:: C R E A T I V E G E N E ::

AI, Here I Come!

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 14:07:00 -0400

How many times have I started out a new year on this blog saying this is the year I'm going to write up the family history? Too many to count. And what have I got to show for it? Nothing.

I'm not going to make that mistake this year!

Instead, I'm going to venture down the road of... AI (artificial intelligence)! The techie part of me is so very curious about AI but I've struggled to figure out how and why I would use it in my everyday life. I've pretty much been sitting on the sidelines, reading about some people's "hits" using AI and some peoples "misses". My curiosity has been building. Earlier this month I took some online lessons via Roots Tech. That gave me some basic technical information to build on and some practical ideas to start with.

I've been practicing, here and there. I've tried planning a vacation trip to Florida (miss), generating some images (hit), looking into some military history in Poland (hit), and looking up an old business in Detroit from the early 1900s (miss). I've had mixed results. I've tried a couple different platforms but not nearly all of the main ones. I have much yet to try and many platforms to test out. But I've gotten my feet wet. I'm not feeling intimidated anymore.

In regards to genealogy and family history, I have a few ideas about how I might use AI.

Perhaps I could use it to delve into Poland's history for a background on farming methods and crops from previous generations (I come from a long line of farmers).
Maybe I could use it to create an outline for a book.
It would be very helpful if I could get it to proofread and/or edit a draft of a book chapter.
Maybe it would generate an interesting way to weave together the family stories that I want to share.
I definitely think it would be helpful in analyzing old photographs. (I have a lot of those. ;-)
It would be fascinating if I could figure out a way to get it to look into some of the mysteries/questions that have plagued me from the beginning of my research. Maybe it would generate some theories I hadn't considered.

AI could be just the catalyst I need to get myself writing again, if not about genealogy maybe about using AI.

We'll see what develops...

A Dream Come True

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 15:39:00 -0500

It's been a long 5 years since I've updated this blog. I'm still alive and well and occasionally still working on my family history. Every now and then, when something interesting happens (like the publishing of the U.S. 1950 census😉), I do delve back into my research long enough to update the records in my Legacy database. And then I'm done for a while.

Yesterday, I experienced another of those "something interesting happens" events.

Let me start by explaining that I had no birth records for either of my grandmothers. Grandma Carrie was born in Detroit, at home, at a time when it wasn't required to register the birth of a child in Michigan. I've searched high and low with the city, county, and state and there's no record for her. I do have her baptismal record, which gives her birth date, so I'm grateful to the Catholic church for that much. But I've given up on finding anything more "official" for her birth.

Grandma Sophie was born in Poland. She was the second born of six children. Her older sister as well as her younger siblings were all born in Wojnicz, Poland. I have all of their birth/baptismal records as well as the marriage of the parents, their birth records, etc etc. I knew the date that Sophie was born from her immigration paperwork as well as from her marriage record here in Detroit. Everything listed Wojnicz, Poland as her place of birth.

I have looked at countless online data bases, wrote to the civil records office in Poland, wrote to the church where all her siblings were baptized, and searched the LDS films for that period of time in that parish and there is no record of her birth to be found. The LDS film photographs of the church registry book showed pages had been torn out for the time period she would have been born, but the diocesan copy was in tact. Still no Sophie to be found on or around her birthdate.

A few weeks ago, before Christmas I think, a dear friend of mine, Valerie Koselka (President of the Polish Genealogical Society of Michigan), posted a link on Facebook for a new collection of Polish Church Records (on FamilySearch.org). Yesterday I finally got around to checking it out. And I found the elusive record I've been searching for since day one of my genealogy research back in 1995... a record of my Grandma Sophie's birth/baptism. Please clap your hands, raise a glass in toast, and dance the HAPPY DANCE with me!!! 😁😁😁

Years ago I'd given up on finding a record of Sophie's birth but I had a persistent daydream about one day entering her name online and finding that record. And that's exactly what happened. The record I found was just an index and the information for Sophie was a close match but not exact. There was a village name listed but it wasn't one I'd ever heard of. The village was near Wojnicz where all the other siblings were born, but it was in a different Gmina (administration district) with a different parish church. I had done a concentric search of villages with Wojnicz as the center but didn't come up with anything and finally gave up. I'd mostly searched villages south and west of Wojnicz, moving in the direction where Sophie's father's family was from. But I did search other villages around the area too. Wouldn't you know it...the village where she was born is northeast of Wojnicz just beyond where I'd searched.🙄 I guess I just gave up too soon. Anyway, last evening I ran over to my local Family History/LDS location and looked up the record and voila! Found it!

Yay and thank you to my friend Valerie for posting that link!👏 Yay and thank you to the folks from the LDS who photographed and indexed the Polish church records! 👏 And yay and thank you to any/all of my friends who are reading this post! 👏 Don't give up the search!!!

Oh, and here's the link for that Polish church record collection:

https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/4135958?fbclid=IwAR2eleYQjnrkSDailZQPviVqdmL8nknps_1I23wvTd_jFAA3YzYQNlgL1PU

Good luck!

New Year 2018, Looking Back and Looking Forward

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Tue, 2 Jan 2018 13:08:00 -0500

Every now and then it's a good idea to take a step back and look at where you're at relative to where you've been and where you want to be. The beginning of a new year is a popular time to do that. With that in mind, here's my take on where I'm at regarding my genealogy...

My goal last year was to write up a family history and I chose my Mizera family line to start with. My intentions were good. I thought I had a good plan although I didn't get far before the plan fell apart. I tried to construct a new plan but that didn't work either. Then I got distracted with other things and never got back to trying to write up the family history.

I did add some names to my family history database last year, some from the Mizera line and some from the Lisowski line. I found some new (to me) sources for information about the lives and times of my families in Poland. And I hired some Polish researchers to help me with finding records and translating them. So that's all good. I helped some friends research their families too. I feel good about that. So I did have some accomplishments last year to further my genealogical journey.

So that's where I'm at looking back on my genealogy-related activities in the past year. Very recently, I came to the realization that I'm not really interested/motivated in writing up my family history. That was a bit of an eye opener for me. I enjoyed writing in the past. I have written two NANOWRIMO novellas, and I've written blog posts about my genealogy, digital scrapbooking, and photography for several years. I remember the writing process to be quite enjoyable to me. But somewhere along the way I lost interest in writing. I used to think of creative writing as one of my hobbies. I don't anymore. It may well be that I just have too many "balls in the air" so to speak. When I make choices of what to do with my hobby time, I never choose genealogy-related writing anymore. Notice I said "genealogy-related" writing. I still write every day but it's rarely about genealogy.

The most recent hobby I've picked up was bullet journaling. I've been doing that for about 15 months now. It's not creative writing the way I do it, it's more like a combination to-do list, planner, tracker, and diary. And the diary entries are most often about the activities of the day. I do spend a good bit of time decorating the pages of my journal (yep, this is old school journaling with pen and paper, not digital) and in that way it's been a good creative outlet for me. But, it takes up a good bit of my hobby time. And it's not genealogy related.

And then there's my painting. The amount of time I put into painting hasn't been as much as I would have liked either. Whenever you try to learn something new you need to apply yourself... practice, practice, practice. I need more practice time painting if I'm going to improve. But the more hobby time I spend painting, the less time I have for genealogy research or writing. It's always a trade off.

The one hobby that I have spent what I consider a fair amount of time on this past year is my photography. I've worked at it and I've improved as a result. I'm happy about that! My photography isn't in any way genealogy-related. It does get me up and moving; most often outdoors, in nature. And that's good for my creativity, my mood, my spirit, and my mind. So it's all good.

So that pretty much sums up a review of all my hobbies over the past year. Going forward, I need to find a way to manage my time better, I guess. I want to do it all but then there's the grocery shopping, house cleaning, bill paying, tax return preparation, vacation planning, house projects (for 2 houses) to manage, etc. And that stuff has a way of interfering with my hobby time all too often, LOL!

Looking forward to 2018, I don't have any specific goals for my genealogy hobby time. I want to continue my research... that's the most fun part of genealogy for me. It's like solving puzzles and I love puzzles. Organizing what I've already found is boring. Writing up the family history doesn't sound like fun anymore. Just an obligation. Quite frankly, I'd rather be painting, or photographing extreme weather, wildlife, beautiful landscapes, butterflies and flowers. But I'm not giving up on my genealogy hobby altogether. I can't see myself ever doing that.

I'm entertaining a dream of one day merging all of my hobbies together... that would require a trip to Poland, so I'll have to overcome my resistance to flying. But I'd love to photograph and journal about the beautiful churches where my ancestors were baptized, married, and buried and the prayer/adoration chapels along the roads to the villages where my ancestors toiled in the soil to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. I'd love to see the parks, the country fields of wheat, the train stations, the castles, the museums, the amber beaches, the snow-covered mountain ranges, the folk art and the folk. My folk. My people. And then come home and paint it all! And then I'd like to put together a photo book of the trip as a companion piece to the family history that I will no doubt be motivated to write after experiencing all that inspiring stuff, LOL! That's my dream. Some day, but not likely in 2018.

11 Year Blogoversary and DNA Results

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Tue, 25 Oct 2016 20:23:00 -0400

Today is the anniversary date for Creative Gene. It's been 11 years since I first began blogging. The last few years have had very few posts, but in spite of how it may have appeared to my readers, it was always alive in my heart.

I have done a bit of reflecting lately on my years of blogging. The inspiration for that came from my friend Barbara Poole's blog, Life From The Roots. My experience has been similar to hers in some ways but very different in others. For instance, she started out blogging only about genealogy and more recently added other topics... and lots of her wonderful photography! I would say things went just the opposite for me.

I started Creative Gene as a blog for all of my creative pursuits, especially creative writing, but then I had to eliminate everything but genealogy to be taken seriously on the topic. Heck, in the early days I couldn't get listed on Cyndi's List because my blog apparently seemed more "personal" than "genealogy". And so I created separate blogs for my photography and digital scrapbooking and even started a blog for one line of my family intending to create additional ones for other lines (thankfully, that never happened).

In the early days, I was still trying to figure things out. When I started writing blog posts on genealogy there weren't many role models for me to follow. I was only able to find a handful of others writing blog posts about genealogy back then and they didn't seem to be experts on the subject either. ;-) So I found myself in uncharted waters and had to figure things out as I went along.

I made my share of "mistakes", like including too many other topics in a "genealogy blog". It wasn't important to me to be known as a "genealogy blog" except that search engine listings were hard to come by back then. The more you used a particular word in blog posts the higher your ranking on Google was for that topic. (Their algorithms were more primitive back then. ;-) And being a web site designer, that was very important to me.

In later years, the multiple blogs I'd created and the need to post to them with some frequency to maintain a search engine ranking, became impossible to continue. Just not enough hours in a day.

But Creative Gene lived on while the others faded away. Of course, Creative Gene was helped along by the Carnival of Genealogy. Oh what a brilliant idea I had with that! I found so many like-minded (genealogy-minded) souls, who later became friends, with that writing project. Those were the good old days.

Today is a different day and time. I'm a different person. I continue to develop myself and my hobbies beyond genealogy, though I'll always feel a passion for it. I'm happy to currently be focused on organizing and writing about my family history instead of focusing on researching my genealogy and blogging about it. But on this, the 11th anniversary of Creative Gene, I'm still here keeping it alive and well.

Thanks to all who've followed me along the way. You've made it fun! And a special thank you to all the blogging friends I've made along the way. You've enriched my life in so many ways. I value your friendship.

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And to end this post I'm going to shift gears in a different direction. I got my autosomal DNA test results the other day, and my brother's too. No big surprises but definitely one little one.

My ethnic makeup:
European: 96% (90% Eastern European (Poland); 6% Western and Central European (Germany/France/Switzerland)
Central/South Asian: 4% (This is "the little surprise" because the map shows this to be roughly in the area of Afghanistan... didn't see that one coming ;-)

My brother's ethnic makeup:
European: 100% (95% Eastern European (Poland); 5% Southern European (Southern Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece)

I've been on vacation for the past couple of weeks so I haven't put any time into my plan for organizing and writing my family history. Hopefully, I'll accomplish more in the next month.

Progress is Slow

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 11:19:00 -0400

Good news! I did find those Slownik Geograficzny entries I was looking for! Yeah!

I've also been able to find some family information on a website I visited. By Googling "Wojnicz", one town my Mizera family is from, I found a link to Nekropole.info. I'd heard of the site before but hadn't made the effort to check it out. It turns out that it has the burials listed for the Wojnicz Municipal Cemetery. I was able to find the death date for one of my grandmother's brother's. Yeah! And I may have found the death year for her other brother too but I need to have that confirmed by another source to be sure. No luck finding the death date for grandma's sister yet. And it looks like if her parents were buried there, they aren't anymore.

More good news. I received some information from the Wojnicz parish priest via the genealogist I'd contacted in Poland. I was sent copies of the birth/baptism register entries for one of my grandmother's brothers and her sister. I already had these images from LDS films, BUT, these same entries from the priest had notations of their marriages including the names of their spouses. Yeah! Sort of. Because they aren't marriage records, they don't have all the regular details you would expect to find on a marriage record from the 1920s and 1930s... like the names of the parents of the bride and groom, their ages, addresses, witnesses, etc. So I have some information but not enough info for me to be able to trace the spouse's ancestral lines. :-( Oh well, I am still hopeful that the genealogist I hired will be able to find the actual marriage records for me. Until then, I'm grateful for the progress made. :-)

And one stellar bit of good luck to add! In going through my brother's old slides (taken during the years he was in Vietnam), we came across a family photo taken when he was home on leave. It's a picture of my whole family, both of my parents, my two brothers, and me. What's the big deal, you wonder? It's the only one I've ever seen of all of us in the same room at the same time. I know. Sad, right? Well, mom was almost exclusively the picture-taker and she didn't have a camera with a timer. So she was never in the family pictures, not that there were all that many pictures taken of family events. I screamed and jumped for joy when I saw the slide photo. I didn't think to take a picture of the projected image at the time but my brother was kind enough to do the slide show again and that time I had my camera with me. It will take a LOT of work in Photoshop to make a decent photo from that projected imaged but it's all I have to work with and I'm so very happy to have it. One day my brother may get around to having his slides scanned but that's not in his plans in the near future.

And the last good bit of info I acquired this past month was my Aunt Helen's marriage record from a trial subscription to FindMyPast.com. My mom told me that her sister eloped to Ohio when she got married (1940) but until now I wasn't able to find a record of her marriage. I have it now! Yeah!

The bad news is, this is about all I can say about my genealogy endeavors for the past month. I wasn't able to put in time getting more comfortable with Scrivener. I fear that I will have forgotten what I learned by the time I get it fired up again. And I haven't made any progress in searching my hard drives.

I got sidetracked with Bullet Journaling (BuJo) and that took up the time I might have spent in Scrivener. Let me say a few words about BuJo. I'm excited about the idea of it but the real world practice of it has left me a bit underwhelmed. I created a personal BuJo, tracking my meals, sleep, steps, mood, general health and including task lists and a calendar for future endeavors. It all looks good on paper but I find myself repeatedly recording the same things over and over again (I already track much of this digitally in phone apps). To me, redundancy means wasted time. If I eliminate the stuff I'm already tracking digitally all I'm left with is a standard journal of daily thoughts and activities. Not that that's a bad thing, but I don't find it necessary. And my days are full enough of necessities (my To-Do List) that I already struggle to find time for my painting, photography, and genealogy. Much as I'd like to add daily journaling, it just isn't in the cards right now. I may try to keep it going through October (in a modified version) because I have some exciting personal stuff coming up then but I'm thinking after that I'll let it go in favor of a genealogy BuJo to help me stay on top of my genealogy-oriented organization/research/family-history-writing prep.

I will be spending much of October doing non-genealogy related things so I've not made up specific goals for the month. I'll just have to fit time in here and there as I can. But, I did send in my DNA test kit, and gave my brother his test kit. So I may see some kind of results from those in October. Hope so!

Till next time!

The Plan's Beginnings

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Mon, 15 Aug 2016 15:30:00 -0400

It's been roughly a month since my last blog post. I thought I'd update the status of my family history writing project over the last 30 days.

With loads of help from my genealogy friends on Facebook, I made the decision to write about my Mizera family line first. That was a big hurdle/decision and one I'm feeling good to have made.
I've made a sincere effort to learn my way around Scrivener. I started with the "Quick Start" video tutorials first and once I felt comfortable with those basics I made my way through the rest of the video tutorials. I have not "memorized" everything about the program but have familiarized myself with much of it. I think that is satisfactory for now.
I started assembling some online information about my grandmother's ancestral village in Scrivener. I'm still a little unsure about how to use (where to put) info that I'm collecting. But, I'm moving ahead and will adjust the way I'm doing things as necessary.
I met with a friend who gave me the name of a researcher who lives in the area of my Mizera ancestral village (Wojnicz). I contacted that individual by email and he indicated that he would need to write a letter to the local parish to obtain the records I was interested in. We are waiting to hear back from that parish to see if they will allow him access to their records. The records I'm hoping to get are: the marriage records for 3 of my grandmother's siblings, their death records as well, and the birth records of any/all of their children.
I was able to structure my genealogy time one week out of the last four. It was a bit more difficult than I thought it would be to plan the time and stick to the plan.

My goals for the next month are:

Continue to collect information about Wojnicz and assemble it in Scrivener. I'll need to practice importing digital photos, text, and web pages.
Start combing through my hard drives for the vital records and digital photos of my Mizera family. Finding them will be a chore since I haven't consolidated my data files over the years... some are here, some are there, etc.
Start looking for printed photos, handwritten letters, and email regarding my Mizera family. I know that stuff is around here somewhere...
Continue to familiarize myself with Scrivener. Watching a few more videos wouldn't hurt.
Hopefully move forward with getting those vital records from the parish in Wojnicz.
Structure my time and make genealogy a priority.

And now I'm off to find those Slownik Geograficzny entries I translated a while back... where the heck did I put those anyway??? Wish me luck!

A Plan for Writing a Family History

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 21:03:00 -0400

The time has come to begin the process of writing my family history. The Polish government archives' online project hasn't gotten but a few of my family's vital records posted online (which is what I've been waiting on) but I'm feeling the urge to move forward with my writing anyway. I can always hold up after the first drafts are written (before editing) and wait for more records to come online at that point. No reason to keep procrastinating before even starting, eh?

To begin a project of this size I need a plan and here's what I've come up with.

I'm thinking I'll devote 2 afternoons a week, for six months (Aug.1, 2016 - Jan. 31, 2017) to organizing my my genealogy information for one of my family lines (which line is yet to be determined) and getting familiar with Scrivener software. Then, for the month of February 2017, I'll join the Family History Writing Challenge and see if I can't get the first draft of one family line written in 28 days. I participated in NaNoWriMo a couple times several years ago and really enjoyed the camaraderie and motivating tips I received. I'm hoping the Family History Writing Challenge will do the same for me.

If this plan works, I could have the first draft of the history of one line of my family written early next year. Yeah! I don't know if this is a good plan, a realistic plan, or even a lousy plan, but it's a plan. And that's what I'm starting with.

My big decision at this point is which of my 4 grandparents' lines to write about first. I can make a case for any of the 4 but no case is stronger than any other. Should I tackle the family line I have the most info on first and get that out of the way? Or perhaps I should write about the family line I have the least info on because it would be the easiest to do and good practice for the other lines... Maybe I should write the histories in the order I researched/discovered the family lines. Or maybe I should just go with my gut. Checking gut... Nope. That won't work. My gut has absolutely nothing to say on the matter. ;-)

What do you think? Have you written your family histories? How did you decide which line to write about first? Are you glad you did it that way? What advice do you have for me?

Software Complicating My Life!

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 11:37:00 -0500

The last couple of weeks didn't go exactly as I'd planned. I did get to my local FHC to look at films. I didn't find what I was looking for but at least I know that the films I'd previously put on indefinite status are still there. :-) And I got to spend some time with my best genealogy pal in the process. Bonus! :-)

I didn't get to my scanning. I didn't get any more Słownik Geograficzny entries translated. However, I did continue my correspondence with one of my "cousins". Unfortunately, we aren't cousins by blood but I'm more convinced than ever that we are connected by marriages. Let's put it this way, I can attach her name to my family tree but Legacy says we aren't related. Anyway, we've been sharing information, stories and documents. Thus far, she's shared more with me than I with her but I'm hoping that will reverse soon. It's been fun!

I've been using Legacy Family Tree software as my primary database for some time now (10+ years). A while back, when they released their mobile apps, I purchased Roots Magic. I really only used it to give myself access to my genealogy on my iPad and cell phone. Meanwhile, I've been waiting patiently for Legacy to create and share their own mobile apps. But I'm guessing at this point that's not going to happen. I've been considering switching over to Roots Magic as my primary database since they seem to be moving forward in a direction I can appreciate and find beneficial. Then the "working relationship" with Ancestry.com happened and that made me reconsider again. My concern was about Roots Magic's mobile apps. Would they continue to support them and improve them now that their software will sync with Ancestry.com trees? It could be a cost savings move to discontinue their apps and instead offer mobile access via Ancestry.com trees. Perish the thought! I expressed my concern in the Roots Magic forum and was reassured that the mobile apps are here to stay. Yay! :-) I was so pleased to hear that that I'm planning to purchase the newest version of Roots Magic just to support the company.

And just as I'd gotten that bit of genealogy-related software decision making dealt with, Google dropped a bomb on my world. They've chosen to discontinue improving and supporting Picasa. They haven't added any new features in quite a while now and you know how that goes... if you're not moving forward you're falling behind. And Google isn't one to fall behind on something they value. So in a way, I guess I suspected something like this would happen. I can't begin to put into words how bummed I am about this. Those who know me know that photography is an essential part of my being. And Picasa has been my go-to software for tagging and organizing my photos and scans for years and years and years. I'm must admit, I'm secretly hoping that Google will sell off Picasa to another company the way Ancestry.com did with Family Tree Maker. I know it's not likely to happen but I'm not ready to give up hope! (I'm still hurting from Google's decision to discontinue Reader a while back and I still haven't found a replacement feed reader I like!)

I spent much of the past weekend looking for a tagging and organizing software product. The Adobe products (Lightroom and Photoshop Element's Organizer) have to be eliminated from consideration because their tags are proprietary. They can only be seen within Adobe products. Unfortunately, the same is true for the Corel software products. :-((((( I downloaded and tried out a few others but each was either too complex or too simplistic. Yah, I know. Just call me Goldilocks. ;-) As this new week begins, I still haven't found a good substitute software. I'm open to suggestions/recommendations if you have any!

Well, so one thing led to another. In the course of my tagging software quest I came to the realization that I wouldn't have to be so dependent on tags if my digital file system was better organized. This isn't really a revelation to me. I've known it for some time. Like most people starting out, I had no idea my genealogy research would result in my needing multiple hard drives to store all the documents, scans, email, and photos I've accumulated. I've been telling myself for years that I need to organize all that "stuff" better but what fun is that when I can be moving my research forward, lol! And honestly, backups have become a nightmare with some stuff on this external hard drive and some stuff on that one. I really, really need to organize and consolidate. I just don't want to be bothered with it. :-P

I know that having all my digital genealogy files organized will help me gather the info I need to write my family histories. And I'm determined to move forward with that writing project later this year. So I'm going to bite the bullet and focus on organizing all my digital genealogy "stuff" now. I don't have a specific goal for this next week other than to get started with the organizing, keep looking for a photo/document tagging product, and get over to the Detroit Public Library to do some research this weekend.

Till next week!

Another Week

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Mon, 1 Feb 2016 12:09:00 -0500

Last week was a good week. It was a productive week too. I completed the Słownik entries for my Mizera family villages. :-) I feel like I did some of these translations years ago but who knows where they are now, or what format they may have been saved in. I searched my hard drive before I started on these translations last month but I could only make guesses as to what I might have called the folder(s) I stored the previous translations in. And my guesses were not fruitful. So the attempted translations will continue, but not this week.

I also spent about an hour every day checking out my ancestral villages in Poland via Google Street View. It is so fun to drive the country roads through Poland and pass through the villages that have only been dots on maps and descriptive entries in a language I don't speak before this. As I "drove" the streets I noticed that most of the images were taken in 2012 and 2013. I'm happy with that. I don't care that they aren't more current. What is a bummer though is that several of my ancestor's villages were not "filmed" by Google. It happens that they were the smallest of villages not particularly near a bigger town and not on a major road. The folks at Google probably didn't feel the need to drive all those extra miles for villages too small to have a stop light or even a stop sign. I can't help but hope they will film them the next time they send their cars out to film the roads, villages, town, and cities of Poland. Please Google! Please!

Of course as I was "driving", I couldn't help but wonder which parcels of property were owned/farmed by my ancestors. I'm certain the current house numbers don't correspond with the house numbers shown on the vital records of my relatives from 100-200 years ago. That got me thinking about how I could get that information. I got a tip from one of my best genealogy pals about online options for historical plat maps. I checked out the sites but no luck for any of my ancestor's villages. So then I thought about consulting a library local to the villages I wanted information on. I got on the internet and did some searching and found a library that looked promising. I sent off an email with fingers crossed and hoped that they could tell me where I could find historical plat maps for the area. It's been 7 days and no response. I also did a Google search for what I wanted with no expectation of actually finding anything. But much to my surprise I hit the jackpot! Sort of. I found a printed book of plat maps for the tiny villages I was interested in for the time period I cared about via World Cat. But, (you just new there had to be a "but" didn't you?) only 5 listed copies in the world, 2 in Poland, 2 in Germany, and one at Stanford University in California. I decided to try to request an inter-library loan through my local library. I filled out the request and got an email back the following day saying they couldn't find a copy available for loan. So I'm guessing that copy in the Stanford library was "reference" material. :-( I have no plans to visit California anytime soon, and I can't really ask a genealogy volunteer to photograph an entire 258 page book for me, so I guess I'm out of luck.

On a better note, I heard from two "cousins" previously unknown to me in the last couple of weeks. They both contacted me regarding information they found on this blog. One of the many benefits of blogging! :-) One I have determined to be a 3rd cousin of mine via my paternal grandfather's line, and the other I would be related to by marriage via my paternal grandmother's line if we can in fact establish a connection. We're working on that. And that's a fun thing! I haven't had many (any) opportunities to collaborate with other genealogists on my family lines. :-)

So that's where I'm at as this first week of February begins. My plan for this week is to visit my local Family History Center to view whatever films might be available to aid my research for my Mizera, Lasky, and Lipa lines.

Lost in Translation

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 14:46:00 -0500

Another week and more translations done. :-)

I finished up the translations of my Lisowski family and have started on my Mizera family. I identified 8 villages/towns to translate the Słownik entries for and attempted 3 of the smaller ones.

The Lisowski village entries were from the Russian partition and if I thought those were a challenge (they were!) they were nothing compared to the Mizera village entries from the Austrian partition. I've not been able to make a complete translation of any of the Mizera villages so far. There are many, many terms that aren't listed on any of the keys/guides I'm using and Google Translate can't deal with them either. Sometimes I can make a guess by the context and content of other words but too often I'm just coming up blank. :-( I'm going to continue to do what I can but I may have to consider asking someone who knows the language to help me out. They're not much good to me if I can only translate every other word, lol!

I made an interesting discovery in the few Mizera village translations I worked on. These villages are each between 1-2 miles apart. The other villages in the area seem to be similar distances apart. That's much closer proximity than I thought. What does that mean in terms of my research? I probably should be looking at villages further out for the individual records I'm missing, because "further out" still isn't all that far away.

I did a quick "drive-by" of some of the villages using Google Street View. What a thrill that was! I love technology. Now if I could just figure out how the old house numbers relate to the current street addresses I could visit some of the old family farms. How cool would that be???!!!

I intend to check out the films available at my local Family History Center to see if there are any on indefinite loan that might include those "further out" villages. I've checked online but no luck there. I think once I finish the Mizera village translations I may take a break and move on to another tedious but necessary project... scanning.

My goal for the next week is to attempt to complete translating the Mizera village entries.

Translating, Research, and Webinar

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Sun, 17 Jan 2016 10:00:00 -0500

Sometimes you just have to throw the plans out the window and punt. That's what I had to do this past week. I'd scheduled myself a good amount of time for genealogy, time I'd planned to use translating 5 Słownik Geograficzny entries for my Lisowski family villages. But, I was feeling under the weather most of the week and wasn't able to put in as much time as I would have liked. I did manage to get 3 of the 5 translations done, including one large one, so all was not lost. I'm content with that.

I was also able to put in about an hour of time at a local library using their Ancestry access to do some research on my mother's best girlfriend's family (Wojciechowski/Lezczynski). Her family doesn't connect to my family in any way I'm aware of but I'm curious about her Polish roots just the same.

And I attended (online) Lisa Alzo's webinar, Clutter Buster Bootcamp, yesterday. Like a lot of folks, I have lots of un-filed, un-organized, un-inventoried genealogy "stuff" that needs to be dealt with. Some of it is digital on hard drives, some of it is paper and heirlooms. It's a lot of stuff and I've been procrastinating about getting started with it because of the enormity of the project. Thanks to the webinar I was reminded about the benefits of breaking big projects down into smaller "mini" and even "micro" projects. Maybe with a little planning I can make some real progress this year. I was hoping to hear about some new software or app that would help me with any aspects of the project but I didn't hear about anything I wasn't already aware of. Oh well. It was still a worthwhile presentation.

My goal this week is to finish the last 2 SG entries, one of which is very large, multiple pages. We'll see how far I get with that. The challenge is that the SG uses lots of abbreviations that Google Translate won't translate, and because I don't speak/read Polish I don't know what words they are abbreviations for. There are multiple guides on the net that you can use to translate the most commonly used abbreviations. That's not what trips me up. It's the uncommon abbreviations that stump me. Onward!

Genealogy and Hobbies

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Sat, 9 Jan 2016 21:15:00 -0500

Hello, and welcome to 2016!

I'm dusting off this blog and sitting back down at the keyboard. I haven't written much in a long time so I know I'm rusty. I expect my writing will reflect that. My apologies. I'm not setting any grandiose goals for myself, like blogging daily, but I will try to write periodically if for no other reason but to record where I'm at with my genealogy/family history research and where I'm going with it.

I'd like to be doing more genealogy research but I've exhausted my resources for now. So for the time being I'll be working on family history research. I've started translating Słownik Geograficzny (SG) entries for the villages of my ancestors and their parishes. I'm planning to explore the churches they worshiped in too (online of course).

This past week I put in 15-20 hours on finding and translating SG entries for one family line (Lisowski). I translated 10 entries, most of them only 3-5 line entries, and I have 5 more to work on. Of the 5 remaining, 2 are very lengthy entries... multiple pages in length. For those I will probably translate only select paragraphs. My goal for next week is to finish translating the entries for the Lisowski line.

On another note, other hobbies...

Two years ago I dabbled in learning watercolor painting. Last year I took up oil painting. This year I'm learning to paint with acrylics. And, as always, I continue to work at my photography. I like having several hobbies and I love learning new things. There are only so many hours in the day though so I've had to give up other interests, reading (books and most of the blogs I used to follow) and writing (my blogs). I wish I could keep up with all of my hobbies and interests at the same time. Maybe I should take up juggling. ;-)

Gettin' My Feet Wet

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 15:11:00 -0500

It's been a long time since I've posted anything here. It will be interesting to see if I get any comments... will my blog still appear in anyone's feed reader??? LOL!

Every year or so I subscribe to Ancestry.com for a month to see what's new and hopefully add some info to my family tree. There's usually not much new and not much to add, so this time around I decided to use that month of Ancestry access to help out a friend by researching her family history. I knew this would be challenging for me because this friend has no Polish ancestors and that's all I have experience in researching. But what the heck, it was time to jump back into my genealogy research and this seemed like a good way to get my feet wet.

I started with my friend's father's line which is French Canadian. The family records from the Essex County, Ontario area were pretty easy to find and it was fun to be on the hunt and entering data in a database again. Before too long, the family records went back to Quebec. Now that was a bit more challenging for me. My French language skills are more than rusty, they're very limited. I had French language classes in grades 4-7 and not since then. But with the help of good ole Google Translate, I made pretty good progress and was able to take a couple of her family lines back to the late 1600s in the Quebec area.

When I'd taken that French Canadian research as far as I could (basically, what I could find online at Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org) I moved on to my friend's mother's line which is English. I've dabbled in researching English records before but it has been a looong while. Ancestry has a few more collections than the last time I was looking for records so that's nice. I had great fun going through the records and discovering the charming street and neighborhood names... like Cold Bath Lane. Wouldn't it be fun to give your address on Cold Bath Lane? Cute!

I was just finishing up with the research of my friend's English lines, and coming to the end of my one-month Ancestry subscription, when Ancestry released the new batch of Michigan Marriage Records 1867-1952. Woo hoo! A serious new collection for me to examine for my own family lines! My one-month subscription to Ancestry just became a two-month subscription.

I'm feeling good about the research I did for my friend. If she wants to take things further she can start reading about Canadian history and pick up some Charles Dickens' novels to learn more about those periods of her ancestors' lives. I know there are probably more (and maybe better) sources for online research for Canadian and English records than just Ancestry and FamilySearch. If you know of some, please leave a comment and I will pass the info along to my friend. Now that I've gotten her started, perhaps she'll want to take the research further.

I was working on that English research at the same time I started binge-watching the "Mr. Selfridge" television series. Now I'm hooked on that series! Love it! Can't wait for Season 3 to begin next month!

Happy New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Thu, 2 Jan 2014 21:09:00 -0500

Ahem.

Hello.

Anybody out there?

Boy, I sure am rusty at this blogging stuff. It's been a while. Quite a while.

I find myself staring at a blank page and wondering where to start. I have no idea. I didn't sit down with an outline of what to write. I just wanted to write something to break the ice, so to speak. It's a new year and I guess it's time for me to get back into blogging. In order to do that, I have to have something to write about. That means I'll have to get back to doing some genealogy and family history research. I haven't done anything along those lines in over a year.

A couple of months ago a dear friend sent me an email informing me that records from the ancestral village of one of my family lines are now online. I was delighted to learn that. I went to check them out and realized it was all foreign to me. Of course it would be because the records are written in Russian (Cyrillic) and I don't read Russian. But that aside, I realized that I've been away from everything genealogy-related for long enough that I can't just jump in and pick up where I left off. I'm going to have to learn the ropes again and that will take some time. The blogging will have to come along somewhere down the line after I get comfortable with what I'm genea-doing. ;-)

Anyway, if there is anyone still following this blog, Happy 2014! May your year be filled with genealogy successes!

Polish Vital Records Online, Coming Soon!

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Thu, 7 Feb 2013 13:26:00 -0500

Well here's an update to my previous post that I wasn't expecting to be posting this soon. Check it out. Good news indeed!

From the National Digital Archives of Poland website:

In the first half of 2013, we plan to publish more than 2.3 million scans in two rounds - in March and June. The attached list archives, which are derived from the digitized resource materials, together with the number and name of the team. Due to the still ongoing cleanup of the whole immense material, we can not at this stage provide specific signatures. We reserve the right to minor adjustments of these statements. Any changes will be announced on our website.

(translation provided by Google Translate)

Unfortunately for me, none of my ancestral parishes are on this list. However, I am very excited to see that the process of digitizing the vital records of Poland is well underway and the first batch of records should be viewable online in just a few weeks! Yay!

**Hat tip to my friend Valerie who shared this info on her FB page this morning!

Polish Vital Records and My Family History

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 19:34:00 -0500

A couple weeks ago I read the following excerpt in the PGSA Notebook (Newsletter from the Polish Genealogical Society of America, January 2013).

RI-Poland and Polish State Archives Plan New Agreement

Jewish Records Indexing - Poland (JRI-P) and the Polish State Archives (PSA) plan to sign an agreement that will define future cooperation between the two groups. It includes:

Access to data that will allow JRI-P to index all vital records that are more than 100-years old which have been transferred to PSA branches in the last six years

During the next four to five years, PSA will digitize all vital records (Jewish and non-Jewish) and make them available on the PSA National Digital Archives (NDA) or Regional Archives website. There will be no charge for directly accessing the records.

As these records are added to the PSA site, JRI-P will be provided with the information necessary to enable it to link its search results to digital images of Jewish records. JRI-P currently has 4.5 million records indexed. This will be done by volunteers or paid professionals. Currently the one town that is complete is Gora Kalwaria.

JRI-Poland will re-launch its Order Processing System that operated from 2003 to 2006, which simplified the process of getting copies of records from PSA. During that period, JRI-P had a shopping cart system where clicking on a button next to one of their index entries would create an order to the PSA to provide a copy of the record. This system will phase out as digitized records become available online but the total project will take a good number of years.

The indexing/linking of the records is a massive project that will include towns in Poland and the former Galician towns that were part of Poland between the wars. Donations are being accepted at http://www.jri-poland.org. Click on "support/donations" toward the top of the page.
From Nu?What's New? - Vol. 13, No. 52 - December 30, 2012

Upon reading this I said to myself, "Self, this is the best news we've heard in a long time!" I was particularly excited about the second bullet point... During the next four to five years, PSA will digitize all vital records (Jewish and non-Jewish) and make them available on the PSA National Digital Archives (NDA) or Regional Archives website. The will be no charge for directly accessing the records.

My heart rate accelerated a bit on learning about this project and I had to remind myself not to get too excited about it yet. After all, this is an agreement yet to be signed by the parties involved. But still, it holds such promise!

I've tried to be patient in waiting for FamilySearch.org to get the vital records for my ancestral villages in Poland uploaded. I've checked their list of indexing projects from time to time in hopes of helping out the cause. But FamilySearch.org is trying to get records uploaded for, well, a gazillion villages in hundreds of countries. It will be a while before they get around to mine. Some baptismal indexes for two of my ancestral villages are available but I have no idea when the actual images for those indexes will be made available online. If they ever are. There are no marriage or death records available online for those two ancestral villages. And it's anyone's guess when the images for my other ancestral villages will be made available. Patience, I tell myself. Patience.

Now it appears there may be another source option for online Polish vital records in the future. That's a really nice thought!

I've been toying around with the idea of writing a family history for a least one branch of my family this year. I'm basically done with my research (have been for a while) except for a few names here and there that I need to search for in neighboring villages. I wonder if I should just put a hold on that idea for another 4-5 years and see what becomes available online. Or am I just procrastinating? Perhaps the thing to do is write a history now and add an addendum when I'm able to fill in the few missing names and dates. Decision, decisions. I'm glad I have found as many of my ancestors as I have but at the same time I miss the days of research, discovery, and happy dancing.

Can I possibly think of enough things to say about my family history research to keep this blog going for another 4-5 years? Doubtful. Hmmm.

[[ Update: The agreement I referenced above was officially signed on February 15, 2013. ]]

Carnival of Genealogy, 123rd Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Sun, 4 Nov 2012 07:00:00 -0500

Welcome to the November 4th, 2012 edition of the Carnival of Genealogy. The topic of today's edition is: birthday party! November is the month of my birth and I thought it would be a good time to visit the topic of birthday celebrations and perhaps honor family members born in the month of November. Please join us in this birthday celebration with a nice slice of cake and a glass of champagne! Sto Lat to all!

Pauleen presents 123rd Carnival of Genealogy: Birthday Parties posted at Family history across the seas.

Nancy Messier presents Nine Turning Ten posted at My Ancestors and Me, saying, "Every 9-year-old girl looks forward to her next birthday. Read what happened on mine."

Jasia presents Birthday Party Memories posted at Creative Gene. "I'm remembering the birthday parties of my childhood with great fondness."

Joan Hill presents 123rd COG: A Magical Birthday posted at Roots'n'Leaves, saying, "Autumn is a beautiful time of the year for a birthday -- and I want to share a most magical birthday experience."

Dorene Paul presents The "Birthday Four" posted at Graveyard Rabbit of Sandusky Bay, saying, "Dorene from Ohio's great great grandfathers shared a birthday with two other friends, and they celebrated together for many years."

Carol presents 123rd Carnival of Genealogy :: Gonna Have a Birthday Party posted at Reflections From the Fence, saying, "Let's just cut to the chase: Happy Birthday Jasia!"

Cheryl Schulte presents, My Tenth Birthday posted at Two Sides of the Ocean, saying, "A 10th birthday party in Pomerania remembered many years later."

That concludes this edition of the Carnival of Genealogy. I hope you enjoyed the birthday party! And thank you all for the lovely birthday wishes!!!

The Carnival of Genealogy is going on hiatus for a while. If you'd like to access previous editions of the COG you can do so here. Thank you to all the participants and devoted readers of the COG. You are the best!

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Birthday Party Memories

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 11:40:00 -0400

When I think back to the birthdays of my youth I remember only two birthday parties where friends were invited. The first party was held when I was 6 years old. The bottom two photos on my scrapbook page were taken at that party. The friends were all girls from the neighborhood and from my first grade class. I remember feeling really special that day because my mom bought me a little crown to wear at the party and everybody else got regular old cone hats. You can see my little crown better in the picture on the right.

Do you see the girl with blonde hair to my right in the photo on the bottom left? Her name was Mary Furman. She used to live two doors down from us. Her mother died and she and her father and sister moved away when I was in the second grade. I still think of her from time to time and wonder if we were related. I didn't know it at the time but my great grandmother's surname was Furman, Karolina Furman. Furman is a common surname so it's not likely that we were related, but still I wonder...

The second friends-only birthday party I remember was a surprise party thrown for me by my best friend Valerie for my 15th birthday. It was held in the basement of her home and all of my close friends were there. It was a sleepover party and we all had a great time. I even got a kiss (on the cheek) from Val's older brother who at the time all of us girls thought was super hunky. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos from that party. It was fun though!

The rest of the years of my youth my family remembered my birthday with a birthday cake and gifts. It was always just a small after-dinner affair. On occasion my Aunt Ceily or Helen and George joined us. That made it feel a little more special. We lived in a small house with no dining room and the basement wasn't finished back then. Dinners with company presented a real challenge for my mom. You couldn't fit many people in the kitchen and going out to dinner was out of the question.

I always used to think of myself as lucky to have a birthday just a few days after Halloween. As a child, Halloween was always a big deal, long anticipated, and great fun. But there was sort of a let down when it was all over, for my friends that is. I still had my birthday to look forward to! :-) November in Michigan is usually cold, damp, and grey so any excuse for a party is a good one!

These days I usually celebrate my birthday with a couple of parties (one with my immediate family and one with my in-laws) and a couple of lunches with friends. It's nice to have a November birthday!

[Written for the 123rd Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy.]

Creative Gene, Doors of Faith

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Sun, 7 Oct 2012 20:29:00 -0400

Over on the Catholic Gene blog there is a project going on where people have been asked to write about the Catholic churches their family and ancestors have attended to celebrate the Year of Faith 2012-2013. This wonderful project is the brain child of Lisa and is called Doors of Faith. I've written about my family's churches many times in the past so I will simply do a round-up here for anyone interested who may have missed these articles.

St Lawrence Church in Wojnicz, Poland is the ancestral church of many generations of my Mizera/Bober family lines. You can read about it here. You can't see the Doors of Faith very well in my scrapbook page below but you can see them better from the links in my article.

St Mikolaj Church in Zgorsko, Poland is the ancestral church of many generations of my Laska/Furman family lines. You can read about it here. You can see the Doors of Faith pretty good in the picture below.

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Przeclaw, Poland is the ancestral church of many generations of my Lipa/Knot family lines (they lived in the nearby village of Bobrowa but it didn't have a church of it's own). You can read about it here. Below is the only photo I have of the old church from Przeclaw.

I have a cousin who is a priest at the Lodz Cathedral pictured below (I haven't written about this church on my blog). Doors of Faith are small but visible.

Moving on to churches on this side of the ocean...

When my Lipa family members first arrived in Detroit in 1881 they attended St Albertus Church in Detroit. You can read about it here. The Doors of Faith are a bit hidden here.

Later the Lipa family were founding members of Sweetest Heart of Mary Church in Detroit. You can read about it here. The Doors of Faith are barely visible. Sorry about that. They are really beautiful.

The Laska/Lipa family branched off to Detroit's west side and were members of St Francis D'Assisi Church. You can read about it here. Lots of Doors of Faith pictured here but from a distance.

And the Lisowski/Mizera branch of my family also moved to the west side of Detroit and attended Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church. You can read about it here. Finally, some Doors of Faith you can really see.

I thought about sharing all the churches I have attended but this blog post would go on for far too long. So we'll just leave it at this. I've enjoyed sharing the Doors of Faith of my family. I hope you enjoy reading about them.

[Written for the Doors of Faith project on the Catholic Gene blog.]

Carnival of Genealogy, 122nd Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Thu, 4 Oct 2012 06:00:00 -0400

Welcome to the October 4, 2012 edition of the Carnival of Genealogy. The topic for today's edition is: School Humor! I must admit I thought this would be a more popular topic than it was. But then, I'm often surprised which topics get a lot of submissions and which ones just a few. Gee, I hope people weren't put off by the need to register on the new BlogCarnival.com web site in order to submit an article. It isn't hard. Really!

We only have a few submissions today but they are good ones, guaranteed to make you smile if not laugh out loud. So pour yourself a cold glass of milk and put a couple cookies on a plate (that was your usual after school snack, right?) and come enjoy the humor of our school days!

Charles Hansen presents Missing Locker for the 122nd Carnival of Genealogy posted at Mikkel's Hus, saying, "You would think a locker built into a wall would not come up missing, but my locker did."

Dorene Paul presents When Mom Forgot It Was "Picture Day" posted at Graveyard Rabbit of Sandusky Bay, saying, "Dorene recalls a time long ago when her mother forgot it was school picture day."

Donna Pointkouski presents I Was a Teenage Car Thief posted at What's Past is Prologue, saying, "My high school partner-in-crime and I weren't very good thieves, but we were excellent pranksters!"

Frances Ellsworth presents CreativeGene Carnival, 122nd Edition "School Humor" posted at Joyous Tomorrows, saying, "I am posting a story set in the time I was a school nurse and my daughter was a sophmore in High School."

Jasia presents It's Humorous Now, But It Sure Wasn't Back Then! posted at : : C R E A T I V E G E N E : : , saying "Some memories will be with you for as long as you live. These two funny ones fall into that category for me. Come share a laugh!

Cynthia Shenette presents Confessions of a Lunch Box Trader... posted at Heritage Zen:, saying, "What was in your lunch box? I really want to know..."

That concludes this edition of the COG. I hope our humor put a bright spot in your day! Maybe it reminded you of some humorous incidents from your own childhood. Please feel free to share in the comments below if you like.

Call for Submissions! The topic for the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy will be: A Birthday Party! Yep, we're having a birthday party here at the COG and you're all invited! Whose birthday is it? Mine. :-) November is the month of my birthday and in honor of me I'd like to invite you to share a birthday story. (Yes, I know this is only October but the COG deadline and publish date for the next edition will be in November. ;-) Your story can be about a birthday party you hosted or was held for you. It can be a tribute to someone on your family tree who has a November birthday. Or, it can be a fantasy about your dream birthday! Please write up your birthday stories and submit them by the deadline of November 1st.

[[New Info! Please Read!]]
Submit your blog article to the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy using the COG submission form. Please note, the blogcarnival.com website has a new look and new management and they have made some changes to the way they do things. You will need to login to the blogcarnival.com web site to submit your articles. If you don't have an account with them you will need to set one up. (I know this seems like an annoyance but it's a good thing because it will cut down on the tremendous amount of spam submissions received.) Please use a descriptive phrase in the title of any articles you submit and/or write a brief description/introduction to your articles in the "comment" box of the blog carnival submission form. This will give readers an idea of what you've written about and hopefully interest them in clicking on your link.

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It's Humorous Now, But It Sure Wasn't Back Then!

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 15:22:00 -0400

When I think back to my K/12 school years, I have many fond memories. I enjoyed school and I was a good student. I had lots of friends but I wasn't in the clique with the "cool" kids. My friends and I were not "jocks" or "nerds" or "frats". We were pretty much nobodies who hung with our friends from elementary school and those that lived in our immediate neighborhoods. One of my best friends throughout my school years was Pam, who lived next door to me when we were little. Her family moved about 4 blocks away at some point in our upper elementary school years but we remained good friends all through high school.

Back in my K/12 years, "middle school" was known as "junior high" and it consisted of 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. I attended Thomas Edison Junior High School for the years 1967-1970. (Don't bother to Google it. The school building was razed years ago and you won't find anything of interest about it.) Yep, those were the years of Hippies, peace signs, free love, the Vietnam conflict, mini skirts, and the budding years of feminists and much political activism.

Like most kids in the pre-teen years, Pam and I couldn't wait to grow up. We were boy crazy from a really young age. Our hormones had us bubbling over with our budding sexuality. By the time we entered junior high we were excited to go to football games and Friday night dances like the high school kids did. And like most kids at that age we were very self conscious.

I had very few classes with my friends. We were at the tail end of the baby boom generation and there were a lot of us in school at that time. (There were over 600 in my high school graduating class.) However, I was lucky and happy to have Pam in my 7th grade Social Studies class. We sat next to each other and competed, in a friendly way, for top grades in that class. And when we weren't competing for grades we were getting into mischief.

Mr. John Cotter was our Social Studies teacher. As I remember him, Mr. Cotter was tall and stocky and had an ordinary face until he was pissed off at which time he appeared very intimidating. He had a commanding personality when he was conducting class and he didn't tolerate much nonsense from his students. He wasn't one to crack jokes but he did throw around a bit of sarcasm that made us smile from time to time. All in all he was a pretty serious guy.

I have a couple very precious and comical memories from Mr. Cotter's class and they both include Pam. The first one was really Pam's comical moment, not mine. The second one was the most embarrassing/horrifying incident of my K/12 years. These aren't the kind of incidents where you had to be there to "get it". These are the kinds of situations anyone can relate to. And smile about.

One day, when we were having a class discussion about the meaning of democracy, Mr. Cotter asked a question. When no one raised their hand with the answer he called on me. As you would expect, everyone in class turned to look at me. And just at that exact moment Pam, sitting right next to me, sneezed. She tried to cover her mouth but she wasn't fast enough. Big long strands of mucus shot out from her nose to our desk/table and her hand, which was still quite a ways from her face. And those strands were still attached to her nose too! What a mess! She was mortified, of course, but couldn't really move without dragging the mucus with her. The class erupted in laughter. Gales and gales of laughter!!! Mr. Cotter, in his most commanding voice said, "Don't just stare at her! Get something to clean her up!" I reached down for my purse, which was under our table, and grabbed a couple tissues for her. But it was obvious she needed more than that. This was a super booger explosion! Pam ran out in the hall, and I went after her, to the nearest girl's restroom to clean her up. Thankfully, by the time we were done the bell had rung and that class was over. Once she was out of the classroom, Pam could see the humor in the situation and we laughed long and hard about that one! I've never forgotten it and I'll bet Pam hasn't either.

And then there was my moment of mortification in Mr. Cotter's class... and after school. Pam and I were sitting next to each other, as usual, and I passed her a note during class. A paper note. You know, the old fashioned kind that kids used to use to communicate before cell phones and text messages. Mind you, he had warned us that if he caught anyone passing notes he would confiscate said note and read it aloud to the class. So I should have known better! But I didn't think I'd get caught!!! (famous last words before your goose is cooked ;-) He saw me pass the note and got up from his desk and walked over and stood in front of the table where Pam and I sat. He didn't say a word he just reached out his hand, palm up. Pam looked totally embarrassed as she handed him the note. I looked like I wanted to die because I did want to die. He opened up the note and opened his mouth to read it then thought better of it and said, "I'll see the both of you after school in my office." I knew I was in big trouble at that point because I had written something good Catholic girls didn't write in notes. What did the note say? "Mr. Cotter is T.S.T.S.A."

Most of the kids in class groaned and encouraged Mr. Cotter to read the note but he refused and said he'd deal with it later. When we walked out of class after the bell had rung Pam asked me what the heck T.S.T.S.A. meant. I told her and she said, "I can't believe you wrote that! We're in big trouble now. What are we going to tell him?" To which I said, "You just tell him you don't know what it means because I didn't tell you and you won't get in any trouble. I'll think of some kind of explanation by the time we get to the meeting after school." That class was our first period after lunch so I had to worry about that after school meeting all afternoon. I couldn't concentrate on anything the teachers were saying in my other classes because I kept trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for T.S.T.S.A. It was all I could think about because there was no way I could tell him the truth.

All too soon the school day ended and I had to go back to Mr. Cotter's classroom and face the music (his office was in the back of the classroom). I was so scared I was shaking. I hadn't come up with anything that T.S.T.S.A. could stand for besides what it stood for. Remember, I was only 12 years old when this happened. ;-) When I got to his office I could see that Pam was already in there and the door was open. I walked in and sat down and looked at Pam and she looked as scared as me. Mr. Cotter addressed us both and said, "Who wrote the note?" I admitted I did and he looked at Pam and said, "You can go." She got up and practically ran from the room. I'm sure she was hugely relieved that her time with him was over. I was hoping and praying a hole would open up in the floor and I would fall through it. No such luck.

Mr. Cotter produced the note from his pocket, opened it up, and laid it on his desk. You know what came next... "What does T.S.T.S.A. stand for?" he boomed.

My heart was beating so hard I thought I was going to have a heart attack on the spot. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. I looked down for a moment and one tear rolled down my cheek. I was absolutely mortified. I wiped the tear off my face, looked up at Mr. Cotter, and told him the truth because I couldn't think of anything else to say. "Too Sexy To Sleep Alone."

I don't know what he was expecting to hear but it certainly wasn't that. He didn't say anything. He just stared at me for what felt like forever. He was probably trying to decide if I had the gall to be telling the truth. And he was trying desperately to keep his face from cracking a smile. He was pretty successful but I could sense his mirth just the same. Finally, he cleared his throat and said, "I'm not going to punish you any more than you're already punishing yourself. I think we're about done here." And with that he stood up and I stood up and I turned to leave the room thinking, "I can't believe that's all he's going to say!" He did give me one admonishment as I was leaving the room, "I don't want to see you passing any more notes!" "Okay!", I shouted back as I ran out into the hall to find Pam and share my mortification. But Pam wasn't there. She had gone on home and left me to face the wolf alone. I didn't blame her. I'm not sure I would have waited around if she'd been the one to write the note. It was a long walk home and I was a nervous wreck the whole time. I kept wondering what I would say if my mom saw how upset I was and asked me what was wrong. Telling her the truth would be even worse than telling Mr. Cotter. But I wasn't comfortable lying to her either.

I guess I managed to pull off a serene face because I have no memory of talking to my mom about the incident. And I'm sure I would have remembered that!

So how did I come up with the T.S.T.S.A.? It was something I'd overheard one of older girls in my neighborhood say in a conversation with my older brother. She was referencing a high school teacher she had. I thought it sounded cool and mature to be talking about a teacher that way. I was sooo naive. ;-)

Looking back, I think Mr. Cotter was a pretty cool dude. He could have dealt much more harshly with me than he did. I was never able to look him in the face again without feeling my humiliation. And I had him again for Social Studies for all of 9th grade! He was a good teacher though and I remember more of my assignments and class discussions from his class than from any other classes I had in my formative years.

I can't help but smile when I think back to that note though. T.S.T.S.A.! What was I thinking, LOL!!!

[Written for the 122nd Carnival of Genealogy]

Carnival of Genealogy, 121st Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Tue, 4 Sep 2012 15:32:00 -0400

Welcome to the September 4, 2012 edition of the Carnival of Genealogy. The topic for this edition is: Great Discoveries! We're writing about those things that have made us do the "happy dance", amazed and astounded us, or perhaps caused us to shed a tear. These are significant finds and we just had to share them with you! I know you'll be amazed at where and how we have come across the information that led us to these discoveries about our family members.

Summer is over. It's time to put away the beach umbrellas and bikinis. Pour yourself a glass of fresh apple cider and pull up a chair. The Carnival is back in town!

Mel Lassalle presents My Very First Deed posted at The Research Journal, saying, "My first attempt at land research has lead to an original deed and a dying husband's wish."

Joan Hill presents 121st COGs Great Discoveries; Discovering J.P. McPherson's Diary posted at Roots'n'Leaves, saying, "Discovering the diary of my great-great grandfather should have been much easier, if I had only taken in all the information available --- but not so."

Margie A. Rennick presents Carnival of Genealogy: Emotional Discovery in My Research posted at Ancestor Chase, saying, "I am always excited to make discoveries about my great grandfather Eugene Lammay, my biggest brick wall. What I did not expect was to have one of those discoveries upset me and actually make me mad at Eugene!"

Ellie presents How I Found the Mysterious McGarrs of Ballyraggan posted at Ellie's Ancestors.

Smallest Leaf presents Found! A small clue to my family's Jewish connection posted at 100 Years in America, saying, "The legend of a young Jewish orphan raised by Catholic religious sisters who grew up to be mayor of my ancestral village in Croatia has intrigued me for years. Now I've found a clue that might help to shed light on the truth of this tale. Make a stop over at 100 Years in America for the story."

Chery Kinnick presents The 95% Baard Johnson posted at Nordic Blue, saying, "For years, Chery consulted with relatives in search of a single image of an unaccounted-for great great grandfather who died in 1872. Using a little intuition and some deductive reasoning, Chery finally discovers his unmarked photograph hiding in "plain sight.""

Donna presents A Great Discovery posted at What's Past is Prologue, saying, "Donna Pointkouski presents "A Great Discovery" about surprises she found in her great-grandmother's alien registration and naturalization documents."

Julie Goucher presents Anglers Rest: Carnival Of Genealogy 121 - Great Discoveries posted at Anglers Rest, saying, "Great Discoveries"

Katie presents On ordering every record of everyone, ever. posted at You Are Where You Came From, saying, "When I was least expecting it, I found a maiden name on a collateral line, and it changed everything!"

Carol presents 121st Carnival Of Genealogy, Great Discoveries: The Lashbrook Book posted at Reflections From the Fence, saying, "My greatest discovery, 12 pages stuck in the back of a surname book. Twelve pages that continues to drive my research 20 years later."

Leah presents My Greatest Discovery (COG 121) posted at The Internet Genealogist, saying, "Who would have thought an obscure little book with a boring title would be the key to cracking the mysteries of my great-great-grandfather?!"

Dorene Paul presents Old photo of Aunt Bertie and Great Aunt Hilda posted at Graveyard Rabbit of Sandusky Bay, saying, "I did a "Happy Dance" when my cousin in Florida emailed me this great photo of my aunt and great aunt. I had never seen Aunt Hilda's picture before, and since she died so young, it was a wonderful blessing to see this image!"

Cheryl Schulte presents The 30 Year Search posted at Two Sides of the Ocean, saying, "It only took 30 years of hard work and determination, culminating in a wonderful find, to take me back on one line into the mid-1400's. What a thrill!"

Jasia presents September Remembrance posted at :: C R E A T I V E G E N E ::, saying, "The clue came out of nowhere, in an email from an unknown person. Come see what I discovered about members of my family!"

Jessica A. Stern presents Brick Wall Breakthroughs: Theresa Kommer Schmidt Kneisel posted at The Brick Wall Climber, saying, "This is the story of how I quite accidentally broke through a brick wall - of one of my most interesting ancestors, Theresa Kommer, whose husband Joseph was murdered in one of Appleton, Wisconsin's most infamous crimes."

Charles Hansen presents Carnival of Genealogy #121 Discovery posted at Mikkel's Hus, saying, "Well I finally found a Civil War Ancestor, I knew his obit said he was a Civil War veteran, but when he applied for a pension they said he had not been in the Civil War! Maybe a month is not long enough to get a pension?"

That concludes this edition of the COG. Weren't you amazed at all the great discoveries? You just never know where you'll find the clue that will reveal some great information about your family. So keep an open mind and look everywhere, lol!

Call for Submissions! The topic for the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy will be: School Humor! It's back to school time and we all have a few memories from our school days that never fail to bring a smile or chuckle to us. For the next edition of the COG I challenge you to share one (or more) humorous or embarrassing moments you remember from your school days. Feel free to use fictional names to protect the identity of those involved. It can be something that happened to you or to someone else. You can even share one of those dreadful school pictures of yourself if you dare. We hear so much about school bullying in the news these days and examples are all over YouTube. I thought it would be fun to go in the other direction and share some school laughter. Bring on the humor and share the good ole schools days with generations to come! The deadline for submissions will be October 1st.

[[New Info! Please Read!]]
Submit your blog article to the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy using the COG submission form. Please note, the blogcarnival.com website has a new look and new management and they have made some changes to the way they do things. You will need to login to the blogcarnival.com web site to submit your articles. If you don't have an account with them you will need to set one up. (I know this seems like an annoyance but it's a good thing because it will cut down on the tremendous amount of spam submissions received.) Please use a descriptive phrase in the title of any articles you submit and/or write a brief description/introduction to your articles in the "comment" box of the blog carnival submission form. This will give readers an idea of what you've written about and hopefully interest them in clicking on your link.

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September Remembrance

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 19:44:00 -0400

Some people touch your life in big ways, some in little. Most people don’t even realize the impact they have on your life, especially those who only touch it briefly and then are gone. Such is the case with Natalia who sent me an email a few weeks ago. I don’t know her, never met her, and probably never will. I may be related to her. I think the odds are pretty good but at this point I can’t prove it. She contacted me because of information she found on my blog regarding the village of Podborze, Poland. Her grandparents are from that village. We share surnames in common.

The most interesting part of her email was the information she shared with me about a document she found online. The document told of a tragedy that happened in Podborze in WWII that resulted in 23 family’s homes being burned to the ground by the Nazis. She listed the names of those families and most of those surnames are on my family tree. I was at once grateful that she had shared that info with me, curious to see the actual document she was referencing, and haunted at the thought of the tragedy.

Can you guess what happened next? I wrote back to her asking for more information, specifically about the document she mentioned as well as about our possible connections. She never replied.

That left me with no choice but to go out and do an internet search and find that document myself. Curiosity was eating away at me. My mind kept recalling her email and all the names she’d listed. Below is that list of names. I’ve highlighted those I’m certain I’m related to.

Dudek, Jan and Karolina (first home burned down)
Kilian, Antoni, and Weryński, Antoni (Antoni and his father-in-law living in one home)
Dereń, Kazimierz and Bronisława
Kilian, Stanisław and Anna
Pietras, Piotr
Pająk, Michał and Maria (mayor of the village at the time)
Froncz, Wiktor and Maria
Rzegocki, Stanisław and Apolonia
Michoń, Jan and Józefa; and living with them was Dziekan, Jan, brother of Józefa.
Rzegocki, Adam and Maria [Maria and her husband Adam were my 1st cousines 3 times removed]
Kołacz, Adam and Apolonia [Adam and his wife Apolonia were my 2nd cousins twice removed]
Koźlik, Adam and Bronisława [Adam and his wife Bronislawa were my 2nd cousins twice removed]
Furman, Jan and Julia
Kużdzał, Jan
Golec, Franciszek and Maria; who lived in the home of their son Rzegocki, Błażej
Lasek, Tomasz and Agnieszka
Sierosławska, Apolonia [Apolonia was my Great-Grandaunt]
Ryś, Sebastian and Anna; living with them was Laska, Michał, brother of Anna. [Sebastian’s wife Anna was my Grandaunt, Michał my Granduncle]
Furman, Antoni and Elżbieta [Elzbieta and Antoni were my 2nd cousins twice removed]
Skowron, Julian and Józefa
Furman, Franciszek and son-in-law Stanisław Midurą.
Leśniowski, Jan and Maria [Jan and Maria are my 2nd cousins twice removed]
Laska, Karolina (known as Zygmoniak); [Karolina was the widow of Zygmunt, my 1st cousin 3 times removed]

I suspect another one or two of the people on this list are my family members as well but I need to do more research to verify that. The long and the short of it is, the story of what went on in Podborze becomes very personal with this many of my family members affected!

So, on with the search. My gut told me I wouldn’t find out anything about the village of Podborze doing a typical Google search but I tried it just the same and came up with nothing. Next I tried a search using Google.pl (Polish Google). Bingo! It wasn’t the first item to come up in the search but I found it eventually. I kept trying “Podborze” plus one of the surnames from the list. I don’t remember how many different surnames I tried before I found it but it took a while. And when I found the document I sent a mental thank you across the miles to the folks at Google headquarters for having created the Google Translate program. I would never have found it or read it if they hadn’t.

It turns out that the document was an 80+ page academic paper written for a regional conference on the topic of the Holocaust and Jewish/Polish relations. It was edited by Dr. Maria Przybysewska and presented in the nearby town of Radomsył Wielka in September 2007. The document tells of Polish/Jewish relations over the centuries and ends with stories of heroism of villagers from several Polish towns and villages during WWII, one of which was Podborze. On September 22 and 23, 2007, there were celebrations held to honor the heroes of Podborze and an obelisk that was erected in the town was unveiled.

I’m not going to try to condense an 80+ page translated academic document here. If you are interested in reading it in its entirety you can download it here. However, I will share with you a condensed version of the section that pertains specifically to Podborze and my family members.

In 1943, the Nazis were all about annihilating the Jews in Poland and had been doing such for years. There was a large population of Jewish families living in nearby Radomsył Wielka. They were killed, virtually all of them. However, one Jewish family escaped to Podborze when the Nazis had taken away their buildings and land 2 years earlier. From 1941-1943 the members of that family survived by living in the neighboring forests when weather permitted and were given sanctuary by a number of villagers much of the time as well. This was at a time when the Nazis had decreed that any Polish citizen who harbored a Jew would be killed for doing so. So the villagers of Podborze were putting their own lives at risk to help this Jewish family.

On April 23, 1943, the Nazis returned to Podborze looking for the Jewish family. Their intelligence information told them the family was living with Jan and Karolina Dudek. They went to the Dudek home but only their children were there. Jan and Karolina were gone for the day. One of the Jewish family members had been there but he escaped to the woods. The Gestapo went to a neighbor, Antoni Kilian, and tortured him in an effort to learn where the Jewish family was. But he did not tell them. The Nazis would not leave the situation at that. They set fire to the Dudek farm and set self-igniting devices in several other homes knowing that one after another they would go up in flames. And not only the homes but the out-buildings too. The home owners tried to salvage what they could from their burning homes but most lost everything. It was a tremendous fire and the Nazis also burned the building housing the fire fighting equipment so the villagers couldn’t even fight it. When the smoke cleared, 23 farms were destroyed along with the fire house. The homeowners had a very difficult time surviving afterwards. Most lived with extended family for a time and built straw huts to live in during temperate months. Years later evidence of the fire was still visible. The true miracle is that none of the villagers were killed in the incident.

And what of the Jewish family? Some of them survived, some did not.

So, what a find, eh? I was gobsmacked. Twenty-three families in the small, poor farming village of Podborze lost their homes and all of their worldly possessions because they were blamed by the Gestapo for harboring one Jewish family. Some of them undoubtedly did give shelter to the Jewish family, but did all of them? They all paid a high price nonetheless. Putting it in perspective, they didn’t pay with their lives as did so very, very many Jewish families but it is an example of how the Polish people suffered at the hands of the Nazis for trying to protect their good neighbors. I’m so glad that the memory of these residents of Podborze was honored. Their quiet acts of heroism are worthy of that at least.

This was the latest “find” related to my family history. I don’t come across this sort of information often so it is really valued when I do. How I wish I could search the last hundred years of newspapers near the villages in Poland where my ancestors lived. But I don’t believe such newspapers exist. Certainly there was no such thing as a “free press” during Poland’s long occupation by the Soviets. A few of Poland’s larger cities had newspapers but that wouldn’t help me. My family came from obscure farming villages in the middle of nowhere. Their names are not likely to be mentioned in any big city newspapers. Just another of the many challenges of researching family history in Poland.

The photo below is of Michał Laska (#18 on the list), my Granduncle, the only one of my relatives listed that I have a photograph of. This photo of Michał was taken in the 1980s. He was born September 27, 1906 in Podborze and died September 16, 1994 in nearby Zgórsko. Sadly, he didn't live long enough to know he was one of those honored for his sacrifice in Podborze. It was very fitting that he was remembered at the ceremony in Radomsył Wielka in September 2007 (September being the month of his birth and death) and is again being remembered in the September edition of the Carnival of Genealogy. Rest in peace, dear Michał.

Carnival of Genealogy, 120th Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Sat, 4 Aug 2012 07:30:00 -0400

Welcome to the August 4, 2012 edition of the Carnival of Genealogy. The topic for this edition is: business and commerce! This time around we are writing about the entrepreneurial spirit in our families. We dedicate this edition to those gutsy folks on our family trees who preferred to take a chance on being their own boss rather than work for someone else. Big corporations may be better known but "mom and pop" small businesses are the heart and soul of our world. Hat's off to all the entrepreneurs in our families!

I think you'll enjoy reading about the small business owners in our families. There are some wonderful period photos included in our articles too. Please pour yourself a cool refreshing libation and pull up a chair in the shade, by the beach, or in your comfortable air conditioned home. The Carnival is back in town!

Geniaus presents Geniaus: 120th Carnival of Genealogy - Business and Commerce posted at Geniaus, saying, "Aussie battler, Frank Duncan, tried his hand at a few businesses and was spectacularly unsuccessful."

Sherry Stocking Kline presents Carnival of Genealogy – Our Family Business Was a Wheat and Dairy Farm posted at Family Tree Writer, saying, "Our family farm might have been a family business, but it was a part of all of us, our heritage, our lives, our home."

Donna presents The Iceman Cometh posted at What's Past is Prologue, saying, "Donna Pointkouski presents "The Iceman Cometh" to tell - and show - her grand-uncle's beginnings as a businessman."

Julie Goucher presents Anglers Rest: Carnival Of Genealogy 120 - Business and Commerce posted at Anglers Rest, saying, "The first steps in researching the business of an ancestor"

Kristin Cleage Williams presents Cleage Printers posted at Finding Eliza, saying, "My uncles Henry and Hugh Cleage owned and operated Cleage Printers on the West Side of Detroit for a decade during the 1950s and 1960, printing handbills for stores and whatever else they wanted to print."

Cynthia Shenette presents Business Profile: Helen's, 39/41 Millbury St., Worcester, MA posted at Heritage Zen:, saying, "My great-aunt, Helen Bulak, opened a millinery shop in Worcester, MA in November of 1918 with a $100 investment. She remained in business at the same location until she retired on October 30, 1973, 55 years later!"

Cheryl Schulte presents Two Generations of General Store Owners posted at Two Sides of the Ocean.

Nancy Messier presents Meinzen Confectionery, Steubenville, Ohio posted at My Ancestors and Me, saying, "Candy store or cigar store? I hope it was a candy store!"

Dawn Westfall presents COG: Timmer = Hammer; Eight Generations of Building posted at Wisteria, saying, "We have a proud heritage of nearly two hundred years and eight generations of building in our family. Come see the beautiful work that's been done."

Jasia presents The Family Bakery posted at Creative Gene. I grew up hearing stories about my grandparent's bakery. I grew up eating bakery bread and pastries too. To this day all it takes is the scent of freshly baked bread to take me back to my childhood...

Carol presents 120th Carnival of Genealogy :: Business and Commerce :: Donald E Bowen the Entrepreneur posted at Reflections From the Fence, saying, "Spotlighting one of my father's entrepreneurial escapades."

Jessica Stern presents The Family Business: Electric Motor Service Co., Appleton, WI. posted at The Brick Wall Climber, saying, "This is my first contribution to one of the carnivals. I wrote about my grandfather's Electric Motor Repair business, which I was inspired to research after finding photos of it that he had taken."

Joan Hill presents 120th COG's Business and Commerce: A Life To Be Dreamed posted at Roots 'n' Leaves, saying, "My McPherson family seem to have an affinity for building, nurturing and owning their own businesses. This story is about one aunt and her dream."

That concludes this edition of the Carnival of Genealogy. I hope you enjoyed reading about the business-minded folks on our family trees. I'm shamelessly going to plug small businesses here by encouraging you to support (shop at... don't just look!) your local small businesses on "Small Business Saturday" (and year 'round too).

From Wikipedia: Small Business Saturday is an American shopping holiday created by American Express, held on the Saturday after Thanksgiving during one of the busiest shopping periods of the year. First celebrated on November 27, 2010, it is a counterpart to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which feature big box retail and e-commerce stores respectively. By contrast, Small Business Saturday encourages holiday shoppers to patronize brick and mortar businesses that are small and local.

Call for Submissions! The topic for the next edition of the COG will be: Great Discoveries. We've written about the Happy Dance before in the Carnival of Genealogy but it has been 3.5 years since then. I figure it's time to once again share your latest discoveries, the ones that put a smile on your face, brought a tear to your eye, or for whatever reason made you say, "wow"! Write up your exciting discoveries and share them with us in the COG. The deadline for submissions is September 1st.

Submit your blog article to the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy using our carnival submission form. Please use a descriptive phrase in the title of any articles you plan to submit and/or write a brief description/introduction to your articles in the "comment" box of the blog carnival submission form. This will give readers an idea of what you've written about and hopefully interest them in clicking on your link. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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The Family Bakery

noreply@blogger.com (Jasia) — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 15:48:00 -0400

The Founders
My grandfather, Wincenty Lisowski, immigrated to the U.S. from Poland in 1912. Something about his life, pre-immigration, was upsetting to him and for that reason he never talked about life back in "the old country". He wasn't a young man when he came to America. At age 28, he was certainly old enough to have had some kind of job before he left Poland but no one in the family knows what that might have been.

The Lisowski family members were peasant farmers and they did own their own land. Wincenty was the oldest son and by tradition should have and would have inherited the family farm. But he didn't. Or perhaps he did but didn't want it. Just a few months after his father died, he left Poland for the land of the free and the home of the brave and made his new home in the then bustling city of Detroit, Michigan.

Once in Michigan, Wincenty worked at a couple different places. He is known to have worked at the Michigan Milling and Beverage Company on Military Avenue in Detroit and for an "auto plant" prior to 1916. In January 1916 Wincenty married Zofia Mizera, also an immigrant from Poland, who was working as a seamstress.

Wincenty had a friend, Feliks Jaruga, who was also from Poland. Feliks immigrated in 1913 and was a baker by trade. In February 1917, Wincenty and Feliks went into business together buying a bakery owned by Louis Robakiewicz and his son Stanley. It was just a small, two-story frame building located on the corner of 30th and Herbert Streets in their west-side Polish neighborhood. A short time after Wincenty and Zofia's first child was born, the family moved into the apartment above the bakery and Wincenty and Feliks' entrepreneurship began with their new enterprise, the Polonia Baking Company (PBC).

Setting Up Business
Wincenty must have learned the baking business from Feliks because I can find no evidence of him working in the baking trade before he and Feliks established the PBC. He would come to learn that owning and running a bakery wasn't an easy life, especially after Feliks wanted out of the business less than a year after they started it.

The PBC operated 6 days a week. Wincenty's only day off was Saturdays. The rest of the time he arose in the early hours of the night and made his way to the kitchen to begin the process of making the dough for the fresh bread and pastries that they would begin selling in the store front at 7am. After she fed and clothed their infant daughter, Zofia would come downstairs and run the front counter while Wincenty and Feliks worked their magic back in the kitchen.

Before long (just a few months), Feliks wanted out of the baking business. He'd met a nice girl who lived on the east side of town and he wanted to marry her. But she didn't want to move away from her family to the west side of town. I'm not sure if Wincenty and Feliks' parting was amiable or not but I believe it was. Bad business relations tend to be the kind of thing that gets whispered about among family members in the retelling of the "old days" but I never heard about any ill will towards Feliks. In any event, Wincenty bought out Feliks' share of the business and he became President and Zofia became the secretary-treasurer of the PBC. Feliks married in April 1918, just over a year from the time he and Wincenty went into business together. By then he was working as a machinist, presumably somewhere on the east side of Detroit. Before the year was out, Feliks and his bride would have a daughter of their own.

Expanding the Business and Family
Meanwhile, Wincenty had big ideas for his little bakery. Business was going well enough that in 1919 he hired an architectural firm to draw up plans for expansion. And they were pretty ambitious plans! He bought out the two houses next door to the bakery and began construction of a substantial two-story brick addition with hopes of eventually buying more land and expanding even more. The new addition was completed in 1920 and the PBC business grew and grew. So did Wincenty's family.

Another daughter was born to Wincenty and Zofia in 1918 (My mom, Lucyna, was born in the apartment above the bakery.) In 1920, two of Zofia's sisters immigrated to the U.S. and came to live with them also. And in early 1921 Zofia gave birth to a son. In 1919 the family moved out of the bakery apartment to a small home kitty corner from the bakery. In 1920 they moved again to a larger home 4 doors down 30th Street from the bakery. Whew! What an exciting time that must have been for the Lisowski family... expanding their business, their family, and their residence in the span of just 3 years! Life was good for this immigrant family.

Sadly, it wasn't so good for Wincenty's friend and former business partner. Feliks was killed in May 1920, hit by a train while trying to outrun it in his car. Feliks' brother, Maryan, was also in the car at the time but he survived the accident. He married Feliks' widow and raised their daughter as his own. Maryan owned a music store and sold musical instruments and sheet music.

The "Roaring Twenties" were a time of robust business in Detroit, Michigan, and throughout the U.S. Wincenty hired more and more employees, mostly family members, neighbors, and friends, until he had 30+ people working for him. He bought 7 delivery vans so that he could deliver his baked goods to neighborhood grocery stores throughout Detroit, Hamtramck, and the Delray areas. He was a well known businessman in the west-side Polish community and the family had a prosperous life.

And then came the stock market crash of 1929.

And the Great Depression.

The Difficult Years
The Depression years were difficult for the PBC. People had no money. Those who were employed could afford fresh bread (at $.10 a loaf) but most people stood in long lines for day-old bread (at $.05 a loaf). Very few people had money for pastries or cakes, not even for special occasions. Wincenty struggled to keep the bakery going but it wasn't easy.

By 1934-1935 Wincenty knew he had to do something. He didn't want to let any of his employees go because they were almost all his family members, neighbors, and friends. He came up with the idea to have half the employees work the first 3 days of the week and the other half work the other 3 days of the week that the bakery was open. That way no one would be jobless. Unfortunately, the employees didn't like his idea.

The disenchanted employees of the PBC demanded full-time employment and when Wincenty told them he couldn't keep them on full-time they organized and joined a local union. Compared to some of the violent union activities at the time, the discontent aimed at the PBC was relatively mild. But it was enough to put it out of business. Some union sympathizers released smoke bombs in the back of the delivery vans when the drivers were unloading baked goods. Police reports were made but there was little that could be done to repair the damage or prevent further incidents. The stinky smoke filled the vans and no amount of cleaning would remove it. No baked goods could be transported in the vans without also taking on the stinky smell. The financial loss of the vans was more than the business could handle.

In 1935-36, Wincenty and Zofia sold the bakery to a Greek family. They weren't in business long before they closed up shop as well.

Looking Back
The PBC had a substantial impact on my grandparent's lives as well as the lives of their children, extended family members, their neighbors and community. It was the focus of Wincenty and Zofia's world for the 20 years they owned it. It provided a very good standard of living for most of those years and I believe they would have been labeled a success by their family back in Poland as well as their fellow immigrants to this great nation. A lot of hard work, long hours, and prayer went into their success. I greatly admire their determination and dedication.

As is often the case with family history, I still have many questions. Where did Wincenty, Zofia, and Feliks come up with money to buy the small bakery in the first place? Did Feliks' widow regret her husband selling out his share of the bakery and moving to the east side of the city to be with her? Are there any records of incorporation or solvency available on the bakery and if so, where? Why didn't Wincenty go forward with his grand plans to expand the bakery? Were my grandparents and the bakery employees on speaking terms when he sold the bakery or were the employees too bitter at that point?

A hundred times or more I have imagined the scent and taste of the Polish rye bread my grandfather was famous for. I've daydreamed about the pastries, cakes, babkas, cheesecakes, cinnamon rolls, egg bread, chrusciki, poppy seed and nut rolls I know they made there. No doubt about where I got my sweet tooth!

Pictured above, my grandfather stands on the sidewalk outside his bakery. You can see the bay windows of the apartment upstairs where my mother was born. On the left side of the image you can see part of the brick addition Wincenty added after buying the two houses next door to the bakery. I wish I had more old photos of the bakery. There are never enough old photos!!!