Momentum has been picking up for research on my side of the tree. My paternal grandfather was born in Suchy Grunt and I checked out the LDS microfilm catalog website and sure enough they had a microfilm of the Roman Catholic parish records for Suchy Grunt. It was a little intimidating because the records were entered in Latin but I bit the bullet and ordered the film online here. It took a few weeks but it finally arrived last week at my LDS center. I headed over there this week and what an experience. The microfilm actually contains records for Zabrnie, Dabrowica and Suchy Grunt. I found an entry for someone in Zabrnie who *may* be a relative at the bottom of the first page (I haven't been able to trace back to 1790 yet which is when the death entry was made). In the first 11 pages, I found 17 more. My maiden name is a fairly uncommon polish surname so I am really hoping I can find a connection.
Anyways, I tried to do some latin prep work before I went and found a few latin resources on the web and printed the pages out beforehand:
Latin Genealogical Word List (familysearch wiki)
Deciphering Records in Latin (ancestry.com)
Latin Keywords list (familysearch wiki)
I went to the center on Tuesday night fully expecting to have a bit of a challenge and while it was, it really could have been worse. The microfilm reader is one of the old manual ones with the film loader above and the light shining down on the smooth surface of a carroll. No printer attached and I left my camera in the hallway of my house so I transcribed my findings. The guides I printed beforehand were helpful but there were some column headers which stumped me (Nrus Domus & Dies Vitae). I was pretty sure that Dies Vitae was age but I couldn't figure out some really odd entries for age like "hebd 20" (which I now know is short for hebdomadum - 20 weeks old)
Last night I decided to do more research to prepare myself for the return trip today. The handwriting was a bit hard to read at times and particularly harder when I don't know the language and am not a good guesser.... Luckily I hit a windfall of information at http://www.halgal.com/, a genealogy website for Halychyna/Eastern Galicia. This site is a must for people researching Polish and Ukranian Ancestors. This website contains extremely descriptive details on how to read Baptismal/birth, marriage and death records for the parish records complete with sample images of the records and full explanations of the latin column headers as well as sample entries and common latin terms used in each column.
Death Records: www.halgal.com/deathrecord.html (part 1) and www.halgal.com/deathrecord2.html (part 2)
Marriage Records: www.halgal.com/marriagerecord.html
Birth/Baptismal Records: www.halgal.com/birthrecord.htmi (part1) and www.halgal.com/birthrecord2.html (part 2)
There is also an excellent writeup about the value in the column "numerus domus" (in my case "nrus domus") which does mean house number and how it may be possible to find information about the house tied to this number in the cadasters
Other websites for Polish/Ukranian research of interest:
TUGG (This site is pretty useful too, I plan on becoming a member)
Eastern European Genealogical Society (I just recently became a member)
PolishRoots
Using these docs were a huge help deciphering what I was seeing and made transcribing I hope more accurate.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Finally a find on my side
I've finally found something on one of my relatives. In the 1911 census, my great grandfather was living in Dauphin Manitoba with one of his brothers and they both worked on building the railway and their birth country was Austria. His immigration year is listed as 1906 while his brother's is 1910. Searching ancestry had not turned up anything. I recently got a subscription to findmypast and decided to give it a try. I couldn't find much entering his last name and enabling variants but once I used a wildcard in the lastname I found him. He arrived in Canada in 1902 on the SS Corinthian. Using this information I went did a search of the database of passengers list (1865-1922) for the Corinitian on the Library and Archives Canada website and after searching a few pages there he was. His occupation was listed as a furrier and his destination Toronto... I then started a search for his brother. While I didn't find him on findmypast may have found him on Ancestry, arriving in New York in 1907. If this is really his brother, the passenger list records his birthplace as Bohorodczany,Austria and his mother's name as Maria... If this is the correct person, he was eventually married to a woman named Julia, served in WWI and lived in Douglas Wis when he was attested as well as later in the 20s and 30s (census records)
Monday, February 7, 2011
Trying to find my Eastern Europe Connections
I've finally started the slow process of organizing all my papers. I was looking through the stuff I've acquired for my side of the family and decided to take another crack at finding my Manitoba relatives originally from Ukraine.
I didn't have alot of success in the census records.
There are a few problems I'm encountering:
-I tried to transcribe the 1911 Winnipeg census when I was volunteering for Automated Genealogy but I found most of the records very difficult to read and there was alot of phonetic spelling going on.
-My great grandparent's last name was Krywyj but seems it sounded like Krovetz so at some point in history it becane Krovetz, sometimes Krowetz. I'm not getting any hits on any of these spellings or other ones I can think of in 1911 or 1916 (automated genealogy or ancestry).
-My great Aunt told me that they lived on McGregor street when she and my grandmother were born so I used the street listing site on Manitoba Historical Society to look up all of the census sheets in 1911 for families living on McGregor
-I know my grandmother was born in 1913 in Winnipeg but in the 50s she tried to do a vital stats search of her birth registration and it was not found. I do have a copy of her baptismal record which was created in 58 but my mom thinks it is not accurate and the church actually used the details about a sister when they created it. I tried to search for the names of the godparents in the census and could not get any hits on them either!
Next steps:
-My grandmother was apparently baptized @ St Volodymyr and Olga Cathedral in Winnipeg, Ineed to contact the Archepathy and see if I can get access to some of their records.
-Discover the church in Toronto where my BaBa and grandpa were married so I can see how she wrote her maiden name and confirm the names of her parents. My great aunt married in the same church so will look her up as well. I have conflicting reports about my great grandmother's name.
- I ran into a nice website regarding researching Ukranians in the Toronto area (TUGG). Which gave the interesting recommendation of obtaining copies of the 1940 Naturalization Registration File.
I did a google search and came across a helpful site: http://www.naturalizationrecords.com/canada/ which lists out all of the questions asked to males and females on the registration card as well a pics of sample cards.
and I checked out the StatsCan website and was happy to read "This information was originally obtained under the authority of The National Resources Mobilization Act and the War Measures Act. Custody of the records was subsequently given to Statistics Canada, then known as the Dominion Bureau of Statistics.
As a result, the National Registration File of 1940 is not subject to the confidentiality provisions of the Statistics Act but is instead covered by the Privacy Act. According to this Act, when a person has been dead for more than 20 years, the information is no longer considered to be personal and can be disclosed." It's a bit pricey $47.25 but I think might be well worth the cost to push my research along a little farther
I didn't have alot of success in the census records.
There are a few problems I'm encountering:
-I tried to transcribe the 1911 Winnipeg census when I was volunteering for Automated Genealogy but I found most of the records very difficult to read and there was alot of phonetic spelling going on.
-My great grandparent's last name was Krywyj but seems it sounded like Krovetz so at some point in history it becane Krovetz, sometimes Krowetz. I'm not getting any hits on any of these spellings or other ones I can think of in 1911 or 1916 (automated genealogy or ancestry).
-My great Aunt told me that they lived on McGregor street when she and my grandmother were born so I used the street listing site on Manitoba Historical Society to look up all of the census sheets in 1911 for families living on McGregor
-I know my grandmother was born in 1913 in Winnipeg but in the 50s she tried to do a vital stats search of her birth registration and it was not found. I do have a copy of her baptismal record which was created in 58 but my mom thinks it is not accurate and the church actually used the details about a sister when they created it. I tried to search for the names of the godparents in the census and could not get any hits on them either!
Next steps:
-My grandmother was apparently baptized @ St Volodymyr and Olga Cathedral in Winnipeg, Ineed to contact the Archepathy and see if I can get access to some of their records.
-Discover the church in Toronto where my BaBa and grandpa were married so I can see how she wrote her maiden name and confirm the names of her parents. My great aunt married in the same church so will look her up as well. I have conflicting reports about my great grandmother's name.
- I ran into a nice website regarding researching Ukranians in the Toronto area (TUGG). Which gave the interesting recommendation of obtaining copies of the 1940 Naturalization Registration File.
I did a google search and came across a helpful site: http://www.naturalizationrecords.com/canada/ which lists out all of the questions asked to males and females on the registration card as well a pics of sample cards.
and I checked out the StatsCan website and was happy to read "This information was originally obtained under the authority of The National Resources Mobilization Act and the War Measures Act. Custody of the records was subsequently given to Statistics Canada, then known as the Dominion Bureau of Statistics.
As a result, the National Registration File of 1940 is not subject to the confidentiality provisions of the Statistics Act but is instead covered by the Privacy Act. According to this Act, when a person has been dead for more than 20 years, the information is no longer considered to be personal and can be disclosed." It's a bit pricey $47.25 but I think might be well worth the cost to push my research along a little farther
Sunday, January 23, 2011
My Methodology assignment on hypothesis studies
I'm back to completing my certification again and working on my third methodology course. In this assignment we were asked to chronical a hypothesis we tried to prove/disprove and this was my submission. It's a bit long winded but captures the 2 year experience in my proving my hypothesis was correct.....
Oral history of my husbands great great aunt Irene was that she died at a young age (before 20) in Grey County Ontario where her father had purchased a farm. My father in law who moved to Grey Co not far from his grandfather's farm tried to determine where she was buried. His research did not turn up anything and he assumed she was buried on the farm. He knew she was not buried with her parents who were buried much later in Toronto. I knew she was born in 1898 in York Co and a few years ago I went to the Archives and searched through the death registration index looking up all the records that could be a possible match from 1899- 1920 but could not find anything.
My hypothesis was that she died later and in the Toronto area.
I discovered automatedgenealogy.com at the time and found the family in the 1901 census in York Co. From this I was able to determine that her first name was stated as Esther. Since none of my husband's family could tell me exactly when the family moved to Grey Co and I did not have an ancestry account I relied on automated genealogy to research the 1911 census. Most of Grey County had been transcribed but I could not find them. York Co still had alot of areas that had not been transcribed. I started to manually read every sheet for York but then figured I should transcribe them at the same time so I spent months helping to transcribe York County in the census. Eventually almost all of the census was transcribed (not entirely by me of course) but I still couldn't find them. I reached out to the automated genealogy community and finally someone was able to find them in York. Their family name (and all of the first names) had be enormously misspelled by the enumerator.... I now knew that the family was in York in 1911 and Esther was still alive. Based on this I knew the family moved to Grey sometime after 1911 but had returned to York where 3 of their sons were attested for WWII. In the midst of my transcribing of the census (which I really enjoyed)I was able to get a copy of Esther's birth registration and confirmed that she was Esther Irene. I was also able to find the birth registration of many of her siblings and of 2 brothers who died as infants and were buried in York County. I went back to death registrations and finally succeeded. She died of TB in 1928... in Toronto. Her parents's address was listed as the same address in Toronto where they lived right up to their deaths. I was hoping the registration would list the cemetery but it didn't so I still couldn't be sure she was actually buried in Toronto.
Next, I found her parents marriage registration which listed St John's Norway in Toronto as the church they were married in. It is beside an extremely large cemetery. Her parents house in 1911 was across from this church and up the road from the cemetery. By this time, I had amassed quite a collection of death registrations for the family and contacted the cemetery for some lookups then went for an all day visit. The records are still on index cards and the cemetery has 80k+ people interred there but I was able to get photocopies of everything (a very nice genealogical windfall). They were able to provide me burial details about 15 relative but not Esther. A year later and armed with more ancestors who I suspected were buried there I gave it another shot and they found her. She is buried in the same cemetery as her two infant brothers, her grandparents, aunts and uncles, sister in laws, nieces and nephews all who sadly are all in unmarked graves.
Oral history of my husbands great great aunt Irene was that she died at a young age (before 20) in Grey County Ontario where her father had purchased a farm. My father in law who moved to Grey Co not far from his grandfather's farm tried to determine where she was buried. His research did not turn up anything and he assumed she was buried on the farm. He knew she was not buried with her parents who were buried much later in Toronto. I knew she was born in 1898 in York Co and a few years ago I went to the Archives and searched through the death registration index looking up all the records that could be a possible match from 1899- 1920 but could not find anything.
My hypothesis was that she died later and in the Toronto area.
I discovered automatedgenealogy.com at the time and found the family in the 1901 census in York Co. From this I was able to determine that her first name was stated as Esther. Since none of my husband's family could tell me exactly when the family moved to Grey Co and I did not have an ancestry account I relied on automated genealogy to research the 1911 census. Most of Grey County had been transcribed but I could not find them. York Co still had alot of areas that had not been transcribed. I started to manually read every sheet for York but then figured I should transcribe them at the same time so I spent months helping to transcribe York County in the census. Eventually almost all of the census was transcribed (not entirely by me of course) but I still couldn't find them. I reached out to the automated genealogy community and finally someone was able to find them in York. Their family name (and all of the first names) had be enormously misspelled by the enumerator.... I now knew that the family was in York in 1911 and Esther was still alive. Based on this I knew the family moved to Grey sometime after 1911 but had returned to York where 3 of their sons were attested for WWII. In the midst of my transcribing of the census (which I really enjoyed)I was able to get a copy of Esther's birth registration and confirmed that she was Esther Irene. I was also able to find the birth registration of many of her siblings and of 2 brothers who died as infants and were buried in York County. I went back to death registrations and finally succeeded. She died of TB in 1928... in Toronto. Her parents's address was listed as the same address in Toronto where they lived right up to their deaths. I was hoping the registration would list the cemetery but it didn't so I still couldn't be sure she was actually buried in Toronto.
Next, I found her parents marriage registration which listed St John's Norway in Toronto as the church they were married in. It is beside an extremely large cemetery. Her parents house in 1911 was across from this church and up the road from the cemetery. By this time, I had amassed quite a collection of death registrations for the family and contacted the cemetery for some lookups then went for an all day visit. The records are still on index cards and the cemetery has 80k+ people interred there but I was able to get photocopies of everything (a very nice genealogical windfall). They were able to provide me burial details about 15 relative but not Esther. A year later and armed with more ancestors who I suspected were buried there I gave it another shot and they found her. She is buried in the same cemetery as her two infant brothers, her grandparents, aunts and uncles, sister in laws, nieces and nephews all who sadly are all in unmarked graves.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Change of pace in PEI
While waiting for free time to start doing the manual research all over Ontario for my Dunn research, I've changed the pace and started researching the Ancestors of my sister in law. She was able to provide me with the names of her grandfather, great grandFather and great great grandfather on her mother's McLeod side (including the first and Maiden names of their wives) She also told me they lived in PEI. A lot of info to help get me started.
This is my first research opportunity in PEI and has been a pretty good learning experience. I started by putting in what I knew into a new Ancestry tree. From that I was able to find record of the great grandparents (Joseph McLeod and Minnie Gas) in the the 1911, 1901 & 1891 census. PEI was setup back then as "Lots" for subdistricts and they were in Lot 65. From there I was able to get a list of most of their children (but not her grandfather Daniel who was probably born after 1911). After some more research I was able to get the census records for the great great grandparents (George McLeod and Ann Henderson), they were over in lot 65 as well and had 9 children. Since there is going to be limited info available due to privacy issues around the her grandfather and his siblings, I then started to go through and try to find as much info on her great great great uncles and aunts as possible. I haven't got through them all but I do know that their eldest son and child Archibald McLeod was a carpenter and settled with his family in Massacheusetts in the early 1900s.
Ancestry does not have any BMD details for PEI in their database so I started to do some google research. I came across the PEI Public Archives site and discovered that PEI did not start keeping civil records until ~1906. They do have a couple of good online databases and I was able to look up baptisms for Archibald and a few of his siblings including the great grandfather George. I took a break from the McLeod side for a bit and looked at the great great grandmother Anne Henderson. Using the online baptism search I was able to find what I believe to be her baptism entry for 1842 (she reported on most Census records that she was born 1843/44 but the month and day matched). Now I have her parent's names (including maiden) and entered them into the Ancestry tree. In doing that I was able to find her and her parents in the 1891 census and I'm now armed with the name of one of her siblings (Richard) and a widowed sister Jane (with 2 kids). I also know from the 1891 census that Anne's parents were both born in PEI (1810 & 1820) and grandfather on her mom's side was born in the US and her grandmother in Ireland. Anne's grandparents on her dad's side were both born in Scotland. I got a hit for another family tree on ancestry with Anne Henderson married to my George McLeod so I am reasonably sure that I am on the right track. I haven't look further into the other person's tree and don't intend to unless it is a last resort. I've been burned in the past and have learned not to trust someone else's work especially when sources are not cited...
Armed with 6 names, I've come up with 43 of her ancestors in only a few hours woo hoo!
This is my first research opportunity in PEI and has been a pretty good learning experience. I started by putting in what I knew into a new Ancestry tree. From that I was able to find record of the great grandparents (Joseph McLeod and Minnie Gas) in the the 1911, 1901 & 1891 census. PEI was setup back then as "Lots" for subdistricts and they were in Lot 65. From there I was able to get a list of most of their children (but not her grandfather Daniel who was probably born after 1911). After some more research I was able to get the census records for the great great grandparents (George McLeod and Ann Henderson), they were over in lot 65 as well and had 9 children. Since there is going to be limited info available due to privacy issues around the her grandfather and his siblings, I then started to go through and try to find as much info on her great great great uncles and aunts as possible. I haven't got through them all but I do know that their eldest son and child Archibald McLeod was a carpenter and settled with his family in Massacheusetts in the early 1900s.
Ancestry does not have any BMD details for PEI in their database so I started to do some google research. I came across the PEI Public Archives site and discovered that PEI did not start keeping civil records until ~1906. They do have a couple of good online databases and I was able to look up baptisms for Archibald and a few of his siblings including the great grandfather George. I took a break from the McLeod side for a bit and looked at the great great grandmother Anne Henderson. Using the online baptism search I was able to find what I believe to be her baptism entry for 1842 (she reported on most Census records that she was born 1843/44 but the month and day matched). Now I have her parent's names (including maiden) and entered them into the Ancestry tree. In doing that I was able to find her and her parents in the 1891 census and I'm now armed with the name of one of her siblings (Richard) and a widowed sister Jane (with 2 kids). I also know from the 1891 census that Anne's parents were both born in PEI (1810 & 1820) and grandfather on her mom's side was born in the US and her grandmother in Ireland. Anne's grandparents on her dad's side were both born in Scotland. I got a hit for another family tree on ancestry with Anne Henderson married to my George McLeod so I am reasonably sure that I am on the right track. I haven't look further into the other person's tree and don't intend to unless it is a last resort. I've been burned in the past and have learned not to trust someone else's work especially when sources are not cited...
Armed with 6 names, I've come up with 43 of her ancestors in only a few hours woo hoo!
Saturday, October 2, 2010
3 years 3 months 11 days 11 hours
That's what's written on the back of George Alexander Dunn's baptism card. I know from previous research he was born May 25, 1903 and died Sept 5 1906 from Diphtheria suffering for 3 days beforehand. I also know his mom could read and write so I can only assume she put it on the back of the card. George was the first of three children his parents buried. I've been to George's gravesite. He is buried with his brother, Clarence Oliver who was born on Sept 25, 1911 and died Aug 31, 1912. I found his birthday card from the "Cradle Roll" program at the Hope Methodist Sunday School. On the back it reads "There's a little band in heaven which is not quite complete and God hath called your darling boy to fill a vacant seat." Clarence died of cardiac failure with primary cause attributed to Colitis in Sick Kids Hospital and suffered 3 weeks. Their grave along with those of their older sister Esther Irene who died of TB in 1928 and grandparents, cousins and aunts and uncles are all unmarked in St John's Norway cemetery in Toronto.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Research Windfall
I went to the annual Family Golf Tournament in Beaverton yesterday and the Dunn family has honoured me with 2 boxes full of family pictures, baptismal records and death records for the Dunn line. First step is to organize and scan all of information and backup. Next step, file the originals in archival quality sleeves and sheets.
Major finds: a picture of the kids Great Great Grandparents (with Dora Elizabeth in full victorian dress) details about the first wife of the kids great grandfather (including children and marriage date) and some written family history from the kids great grandfather. Some of the accounts do not line up with my research which is to be expected since oral history (especially by a gentleman in his 90s) may not always be historically accurate.
So as to not underplay the Petersen's generosity this is right up there with the extensive family tree that Ebba gave me to last year with Danish ancestry going back 200 years.
What an honour!
Debbie
Major finds: a picture of the kids Great Great Grandparents (with Dora Elizabeth in full victorian dress) details about the first wife of the kids great grandfather (including children and marriage date) and some written family history from the kids great grandfather. Some of the accounts do not line up with my research which is to be expected since oral history (especially by a gentleman in his 90s) may not always be historically accurate.
So as to not underplay the Petersen's generosity this is right up there with the extensive family tree that Ebba gave me to last year with Danish ancestry going back 200 years.
What an honour!
Debbie
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