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. (more…)
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Babci Mary’s Polish Soup
Happy Mother’s day!
Okay; Mary is not my grandmother. In fact, we’re only related by marriage. Since I came across the existence of Babci Mary from a cousin I’ve never met in person, I decided that this would be a great opportunity to get to know my cousin. By proxy, I’ve gotten to know my own family better.
“Babci” Mary is the beautiful woman seated to the far right. Bernie’s mother is the little blonde seated next to her; his grandfather Joannes “John” is seated on the left. We have speculated that the man standing on the right is my great-grandfather Michael. Michael and Joannes were brothers. Babci is a Polish word meaning grandmother. It is pronounced bob-chee with the emphasis on the last syllable, making the last consonant in the first syllable sound more like p.
I met my cousin Bernie on Facebook when I started this blog. Hoping to connect with other family researchers, I created a companion Stories From the Past Facebook group. Many researchers have joined the group, along with friends and childhood classmates. Thanks to my father’s familial connections on Facebook, I was further connected to many cousins from Southwestern New York and Northwestern Pennsylvania. Bernie is one of those cousins. (more…)
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A Boy and His Sister
Warning: Despite my insistence that this blog is all about graveyards and dead people, it’s really about family history. This story is about part of my family, and it is part of my children’s history, so even though they are still alive to tell this story themselves, I’m going to tell it now to keep it from becoming untold.
My baby boy turns twenty this weekend. I haven’t been able to get him out of my mind because he lives nearly three hundred miles away. I have been too ill to travel for the last year or so. I’ve been having car problems too. So has Jake. I miss him terribly, but he promises to come and visit soon, and I can’t wait. Yes, this is the story of a boy and his sister. I’m getting to that–I promise.
But first, a little about a boy and his music. I usually begin my day by listening to uplifting music, and today was no different. I began by listening to “Bring Him Home” from Les Miserables, but that got me thinking of sons in general, which got me thinking of Jake. Again. And then I began wondering why I hadn’t listened to anything from Waiting for Compromise lately. In fact, I’ve been avoiding it.
You see, Jake is the lead singer in a band (Waiting for Compromise). Or am I supposed to say was? I don’t know. He is one of three extremely talented singer/songwriters. Two are brothers, and then there’s Jake. Jake moved to the other end of the state for a full-time job about a year and a half ago, and the two brothers have done a pretty good job of keeping their band going despite the fact that Jake is no longer around. In fact, they’ve even released their first album. Jake wasn’t able to be around for most of the recordings, so he doesn’t sing in many of them. But this one, “Morning’s Coming Soon,” brought me to tears:
Jake does sing in this one. He’s the crazy blonde always up front and in the middle. It’s not the song itself that makes me cry, but the video montage, the fact that the boys are separated, and the lyrics. They probably did it on purpose just to make me cry. Well, it worked, so I’ve been avoiding their music for a while. To be fair though, Jake tells me it makes him cry too. (more…)
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Traditional Christmas Eve in Poland- Wigilia w Polsce- tradycje
Just found this blog post today. I love it because it gives insight to Polish traditions and life in Poland from the prospective of a transplant. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to post weekly. Having three active blogs, this may seem difficult, but having access to great re-posts such as this one will make things a bit easier.In Poland, Christmas Eve is a day first of fasting, then of feasting. The Christmas Eve feast begins at the appearance of the first star. There is no red meat served but fish, usually carp. The supper, which includes many traditional dishes and desserts, can sometimes last for over two hours. It is followed by the exchange of gifts. The next day, the Christmas Day, is often spent visiting friends and family. In Polish tradition, people combine religion and family closeness at Christmas. Although gift-giving plays a major role in the rituals, emphasis is placed more on the making of special foods and decorations.
As mentioned before on the night of Christmas Eve, so important is the appearance of the first star in remembrance of the Star of Bethlehem. On that evening, children watch the sky anxiously hoping to be the first to cry out, “The star has come!” Only after…
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I went to the cemetery looking for my family. I think I found them.
A few days ago I decided to change my screensaver on my PC. I thought I’d look up places where my ancestors lived and fill my screensaver scroll with interesting photos of those places to provide inspiration for my family search and for blog posts. You wouldn’t believe the stories I uncovered! Right here, in the good ol’ U S of A!
But first, a few shots from my past in the old world:
Wimpassing Im Schwarzatalle, Lower Austria , where my maternal grandmother was born. Yes, those are the Alps in the far background.(http://www.bergfex.at/sommer/wimpassing-im-schwarzatale/) 
Hanstein Castle, near Hanover Germany where my maternal grandfather was born. (http://posture.doonks.com/hanover.html) 
The only Jewish synagogue in the old Jewish sector of Pressburg, Austria, now Bratislava, Slovakia. Did my maternal great-great-grandfather, Rabbi Rudolf Abeles preside over a congregation here?(http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Europe/Slovakia/Bratislava-686020/Things_To_Do-Bratislava-Jewish_Life-BR-1.html) 
Bydgoszcz, Poland where my great-grandparents immigrated from. (http://allworldtowns.com/cities/bydgoszcz.html) 
One of the few remaining buildings in a tiny place called Kwiatkow in Poland. If I go back far enough, will I find that my surname originated here? The photographs of the old world are amazing, but I do have ancestors from the colonial days in America too. My paternal grandmother was born in Potter County, Pennsylvania, and my grandfather, son of Polish immigrants, was born in Cattaraugus County, New York. The two counties share state borders, and from what I’ve heard, Grandma must have crossed the state line where she met my grandfather. I’ve actually driven through Cattaraugus County, and I even stopped in the City where my father and grandfather were born (probably the same city where my grandparents met, considering it is rural New York, and it really is more of a small town), so I really was more interested in seeing images from the Pennsylvania side. (more…)
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Know Your Groups
If you’re lucky, your family has never immigrated. It happens. But since the discovery of the Americas, people have been migrating with increasing frequency. No matter where you live, if you are anything other than indigenous, you can be sure you will find immigrants in your past. People marry outside their traditional cultural and social sets all the time, bringing more groups into the mixture.
While this is usually a good thing, it often makes it difficult to do genealogy. But as my family has found, focusing on one family group at a time helps to organize and focus on the task at hand.
Take a look at my family: (more…)
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A Renewed Tribute to Tante Rosa
A couple of months ago I had to delete one of my blog posts: “A Tribute to Tante Rosa.” I had linked the post to the Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California because I would not have been able to write my tribute without access to their research on the Holocaust. Unfortunately, the Shoah Foundation attracted malicious hackers, and my blog post had to be removed in order to protect the rest of my web site. Why is it that tragedy attracts malevolence?
Tante Rosa as a child Today I am rewriting my tribute to Tante Rosa (Rosa Daniel), since I did not save it in any other form. I will not be linking my site again to theirs, but I do recommend looking up USC Shoah Foundation. It does a great job at personalizing genocide, something we should all make personal.
If we can’t relate to it, we have no reason to put an end to it.
Tante Rosa’s story has been intrinsically connected to my appetite for genealogy. I truly believe that we are all products of our past, and that those who came before us help to define who we are today. For example, my mom tells me that my brother walks with the same swagger that my grandfather had; and I know that my daughter suffers from the same anxiety and depression that I believe came from Rosa’s sister: my grandmother. My mother and I have it too. As I learn more about each of my ancestors, I begin to understand how customs, traditions, physical characteristics, and yes, behaviors, are kept alive in myself. (more…)
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A new Branch on my Family Tree
My silence for the past few weeks has not been purposeful. After the birth of my newest grandchild, I spent some time caring for his big sister, and then nursing a sinus infection. I’d like to say that I am over the sinus infection, but every time I say so, it flares back up again. And on days when it does, I am not capable of thinking straight enough to catch up on my writing. This morning was another rough one, but I’m feeling better for now.
So about that new grandkid. He’s a cutie! Brody was nine pounds and six ounces, and we assumed he was completely healthy; but on the morning that he was scheduled to go home, the doctor came into my daughter-in-law’s room to tell her that Brody had been moved to NICU.
Brody spent a week hooked up to tubes and monitors fighting off an unknown infection. He’s home now, and doing fine. He’s been to the doctor twice already just to make sure.
One thing that everyone said when they saw that big boy with piles of black hair is that he looks like a little Navajo boy. I said it too. Because he is.
Brody’s mom is half Italian and half Navajo. His grandmother on his mother’s side was born on the reservation in Arizona. Brody won’t know his Navajo grandmother. She died about a year ago. His grandmother was kind of like my grandmother. She didn’t like to talk much about her life on the reservation (my grandmother didn’t talk about being Jewish), so Brody’s mom doesn’t know much about being Navajo (like my mom didn’t know about being a Jew).
With my daughter-in-law, we have a whole new limb grafted into our nearly 100% European tree. That new limb brings some authenticity to the transplanting of our tree in North American soil. But it also brings a different way of doing genealogy.
I lived for just one year in Page, Arizona, where I taught English to students from the Navajo Reservation. I fell in love with the Navajo people and their ways of doing things. Because of that year, I know a little more about the Navajo way than my daughter-in-law does. We are both looking forward to learning more about the Navajo culture as we help Brody and his big sister grow.
So . . . Ya’at’eeh. Welcome to the world, little Brody!
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I’m Thankful for Geneabloggers
One thing I hate about Christmas–it takes over both months of November and December, and Thanksgiving tends to get thrown in as an afterthought. I love Thanksgiving because it reminds me to stop and think of all of the many reasons I have to be grateful.
This month I am busy being grateful for my talent. If you haven’t already noticed, I’m a writer. I have never written a full-length novel, and I am taking advantage of NaNoWriMo to get a good start on one. This means that I won’t be writing full posts in my blogs for a few weeks.
I have decided that this would be a great time to explore Geneabloggers and see what I can find that interests me. And for a genealogist and writer, nothing is more interesting than a good book about real people. Enter Literature and Genealogy by Jeannie M. Martin (http://www.literatureandgenealogy.com).
Check out Jeannie’s recent commentary on some great genealogical reads:
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Death-It runs in the family
A curious thing about my ancestors–they’re all dead. It’s the one thing they have in common. When they die, they get buried. At least back in the day, that’s what they did. Today, cremation is a definite possibility, and it’s getting more common. Especially in Europe where they are running out of room for all of the bodies. But where did the bodies of our Euro-American ancestors go? I have some guesses, and going by family names, religions, places of settlement, and places of origin, I’d bet some good money that I’ve got late relatives buried in each one of the cemeteries I found.
Of course, I promised that I’d do some looking into the Polhemus family cemetery where my 5th great-grandfather was buried. You would think that would be an easy thing considering that the cemetery is smack in the middle of American Revolutionary history. Not so. None of the links to Colts Neck New Jersey Cemeteries seem to be working correctly. However, I was able to get some interesting photos with definite possibilities.
I did some sleuth work, based on things I know about the Wyckoff family. First, I know that they are Dutch; we have traced their records back to the Netherlands. Second, I know that they originally settled in the area of Monmouth County in New Jersey. Third, I have some evidence from Find-a-Grave that indicates that Aukey Wyckoff was buried in the Polhemus family cemetery in Colt’s Neck, New Jersey. And, of course, I know their last name would have been Wikoff, Wykoff, or Wyckoff. Knowing these things, I have come up with the following photos:
The Polhemus family cemetery, where Auke Wykoff is said to be buried, is located in the Colts Neck Reformed Church Cemetery. This makes sense, since most Dutch immigrants belonged to the Dutch Reformend Church. This is the only photo I could find of the “church” or cemetery. 
The Flatbush Dutch Reformed Church in Monmouth county. I would not be surprised at all to find ancestors buried here, even if they are not Wyckoffs. 
This is actually a screenshot of a street-view looking at the Wyckoff Reformed Church Cemetery in New Jersey. 
The Wyckoff Reformed Church 
There are so many possibilities in New Jersey. I would love to take a trip there sometime and do some cemetery hopping. It would be a lot of fun to see how many of my Dutch ancestors I can find while I am there.
StoriesFromthePast.com 
