The Spiraling Chains: Kowalski - Bellan Family Trees
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Gravehunting

7/31/2012

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PictureSt. Francis Cemetery, Phoenix, Arizona
Most people don't generally view cemeteries as pleasant places; some even consider them creepy or unlucky places.  For a genealogist, cemeteries and the gravestones within them are invaluable sources of information about people and communities of the past.  The information inscribed on gravestones - names, dates of birth and death, relation words such as "wife, "mother," or "son" - can serve as an important starting point in discovering when and where our ancestors lived.  Gravestones can also help validate information about ancestors that may have been located in other sources or passed down verbally through the generations.

There is a free website called
FindAGrave.com that is essentially a catalog of interments from cemeteries all over the world.  It is completely run by volunteers who set up memorial pages for friends, relatives, or even complete strangers who have passed on.  Once a memorial is posted, anyone can "request a photo" of any particular grave.  Volunteers receive photo requests via email from cemeteries located near their homes, and then go out to the cemeteries, search for the grave(s), take photos of them, and post it on website.  I found a photo of my great-grandfather's grave on the site, which was helpful to me, because he is buried in Arizona (where none of my family lives).  It was taken by a complete stranger who assists in cataloguing cemeteries for the website, and she even managed to track down and post his death certificate as well.

I became a volunteer grave photographer a couple of months ago.  I like to take photos, and it gives me something different to do with the kids outdoors.  Sometimes, I actually think they enjoy walking around the big old gravestones and large trees that are often in the older cemeteries we visit.  One day, I tracked down an older grave for a woman living in Kentucky.  She sent me a very kind 'thank you' email that was so, so appreciative, it just made my day.  She told me the story of how, in the post-Civil War era, her great-great-grandfather enlisted the help of his brother-in-law in discovering the fates of his southern family members.  She was trying to find where this brother-in-law ended up and my photograph of his gravestone confirmed the location of his final resting place and seemed to give her some sort of peace.  I felt like I had really made a difference in this woman's life. 

Most of the photo requests I search for, I cannot find.  This is especially true of people buried pre-1900.  Weathering renders many stones unreadable and, oftentimes, broken stones are not replaced and graves simply become unmarked.  Sometimes, it saddens me when I have to tell a person that I could not find the graves of their ancestors.  Nobody wants to hear that a family member, even one from generations ago, has been forgotten or neglected, even in death.  But still, most people thank me for going to the cemetery and looking, even if it was unsuccessful.

Just the other day, I received three emails saying that three of MY grave photo requests had been fulfilled.  A volunteer in western Ohio visited three separate cemeteries in Mercer County and photographed graves of Tony's ancestors.
 

Picture
St. Johns Catholic Church, Maria Stein, Ohio
Picture
St. Marys Cemetery, Philothea, Ohio
What I LOVE about these gravestones is that they are inscribed in German.  Through my research, I already knew both of these men were German immigrants, but these stones give me a sense of the culture of the region at the time of death.  Andreas Brunswick (first photo) immigrated to America in 1853.  He lived for 45 years in western Ohio, yet his gravestone is written in German.  So obviously, some communities in the region were still speaking German (or German/English hybrids), even as late 1898.  The second photo is the grave of Tony's great-great grandfather, Theodor Tumbusch, who arrived in America in 1861.  Unfortunately, he died quite young in 1870, so the only real what I call "life" documents relating back to Theodor are his immigrant ship roster and the 1870 U.S. Census.  The gravestone has helped me confirm the spelling of his name and his dates of birth and death.

©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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The DNA Test

7/26/2012

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I turned on my phone this morning while making breakfast (don't judge me), opened my email and expected to see the normal accumulation of junk mail from the overnight hours.  Among that junk, though, I see one that says "Your DNA results are ready."  Yay!  Several weeks ago, I purchased a DNA testing kit from Ancestry.com.  I spit in a tube (again, no judging allowed) and sent it off to the lab.  Here are the results:
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Source: Ancestry.com
Ok, so I was not at all surprised at the big chunk of "Eastern European."  Both of my dad's parents were children of Polish immigrants, and my mom's dad was the child of Croatian immigrants.  Now, the "Central European" made a little bit of sense to me, because my great-grandmother was from Milan, Italy, which is in northern Italy not far from Switzerland.  Plus, both Croatia and the area in Poland where my great-grandparents were born are pretty close to where the Central and Eastern regions meet, so I figure there may have been some genetic influence there. 

I was NOT expecting to see the Persian/Turkish/Caucasus region anywhere in my genetic makeup.  Actually, my first reaction when I saw the pie chart was, "Oh great, they messed up my test and the results are inaccurate."  Then, I started to get a little more analytical and did some research.  I looked at the map and started to think about my great-grandpa Licciardi, who was born in Palermo, Sicily, which appears at first glance to be isolated from any of the genetic regions highlighted.  I do a little Google-searching about Sicily and its history.  The more that I read, the more I begin to realize that, genetically, Sicilians are some of the most diverse people in Europe.  It's a large island, situated right in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, which, for thousands of years was the main conduit for travel, trade, and conquest for most of Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia.  Even today, evidence of the island's unique history remains in some of the island's older architecture.  This is a photo from a wall in the city of Palermo:
Picture
Picture
San Cataldo Church in Palermo (built 1154) shows both Norman and Arabic architectural influences.
Palermo was conquered by Arabs in the mid-800s AD and Sicily became an Arab emirate in 965 AD.  A little over a hundred years later, the Normans moved in and took Sicily from the Arabs.  After a short period of coexistance between the Christians and Muslims, fighting and an intolerance for Islam developed from the late 1100s to early 1200s and the Muslims were given the choice to leave or convert to Christianity.  Many Muslims left Sicily at this time, but some remained, converted, and assimilated with the native Sicilian population.  Following the Normans, Sicily was ruled by German, French, and Spanish nobilities before the unification of Italy in the 1860s.   

So, it's possible that that Persian/Turkish marker came from my Sicilian great-grandfather, but I'll probably never know for sure.  And my 23% of "Central European" also may partially come through my Sicilian roots as well, considering the influences of various western European kingdoms in Sicily after the Arab influence had mostly waned. 

This DNA test is different from others out there in that it traces both your matrilineal and patrilineal lines by looking at the makeup of all 23 chromosomes, looking at 700,000 locations in the DNA.  Ancestry.com claims that results are at least 98% accurate.  If one of my siblings were to have their DNA analyzed, the results would probably be similar, but not exactly the same, because a person does not inherit genes from her mother and father equally (50/50).  In fact, we can have ANY combination of our parents' genes in our DNA (40/60, 15/85, 96/4...you get the idea), and THEY have inherited some unknown combination from their parents, and so on and so on as you go back through the generations.  Mother Nature is a wacky gal.

Ancestry.com claims that the results of my test may change slightly as they acquire new DNA data that they are continually collecting from people all over the world.  That's fine; I didn't expect it to help me find specific names of my ancestors or anything detailed like that.  I mostly did this for fun, but it has certainly changed my perception of what a European heritage can look like and it has driven me to learn more about my great-grandfather's homeland. 



©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder
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Coming Over

7/16/2012

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PictureSS Finland, Antwerp-New York, 1902-1927
Like most white Americans, husband and I are descendants of immigrants from European nations.  My ancestors were from Poland, Croatia, and Italy, while his were from France and Germany.  (Our kids are good ole European mutts, I guess :)  Our relatives came over at different times, though, which made their immigrant experiences somewhat different due to improvements in technology and changes in American immigration legislation and processing.

Tony's ancestors came to America in the 19th century, mostly from 1830 to the mid-1850s.  Many of them were farmers from small villages in northeastern France (Alsace-Lorraine) and northwestern Germany, but there were a few tradesmen (blacksmiths, coopers, etc.) that made the journey as well.  At this time, the Trans-Atlantic journey took an average of about seven weeks, but it could take upwards of 2-3 months depending on weather conditions and steering currents.  The following exerpt describes how two of my husband's ancestral families came to the U.S from France:

"The Grill(i)ots (in 1838) and Aubrys (in 1840) traveled to the United States on  American sailing ships.  Usually these packet ships carried cargo, perhaps bales of cotton, on the voyage from America to France.  For the return trip, the empty  holds were transformed into a semblance of living quarters for the  emigrants.   Shelves arranged around the walls, three tiers high, served as berths.  Each  family was assigned an appropriate space that some managed to curtain off for a  bit of privacy.  They went up on deck for exercise, fresh air, and to prepare  food on cook stoves."  Source: http://www.wmcnitt.net/aubry/emigrati.htm 

Picture
Typical steerage immigrant quarters
Conditions in steerage were usually quite bad.  The quarters were cramped and unsanitary.  Air circulation was poor and temperatures became dangerously hot during the summer months.  People did not bathe and, at this time, were expected to provide their own food, which, even if properly "preserved" did gradually spoil.  The stench was probably pretty awful.  Passengers suffered from seasickness and other serious illnesses and injuries, and, unfortunately, there were occasionally deaths during the voyage.  

In 1855, Congress enacted a
Passenger Act  as an attempt to improve conditions for immigrants heading to America.   It included provisions to limit the number of passengers per size of ship, increase the height of living quarters to at least 6 ft (it was usually 5.5 ft or less prior to this), provide adequate food, water, and ventilation, maintain a "quarantine" area for the sick and wash areas for all passengers, and provide some discipline to passengers who broke simple laws (theft was a large problem).  There were fines if these  provisions were not upheld; however, most historians agree that the law was not regularly enforced and the fines were not large enough to get every ship captain to adhere to the provisions.

It was about this time that the first steamships started making Trans-Atlantic voyages.  By the mid-1870s, dozens of steamships were regularly carrying immigrants from Europe to America.  While conditions onboard these ships were still cramped and unhygienic (for lower class passengers), the length of the trips was signifcantly less:  About 5-7 days from English/Irish ports and no more than 2 weeks from ports in central and southern Europe. 

My ancestors came to America between the 1890s and 1921, so they did have much shorter journeys.  However, they also had to go through more red tape once they arrived at port, which included more thorough medical inspections, grouping procedures, and obtaining legal paperwork.   Another post for another day, though :)  I also intend to write about WHAT may have driven our ancestors to leave their homes and make a long, difficult, and dangerous journey halfway around the world to start new lives.
 

Finding Ship Manifests

In 1819, the U.S. passed a customs law that required ship captains to list the names of each passenger traveling on his ship.  Because of this law (and the good fortune that most of them survived to be preserved and catalogued), we actually have pretty good records of the immigrants on each ship passage.  Ancestry.com is the best, most-complete online source of records and images of the original ship lists (known as 'manifests') that you can download.  If you choose to get a 14-day free trial, these documents are the first ones I would search for, because, apart from visiting the National Archives in Washington, D.C, they are difficult to obtain elsewhere.  Below is a sample manifest from 1853 when Andreas Braunswig, Tony's great-great-great-grandfather, came to America.  It lists his name, age, country of birth, place of last
residence, place to which he is going, occupation, and pieces of baggage.  Once in America, he used name "Andrew Brunswick."  It was fairly common for immigrants to anglicize their name, so keep that in mind when doing your own searching.
  
Picture
Andrew Brunswick "Bessel" Ship Manifest 1853
There is a free site on which you can find some immigrant ship manifests.  The Immigrant Ship  Transcribers Guild is a network of volunteers who read through and manually transcribe original ship lists, which are then posted on the website.  Because it relies on volunteer work, it is by no means a complete record of all ship lists, but I did find some of Tony's ancestors in their database, which is continually growing and being updated.


©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder

Ship Manifest Source Citation: National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, DC; Records of the US Customs Service, RG36, Series: M255, Roll: 9
Source Information:  Ancestry.com. Baltimore, Passenger Lists, 1820-1948 and 1954-1957 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006.
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Getting Started with Online Genealogy Research

7/11/2012

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PictureAnthony and Leona (Knob) Schroeder Wedding Photo
I started the process of researching family history about a year and a half ago.  I admit my curiosity was sparked by the NBC show, Who Do You Think You Are? which aired on Friday nights (I know, I'm a party animal!)  If you aren't familiar with the show, each episode basically follows one celebrity as he/she "researches" a particular side of his/her family.  I use the term "research" lightly in this case, because they always got professional librarians, archivists, genealogists, war experts, etc. to do the legwork for them.  Honestly, I would have been a fan even if they didn't use celebrities.  Dork, I know.  Anyways, even though it ran for several seasons, the show was evidently not popular enough among the masses so it was cancelled. 

The show was heavily sponsored by
Ancestry.com, so, several commercials later, I went online and checked it out.  Oh look, I can get a free 14-day trial?  Great, sign me up!  My strategy was to download as much info as I could find in those 14 days and then cancel the subscription.  Ha!  Fourteen days turned into several months.  I started making family trees for my and my husband's family with the information I did know (or with what I could get from my parents and aunts and uncles).  The nice, yet time-consuming, thing about Ancestry.com is that you are able to link your ancestors with other people's family trees.  I was not lucky enough to find anyone out there who had researched my family tree, but my husband's side was a different story.  There are several branches of his tree in which someone (a distant cousin, perhaps?) has gone back hundreds of years to document ancestors.  So, it took a while to link up with all those trees while at the same time trying to find and download birth, marriage, military, and death records, census schedules, newspaper articles, etc.  I bought a month-to-month membership which I probably kept for 4-5 months.  Then a couple months ago, I reactivated my membership for 6 months and picked up where I left off (Ancestry.com does not delete your tree or any info you collect if you cancel your subscription, so you can always go back and reactivate.) 

While Ancestry.com is the genealogy site that usually gets the most attention, there are several others that I have found VERY helpful in my research.  The Church of Latter Day Saints maintains excellent genealogy records from all over the world.  The records are kept at their headquarters in Salt Lake City, but they are continually adding digital copies to their website 
FamilySearch.   It is FREE to access their database, which contains some records you cannot find on Ancestry.  (One example is death certificates, which are extremely helpful in the research process - more about that later :)  The other site that I currently use is GenealogyBank, which is a searchable database of newspaper archives from all over the country.  This one, like Ancestry, you also have to pay for, but the rate is only about $6 a month.  Has been helpful in finding obituaries, - more about those later, too - engagement/wedding announcements, and general articles about family members.  Before joining this one, though, make sure they have newspaper records from the town/area where your ancestors lived.  I have found a lot of stuff about my family on this site, but virtually nothing from my husband's side because they don't (yet) have the newspaper archives from western Ohio.

There is another site called
Fold3, which has mostly military and war records, BUT it also has U.S. citizenship and naturalization records (another thing Ancestry.com doesn't have).  You can do a seven-day free trial of this site, which is plenty of time to download what you need and be on your way (as long as you know who you are looking for). 

So, you may ask, "Why spend the money to find out stuff about dead people?"  I tell my husband, "I don't have any other hobbies (aside from a random knitting project here and there), I don't get mani/pedis or buy many shoes (We'll "thank" Mother Nature for that one, I guess.), so I'd like to use some money for this research."  Plus, I feel like it's worth it for my kids' sakes, just so they have a sense of where they came from.  I know I've always found history more interesting if I learn it through reading biographies and learning about the PEOPLE that made the history happen.  When my kids are older and complaining about how history class is SO BORING, I'll show them all this stuff about THEIR family and hopefully that will make it more interesting to them.  Maybe...



©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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Welcome to my blog!

7/11/2012

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PictureThe Licciardi Family, probably around 1930.
I never thought I would do it.  Start a blog, that is.  I mean, who wants to read about my mundane everyday life?  Well, here's the thing: This blog will, for the most part, be about other people's lives.  This blog will contain my thoughts and reflections on what I have learned and experienced over the past year and a half while researching my and my husband's family trees.  I've already outlined ideas for at least a dozen blog posts so far (Thank you, six-hour drive to Cleveland.) and, because I am still researching, I'm sure many more topics will emerge.

Many of you who will read this blog already know that I am in the process of posting electronic copies of family documents and photos on the following websites:
http://kowalski-bellan.weebly.com/     (my family)
http://schroeder-tumbush.weebly.com/    (hubby's family)

But recently I've realized that the documents and photos don't tell the whole story of our ancestors' lives.  I wanted a forum (this blog) where I and other family members, if they choose to do so, could tell stories of what they remember about those who have passed.  And while there are individuals in our family trees for whom there are no living memories, we can still honor them by chronicling what life was like during the times in which they lived (the history buff in me is tingling with excitement!)

The title of the blog, "The Spiraling Chains" is from a quotation by magazine editor and author, Shirley Abbott:

"We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies."

I like this quote because it pays tribute to both the memories we have of our ancestors AND the traits that they've passed down to us through genetics.

I hope you all enjoy the blog; I will try to post fairly frequently, and please feel free to leave comments!
 


©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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    Emily Kowalski Schroeder

    Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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