©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder
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This is an 1863 Civil War Draft Registration List for several counties in western Ohio. My husband's great-great-great-grandfather, Andrew Brunswick, is listed. He immigrated to America from Germany in 1853 under the name of Andreas Braunswig. He married Philomena Oldendick in 1855, with whom he had eight children, and worked as a farmer in Auglaize County, Ohio. So far, I have been unable to determine whether or not he actually did serve actively in the military during the Civil War. He died in Mercer County, Ohio in 1898. Can you imagine being a recent immigrant to America right before or during the U.S. Civil War? And then all of a sudden being asked to fight and perhaps die in a war for which you have no understanding of the causes? I highly recommend reading this series entitled The Immigrants' Civil War published online by LongIslandWins.com. It's an ongoing blog discussing how the foreign-born population influenced the Civil War and vice versa. Definitely a must-read if you are interested in Civil War and/or immigrant history.  Civil War Draft Registration for Andrew Brunswick Source Citation: National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington, D.C.; Consolidated Lists of Civil War Draft Registration Records (Provost Marshal General's Bureau; Consolidated Enrollment Lists, 1863-1865); Record Group: 110, Records of the Provost Marshal General's Bureau (Civil War); Collection Name: Consolidated Enrollment Lists, 1863-1865 (Civil War Union Draft Records); ARC Identifier: 4213514; Archive Volume Number: 3 of 3.
©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder Unless you live under a log, by now you've heard all the hype surrounding Hurricane Sandy which will make landfall along the U.S. Mid-Atlantic Coast tomorrow. Even though I don't work as a meteorologist anymore, I am nonetheless still very much fascinated by these large weather events and the impacts that they have on people and society. I still regularly look at weather observations, maps, and computer forecasting models. And, like most professional forecasters, I like to compare current storm happenings with historical events. So, today I thought I would blog about the New England Hurricane of 1938. Here is a surface analysis map from 21 Sep 1938 (left) and the current storm (right):
The 1938 Hurricane was actually much stronger than Sandy; it reached Category 5 status on the Saffir-Simpson Scale while it was still over open waters with sustained winds up to 160 mph. It has been estimated that it was probably a Category 3 with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph when it made landfall in Long Island, New York on the afternoon of September 21st. As it approached New England, the storm's forward speed reached an incredible 70 mph, which, when added to the already-fast rotational winds, made the total observed winds at landfall even higher on the right-hand side of the storm.  Great Hurricane of 1938 path. One of my favorite actresses, Katharine Hepburn, experienced this storm first-hand, and it left such a strong impression on her that she dedicated a chapter to it in her autobiography, Me: Stories of My Life. She describes what she and her family members went through in their home on the Connecticut coast:
"Then there was a rip and a crash and the big laundry wing fell off the back of the house. By this time, the wind seemed to have doubled its strength and the tide had risen up over the bulkhead and was rushing across the lawn. The house, which was a big old wooden house built in about 1870, was shaking like a leaf. Windows were being blown out or sucked in. Two of the chimneys had blown down." She then goes on to describe how she, her mother, her brother, and their cook escaped the doomed house by climbing out of a dining room window with a rope and then running to higher ground. About 15 minutes after they escaped, the house "just sailed away - easy as pie - and soon there was nothing at all left on the spot where the house stood for over 60 years." The storm became known as the 'Long Island Express.' It is estimated that anywhere between 600 and 800 people were killed and that 57,000 structures were damaged or destroyed. Thousands of fishing and shipping vessels were also destroyed, which was devastating to the region's economy. The cost of damage in 1938 was about $306 million, which would be equivalent to around $6.3 billion in today's dollars. IF this strong of a hurricane were to ever make landfall along the Long Island and Connecticut coastlines today, the property damage would be well into the tens of billions simply due to the fact that population in these areas has grown a lot since 1938, which means more structures and more personal property would be in danger of destruction. And THAT is one of the reasons why Hurricane Sandy is getting so much press today. Sandy is not as strong of a hurricane as the Long Island Express was, BUT it is a very LARGE, expansive storm that is going to affect millions of people just because of the sheer population density of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states. I worked as a meteorologist in the insurance industry, and I am confident that the damage caused by Sandy will be well over a billion dollars. The one benefit of experiencing a hurricane today as opposed to in 1938 is the improvements in weather monitoring and forecasting. Some of the computer forecast models saw this situation coming together over a week ago, and satellite tracking of hurricanes is an invaluable tool to meteorologists today that forecasters in 1938 simply did not have. We have more time to get prepared today, which, as any emergency manager will tell you, does save lives. Because our grandparents and great-grandparents lived in Ohio, my husband and I do not have any people in our family tree who were affected by the 1938 storm. Do you have any ancestors that were affected by this 1938 storm? If you are in the path of Sandy, what are you doing to get ready? ©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder When I married my husband, I was somewhat looking forward to taking his last name. I had grown up with a Polish surname, and it was actually one of the easier Polish names to spell and pronounce. However, I found that once I left my very ethnic hometown where such names were common, I was continually asked to repeat my name and spell it out S-L-O-W-L-Y (and then they'd still get it wrong!). So, I thought to myself, 'Schroeder' - fairly common and straightforward, right? Well, not so much, really. I soon learned that there are many ways to spell what sounds like schro-der or schro-ter, and that it may actually be pronounced schra-der or schra-ter depending on each family's tradition of saying it. The name Schroeder (and all of is mix-and-match variants like S(c)hra(t)der and S(c)hro(e)ter) is a common and old family name with origins in medieval Northern Germany. It comes from the Middle Low German word(s) schroden/schraden which means "to cut," and it was a surname first given to tailors (people who cut cloth for a living), occasionally shoemakers (people who cut leather for a living), and also to draymen who would drive around large carts and deliver bulk quantities of beer and wine. Now we're talking! I have been able to trace my husband's Schroeder family back to Frank Schroeder, who came to America probably sometime around 1850. I don't know the exact year because I haven't found his immigration ship manifest yet. In the 1860 Census, his place of birth is listed as Oldenburg, Germany, which is in the northern part of the country.  Surname information source: http://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?view=3&surname=schroeder
©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder Ghostbusters: If I'm not mistaken, it was the first film my brother and I saw at a drive-in movie theater. Of course, we became huge fans, not only of the movie, but also the clothing, the toys, the breakfast cereal - you name it! Here we are at Halloween that year; I was the ghost and he was the Ghostbuster.    ©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder
 Today, I made up my mind to send Facebook friend requests to several of my second cousins (people who have the same great-grandparents as me) on my mom's side of the family. Some of these people I've only ever met maybe twice in my life, a couple of them I would see once or twice a year when I was younger. I also sent a message to one of my late grandmother's cousins who lives in France, in the hopes that she may be able to tell me more about that side of the family.
These are big steps for me to take. I am thankful for Facebook and its usefulness in finding those more distant family members. Those of you who know me know that I'm really not much of a "people person." If I had to call these second cousins on the telephone, I'm almost positive I wouldn't do it. But, I've put a lot of time and effort into researching this particular side of the family, and I've found a lot of cool and interesting things about our great-grandparents that I want to be able to share with them. I even have some photos of us together when we were kids - from those very sporadic times when we did see each other. Actually, I am probably getting a little ahead of myself - I'm not even sure they will recognize my name and accept my friend request. And who knows if they will even be interested in what I've found? I will be sure to keep everyone posted. :-) ©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder  Photo taken during our recent visit to Boston, August 2012 ©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder
 St. Peter Cemetery, St. Peter (Mercer County), Ohio This is the burial place of two of my husband's great-great-grandparents on his mother's side of the family. John M. Braun was born and died in St. Peter, Ohio, where he worked as a farmer his entire life. His wife, Louisa Kahlig, was born in Austria and immigrated with her family to America when she was about a year old. They were married in St. Peter and had ten children, all of whom survived well into adulthood.
©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder When I was first starting my family tree research, I ran into a bit of a roadblock when searching for information related to one of my paternal great-grandmothers. At first, all I knew was that she was a Polish immigrant who lived in Cleveland, and who died when my grandfather was a young child. All my dad and his siblings knew about her was that she went by 'Lottie.' I was able to piece together some clues through other family documents I found: I knew she had died by 1920 because my great-grandfather was listed as "widowed" in the 1920 census. My great-uncle's obituary listed her name as "Lottie Gacka," so all right, I thought, now I have her maiden name. I searched the engines on various genealogy sites for Lottie Kowalski (her married name) and Lottie Gacka, but I couldn't find any records that I could definitively link to my great-grandfather. In fact, as I was scrolling through the many records returned by the search engines, I soon realized that 'Lottie' was a common nickname adopted by Polish immigrant women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So, at this point, I feel like my only choice is to scroll through and check ALL of the records returned by the search engines, even those with names that would not initially seem to be a match, in the hopes of discovering some clue that would lead me in the right direction. I was doing this on FamilySearch.org and came across a 1919 death record for a woman by the name of 'Władysława Kowalska.' The record also listed her father as 'Stanisław Gacki.' Hmmm, 'Kowalska' and 'Gacki' are close to 'Kowalski' and 'Gacka,' but, again, I had NO idea if this really was her first name, so I couldn't be sure it was her. I printed it out, though, and hoped that it may be an important clue. Now, when I initially found this record, FamilySearch had not yet uploaded the actual image of the death certificate, so I couldn't learn anything else from it. Fast forward 6-8 months. I went back on FamilySearch to examine the record again and found that they HAD uploaded the actual death certificate:  "Ohio, Deaths, 1908-1953," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/X8L9-NC9 : accessed 04 Nov 2012), Wladyslarva Kowalska, 1919; citing reference fn 52304, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio. And there he was at the bottom - Informant: Dominik Kowalski - my great-grandfather. Now, I KNEW without a doubt that it was her. And then I was a tad angry with myself for not realizing that Poles traditionally spell surnames differently depending on if you are a man or a woman. I have read enough Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in my life to know that this is true in Russia, but I suppose I had never been exposed to it as part of Polish culture. This explains the 'Kowalska' instead of 'Kowalski' and even the 'Gacka' instead of 'Gacki.' Even though she had been in America six years, she maintained her female surname, even if she did adopt a more "American" first name. And then of course AFTER I went through all of this with the death certificate, I found my great-grandfather's immigrant ship manifest on which he listed Władysława as "nearest relative in country from whence (he) came." If only I had found THIS document first - then I wouldn't have had to go through the whole mystery with the death record and trying to figure out her real name. Ah, but we all know that researching family history isn't always that simple. :-)  Source Citation: Year: 1912; Arrival; Microfilm Serial: T715; Microfilm Roll: 1850; Line: 8; Page Number: 76. Source Information: Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Because she died quite young, these are the only two documents I have found that reference Władysława. I am still on the hunt for her immigrant ship manifest; she came over about a year after my great-grandfather with her three sons ages four, two, and eight months. (I can't even imagine doing that on my own - she was obviously a very brave, a very strong woman.) By the way, the name 'Władysława' is the female equivalent of Władysław, which comes from the Russian name of Vladislav. It means "to rule with glory." ***STOP THE BLOG PRESSES! UPDATE!*** Ok, so literally right after I typed that sentence above about being on the hunt for her immigrant ship manifest, I went to Ancestry.com. Because I knew she was traveling with her sons, I tried searching for the manifest using the name 'Jan Kowalski,' who was her eldest son. I had previously discovered his immigration application papers, so I knew the exact date they entered the country and the ship name. I had to scroll through quite a few pages - 'Jan Kowalski' is literally the Polish equivalent of 'John Smith,' so there were a lot of records - but I found the manifest! Here is Władysława with her three sons, Jan, Stanisław, and Josef, all listed with her surname of 'Kowalska.' And her father, Stanisław Gacki, is listed as next of kin, so that matches the information on her death certificate.  Source Citation: Year: 1913; Arrival; Microfilm Serial: T715; Microfilm Roll: 2194; Line: 25; Page Number: 43.
Source Information: Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. ©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder Yesterday evening after the kids went to sleep, I was casually fooling around on FamilySearch.org, trying to find any records from Poland regarding my great-grandparents. I didn't intend to spend much time on it; I was just killing some time before my own bedtime. I didn't find any Polish records, but I did FINALLY find my great-grandfather and his family in the 1930 U.S. Census. I had made several earnest attempts over the past year and a half to find it, with no success. Their last name of 'Kowalski' was transcribed as 'Koralski,' and Ancestry.com had listed 'Korchske' as an alternate possibility, which, of course, was WAY off. I suppose this may have been the first time I used the FamilySearch search engine on this name, and it obviously did a better job of pulling up close matches than the Ancestry search engine did so many times before. It was nice to be able to add a 'missing piece' to one of my family binders before going to sleep. If you use both FamilySearch and Ancestry regularly, do you find that one search engine performs better than the other for particular situations/topics? I am curious of other peoples' opinions. :-)  Source Citation: Year: 1930; Census Place: Cleveland, Cuyahoga, Ohio; Roll: 1770; Page: 17B; Enumeration District: 227; Image: 285.0; FHL microfilm: 2341504. Source Information: Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls. If you use both FamilySearch and Ancestry regularly, do you find that one search engine performs better than the other for particular situations/topics? I am curious of other peoples' opinions. :-)
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