Four months ago, I began making plans to revive this blog. I began reorganizing my schedule, but just one week later, my plans were thwarted by the news that we were moving back across the country for my husband’s job. He had about two weeks’ notice, which meant he had to fly out and get started looking for a place in Kentucky immediately. I was the lucky one who got the job of managing the logistics of moving the whole household, including my daughter and granddaughter.
I didn’t have much time for researching genealogy or looking into new stories, even though I did manage to get Babci Mary’s Polish Soup published. It required a Facebook conversation and an hour’s worth of research on FamilySearch. The actual blog post took just a bit longer. In the meantime, I began gathering information for a new blog post similar to the previous one, and thus began my Cousin Connections project (coming soon). I couldn’t even touch it though, for a couple of months after the move. In fact, I’m still unpacking and paring down (we had two households combined into one). Whew! I’m glad the worst is over with.
Moving was bad news for a more timely blog revival, but it is great news for my family search. I was born in California and raised in Utah where I have lived for most of my life. My mother is a first generation American with just two siblings. I can count all of my maternal first cousins on both hands and most of them live in the Midwest. My paternal grandfather was also first generation. Many of those cousins are still in southwestern New York. My paternal grandmother is really the only family that I don’t know much at all about, and her roots run deep in Northern Pennsylvania.
Moving across the country gives me more and better opportunities to make familial connections with the places and stories of my family’s past in the U.S. Another short Facebook discussion with my recently connected cousin Bernie last night verified what I had been thinking: I am now just a day’s drive from most of my American cousins. Yay!
Time to do some exploring. First stop, Chicago, to make new connections with my husband’s side of the family (It’s a wedding–perfect occasion). I’m planning to come home with more stories to tell.
Connections I can make so far (just off the top of my head):
US locations:
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Illinois, Missouri, Texas, Utah, California
Other locations:
Czech Republic, Czechoslovakia, Netherlands, Prussia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Wales, England, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Canada, Hong Kong,
A handful of surnames:
Abeles, Barrett, Bauer, Berfield, Bartram, Bertram, Brent, Boe, Chyung, Couvenhoven, Couwenhoven, Daniel, Daniels, Davis, Davies, Doherty, Freigant, Hammende, Henry, Jordan, Kempa, Klussmeier, Knight, Kwiatkowski, Lane, Lefferts, McDowell, Meier, Schenck, Skeen, Sterling, Szadlowska/Szadlowski, Walker, Williams, Wozniak, Wyckoff, Wykoff, Van Horn, Van Mater, Van Ness, Yee
STORIES FROM THE PAST 