Shalom and Hanukkah Sameach! Hanukkah 2017 begins this evening. And because I do identify as Jewish by virtue of my ancestral birthright, we find no problem with fitting it in among our celebrations of the season.
Being Jewish has everything to do with my passion for Family History. I grew up knowing that my grandmother was a Jew, but I did not feel its impact until I was required to read The Diary of Anne Frank in junior high school. The connections I made between my grandmother, Anne, and the Holocaust suddenly became very real to me, and I longed to know more about my own family’s experiences during those dark days, but it would be several decades before the truths of those times would come to light.
I know that my personal commitment to religious, cultural, and racial tolerance had its beginnings in those early literature and history lessons. I was solidly struck by the fact that I would have been targeted for death camps had I lived in Europe during those rough times, simply because my grandmother was born into Judaism. I could not wrap my mind around the fact that my whole family could have been slaughtered based on the identity of one grandparent. I still can’t.
Those early lessons in prejudice and religious/racial tension led me to want to know more. As I learned, the desire to understand that extreme commitment to birthright and religious heritage led me to make connections between my parents’ chosen religion and the tenets of faith espoused by my third great grandfather, Rabbi Heinrich Abeles.
For the longest time, the only things I knew about my Jewish predecessors were related to what I could learn through my history classes at school and church. Unfortunately, those lessons were limited to the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, and the older-than-dirt-and-twice-as-dusty Old Testament, the latter of which I found beyond boring. In the intervening years between high school and the advent of the internet, I was able to glean a few more insights into Judaism, but really only enough to help me to understand the basic differences between Christmas and Hanukkah, along with the fact that all of those “potato pancakes” I’d been eating over the years as a side dish to Mom’s Christmas Saurbraten, were really Latkes, the traditional food of Hanukkah.
This photo was taken from our 2016 celebration. Tonight, Jews all over the world will light the first candle to begin their festivities.
Thanks to the internet though, I have been able to bring to life the Jewish commitment to God and tradition, and to intertwine them with my past and present. It was during those early days of inquiry that led me to understand myself as a Messianic Jew. I think there is an actual established religion out there that identifies as such, but for me, Messianic Jew is simply a way to identify my personal faith in Jesus Christ as the god of the Old Testament (“Yahweh”—whose name is too sacred to be spoken aloud). Since then, I have not only learned how to make Hanukkah an annual tradition in my home, but I have learned how music, prayer, and practice come together to make religion an integral part of daily life as a Jew. I have even been able to participate in, and appreciate, the deeply spiritual Passover Seder. Those early days of inquiry and discovery brought that dusty Old Testament back to life for me.
But doing Jewish genealogy has not been so easy. This has a lot to do with the Holocaust and the intersection of German, Hebrew, and Yiddish languages, upon none of which anyone in my family has much of a grasp. We have struggled to make connections between my grandmother’s verbal history and the truth of her past as a European Jew with not much to go on. Were it not for a handful of trinkets, photographs, and letters in a handwritten language we have yet to decipher, that past would have been nothing more than rumor.
All of that changed exactly one month ago when I received an email from a woman I’ve never met by the name of Ruth Contreras. Ruth’s letter asked about the family of Rudolf and Charlotte Abeles. She implored, “If there is the possibility to get into contact with someone of the descendants of the Abeles Family you may give them my e-mail address . . . so they can decide if they want to contact me.” Ruth not only provided the names of my great-great grandparents, but the name of my great grandmother along with the name and birthdate of my grandmother, all of whom had lived in Pitten, Austria at one point or another. This was information we already had on record, but her letter indicated that she could provide even more that we did not have. I was so overcome with excitement I had to read the email three times before I could actually believe what I was reading. The first thing I did was call my mother, after which I swiftly replied, “We are very pleased to report that you have made direct contact with descendants of the Abeles family in the United States.”
Ruth Contreras, the lovely woman who would not give up her search until we were found. (Photo Courtesy of Ruth Contreras).
After a series of back and forth emails in which we both asked and answered questions, I asked Ruth for a candid interview regarding her background and interest in finding my family. To my delight she was completely forthcoming in her answers. Ruth’s family had been next door neighbors to my family before all of the residents in the Jewish sector of Pitten were displaced or murdered in the dark days of the Holocaust. As I told her, “We must not let the world forget.” Ruth agreed, and the interview proceeded as follows:
Q: Would you prefer to be called just Ruth, or may I also share your surname?
A: You may do as you like and feel better.
Q: I have noticed that your official title is “Mag. Dr.” Does the Mag. stand for magistrate? Is the Dr. a Doctrate of Philosophy or some other kind of doctor? If magistrate, are you a magistrate for the town of Pitten?
A: My titles are „Master of science“ (I studied biology and have been teaching for some year in Vienna at a highschool.) and Dr. phil. Yes, indeed when I studied in spite of studying a branch of natural sciences the degree was Dr. phil. I have been working as an entomologist at the Natural History Museum in Vienna since 1972. From 1995 to 2003 (my retirement) I was the Head of the Department of Entomology at the Natural History Museum. After my retirement I did some terms of Jewish Studies at the University in Vienna.
A more detailed biography of Ruth Contreras along with a photograph of her family’s home in Pitten.
Q: I can see that you have a personal vestment in this project, but do you also have a more official role in the Jews of Bucklige Welt project? What is your role?
A: One of my interests is the history of Jews in Austria before the Shoah. I am working since several years on a project about the Jews that lived in the 10th district of Vienna and so I learned first about Rosa Rebecca Abeles who was deported from Alxingergasse 97 to Theresienstadt.
Some years ago I was interviewed for a book on the history of our family and the house where we are living: Johann Hagenhofer, Gert Dressel (editors) (2014) „Eine Bucklige Welt – Krieg und Verfolgung im Land der Tausend Hügel.“ ISBN: 978-3200037342 . Publisher:Alois Mayrhofer.
Q: What is the official name of the project, and how did it come about?
A: Last year I was invited by Dr. Hagenhofer to participate in the team that is doing research for a project „Die jüdische Bevölkerung der Region Bucklige Welt – Wechselland“
(English translation:The Jewish Population of the Bucklige Welt Region – Wechselland. Bucklige Welt covers more than 23 villages with approximately 39,000 inhabitants. Wechselland is a region of mountains and valleys in Lower Austria, South of Vienna. )
Q: Will there be a museum? A book? A website?
A: This project is part of the preparation for a regional Jewish Museum in Bad Erlach, which will be inaugurated in on occasion of the Lower Austrian Provincial Exhibition 2019 and yes, there are also plans for a book.
Q: How many towns in the region does the project cover?
A: We are 17 working on this project on about 25 villages and their former Jewish fellow citizens.As I am living in Pitten and had already some information, I was invited to participate in this project.
Q: How did you know to look for the Abeles family, and what was important about Rudolf, Lotti, and their children?
A: The history of the Jaul- Family in Pitten was known as well as the history of our house. In order to get more information I started with the permission of the Mayor of Pitten to check old registries at the school in Pitten where I found the information on Josefine Daniel and Heinrich Abeles. The other children of Rudolf have been added with the help of the archive of the Jewish Community in Vienna and by using the Austrian genealogical website https://www.genteam.at/.
The other important source where the registration forms where I found Rosa Rebecca repeatedly also hosting people at her home and this last document when she had to leave Pitten..
From the registration forms at the municipal archive in Wr. Neustadt I learned that Jakob Abeles had changed his name into Aldor.
The next step was to go to the Jewish Cemetery in Neunkirchen where I found the gravestone of Franziska Daniel. There is also a grave stone of a Ruben Abeles. The letters are in Hebrew, do you know the Hebrew name of your great great grandfather?
(The only name we have for my great-great grandfather is Rudolph)
Q: What was the surname of your family living next door to the Abeles family?
A: My grandparents who bought the house in 1917 were Rosa and Fritz Weiss. My parents were Elfi Lichtenberg (maiden name Weiss) and Franz Lichtenberg.
Q: Do you have any details of comradery or community between the families that can be shared?
A. I have no information if there was any contact between the families. As I told you, my mother did not talk much about this. My grandmother was born in 1880 (she was two years younger than the youngest son of Rudolf Abeles who was born in 1878) Maybe he did not even live there anymore. My mother was born in 1904 and my dad was born in 1907 so I think there was too much difference in the ages of them.
Q: How difficult was it to find us, and what led you to my website?
A: As Rosa Rebecca was the third person directly deported from Pitten I considered it important to find more information about this family. And yes, it was not easy at all to find your blog. After having contacted several groups of 2nd generation of survivors of the Shoah without success it was really by incident that I tried by using Google to look if I could find something about Josephine Daniel Wimpassing and came to your article A Renewed Tribute to Tante Rosa – Stories From the Past .
(Rosa Rebecca was a previously unidentified daughter of Rudolph Abeles. She was my great-great aunt)
One of the most fun parts of the Hanukkah celebration is the dreidel game. The dreidel is a four-sided spinner with the Hebrew letters nun, gimmel, hey, shin; one letter appears on each side. My children have very fond memories of that game which we played as a family. The letters stand for the Hebrew words, nes gadol haya sham, meaning “a great miracle happenedthere.” For my family,connecting with Ruth is a great miracle, and we are so very thankful to welcome her as a new part of our continued quest to discover the truth of our Judaistic past.
Most of my followers read my blog for just one reason: to find information regarding their own family history. This post is simply to update you on my situation and when you can expect to hear more about the family history interests that brought you to me in the first place.
Since my post regarding Grave’s disease a couple of years ago, I have undergone radiation therapy to shut down my thyroid. Living without a thyroid requires daily synthetic replacement. In the past couple of months I have suffered from hypothyroid symptoms that severely affect my general mental alertness. It is difficult to focus, stay awake, and remain pain and symptom free if I sit at the computer for more than just a few minutes. Hence my recent post regarding tennis elbow (just one symptom of the larger disorder). To make my long story short, I have been back to the doctor and am having my medication adjusted. In the meantime, my blog has suffered.
Please accept my sincere apologies. Many of the posts I had planned for the past few weeks just haven’t happened. I do expect my blog to return to normal function as my body responds accordingly. So here is what you can expect over the next few weeks and into the new year:
An introduction to my new friend from Austria, Ruth Contreras. She was just as anxious to find me as I have been anxious to find family members in Austria. We are both very grateful to have found each other. Ruth’s project, a recovery of pre-holocaust Jewish families from the Bucklige Welt region in Austria is a very exciting development.
Another Cousin Connection to Kwiatkowski brothers living in Hawaii, along with their holiday traditions.
My very first ancestor landing page featuring my great-great grandfather, Rudolf Abeles from Austria. My grandmother was very close to him, and even lived with him in Pitten during his later years where she attended primary school and helped him with daily tasks. We believe he lived to be 99 years old!
An exploration of Sephardic Jews in Europe, and how one particular Sephardic family ended up in Austtria. (My mother always said she would take a hard look into the mirror looking for evidence of her Spanish heritage).
My second ancestor landing page featuring Aucke Wykoff. He was a Colonel in the American Revolution, and was credited with saving the life of a fellow POW in the infamous New York Sugar House Prison. The man he saved was more than just a friend, he was a member of the family.
An exploration of life in the Sugar House prison and how Aucke Wykoff was related to Toby Polhemus.
In the next year, I’ll be updating and revisiting the life of Mary Davis Skeen, the woman who started my journey to learn more about Plain
Just one example of Kentucky’s historical stone fences.
City Utah’s Pioneer History, and the inspiration for this website.
A deeper look into the people and events that make up this place that is my new home. I’ll begin with a close look at the historical “Slave Fences” of Kentucky and the efforts to preserve them. I see evidence of this Irish stonecraft everywhere around here.
In the meantime, I have discovered some exciting information about Family History in Kentucky. I was able to visit the public library for the first time yesterday, and found some amazing help for family historians. There is tons of information available through their resources, and I want to showcase their upcoming Tuesday afternoon online events from 3-4 pm Eastern Standard Time:
P.S. You don’t need to have a library card or even live in Kentucky for these online events. To view online, tune into @KentonLibrary on Periscope (available on your smartphone or tablet), or at periscope.tv/kentonlibrary. Dec. 5 and 12 events look like they’d be interesting for people everywhere, especially those with German and/or Christian backgrounds.
In honor of Mexico’s Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), which officially begins at midnight, November’s Cousin Connection comes one day early. Coinciding with the the Catholic All Saints Day, and incorporating garish costumes resembling skeletons, Dia de los Muertos is not Mexican Halloween, but a much more elaborate version of Memorial Day in the U.S.
In Mexico, this year’s commemoration began a few days ago with a large parade including a salute to rescue workers who worked tirelessly to save family, friends, and fellow countrymen from the rubble of recent earthquakes.
When Pete, a Mexican friend from college, entered a Facebook post celebrating his recent connection to cousins he never knew he had, I decided that this week’s holiday is the perfect time to include it.
Pete’s mother abt. 4 years old
Gonzales grandparents
Pete at 15
Pete tells his own story:
I have become obsessed with making a family tree. It did not just happen out of nowhere. It started when I submitted my son’s DNA to Ancestry.com. I wanted to show him his multi-ethnic background. We were not disappointed. He is from all over the world–every continent except Antarctica and Australia.
Ancestry told us that he is mostly Native American from the area of Zacatecas and Aguacalientes. His ethnicity estimate is also 24% Great Britain with Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, Scandinavia, Ireland, Finland, European Jewish, Polynesia, the Middle East, Senegal, and Africa North all vying for a slice of the genetic pie.
But this smorgasbord of the world is not what compelled me to create a family tree. It was a feature of Ancestry that I did not expect. Our DNA was matched with other people who submitted their DNA with Ancestry.
There was a small group of people who were listed as close relatives. Some of these were easy to figure out. They were: a sister of my wife, a first cousin of my wife and his daughter, and a first cousin of my son. Then, there was a man and a woman who had a majority of Native American ethnicity in their report. They had to be related to my side.
But how?
My father was the only member of his family who came to this country. That was in 1948. How could he have close relatives in this country? My mother was raised as an only child. I was the only Mexican in the world who did not have a cousin, an uncle, or an aunt. We held our family reunions inside a closet. But, on the bright side, there were more tamales for us during the holidays. We did not have to share them with relatives.
But who are these people that Ancestry claims are closely related to my family?
Did my father stray, and now the evidence is coming back Maury Povich style to say that “The DNA evidence is in, you are the father?” Did my mother’s parents have a secret child? Did I have a close relative from Mexico who came unannounced to Chicago in the 1930s?
I did some research and found that these two people listed on Ancestry are from Chicago. One was 73 years old. The other was in her 20s.
The older man eliminated my father. My father was not here 73 years ago. He was still in Mexico.
Was my mother’s lingering doubt that her parents are not her biological parents more than a doubt? Could she be related to this 73 year-old man?
I found records for the younger woman. She had been arrested a couple of times in her early 20s. We have to be related and share the arrested development gene. My line has proven that this gene exists. It lingered in me into my twenties.
She lives in a northern suburb of Chicago. The older man lived in an adjacent suburb. They lived near each other.
I went to Facebook. I found a connection between the two people. I began to develop a hypothesis. These were the biological relatives of my mother, who was adopted in 1934. Now, I need to apply science to prove my hypothesis. I need evidence.
I sent messages via Ancestry to both people. I did not receive a response. I tried again. I received the same result-no reply.
I began to create my tree. I spent about 200 hours in September researching for my tree. September is our month off for home school. I needed to make progress and uncover these connections in one month before I started in October with Geometry, U.S. Government, Spanish, and Language Arts for my 13-year-old son. He takes three other classes in the regular school system.
I was obsessed. I searched every clue. I looked under every rock. Researching my family is not an easy thing. My name is not Gonzalez. Anyone researching my family will come to an instant dead end.
Our real family name may go back only a few generations. It may not be our real family name. Family legend has it that someone in the family line helped a gang rob a Zacatecas silver mine payroll. He then disappeared into another Mexican state with a new name and a richer, new life. I found nothing to prove or disprove that legend.
I did hit a dead end with the family lineage in the mid 19th century.
If my mother was adopted then there is another instant dead end. Could these two people be the key to answering the question about my mother’s biological parents?
Maybe my mother was not adopted although I have always believed in that theory. My grandparents resemble no one in my family. None of them look like any of the ensuing offspring. I look like my dad. My son, Pete, looks like me.
Did I really want to go down this road?
In my mind, my grandparents will always be my grandparents no matter what I find out. My grandmother, in her late-60s, would take her rug muffin [sic] grandchildren to the movies and to the 12th Street beach. She had a folding chair, and she would sit and wait with us at the Roosevelt Street bus stop. She did a lot for us.
I loved swimming in the 12th Street Beach. I never would have had that experience if not for my grandmother. She cared about us.
I loved the movies except for a horror movie that was in Spanish. I was afraid for about a week after watching it. I was about six years old.
She fed us when we visited her apartment down the street on Peoria. She fed me my first jalapeno when I was about five. She and her husband laughed about it. It was a rite of passage, and one of my dearest memories of them. She was performing an important ritual. I cannot live without jalapenos and spicy foods.
I searched census forms from the 1930s, line by line, of every residence in the Taylor Street area. I looked at immigration records, marriage records, death records, and I sent out a few smoke signals and gave offerings of fried bread and jalapenos to the family tree gods.
I made flowcharts comparing the DNA evidence and the relationship between these two people and me. I developed a hypothesis that the older man had to be either the first cousin of my mother or her brother.
I hit dead ends in my search for more information. I felt hesitant to call to contact the man. What does one say?
“I think that your mother or your aunt gave up your older sister/cousin for adoption. I have no evidence, it is just a hunch.”
I do not think so.
There was one other person who was listed as a close relative. She had a family tree with about 3,000 people listed on it, but it was private. I contacted her and asked for permission to look at her extensive family tree. I explained that we probably shared a common ancestor from one hundred years ago. I was hoping that her family tree would provide some vital clues to help me determine how we are related. She granted me permission, but she added that she doubted if we were related. She said that she had no Gonzalez in her tree.
Neither did I.
Looking at her tree was an eye opener. I immediately found a link between her and the two people who are closely related to me. I asked her about the two. One was the granddaughter of her aunt. The other, the 73 year-old man, was her first cousin.
Let’s call her aunt Aunt Zuzu.
If he was my mother’s first cousin, then this woman with the family tree was also my mother’s first cousin. I was on the right track.
She said that all her family lived in the Taylor Street area. She was not sure if we were related.
Her grandparents had one daughter who possibly could have been the mother of my mother. All the DNA evidence would fit if she was. There were two daughters who possibly could be the biological mother of my mother. One was pregnant with another child when my mother was born. It could not be her. The other would have been 14 when she was pregnant with my mother. I think it was this teen who gave birth to my mother.
I asked my mother if she knew this Aunt Zuzu. My mother’s voice picked up with excitement when she heard Zuzu’s name. She said that Zuzu was her cousin.
Cousin? But she had no relatives in Chicago. How could she be related? She said that my grandmother wanted her to address Zuzu as her cousin Zuzu and to call Zuzu’s mother dia Maria.
I asked her the name of Zuzu’s mother. She answered. It was the exact name of the mother of the person who I hypothesized was the biological mother of my mother. Dia Maria most likely was my mother’s grandmother.
It was a tangled web.
Zuzu’s mother was a close friend of my grandmother. Who else would you trust with your grandchild but your good, trusted friend?
It made sense. Was Aunt Zuzu my mother’s biological aunt? Was her sister the teen who gave up her daughter, my mother, for adoption? It was during the Great Depression. She came from a large family. She was only 14 when she became pregnant.
Was I solving this puzzle that I thought was unsolvable? I had thought that anyone who would know the truth about my mother was long deceased. But here I am, on the cusp of putting in the last few pieces of this puzzle.
Her mother was right there all the time. It was the older sister of her friend, Zuzu.
The owner of the huge family tree confirmed that her aunt had given up her child for adoption. She had heard that family story.
My mother is 83.
Her parents will always be her parents.
She finally found out the truth and received the answer to her doubt. It all fell into place like it was preordained. We were meant to know the truth while she was still alive.
In her last response. the woman with the huge family tree addressed the message to cousin Pete. I smiled when I read it.
I finally have a cousin. I am no longer the only Mexican in the world sin primos.
You can scan and send your registration form to Shirlene or Karin at the corresponding email address in the image directly above and on the left. See you there!
The Duck, The Whole Duck, and Nothing but the Duck
Quack.
But seriously, my New York cousins from my dad’s generation are very Polish. I mean, many of them speak the language, and even if they don’t, they know a few words here and there and even understand much of the Polish dialogue. Even my father, who was separated from the family when he was just thirteen, can speak a few words. Not only that, but many of them are still staunchly Catholic as their grandparents from the old world would have wanted it, and even more still enjoy the good old Polish cuisine.
I myself grew up enjoying many culinary delights from the Old World. I ate things many of my American counterparts would never dream of touching. It’s too bad for them, though. They don’t know what they are missing out on. Beef tongue served the Bohemian way will always be my favorite. One of these days I’ll have to post that recipe as well.
The first thing John Woodgie, another of my New York cousins, suggested for this month’s Cousin Connection was another Polish recipe. I can’t blame him. Polish food is delicious. (By the way, you can get the best Polish food in the U.S. if you visit Chicago.) This particular recipe uses the whole dang duck! It’s one of John’s favorites. I’ve never had it, and like many of my counterparts, I’m a bit reticent to try it; but then I’ve had lots of strange foods in my life, and most of them are amazingly delicious.
First, a little about John and how we are related. John Woodgie is my family’s genealogical expert. He has been working on the Kwiatkowski family line for some time and has identified over 2100 family members. He links names while I am looking for stories. I am eager to connect faces and places with those names, linking each of us in a way that brings the past to life. But I’m just a dabbler compared to him.
Like Chuck Kwiatkowski, John also lives in Olean, NY. In fact, he tells me he’s only a mile away from Chuck. Olean is where my dad was born. I’ve only visited once, staying for just a couple of hours. I think this means I need to plan a trip up north to meet these guys in person sometime soon.
Joseph Woodgie with sons John, Louis and Steve with their dog Rags circa 1943. John is the little one.
I am related to John through his mother, who was daughter to my great-uncle Joseph Kwiatkowski. Like my dad, John’s father was also born in New York but he was a first generation American. Two of John’s uncles were born in Poland before the family immigrated.
John tells me that his grandfather on his mother’s side, Chuck‘s grandfather, Bernie‘s grandfather, and my dad’s grandfather were all brothers. There are plenty more where they came from, too. Their father, Joannes (“John”) Kwiatkowski, and his wife Catharina had a total of thirteen children. John’s Kwiatkowski grandparents had twelve children, and John is one of 41 grandchildren. Bernie’s grandparents had at least five children. I don’t know how many children Chuck’s grandparents had, but I know that my own great-grandparents also had a dozen children, and I am sure that my father probably has just as many first cousins as John Woodgie does. This means I have only touched the tip of the iceberg as far as my New York cousins go, although I have no intention of focusing all of my Cousin Connection efforts there. I still have three other grandparents to search through.
Of course, creating a new cousin chart for John was pretty easy. I just had to substitute a few names:
So about that duck.
Salomea, Frankie and Sophie Skała with their mother Maria Dynia-Skała circa 1910, Rzeszów Poland.
Joseph Kwiatkowski married Sophia Skała ,who was born in Zaczernie, Poland, in Olean, NY May 13, 1913. Sophie was John’s grandmother. She would make her duck soup almost every autumn. John says, “Grampa K would kill the ducks that he raised in their backyard along with chickens and pigeons.” Because the family relied on home-grown resources, they never went hungry. But there is more to it than that. The recipe frugally incorporates every edible component of the duck , including the blood. A goose can be used interchangeably with the duck in this recipe.
Sophie Kwiatkowski’s Duck soup is a regional recipe known as Czarnina (char-NEE-nah).The name is derived from the Polish word, czarny, for black. It refers to the dark color of the soup which comes from the blood in the recipe. The soup often has a sweet-sour flavor, a flavor I remember well from many of the European recipes I grew up on. I’ve never tried it, and I doubt I’ll ever have the opportunity to acquire a whole freshly slaughtered duck, but if I come across the concoction, I’ll be sure to give it a try.
Or maybe not. Legend has it that Polish suitors would receive Czarnina from their prospective in-laws. It was a way for the family to let a young man know that his advances would not be welcome. But John likes it, so it can’t be that bad.
Sophie Skała’s Czarnina
1 whole duck (gutted and feathers removed, reserve heart, neck and gizzard)
2 containers blood
1 medium onion
1 medium potato
1 carrot
1 medium apple
1 cup sour cream
sugar to taste
3 tbsp flour
In an 8 quart pot place duck, neck, heart, gizzard. Cut up onion, potato, carrot, apple into quarters and place them in a piece of cheese cloth. Tie cloth and place in pot.Cover with water to two inches of top of pot. Cook for two hours until duck is done.
Take duck and veggies of out the soup. Let soup cool to touch. In a bowl, mix blood and flour. Blend until smooth. Stir in sour cream and pour this into the soup. Stir until soup comes to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for about 1/2 hour.
While cooking you can make Kluski to add when soup is finished. Some people prefer to use Polish potato dumplings instead. I have also heard that Polish-Americans often use pre-made gnocchi found in the freezer section of their local grocery store.
You can find different versions online or in Polish cookbooks, but this is how John Woodgie’s Grandma Kwiatkowski made it, and it is his favorite. The others, he says, have too many ingredients.
I’ve been learning a lot about the workings of my Polish forbears from my New York cousins. Especially John. From both John and Chuck, I have gained new insights into the workings of my Polish-American cousins including changes in surnames and immigration patterns. I’m looking forward to learning more from them and sharing even more with my readers.
Stories From the Past is proud to present The Cousin Connection Project.
I grew up without cousins. Well, I did have cousins. I knew I had cousins. I had even met three of them. But I didn’t know them well, and I didn’t even live in the same state as any of them. I was well into my 40s by the time I started getting to know the rest of my cousins, and I still haven’t met most of them in person.
I met my midwestern cousins on my mother’s side when I moved to Chicago for graduate school. As I sat at Thanksgiving dinner with all those first cousins trying to figure out how my children were related to them and how our children were related to each other, my cousin Allen patiently explained the differences between first, second, third cousins, etc., and the numbers of removal. It was a bit confusing, but I retained enough of the information that I felt comfortable in exploring cousin relationships to others.
Thanks to Facebook, I have been able to connect with even more cousins I have never met in person. With their cooperation, I am getting to know them better one blog post at a time. When my newly discovered cousin Bernie posted a family recipe on Facebook, I decided the recipe would make a great blog post. I felt that I should also identify just how we were related, so with Bernie’s cooperation, and using Allen’s “formula” I created a chart showing my newly discovered relationship. Bernie was great, and the post was so personally rewarding that I offered to do it for all of my cousins on Facebook.
Between Bernie’s post and my next cousin post, I was contacted by a complete stranger named Diedre in Michigan. Diedre gave me some information indicating that we have common ancestors from early colonial America and the Netherlands (AKA Holland at the time). Much of Diedre’s information pointed to a probable family connection by removals with an old family friend in Utah. I could see that I could easily make cousin connections throughout the United States on a regular basis by connecting through common ancestors. I’ll go more into detail about those common ancestors in another cousin connection post, but suffice it to say I can see that I have plenty to keep busy.
Thanks to my U.S. immigrant ancestors, and the cousins I’ve already connected with, I can connect with my past in a completely new and exciting way. Next week I’m connecting with another New York cousin, our family genealogy expert, John Woodgie. After that, Diedre, and I still have plenty of ideas to keep me going well into the new year. This is very rewarding for me, so I am creating a database for these cousin connections, and I am calling it The Cousin Connection Project.
The Cousin Connection Project uses a surname and location database of most ancestors I have been able to identify. The database is organized alphabetically by surname, and should be pretty easy to identify links to common ancestors. If you come across a name, location, and date range that matches names, locations, and date ranges in your own family tree, you can contact me for a free consultation and a possible cousin connection post showing your relationship to me.
I am also including separate databases for Mary Davis Skeen and any other family lines for other historical biographies I decide to tackle in the future. The separate databases will make it easier to identify your own personal relation to other bygone figures. I have already checked Mary Davis and her husband William Skeen (who was from Pennsylvania), against my own family tree, and I have no reason at all to believe that there is a connection to myself (so far).
As the connections grow, I plan to include links to stories, recipes, and family traditions. This is exciting for me, a person who grew up without knowing most of my extended family, including three of my grandparents and most of my first cousins. Where before I felt that I had almost no extended family, suddenly the world is becoming my family. I know that we have often been told that the family of humankind is all related. Some of those estimates claim that we are related by as little as sixth cousins. Other, more scientific endeavors claim that everyone on the earth is related by at least fiftieth cousins. I don’t know how much truth there is to that claim, but I am pretty sure that I am related to enough amateur genealogists to keep my Cousin Connection Project alive for as long as I want to pursue it. Here’s to getting to know you!
This isn’t a William Faulkner novel, it’s reality. It’s also not like it sounds. When your family has deep roots in the same area where you were born and raised, it’s bound to happen, and it doesn’t take much digging to find family members marrying family members. They probably don’t even know they were doing it.
This case is different because my cousin on my grandfather’s side, married a cousin from my grandmother’s side. They are not related at all to each other, but it’s not totally coincidental that it happened. All of my New York cousins come from my great-great grandfather who was born in Poland. Their roots are not nearly as deep in American soil, and they know who most of them are, so the chances of marrying one of the Kwiatkowski cousins are pretty remote. My grandmother’s genealogy can be traced well into pre-revolutionary America though. They settled in Pennsylvania, a wild and untamed frontier, approximately two generations before my Chuck’s grandfather and my great-grandfather arrived with their parents from Poland. (more…)
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…)
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.
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:
StoriesFromthePast.com 