sure & asked for the name.  The man, who's name I never caught, wasn't paying much attention until I said Rollins.  He looked up at me and said "which ones?", I replied with "all of them?" and laughed a little.  He asked for first names so I rattled them all off "Annie, Ernest, Julie & William"; he looked me dead in the face & goes "I know the Rollins family". So that launched into a 15 minute long conversation.  Ernest had once been his boss and this very cemetery, he knew the family well.  He informed me that Julie & Ernest couldn't have kids so their eldest child (after the still-born baby) was actually adopted, and once they had adopted him they conceived a boy.  He also let me know that Edna was also buried next to her parents so I'd be able to locate them all.  I was a little leery to ask him any personal details about the family he didn't seem like he wanted to give too much away.  He pulled out a map and showed me the 2 locations for the family members and away I went.

After the cemetery I drove around Aurora a bit and took some photos of the houses my family members had lived in, the church my great-grandparents got married in, & Edna M Rollins school.

1st home of Beatrice & John Moseley
(grandma panfil's parents)

Herbert & Hannah Smith's house
(grandma panfil's grandparents)

former home of William & Annie Rollins

Trinity Episcopal Church

Larson family mystery

Hey friends!  As of late I have been working to try to decode this mystery for my grandmother.  Now my grandma, Ellen Meeks nee Larson, doesn't know much about her father Edwin's family.  For those of you who are not family who read this and don't know the story I'll give you a brief rundown.  What I started out with was Edwin Larson and his mother Emma nee Lunstrom and his father John Larson.  Now we also knew that Emma got remarried at some point to a man named Herman Palka and they had one daughter, Hazel.  All I ever had on Edwin's father John was the information I got off of Edwin's delayed birth certificate.  Now for those of you who don't know what a delayed birth certificate is, it basically means that child was more than likely not born in a hospital and a birth certificate was not filed until 1 year after the birth.  Now here comes the fun part.  There has always been some speculation, especially as of late, that Herman Palka is actually my great-grandfather Edwin's father.  I think that research I have done so far may not prove that point, but it seems to prove the point that John Larson isn't a real person.  The scary/interesting thing about looking into this matter is that it leads to a loss of identification for my grandmother & her family members with the Larson family name.  If John Larson isn't in fact a real person, then what's the real surname?

Here's what I've found on this matter so far:

• delayed birth certificate from 1894
• lists father as John Larson, age 25, born in Chicago, occupation Wood Turner
• lists mother as Emma Lunstrom, age 24, born in Stockholm
• 1900 census record
• Emma's last name is now Larson & suddenly 6 years later she's now 35
• Herman Palka is a lodger, age 29, German born, occupation Wood Turner
• Edwin's name is Gustave A Larson, & lists his father's birth country as Germany
• 1910 census record
• Emma & Herman are married & daughter Hazel has be born
• Edwin is not listed as having a different name from the rest of the family
• father still listed as German
• 1920 census record
• Edwin is now married, last name is back to Larson
• lists both parents as Illinois births
• Emma Palka death certificate
• her birth place is listed as Sweden
• Father's name: Carl Larsen - born in Sweden
• something to note: this info was given by the informant who is listed as Edwin Palka

All of this has obviously left me with some questions. Where did the last name Lunstrom come from? Is John Larson a real person? Who is my great-grandfather's REAL father? and lastly, what does all this mean for my grandmother?

Hopefully I'll be able to find some more information soon, but I know I can't possibly ever really know the truth.

new finds

Hey all!

Sorry it's been a while again! I've been slowly trying to plug away on some genealogy work and it's just been taking me a little longer than usual.  About 3 weeks ago my grandmother's younger sister, Margaret Lev, passed away.  With her passing it has given me a bit of a boost to work on my grandmother's tree with a little more gusto.  But before I get to that I do want to share one funny little anecdote about my great-aunt Peg.  The last time I saw her, which was about a year & 1/2 ago, I had taken my grandmother to visit her so I could pick her brain about the family tree.  She was 3 years younger than my grandmother so I figured I'd see if she had anything new and exciting to tell me.  Turns out she remembered this great little story about how their parents (my great-grandparents) got together.  Their mother Beatrice & father John were both born in England, Beatrice immigrated here with her family and John came alone.  Beatrice's family moved to rural (at the time) Aurora, IL and John lived in the city and worked as a bricklayer.  A friend of John's told him there was more work to be had out in Aurora, so he moved out there.  Beatrice  happened to be engaged at the time to a mailman.  When John & Beatrice met it must have been love at first site because she promptly broke off her engagement and married my great-grandfather 4 weeks later.  To this day my grandmother still doesn't remember this story, but because of my great-aunt Peg I will always have it.

I've been having a rough time with this particular tree because of the surnames involved.  Unfortunately this is one of those trees that is a lot of work.  My grandmother's maiden name was Moseley; which is EXTREMELY common in England.  Not to mention it's got a handful of spelling variations which are all pretty much interchangeable depends on what kind of document you're looking at.  As if that's not bad enough, her mother's maiden name is the dreaded . . .  Smith.  Ugh, this is like an genealogical nightmare.  Also these names may not sound common to you but I also have Bastable & Hodgetts; both of which are more common than I care for them to be.

My frustration reached an all time high this week when I realized that when I was inputting all my ancestral information into Ancestry.com I conveniently forgot to add most of the Bastable & Hodgetts line.  After spending about 45 minutes inputting everything I had on them I had about 125 more hint leaves than I did before.  Yippee!!  Slowly, but surely I narrowed most of them down, but I am still stuck on some hints that pertain to my great-great-great-grandmother Ruth Hodgetts & her brother Samuel.  There are unfortunately a few families with similar names and birth dates and I have no information on Ruth & Sam's parents so I can discern which is mine and which isn't.  I'm hoping I'll turn over some leaf soon that gives me the hint I need to sort it all out.  In the mean time I've discovered many of the people I left out (oops lol) didn't leave to far from me so I'll be able to visit some cemeteries and hopefully get some great pictures.

That being said I will move on to another brief topic.  My paternal great-grandfather, Victor Panfil, was a glass blower most of his life.  I knew he made glass ornaments for our christmas trees and he had fashioned these glass bells that we hang in the window ever year.  I had also heard some family stories about him doing some work with the Manhattan Project here in Chicago, but never really knew much more.  Unfortunately I don't have many details besides that he was blowing glass into beakers? or something that was of use to the Manhattan Project.  Also what I do have are 2 really great photos.

This is a photo of a pin given to my great-grandfather to commemorate his work on the Manhattan Project.  My Dad's cousin, Dayle, has the pin.

This is a photo of the certificate given to my great-grandfather by the USA War Department in August of 1945 commemorating his work on the Manhattan Project.  It also states that he "has participated in work essential to the production of the Atomic Bomb, thereby contributing to the successful conclusion of World War II"

Talk about your kick-ass great-grandparent stories!

Well that's all I have for now friends.  Hopefully soon I'll have some new exciting family finds to share with you!  Happy hunting fellow genealogists!

Sometimes "hording" can be a good thing

So I know that it has been a very long time since I updated my blog and I do apologize for my absence.  My grandmother had hip surgery earlier last year (2013) and it has been a long road to recovery for her since she is 91.  We just recently moved her from her retirement community apartment to a very nice assisted living apartment so the family has spent a lot of time boxing up her belongs and finding places to store it all and selling old furniture.  In that time span I have unfortunately not been able to spend as much time on my genealogy as I would like to be.  That being said, all of this kind of ties together in an interesting way.  The apartment my grandmother lived in had a storage locker in the basement garage and we decided this past weekend to clear that out & bring the contents upstairs so everything was in one central location.

My Dad had mentioned there was a box the in storage locker of things that had belonged to my grandfather, but I have never really made the effort to look for it.  For those of you who may be new to my life/this blog you may or not be aware that my grandfather passed away when I was 9.5 in 1997.  That being said I am always searching for ways to feel close to him and the idea of this "memorabilia" box sounded great to me.  I couldn't wait to get the box home and open it up to see what was inside.

Memorabilia box

As can be expected the box smelled like old paperwork haha.  Sometimes you just never know what your grandparents might deem worthy to save and I'm pretty grateful none of the stuff in this box was tossed out.  There were documents related to my great-grandmother's estate from when she passed away in 1978, documents related to the sale of my grandparents' house in Glenview in 1989, my grandfather's personnel file from the Bell Telephone company and all this old school stuff from Northwestern.  Also in this box of mystery were all 4 of my grandmother's high school yearbooks from Austin High School in Chicago as well as my grandfather's last 2 high school yearbooks from Steinmetz, also in Chicago.

Steinmetz High School Yearbooks

Diary

Something else interesting that I found was my grandfather's diary.
Dated from around the year 1937/1938 when he was just a 15 year old boy. What I also came across was a file folder that had no indication of what was inside.  When I opened it I first discovered the Death Certificates of both my great-grandparents (whom died in Florida) as well as their Marriage Certificate, my great-grandmother's Delayed Birth Record and my great-grandfather's Birth Certificate.  The death certificates I had already obtained over a year ago from the state of Florida, but the other documents I was unable to find ANYWHERE.  So just for that alone I am grateful that for whatever reason my grandfather saved these things.  Also in that folder was the bill of sale for the house my great-grandparents lived in in Pompano Beach, Florida, as well as all the paperwork for both of their funerals & burials.

Then I hit the money load.  Behind all the random paperwork was a sizable stack of different pieces of paper, which at a quick glance had all been hand written on.  Turns out that even though everyone in my family had telephones in their homes, my great-grandparents made a habit of writing letters to my grandparents from their house in Florida.  As my luck would have it, it looks like my grandfather saved the majority of those letters.

Old family letters

I spent the rest of the afternoon just reading those letters; 20 in all.  Most of them were from either my great-grandmother or great-grandfather, but there were a few from my Dad's cousin to my grandfather.  Now I never got to meet either one of my great-grandparents, but I always have heard the stories.  They were both full-blooded Polish and both seemed to know how to enjoy themselves.  My great-grandfather loved himself a cigar and my great-grandmother was always full of life.  I'll spare the details as I would say the contents of these letters are probably best kept as family secrets.  What I can say is that by reading them I got an amazing look at what life was like between 1962 & 1975; I got to hear in my great-grandparents' own words the struggles they went through and the happiness they had in their lives.  Unfortunately the letters end after the death of my great-grandfather in 1975.  I decided that in order to make sure they stay preserved for another 30-40 years I would put them in sheet protectors in a binder.

 With that all being said I will leave you with this bit of wisdom I learned; it may seem like trivial junk to you now, but you just never know who it might mean the world to in 30 years.

FindAGrave.com

Alright Genealogy friends let me tell you what an amazing website Find A Grave is.  Anytime I'm looking for dead ancestors I always hit up this site.  It's a pretty great find and I've decided to help out those on their looking for graves of family members.  The basic concept of the website is that you can search for virtual memorial pages of people that have their death information & possibly pictures.  Here's an example of one I just finished entering today William K Larson.  This is my grandmother's brother Bill.  The great part about this site is it's pretty quick and easy to use.  I'm currently just starting the long overdue process of adding all of the headstone I have pictures of.  The really great thing about this site is that you have the potential to find photos of headstones you might otherwise never get to see.  I've got some distant ancestors that have died in abstract places that I will probably never get to, but from Find A Grave I have their headstones.  The other neat part about the Find A Grave memorial pages is that many times the person who adds the memorial links that deceased person to other memorials of people they are related to, whether it be spouse or parents.  One thing I also recently discovered is that there is literally an army of Genealogy buffs and cemetery lovers and other people out there who are willing to go get a picture for you!  If there is already a memorial page, but no headstone picture you can click the button that says request a picture and it will send out emails to the volunteers in the area and you very well could get a photo in as little as 24 hours.  The other cool thing is if you know when and where the person died, as well as where they are buried you can create your own memorial page and the same thing applies; just click the request picture button.  There are even some people out there who are literally cataloging whole cemeteries!  I have to give major props to the people who came up with this site and all of the volunteers, because this site is seriously awesome.

Grandpa's 80th birthday!

Back on February 11th we celebrated my grandfather's 80th birthday with our immediate family.  Just my grandparents, aunts & uncles and cousins.  I decided that since it's a big birthday for him I really wanted to do something special and unique.  I've been keeping him up to date as much as possible on all the ancestry stuff I've found, but it can be hard to really see how many people you're connected to when it's on tons of pieces of paper.  I came up with the idea of making my grandfather a family tree display.  Something that would have all of the people that he is related to in one place where he could see it.  Little did I realize when I started what a massive undertaking this would be.  In hindsight I wish I would have taken photos along the way, but I've got photos of the end result to share.

I started by pulling out my Meeks binder and getting on to +Ancestry.com  to fill in the blanks.  It had been a while since I intensively sat down and worked on my trees, so I made it my mission to connect as many dot as I possibly could on my grandfather's tree before I made this display.  Well let me tell you, I bit off a lot more than I could chew.  I spent weeks working on the tree and researching every single leaf hint that +Ancestry.com had to show me.  Finally after I did all of that I tried to print out small versions of the trees that I was looking at.  All in all I had 4 last names; Meeks, Tjardes, Keilhack & Riordan.  The trees varied in size based on the information I had available to me.  The Riordan tree for instance was pretty small, while the Tjardes & Meeks trees were pretty extensive.

The next battle came in trying to figure out how to put it all together.  I used 2 of those large tri-fold display boards to get this all together.  I put 2 trees on each board and split them based on which side of my grandfather's family there were on.  Keilhack & Riordan were on one and Meeks & Tjardes were on the other.  I next enlisted the help of my mother, and I'm pretty damn thankful I did.  Word to the wise, if you plan a project like this it is a MUST to have someone who has never done genealogy look over your rough draft.  It may make sense to you, but you look at this all the time.  Having my mom look at what I had laid out was really really helpful.  She took one look at my rough draft & went, "I don't get it".  She gave me the bright idea of staggering the generations to make it easier to see and understand.  After I got all of the little names cut out and glued on to the display board I really wanted to make it more personal.  I titled each tree with the surname and flanked it with the flag of the country of origin if I knew it.  I then went back through all my census records and gathered up any interesting information I could about the people on the trees.  I added occupation, salary, rent/house worth, as well as any military information I had available.

The end result was pretty awesome.  I gave my grandfather a tree that he could get right up to and connect the dots and really be able to visualize the magnitude of the amount of people we're related to.  I also have myself the realization that I've come across a lot of really cool information and I've had a ton of fun doing this research.

My Grandfather & I

Keilhack & Riordan tree display

Meeks & Tjardes tree display

Keeping it all straight

I've been sticking to one of my resolutions this year and have actually been attempting to keep up with my genealogy research better this year.  I've spent a lot of time in the last few days combing the massive amount of hints I've got waiting for me at Ancestry.com.  It's unbelievable how quickly those things can add up.  One minute you're looking at information about your great-great grandparents and the next you have information popping up about their parents, their brothers and sisters and all the people that descended from those brothers and sisters.  Here in lies the problem; how do you keep it all straight?  How do you make sure you're adding the right hints to the right people and that those people are in face the people who you are related to?

It's no secret that a lot of people in the US are descendants of people who came here from European countries.  Unfortunately back in the day, surnames weren't always so creative.  Even if you thought it sounded original to you, once you start looking up documents online you realize "holy s**t! there's 4 other people named William Meek who were born around 1835 in Ohio!".  That my friends is the moment panic sets in.  Oh my gosh, how am I going to figure out which one is mine?!  I can tell you from experience it's all about the note taking.  I personally think that to be a successful genealogist you have to be super organized.

This is my shelf of goodness.  I have 1 big colored binder per surname of my 4 grandparents; Panfil, Moseley, Larson, & Meeks.  The pink binder is full of empty pages and some documents and odds and ends that my grandmother (Moseley) had collected on her family.  The smaller light blue Ohio University (GO BOBCATS!) is for a sub-surname of the Panfil binder, the Opalinski family.  The white binder contains lists of documents that I still need to find from family members, some really helpful documents from Ancestry.com about the 1940s census, newspaper/magazine clippings on genealogy as well as notes I have taken during some of the video seminars Ancestry.com conducts.

In each of these binders I have dividers and I many times split each surname into sub-surnames of their respective parents.  I also have 1 large family tree with the main ancestors in each line, as well as smaller family trees for those split off surnames.  I find that the more OCD you are about keeping all your records organized, the easier it is for you to verify facts and eliminate accidental issues like adding hints to the wrong people.  I also find that the more information you have readily available about a person you are researching, the less likely you are to get people confused.

Take for instance the problem I've just come across.  While researching the Keilhack branch of my Meeks family tree I am looking into the family of my great-great grandparents Jacob Keilhack & Catherine (Riordan) Keilhack.  Last night during my research I discovered that his parents; Joseph & Theresa (Gamel) Keilhack had to boys right before Jacob.  Their names; Joseph C & John C Keilhack.  What makes matters even worse is that BOTH of those boys also married women names K/Catherine!  So I know have Joseph & Catherine, John & Katherine, and Jacob & Catherine.  Talk about utter confusion!!

I'm hoping that my work tonight will lead me to some more information to differentiate all 3 of these brothers and their respective K/Catherines.  Wish me luck!!

How far do you go?

So now that the holidays are over and life has calmed down a bit I have finally found some time to work on my genealogy research again.  This has brought up it's own set of problems and questions.  How far do you go?  I'm currently working on the Meeks family tree, my maternal grandfather.  Of course you always want to trace your ancestry as far back as possible, but how far sideways & forward do you go?  For example, my family tree on Ancestry has exploded with hints for the descendants of my great-great grandfather's sister.  My great-great grandfather only had 2 siblings, a younger brother and a younger sister, only one of whom had children.  But it still begs the question, how far do you go?  Do you trace her lineage down as far as you can, or do you just include her, her children, and her grandchildren?

Part of me wants to stop at her children, so I don't add any more to my already full genealogical plate.  The other part of me, the part that needs to join Genealogists Anonymous, just wants to know everything out there that I can possibly get my fingers on.  I feel like the further down I trace her lineage the better chance I have of going back.  Tracing her life down to her grand-kids might actually give me the ability to find out some really cool stuff.  Or at the very least maybe uncover some family photos.

So that my friends, is the question of the night on my genealogical quest.  How far do you go?  How far have you all taken your family trees?  Do you think you shouldn't have gone as far as you did, or do you wish you had gone further?

Why I do what I do

I realized today that I haven't written in my blog in quite some time.  I apologize for being absent for so long; as I'm sure is the case for many of you, this time of year seems to fly by before you even realize it's over.  I haven't been keeping up with my genealogy research as much as I would like to lately.  Once October hits I am kind of in decorating mode.  First it's Halloween, which I must admit is my all time favorite holiday and I take a ton of pride in my decorations so I spent the whole darn month wrapped up in that, and before I knew it Halloween was over.  Then you move on to Thanksgiving and everything that goes with that. Now it's Christmas. I know it's only the 11th, but this month is packed.  First I have my parents annual Holiday Party this Friday, which I must say I look forward to every year.  Since I still live at home I try to help as  much as possible to make the prep load less for my parents.  So all that being said I'm going to write a brief blog entry to night about why I do genealogy research and hopefully as 2013 rolls around I will have more time for research and keep this thing better updated.  Bear with me, as it may get a little emotional.

Believe it or not I don't necessarily do all this genealogy research for me.  This all started long before I can even remember with my paternal grandfather, Robert Panfil.  My grandfather unfortunately passed away when I was 9.5 years old so I've never gotten to share all this with him.  I think though, that I do it for him.  He's the reason I got interested in my family history.  He was interested in it an had spent time writing to family members and compiling what he could into a family tree, and now I've taken up his hobby.  I think part of the reason I push so much with my research is because it gives me a connection to a man I didn't get to know as much as I would have liked.  Through my research I can see what his life might have been like when he was a child and learn things about his parents and grandparents that I don't have the ability to ask him.  As amazing as all of that it, it's so hard at the same time.  It brings up so many unanswered questions and so many things I'd love to be able to sit down and talk to my grandfather about.

Lately I've grown to realize what an amazing gift my grandfather has given me.  He's opened my eyes to a hobby and a passion I never knew I had and I only wish I could tell him how grateful I am.  Not only that but he has given me the opportunity to create a stronger bond with my maternal grandfather, Carl Meeks.  For whatever reason, as a child I felt much closer to my father's parents, especially my grandfather.  My grandpa Meeks and I never had the kind of relationship I had with my grandpa Panfil.  But now, thanks to genealogy research, we've gotten closer.  Being able to see the look in your grandfather's eyes when you can tell him names of people he never knew he was related to is so amazing.

So in short, that's why I do what I do.  Not just because I'm innately curious about where my ancestors have come from, but because it's given my a connection to both my grandfather's that I never had before.

Happy Holidays Genealogists!

My grandfather, Robert Panfil, and I.  Around 1989

cemetery visits with grandma

 So for almost a year now I've been trying to plan I day for my mother and I to take my grandma Meeks to the cemeteries where her families are buried.  Now unlike all my other trips to the cemeteries, this one was different.  This time it wasn't just for me to show Grandma who I'd found and where they were, but it was for the 3 of us to find them together.  The hard part was that the burial locations of these family members were a bit confusing.  We started our day out at Mount Olive where my grandmother's parents and 2 of her brothers are buried.  Her grandmother Emma is also buried there, but unfortunately for whatever reason she has no headstone so we just stopped by the general area to say hey.

Next stop was Graceland cemetery and that turned out to be an interesting visit.  My grandmother had already known that her grandfather was buried there with his brother, the brother's wife and their daughter.  What she didn't know was that I also found out her Great-Grandparents were also buried there with 2 of their sons and a daughter in law.  The weird thing about both these Graceland plots was that there are also some other people we don't know buried there as well.  For instance in Plot G; the plot with the great-grandparents, there are also a 46 year old man with the last name De Bellay and a 7 yr old boy named William Ratcliffe.  We have no idea who those people are and we don't really know how to find out why they're buried there.  In Plot D with her grandfather there are the 4 people we know are related to us, plus 6 other people! Again totally stumped on that one.  I'm hoping I'll be able to figure that out some time soon; any tips would be helpful!

Last stop was up in Evanston at Calvary Cemetery.  Now of course this cemetery has a similar dilemma to Graceland.  Here there is a 12 grave plot (11 filled) that is owned by a man named Patrick Kelly.  In this plot there are the following family members: Marion Larson (my grandmother's sister who died as an infant), Ellen Cochrane (wife of a Cochrane buried at Graceland, my grandma's grandma)  Ellen's parents Bridget & Henry Taylor as well as 2 siblings John & Mary Taylor, David Cochrane (grandma's uncle) & Susan Lafferty (grandma's aunt).  So I'm left with these 3 people: Mary Johnson (2 days old), Michael Cannon (2 yrs 9 mos) & John Kelly.  Obviously John Kelly is related to the owner Patrick some how, but the other 2 i'm totally lost on again.  Right now we're assuming the Kelly family is related to the Taylor family; both being Irish last names maybe it's some family member from the mother Bridget's side??

Graceland - Lot D

Graceland - Lot G

Calvary Cemetery

Needless to say every time I go to a cemetery I come back with great pictures and more questions than I had when I went to the cemetery to begin with.  Here's to hoping I can get them figured out soon?

Happy Hunting friends!!

1940 census update

Hey all!  Just a quick update for now to keep you all interested!  This week we're celebrating my grandmother's 90th birthday! I'll be sure to let you all know how that turns out after it's over but the prep for that has demanded much of my time to get things ready.  That being said I've had bits of time to work on my genealogy and am very happy to share that I am making great progress on locating my family members on the US 1940 census record.  I owe this largely in part to Ancestry.com as they have finished indexing all of the census records so I can now find those hard to located people by searching for their names.

On that note, for those of you who are newer to genealogy research don't get discouraged if when you first start looking for someone you can't find them.  I learned this that hard way after over-looking many documents because the name just didn't seem right.  Something as simple as the last name Huffman can be incorrectly indexed as Hofman or some other variation of that name.  Keep in mind that the people who are indexing many not always be able to read everything that was written.  Hand writing can be a very hard to thing to decipher so you should always take a second look at names that seem close to yours because they may have just been misread

I'm hoping the newly indexed 1940 census records will help me clear up some questions about family members and lead me closer to the things I want to find.  Hopefully I'll have more to update on next week after finding some more records and knocking some of these hints of my family tree.

Happy hunting genealogists!

Civil War military records & 1940s census progress

Hey fellow genealogists! Sorry for the long absence things have been kinda hectic around my house lately.  Unfortunately my uncle lost his 3.5 year battle with colon cancer so we've been dealing with that and everything that comes with a death in the family; but I digress.  So in my absence I haven't been able to spend as much time as I would like working on my genealogical quests, but I have come up with a few small things.  Firstly I must say that attempting to hand search through hundreds of 1940 census records to find your family is exhausting.  I have still yet to find everyone, but I'm making some headway.  In my efforts to find all my living family members on the 1940 U.S. Census I have realized that I have a lot of those little hint leaves on my ancestry.com family tree (at last count about 340 total hints) and I must say it is driving me a bit bonkers. Hopefully when you hear from me next I will have been able to sort through some of those to eliminate them.

In other news, I have been attempting some more research on my 4th great-grandfather on my mother's side of the family.  For those of you who may not remember I've written about him a few times; Familial Connections in a Strange Place & Finding Your Ancestry Isn't Always Easy.  William R. Meek has been a bit of a mystery to my family as of yet and I'm really struggling to find out more about him with the records I have available to me.  Now I know that he was injured at a battle in Georgia and died later of wounds he received there, his wife Rebecca remarried and her parents took in their only son William D. Meek.  I've been searching for where the Meek(s) family came from and I'm still coming up blank and it is beyond frustrating.  I was hoping that by finding William R. Meek's military records it would help lead me to his parents.  Unfortunately, that was not the case but I did get some really interesting documentation to share with my family.

Through the National Archives I was able to order William R. Meek's Pension Records and Military Death Records.  When they arrived it was like Christmas morning; I was so excited to dig into those records and see what they could tell me.  The death records were fairly simple, mostly copies of casualty sheets and muster rolls all signed by commanding officers.  The Pension Record envelope was a whole different story.  While it didn't lead me to William R.'s parents; it did give me some insight into how things working in the 1960s after the Civil War.  Most of the documents were depositions as to when William R. & Rebecca got married, doctors attesting to William D. being their child and all that good stuff.  There were also papers in their about Rebecca's pension claim being denied because she had gotten remarried, and that William D. would get $8 a month until his was 16 years old.  All in all unfortunately nothing helpful in the genealogical sense, but none the less exciting to look at.

Anyone have any suggestions as to what steps to take next?  I'm stuck in Ohio in 1800 and I don't know who to get out!

writing letters & DNA

Hello all!  Sorry for the gap in posts but I've been in the process of giving my room a bit of a face lift with some new paint and new furniture so needless to say my genealogy research had to be put on hold for a bit.  I've been muscling through trying to find the 1940 census for everyone in my family and I hit a bit of a snag on one of my branches.  My paternal grandfather's mother's family, the Opalinskis, have been a bit of a pain in my butt when it comes to research.  My great grandmother's brother and sister have been very allusive and hard to find in any records due to their parents dying so young.  I've been in touch with children from both of those families and have recently yielded some interesting information.  Bob Ryan is my grandfather's cousin, and is the son of Lillian and Patrick Ryan; or so I thought.  Upon trying to find him at 10 years old in the 1940 census I realized I have no 1930 census.  When I tried to find the 1930 census and came up dry I wrote Bob a letter detailing all the information I was missing and asked him for some help.

What came back in the mail was pretty interesting.  He told me that he was born in 1930, which I knew; and that his father's name was Robert Wallace Smith.  On top of that he also informed me that his original name had been Robert Wallace Smith Jr.  His parents Lillian & Robert divorced when he was very small and Lillian remarried Patrick Ryan in 1935.  So now I have even more of a mystery on my hands.  I'm going to be spending the rest of the morning looking for Lillian & Robert Wallace Smith in the 1930 census and then Lillian, Patrick & Bob in the 1940 census.  Here's to hoping I find something!

On a side note, I have been watching the Ancestry.com webpage for information about their DNA program and I finally got an email from them about 2 days ago.  They are offering this program to Ancestry.com subscribers for only $99.  They'll send you a DNA kit where you just need saliva and then you send it back to them and they will help you trace your family roots.  I'm not very good at explaining how the program works so if you want some more information check out their website.  Ancestry DNA

Happy searching everyone!!

how to get started on your 1940 census adventure

Well it's been a few days since the 1940 census was officially released by the National Archives and I'm sure many of you are excited to get started.  Now the thing about the census being newly released, is that it has yet to be indexed.  Now what that means to you as a researcher is that you have two options; A, wait about 6 months until Ancestry.com, Myheritage.com and familysearch.org have indexed all the census records, or B, do the leg work and hard searching yourself.  I will warn you that doing this research yourself is going to be a bit time consuming, but depending on what kind of information you have readily available about who you are looking for it might be a little easier than you think.

I opted to attempt to look for as many family members as possible on my own.  Now keep in mind, I am doing research for all FOUR of my grandparents and their ancestral lines, so needless to say I've got a loooong road ahead of me when it comes to the 1940 census.  I started off my going through each of my family tree binders and making a list of the people who should be alive and on the 1940 census.  I then went through all those people and made note of their status on the 1930 census as well as an pertinent information on that census; i.e. enumeration district, city ward and address.  I typed all this information up so that I could have it available and easy to read whenever I wanted to search for my family.  One issue that I'm sure will be prevalent for most people is going to be whether or not you can read the census taker's handwriting, that is something you will just have to work with or decided to wait on that family till the records have been fully indexed.

As far as what site to start looking at I would suggest ancestry.com.  They took longer to get their census records up, but I think you'll find that in comparing the same images from all three sites available that ancestry.com's are much cleared and easier to read.  Ancestry also has a TON of links and things to help you with your search.  To get yourself started I suggest this: Your Guide to Finding Ancestors in 1940 Census Images.  It is a great step by step run through of ways to look for your family in the 1940 census.   There are pictures and detailed information on places to look for more information.  I also would suggest checking out this website, 1940 census general information.  It has a list of all questions asked on the census, as well as a very easy to read, printable census form.  I printed this so I can easily go through the census and see what I'm looking at.

I headed on over to ancestry.com and with the information I had on my great grandparents, Andrew and Elizabeth Panfil, I successfully found them on the 1940 census record.  If you have them on the 1930 census I suggest looking in that same areas again for them.  On the search page you can click on "already know the enumeration district from 1930?", it will prompt you to choose the State, then County & then district from the previous census.  From there you just have to look at every image and try to find your family.  Where I have hit a brick wall so far is that there are family members who were still too young to be out on their on in 1930, but now in 1940 there are no longer at home.  I have no information as to where they might be that I know of, so unfortunately there I will probably be stuck waiting for the indexes to come out for cetrain people.

Happy hunting genealogy nerds!

Familial connections in a strange place

For starters let me give you all some background information about myself.  I grew up here in the Chicago suburbs & never in a millions years thought I'd leave Illinois to go to college.  When that time actually came around I turned down schools in Illinois to pursue my dream of becoming a Forensic Chemist at Ohio University in Athens, OH.  The campus was everything I could have ever pictured a college campus to be & strangely it felt like home.  Little did I know that almost 3 years after leaving my beloved OU,  I would find out why I felt so at home in the little town of Athens, Ohio.

This all started with the dream of being able to tell my maternal grandfather where his family came from.  I knew so much about both my paternal grandparents and my maternal grandmother that I felt really bad we never were sure where the Meeks side of my family came from.  Little did I know that I would be fighting and uphill battle to find my ancestors on my maternal grandfather's side of the family.  Through the beauty of ancestry.com learned that my 3rd great grandfather was William Dalton & he was married to a Millie (Smith) Meeks, which led me to his father William R & his wife Rebecca.  That is where I hit my first of many speed bumps.  William R wasn't around for very long and I was at first confused as to where he could have gone.  I then looked at the dates and realized that he disappeared during the Civil War.  Some Google searches and lots of research later I discovered a family website belonging to a distant relative of who else? William R Meeks & his wife Rebecca!  Lucky for me I had some other family members off of Ethel's branch who were just as interesting in our ancestry as I was.

On this website there was information pertaining to William R., the Civil War, and surprisingly enough; his parents.  I learned William R joined the Union army in February of 1864 where he we in the Atlanta Campaign with none other than Major General William Tecumseh Sherman.  Unfortunately he was wounded in Atlanta and died in Effingham in October of that same year.  Now this family website listed William R.'s parents as a Ichanenstean and Mary Meeks.  When I contacted the owner of the site she couldn't remember where she had gotten that information from, so the trail went cold.

Recently I tried to give it a go again at figuring out where William R Meeks and came from.  I had an 1860 census from Effingham in which he was living with his wife Rebecca's family and it listed them as being born in Ohio.  I knew where to start but narrowing down all the information I had was not going to be easy.  I knew he was 25 in 1860 so he had to have been born about 1835 some time.  I started looking for an 1850 census in Ohio with William on it with no luck.  Then I cam across 3 Ohio census records from 1840 that had a William Meeks that was about the right age on every single one!! I was so confused and not even sure where to start.  Then I got a bright idea.  Lets look for that same family in the 1860 census and if William is still with them, then it's not my William.  Well am I ever happy I did that because, I found him!  I couldn't believe it.  An enumerator of the census had typed in that his father's name was Johnathan & his mother's name was Mary.  Upon further inspection it seemed pretty obvious to me that the census in fact said Ichanenstean not Johnathan, but maybe that was the "American" name for him?

I couldn't believe my luck.  There he was, my 4th great grandfather in the 1850 census with his father & family.  On top of all that, I couldn't even believe where in Ohio they were.  Hocking County, which for those of you who don't know, is the county over from Athens (where I went to college).  I did some more looking & found his parents and 4 siblings had actually came to Effingham with him and were there in the 1860 census.  Now this census gave me some interesting information.  I found out my 5th great grandparents, Ichanenstean & Mary, were bother born in Virginia.  I also learned that William R. had NINE brothers and sisters.  Next came the hardest step, finding an 1840 census.  Those of you who are knew to this may not know but in 1840 when the census was enumerated they only listed the head of household.  All other people, black or white, living in that household were tallied and placed into categories.  Luckily since I had the 1850 census I could figure out who would have been on the 1840 and under what age/gender category they would have fallen.

I almost jumped out of my chair when I found it.  I couldn't believe that all of my hard work was paying off.  I didn't even stop to look at where in Ohio the census was from; just that I found a record for "I Meek" and that there were 9 other people living in the household that all fell under the right age categories.  The next thing I looked for was to see if there were any black residents of the house, and to my great excitement, there were none.  What I saw next really blew my mind.  There it was, in the top corner of the census document, the County where my 5th great grandfather and his family was living in 1840.  I couldn't believe my eyes . . . ATHENS! My family lived in ATHENS!! The county I called home for the greatest 4 years of my life was where my 4th great grandfather was born!

Unfortunately I have been unable to find anything back further than that, but just knowing that I have more than a collegiate connection to Athens is good enough for me at the moment.

Cemeteries are more helpful than you think

So it's about time I talked about something that I think is an important part of genealogical research; cemetery visits.  Now I realized due to geographical restraints this is not necessarily something everyone can do, but if it is at all possible I highly suggest it.  Not only are cemeteries always quiet and even sometimes extremely beautiful, but they can actually give you some clues about your family members.  Sometimes just based on whom someone is or isn't buried next to you, can determine their relationship.

For example, my great grand uncle on my maternal grandfather's side; Frank Keilhack, has two children.  Presumably in the early 1900s one would need a spouse to have children.  I have not found said spouse, and upon visiting his grave at St Joseph Cemetery I found that he shares a headstone with 3 other people;  his parents and his brother Robert (who had a very short life).  Also upon finding Frank's obituary there was no mention of a left behind spouse, only his 2 children.  This would lead me to believe she was not very important to him.  To go along with this, sometimes cemeteries can give you spouses you weren't even totally prepared to look for.  I went to Concordia Cemetery to find some family members on my maternal grandfather's grandmother's side of the family; the Tjardes family.  I found a great grand aunt and her spouse & then what seemed to be to be 2 mysterious people by the names of Grace & Julian Law who were buried on the same plot.  Now at first I figured those two graves sites had been sold at some point and weren't part of the family plot.  This is where the people who work in cemetery offices are amazingly helpful.  The woman who runs the cemetery was able to look up the card for the plot and let me know that those graves had not been sold and they in fact belonged to my great grand uncle who owned the whole plot.  To make a long story short, turns out the Laws were the daughter and spouse of the people I was looking for.

Cemeteries can also give you information on children you never knew existed or children you knew were born, but then lost track of.  This is extra useful if your family was around in the early 1900s.  The records were not the best that were kept around that time, especially if you're looking into infant or small child deaths. On the same trip to Concordia Cemetery I was told by the wonderful woman in the office that the other pair of great grand aunt & spouse I was looking for had 4 other people buried with them on their lot.  Turns out one was their adult daughter who had never married and died; the other 3 were unmarked graves for babies.  She did have the names for me, which after I got home and looked through my binder, turns out there were 3 of the 9 children they had that I had lost track of.

Cemeteries can be a daunting and scary thing for some people. However, if you can make it work I would definitely suggest making the trip.  Charge your camera battery and take lots of pictures too, you never know what you may come across.  One of the joys I've gotten out of these cemetery visits is being able to share it with your family members.  Sometimes the greatest pleasure of doing genealogy work is to be able to tell your grandparents something they never knew about their family or to take them to a grave of a long lost loved one.  If you're lucky enough to have family that died in the early 1900s (not that people dying is lucky but you get what I'm saying) I would highly recommend trying to get to those cemeteries.  Upright monuments were very popular back then and you never know what kind of interesting "architecture" you may see at a cemetery.  The prettiest cemetery I've been to lately was Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park.  It is a marriage of 2 older cemeteries; Forest Home & German Waldheim.

The thing I really thought was cool about this cemetery was the way it was laid out.  You could tell that the roadways had been brick at one point because through the cracked old concrete a few were still sticking out. The thing I liked the most was the walking paths that had been put into place.  In the late 1800s and early 1900s cemeteries were often gathering places for families in the city.  There weren't many city parks at the time so this was often the cleanest, quietest place to get together.  The grave plots are also raised off the road and lined by concrete curbs.  It gives the cemetery this kind of eerie old world charm to it.

And on a last note . . . only 36 more days till the 1940 census is release on ancestry.com!!

eerie family connections

With Christmas coming up I figured I'd make a stop at one of the last cemeteries on my list at the moment for the Meeks family.  My mother's cousin Cindy died from Cancer in 1981 when they were 19 years old.  She was the only daughter of my great aunt & uncle and they just haven't really been the same since.  I never knew Cindy since she died about 6.5 years before I was born.  Luckily she's buried close by, in a very nice mausoleum.

Now here is where the connection gets eerie.  My mom and her cousin Cindy were very close, they were only 4 months apart.  Now Cindy dies in 1981, my parents marry in 1984 and I arrive on July 19, 1987 . . . Cindy's birthday.  Now you might be saying to yourself, what's so weird about that.  Well here it comes.  Apparently one of Cindy's cancer nurses was my mother's delivery nurse.  Straaaaange.  Now at least it doesn't get any eerier than that, though I'm not sure how it could possible get eerier; unless I looked just like her (which I don't . . . . I don't think).

Well that's all for tonight.  It's time for me to work on some more last minute research before the family is here  on Sunday to celebrate Christmas.  Happy Holidays!! See you all in the new year!

finding your ancestry isn't always easy

Hi All! Sorry it's been so long, things have been hectic around here.  I've been working on bit on trying to find some genealogical information about my maternal grandfather's family.  Now this family is especially challenging because they've been in the United States for a long time.  Through the greatness that is ancestry.com I've taken what little bit I knew about my grandfather's family expanded it.  All it takes is a little patience and some time for you to be able to take the little bit your grandfather can tell you (his grandparents names and dates of death) and add that to a family tree with known descendants.  From there I found my 3rd & 4th great grandparents, and discovered that my family is not native to Illinois.  After this all this I made an interesting discovery, my 4th great grandfather disappears before the 1870 census.  I did some more digging and found that he had in fact been a Union soldier in the Civil War and had died from wounds he had received in a battle.  But unfortunately for me it only gets harder from there not easier.


Let me try to lay out this family a little so I can make it all a bit easier to understand.  My 4th great grandparents William R Meeks (born 1835 in Ohio) and Rebecca Davis (born 1834 in Ohio) had one son, William Dalton Meeks (born 1861 in Illinois).  He married Millison R Smith (born 1866 in Kentucky) and they had 3 children; George William (1882 - IL), Charles E (1885 - IL), and Ethel (1888 - IL).  George William went on to marry Louise Tjardes and they had my great grandfather Milton, along with 5 other children.  Now my grandfather had always heard some rumor that he had a relative that was a police chef or something of the sort and he had heard they were from Effingham, IL.  So I did some research and it led me a whole lot of different places.  I've realized what can work really well sometimes is just simply googling your ancestors name.  You never know what you may come across.  I typed "William Dalton Meeks" into Google and came across numerous personal family websites & Effingham County genealogical sites to assist me in my search for my ancestors.

Long story short, I got in touch with some people through Effingham Country websites and Ancestry that gave me some great information on my family.  I also dragged my mom into a trip down to Effingham to do some searching for grave sites.  Unfortunately it is not confirmed as to the location of William R Meeks' burial but due to his date of death it was assumed he's buried at a small cemetery in what used to be Ewington Township in Effingham County Illinois.

This cemetery was probably one of the coolest I've been in.  It was very small and only had maybe 100 or so graves, many were warn due to being close to 150-200 years old.

Well that's all for now, hopefully I will be able to keep up with this better than I have been.

suicide, abandoned children, & name changes, Oh My!

So while I was doing research on my dad's father's side of the family, the Panfil's, I figured I would also include looking into my dad's father's mother's side of the family, the Opalinski's.  Pauline Opalinski was born in Poland in 1902 and married my great grandfather Victor Panfil, my father used to call her Nana so from here on out that's what I will refer to her as to keep it simple.  Now I had always hear that Nana's parents were maybe a little crazy, and her family had some issues, but never knew what they were.

Now since my grandfather died when I was 10 I only have my 88 year old grandmother to ask questions to and she doesn't always know the answers because, lets face it, it's not totally her family.  Between her and my dad neither really knew what Nana's parents names were but the information I had was that she had 2 younger siblings, Lillian & Raymond.  At the time I did not yet have an ancestry.com membership so I relied on my familysearch.org website for all the information I was looking for.  I eventually found a census record for Nana and her family & came to discover her parents names were Stanley & Katherine (Catherine).  Upon further investigation I found the death certificates of both Nana's parents & was handed a bombshell.  I had heard from my grandmother that Nana's parents had died when she was young, but I had no idea what I had just stumbled on.  Turns out Nana's parents committed suicide within 7 months of each other.  In May of 1920 when her mother died Nana was just 18 years old and had been left behind with Raymond, 14, and Lillian, just 9 years old.

Now the 1920 census was compiled before Nana's mother Catherine committed suicide so she was still listed with the all the kids.  What my question was then was; what happened to the children?  What I do know is that Nana married my great grandfather Victor in 1921 and my grandfather was born in 1922.  I have Nana & Victor in 1930 living with their 2 children & no one else.  So my question then was, what happened to Raymond & Lillian.  I knew from Nana's father, Stanley's, death certificate that he had a brother named Anton so I looked for him.  I found him as well as his wife and 3 daughters, but no sign of Nana's siblings.  I then found another brother names Waclaw (Walter) and again found no signs of Nana's siblings.  I finally started using ancestry and made contact with a woman, Ann, who is a descendant of one of Anton (Anthony)'s daughters and we have been communicating back & forth and have still yet to come up with any solution to our, now mutual, dilemma.

Now it starts to get weird.  Grandma one day remember that Raymond's real name had been Roman & he actually  had changed his name from Roman Opalinski to Raymond Ormond, but no one seems to know why.  I have not determined whether Raymond and Lillian were adopted and am not sure how to go about figuring that out.  Ann has the world subscription to ancestry so she did some more digging and found records for a Raymond Ormond that traveled to Canada in 1933 to work and live there.  She also managed to get the social security applications for both Lillian and Raymond and found something pretty interesting.  Lillian's checked out to be everything we thought it would be, had her last name listed at Opalinski & had the correct names of both her parents as well as stating that she was married to a Patrick Ryan.  Now Raymond's was a totally different story.

His actually lists his name change as we thought, but instead of listing his parents as Stanley Opalinski & Catherin Fedek, he has his father's last name as Ormond.  Now why he did this I suppose we will never know, but what posses a man to change his name & when filling out his social security application lie & falsify his own father's last name

If only I could figure out a way to answer all of these questions & figure out what was going on with the Opalinski family.

premarital sex in the 1860's??

It has been a long time since I have updated this & since then I have not had a ton of time to work on my genealogy.  I did however get a chance to go back and go through my microfilms that I talked about in my last post.  To my surprise, Andrew has more than just the two older siblings I found previously.  With some more digging I found he has one or two younger siblings as well.  The reason for my confusion as to whether it's one or two is simply due to the fact that the baptismal records list both children (one born in 1869, the other in 1871) as boys, both with the name Joannes.  Now I'm assuming people do not name their children the same thing, that's just strange, so this assumption leads me to believe that the first Joannes (born in 1869) was no longer living when the second was born. So I suppose either way there are two younger siblings, but non the less I am still confused.  I also did some digging for a marriage record for my great grandfather's parents Valentine & Victoria.  When I found it, it too came with a surprise.  They were married in September of 1862, and my great-great grandfather's oldest sibling was born in February of 1863.  Now if you can do your math like I did, you'll realize that my great-great-great grandmother was 4 months pregnant when she got married, that seemed like a shocker to me to say the least.

Unfortunately the marriage records for Valentine & Victoria gives no indication of either of their parents' names so that is another search I am going to have to make.  It does however give me the ages of both, kinda.  It clearly says that Valentine is 24 years old, but when you look at the column for Victoria's age all that's there is a scribbled out number.  What I can make out is the number 2 at the beginning so I would assume she was in her 20's as long as she did not lie about her age.  I also would probably make the assumption that she is not older than Valentine, then again I could be wrong.  My next step now is to reorder microfilms from the library and look for the baptismal records for both Valentine & Victoria in hopes of finding their parents & tracing things back even further than that.  What I also would like to find is the answer to my problem of the two Joannes' and see if I can find a death records for the first boy names Joannes.

Now the funny thing about all these finds I made in terms of my great-great grandfather Andrew's parents & siblings, is that originally I ordered all these microfilms so that I could find baptismal/birth records for my great-great grandparents Andrew & Elizabeth as well as the 3 children they had in Poland before immigrating to America in 1900, as well as their marriage record.  Ironically I found non of those in my search, which confuses me.  Every record I have of the Panfil's states that they were from Gniewkowo, which is the parish & area that I ordered all the microfilms from.  What is a mystery to me, is that if they said that's where they were from & it's clearly where Andrew as born, where did they get married & have their first 3 children & why have I been unable to find an record of them so far?