Poland: Target Wisła River

Poland has been on my genealogy wish list for years. 

In My Genealogy Sabbatical Year, I wished for two months in Poland and Germany. I feel lucky that I was able to spend two weeks there.

Lake Radyszyn

Target: Vistula River (Wisła in Polish)

I hoped to stay near the Wisła River. My ancestors lived in various small towns along the river between Włocławek and Płock. I wanted to feel what it felt like to be there. The Gostynin-Włocławek Landscape Park, a beautiful post-glacial area, absorbed many of the towns. The land and its' beauty remains. 

Ancestral Locations on Vistula River

Research Location #1: Płock or Włocławek?

Since my last posting about finding genealogical records in Poland, I have found evidence of ancestors in several more towns. Most of these ancestral towns, are part of Powiat Włocławski in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship. These towns belonged to the Nowa Wieś Lutheran parish. Nowa Wieś is just south of the border of Powiat Włocławsk in Powiat Płocki in the Masovian Voivodeship.  When it was active the Nowa Wieś Lutheran parish encompassed 36 towns and villages. Our first research stop will be the Płock archive. 

Research Tip: Carefully examine ancestral locations over time to determine which government or religious body created the records when your ancestor lived. 

A River View

We found a fantastic hotel right on the river in Płock; Hotel Tumski. It is less than a block from the archives. Our guide, Zbigniew, picked us up at the Warsaw airport and brought us straight there. PolishOrigins had planned research for the first day, but I knew we would all need a break. Plus, our cousin, Erwin, would be coming from Potsdam, Germany, in the evening to meet and join us in our ancestral quest. We did not want to leave him out of the fun.

Research on!
Jennifer Shoer aka Scrappy Gen
Reconnecting Relatives®, LLC
Let's Remember together! Visit my business page to learn how to hire me in 3 easy steps to help you find and reconnect with your ancestors and family. 

Resources: 
My Genealogy Sabbatical Year
Gostynin-Włocławek Landscape Park
Using Google Maps to Find Genealogical Records
Płock Archives
Płock Evangelical Lutheran and Catholic Indexing Project
Polish Archival Resources for Nowa Wieś
Search Polish Archives

Into a Briar Bush - Genealogy Records Page by Page

"If a girl jumps into a briar bush, it is hard to tell which bush scratches the hardest."[1]

This birth certificate took my breath away. There were several illegitimate births each year in Stonington, Connecticut, but for this one, either the doctor or the clerk felt the need to pass moral judgement on the mother of this baby boy. 

Genealogy Records Page by Page

I found the record for baby boy Morrison born in 1863 by looking through the Stonington vital records on microfilm, image by image. When you are searching for a family (online, on microfilm or in person), take the time to proceed page by page. There are several benefits to this process;

• become familiar with names of fellow residents; important when building your FAN club
• find items missed during indexing or indexed incorrectly
• microfilm: you may discover film descriptions are inaccurate and find something you didn't expect to find
• births: find babies recorded without first names
• marriages: learn the names of officiants of other marriages and by extension discover religious institutions
• deaths: learn about most common causes and epidemics
• discover interesting stories and add to your knowledge of the time and place

Yes. It takes more time to look at every page or image. I spent eight hours going through this microfilm reel! That's three days spent at the Family History Center in Exeter, New Hampshire. However, not only did I find several family records, I found baby Morrison's birth certificate. 

Baby Morrison's certificate tells us about the morals of the day and society's view on illegitimate births, promiscuity and racial prejudice. Was this remark made by the white doctor because of the mother's color? We could answer this question by making a survey of all of the illegitimate births in Stonington and noting the doctors' names and their remarks.[2] 

I hope you will consider going page by page the next time you are hunting for an ancestor's record. Let me know what you find. 

Research on!

Jennifer Shoer aka Scrappy Gen

Reconnecting Relatives, LLC

Let's Remember!

________________________________________________
[1] Stonington, Connecticut, Records of births, marriages, deaths 1847- 1869, Certificate of Birth, 39, Morrison, April 12th, 1863; FHL microfilm 1309873, Item 4.
[2] 1850 U.S. census, Stonington, New London County, Connecticut, population schedule, p. 270 (stamped), dwelling 208, family 381, Geo. E. Palmer; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 19 June 2015); citing National Archives microfilm publication M432, roll 48.

Family History Stories

Just a quick hello to say I have been enjoying organizing photos and memories for telling more family history stories. 

What have you been working on?

Jennifer Shoer aka Scrappy Gen

Reconnecting Relatives, LLC

Let's Remember!

Rule for Photographing Ancestral Places

view of Portage looking southeast

One thing I did not expect when we traveled to Hancock, Michigan was the gigantic presence of the Portage River. Hancock is perched on one bank and across the expanse is the town of Houghton. The Houghton-Hancock Bridge connecting the two towns is vital to the prosperity of both, but as the only land access to the northern most area of Michigan it is also indispensable to the entire Upper Peninsula called the Keweenaw Peninsula. To the south the Portage River becomes Portage Lake and to the north, connects to Lake Superior as the Portage Canal. 

location of Temple Jacob with view of Portage

Temple Jacob has made its home on the bank of this venerable river since 30 May 1912, the day its cornerstone was laid.[1] The view is spectacular and I wonder if there is another synagogue in the United States with such a setting.

Temple Jacob building and the bridge

    
Rule for Photographing Ancestral Places

The pictures I did not take were 1) a panorama of the river from the steps of the synagogue and 2) street views of the temple's location. I was so busy recording the building and the events that I forgot my rule: Whenever you visit an ancestral place, stand in front and take pictures down the street, up the street and across the street. Then, walk away from your ancestral place and take pictures of it from each of the three angles and from a distance; i.e. from down the street, up the street and across the street. 

And what do you do with all of those pictures? Put them in an album, photo book or scrapbook, of course!

page elements: Journey of the Heart
© 2011 Elise Hansen of Elise's Pieces Designs
www.elisespieces.com

Hope this helps you record and memorialize your own ancestral journeys. 

Scrappy Gen
Let's Remember!


[1] Rochelle Berger Elstein, "The Jews of Houghton-Hancock and Their Synagogue," Michigan Jewish History 38 (November 1998); online archives, Jewish Historical Society of Michigan (http://www.michjewishhistory.org/pdfs/vol38.pdf : accessed 28 September 2012), page 7

One Foot in the Present, One Foot in the Past

As I mentioned in Not Who We Thought We Were, my great, great grandfather may have changed his name from Shailer to Brainard. When I began to create this family history page, I hoped to capture the mystery that surrounds my maiden name, but as I worked the story became about the enduring draw I have, since childhood, felt from my ancestors. Although rooted in the present, part of me lives in the past and usually the quite distant past, not yesterday or last month. 

The trio of men are my three grandfathers, who brought this surname forward to my Dad. I have been thinking about them quite a lot and wondering how the story of our surname was lost, or was it purposely forgotten? In the layout a much younger me is ready to climb over the wall into the past seeking understanding of my grandfathers' lives. She is already starting her climb as if she cannot resist the pull.


Have you experienced this feeling? When did it start? 


Happy Scrapbook Sunday!


Scrappy Gen
Let's Remember!

Credit: Elements in layout are from "Flying Dreams, A Storybook Collection" kit copyright 2009 by Lorie Davison of scrapbookgraphics.com

How to Begin Your Genealogy Research, or How Not to

One of my best friends has renewed her interest in researching her family tree. Woo hoo!!! An in person, non-virtual friend...who is actually interested in genealogy. She has caught the bug! How lucky am I?

How to Begin Your Genealogy Research

Like many who catch the genealogy bug, my friend would love to jump ahead and collect as much information as she can, but she has been allowing me to offer some guidance and I am thrilled at all the great discoveries she has made.

Here are a few of things she has done to get started:

1. Contacted and gently prodded family information and records from her living relatives. 
2. Made a research plan of the vital records she needed to collect for her direct line ancestors.
3. Visited the town clerks where she suspected her ancestors' vital records would have been recorded. 
4. Joined Ancestry.com and began using both Family Search and Find a Grave. She has been learning how to do a targeted Google search and has consulted genealogies and family histories.
5. Tramped through cemeteries all over southeastern New Hampshire. Took pictures of her ancestors' graves as well as the graves all around her ancestors' burial plots. 
6. Bought a special notebook to use specifically for her research notes so that she doesn't end up with lots of slips of loose paper. 
7. Started a binder with a tab for each of her direct line surnames and individual sections for each of her direct line ancestors. Began filing her documents according to surname.
8. Created a Dropbox account to share documents with me and with her family members. 

Hasn't she been doing a great job? She gets that it is important to not give up and even has a plan to look at alternative records for proving familial relationships. Another important skill she has used frequently is an often overlooked one: ask a question if you can't find something or you don't understand something. Not only has she been asking me questions, but also those she has met in her research journey. This leads me to a question she recently asked me and to the second part of this post.

How Not to Begin Your Genealogy Research

My friend is not shy, no, not at all. Everywhere she goes, she strikes up conversations. She had a nice talk with a local historian, who told her the advice he gives to most newbie genealogy researchers. When you start out, don't bother with getting all those original records, gather information from the people, who have already shared their family trees. What?? This is not the way to begin your genealogy research!

Random copying of names, dates, places and events from books and websites is never a good idea, unless the facts are linked to sources. Books and websites without sources can and should be consulted to find clues to possible research paths. Thankfully my friend knew enough to ask if the advice was good and she gets it. What about all of the newbies, who didn't know enough to ask? What do you think will happen with their family tree?

Happy Monday Everyone!

Scrappy Gen

Let's Remember!

Get Up and Dance or Boogie with the Band - Your Invitation

Have you been scrapbooking your family history? Well, actually, I know the answer to that question because I've been creeping on your blogs and yes, lots of you have been! Would you like to do more? How about sharing how you do it with more readers? Interested? Here are some suggestions:

Take the Microphone

Be a guest blogger for Scrapbook Sunday, here at The Scrappy Genealogist. Share your unique vision and techniques for sharing your family's ancestry and stories through scrapbooking. You might just inspire your fellow readers to get started. 

Boogie with the Band

Join the Virtual GeneaScrappers group! We are currently working our way through the Family History Album Class 1 from JessicaSprague.com. There is nothing like group support and these women are quickly becoming good friends. 

Get Up and Dance

Everyone  dances to a different beat. Show us your rhythm. Write a blog post showcasing a project you have created that fits the theme scrapbooking family history. Then post it with 'Scrapbook Sunday' included in the title and send me a link. For Sunday, 11 December 2011, a nice holiday themed layout would be fun. Or maybe your Uncle Miles didn't like the holidays, you could always do a page about your uncle, the Grinch. 

Hold Up Your Lighter

Hop around to the blogs participating in Scrapbook Sunday and leave a comment, or two or three. You know how we bloggers like to look out and see the lighters. Comments keep us motivated, let us know who is spending time with us and give us a chance to get to know you better. 

Have I convinced you yet to join the party? I hope you do. Personally I like to get up and dance whenever I can, which isn't very often anymore. Mostly at weddings. I love weddings, just for this very opportunity. Oops, off topic. Anyway, let us know if you are up for dancing, or watching or something else entirely. See you on Sunday!

Scrappy Gen

Let's Remember!

Family History Album Week 3 - Scrapbook Sunday

Welcome to our first official Scrapbook Sunday. Today is the day to work on sharing your genealogy work with your family. How you decide to share it is up to you. Don't be afraid of the crafty word, scrapbook. Any creative project for displaying your family history will be considered scrapbooking for Scrapbook Sunday.

This week I am still working on the Family History Album from JessicaSprague.com. The assignment is to create four pages about the parents in our selected family tree. The parents in my tree are my husband and me, so this assignment is not difficult in terms of collecting missing information. 

This project is very straight forward and easy to complete. There are three more pages to do for this week and I will be working on them today. If you have missed any of this project, simply click on Family History Scrapbooking. There are four other bloggers regularly contributing to this series!

How do you share your family history? Do you scrapbook?

Happy Scrapbook Sunday!

Scrappy Gen

Let's Remember!

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Saturday's Family History Scrapbooking Stars

Saturday's Family History Scrapbooking Stars

Have you wondered how to interest your family in your genealogy work? Tomorrow, Sunday, November 20th is the first official Scrapbook Sunday in the family history blogging universe. Scrapbooks have many incarnations; quilts, mugs, wall hangings, canvases, glass jars, plates and of course books. The possibilities are limitless. While you are waiting for Scrapbook Sunday to start, take a look at these blogs and articles for a glimpse of the possibilities:

 

Flip-Pal™ Simple Gifts Blog Hop – Digital Scrapbook; Julie Tarr at GenBlog created a multilayered project using photos she scanned with her Flip-Pal scanner. With the photo scans, she digitally created family history scrapbook pages and then combined the pages into a fabulous power point presentation.

Legacies: Scrapbooks, Photo Albums Tell Important Family Stories; Inspirational article posted on TheLedger.com. Creating a scrapbook about her life helped this woman overcome cancer, share her legacy and start a new business.

   

A plate as scrapbook? Yes! Heather Wilkinson Rojo of the Nutfield Genealogy blog created it for the Flip-Pal™ Simple Gifts Blog Hop.  

For My Son...a Lifetime of Memories; Article posted on this is Somerset. This mum was diagnosed with cancer just after her son was born. Now she is enjoying every minute with her baby and creating a memory box of their time together.   

Family Tree by Chelle's Creations on scraporchard.com. This new digital scrapbooking kit is on sale with a bonus set of heritage words from 11/18-11/25.   

Tell a story and put it in a jar. That's what Caroline Pointer of For Your Family Story did when she created a Story Jar.  

Food for thought in What Will You Do With Your Genealogy Research from Lorine McGinnis Schulze at the Olive Tree Genealogy Blog.   

Want more? Click on the Family History Scrapbooking tab above and read about the Family History Album several bloggers and I are busy making. Have you been working on a family history scrapbooking project or do you have any questions? Leave a comment below or send me an email to jshoer [at] jenalygen [dot] com. I would love to hear from you!

See you tomorrow for Scrapbook Sunday!

Happy Saturday!  

Scrappy Gen  

Let's Remember!

Scrapbooking Family History Album - Week 3 Assignment

It's week three of our family history scrapbooking project. Participate or follow along as we complete the Family History Album Class 1  from JessicaSprague.com. If you have missed anything, go to the Family History Scrapbooking page to catch up. 

Week Three or Day Five Assignment:

Parent Pages

• Create two to four pages about the first individuals or the parents in your album's family tree.  

What was easy? What was difficult? Did you make any discoveries about your family? Write a blog post about this assignment and be sure to include 'Scrapbook Sunday' in your title. The GeneaBloggers widget for Scrapbook Sunday should pick up the posts beginning this Sunday, November 20th. 

Happy Tuesday!

Scrappy Gen

Let's Remember! 

 

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Scrappy Genealogist Goes to New York – Part 4 Great Grandma Catherine’s Birthplace

The second day of our frenetic visit to New York City found us here:

  
With my family in tow (in a hired car), I was looking for the home of this precious beauty, my great grandmother, Catherine:



It’s hard to say who was cuter, Catherine, or this kid:



You have to love those freckles. This adorable guy was Catherine's son and you already know him as Bubba, the Sailor Man. While we were in New York City, we visited 401 East 10th Street in Manhattan. This was the home address of Catherine’s parents, Edward and Sarah, at the time of her birth in 1899 as indicated on her birth certificate. 




Here is the building (above) which is at the location Google Maps gives for 401 East 10th Street. The photo below shows the same building from the front, which faces Avenue C. The address above the door shows that it is number 170. A website of virtual walking tours in Manhattan called New York Songlines indicates it was built in 1967. 



Obviously this was not the home of my great grandmother, although the 1900 U.S. census did show them living at 170 Avenue C and not 401 East 10th Street. I had expected them to be living in a building similar to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and similar to the buildings (shown below) across both Avenue C and East 10th Street from this more modern building. 

          

I took a look at some old maps to see what the area looked like in the past. This snippet of an 1852 map from the David Rumsey Map Collection shows Stage Stables at the future location of  401 East 10th Street. Click on the map to be taken to the original image. 



Here is a later image of the same address in 1891. The stables have become a Horse Car Stable and seem to take up a smaller area. The street number range provides for the house numbers in Catherine’s records.




The buildings along the stretch of Avenue C between from 162 through 172 appear to have been similar in size to other brick multifamily buildings still in existence today and which I photographed in the area. Most likely Catherine did live in a building similar to the Tenement Museum. Although I did not get to see the original home of my great grandmother, it still felt more concrete (no pun intended) to stand on the street where she lived. As much fun as I have with David Rumsey’s maps and Google Maps, nothing beats visiting a place in person.
This is my last installment of our two day whirlwind trip to New York City. You can read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 here.

Thanks for reading!

Scrappy Gen

Scrappy Genealogist Goes to New York - Part 3 - The Lower East Side Tenement Museum

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum at 97 Orchard Street has been on my bucket list for a long time. For years as a Third Grade Hebrew school teacher, I facilitated an immigration project with my students. The students would first spend time learning about Jewish immigration through fiction and nonfiction books, maps, videos, websites and a visit with Mrs. Shapiro at the Shapiro House at the Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, N.H. The second part of their project involved interviewing a family member, who was an immigrant or who knew an immigrant ancestor. It was an ambitious project and so we only spent a brief period of time learning about the Tenement Museum in New York City, but every year my interest in visiting this place was renewed. 

97 Orchard Street is just a couple of blocks from Sammy's Roumanian Style Restaurant. We were due there at 6:00 PM for dinner with our 'long lost' cousin and so we made a reservation for the 4:45 PM Piecing it Together tour. One thing you should know about this museum is that the only way to see it is by guided tour. I would have loved to have spent the whole day going on all of the tours and seeing the entire tenement, but I knew that my husband, M.J., and the kids would stage a revolt. The best I could hope for them to do (if a little grudgingly) was a one hour tour. Conveniently I was able to make the reservation online and luckily as well because all tours were sold out by the time we arrived.

I chose the Piecing it Together tour for two reasons; the first because it would show how two Jewish families lived in the tenement and the second because one of the families was involved in the garment industry. M.J.'s Jewish immigrant ancestors were not involved in the garment industry, but my Irish Catholic immigrant ancestors were and lived not far from the museum at 401 East 10th Street.

All tours for the museum begin not at 97 Orchard Street, but at 108 Orchard Street, where their gift shop is located. This is at the corner of Orchard and the infamous Delancey Street. Just down the street you can see the tenement building. 

Our tour guide was Dave, a veteran guide of seven years at the museum and a descendant of Lithuanian and Italian immigrants. Dave knew his stuff and brought the Rogarshevsky and Levine families to life. More importantly he piqued and held the interest of my highly disinterested 11 and 14 year old kids. 

Before we entered the museum we found out we would not be able to take any photos, but that www.tenement.org had an entire section of photos available for free download. This made sense once we were inside and found that most of the interior is original. Very little restoration has been done. It feels very much like a tenement. It is dark, and the original layers of flooring and wall papers are there. Dave told us that there will be a museum project or exhibit that will show the process they are going to use to do some restoration, almost like an archeological dig, but on a building. It sounds fascinating.

Our hour on the third floor of the museum in the Rogarshevsky and Levine apartments passed very quickly. One last thing of interest to those who do genealogical research is that the museum has traced forward the ancestry of those known to have lived in the building. They have been able to gather pictures and oral interviews of former residents adding immeasurably to the experience for tour guests. It's a visit I will long remember. 

Confessions of an American Mutt

It's time for a confession. My children are American mutts. Their mother is an American mutt. My ancestry includes (but is not yet limited to) Prussian German, English and Irish (both northern and southern for variety). Their father's ancestry is (but is not yet limited to) Latvian, Lithuanian and Russian Jewish as well as possibly Spanish Sephardic. Actually I am not sure which word in that sentence should have come first. Is it Spanish Sephardic or Sephardic Spanish? Perhaps someone will enlighten me.

The fact of the matter is...there are no purebreds living in our house ...except possibly our canine household members.

It makes me happy that the melting pot that is America is well represented in my children. It sure makes researching their ancestry interesting! 

Thank you for reading! 

Scrappy Gen