Family History Library Week

I know I've been MIA for a while. But I have still been doing research. In fact, two weeks ago I spent my week nights at the Family History Library. 

I used the whole time on only two digitized films. It was so much easier than what I remember working with the films directly a number of years ago, but the process of going through the yearly, un-transcribed indexes and then back through the images was just as slow. However, I was able to create discrete sources, save to tree, and d/l the images. I also was able to log onto Dropbox and upload the images. I was trying to save time and not do the translations there. I think the method was effective and I could work on what I retrieved for the next year and still not get through them. The prep work I did by doing specialized reports from my tree of birth, deaths, and marriages against the region meant I wasn't looking for a record that couldn't possibly be there. While the family group sheets were helpful for context, the reports formed a detailed checklist for record retrieval.

I also learned more about the Family Search Community feature; the volunteers and staff who work at the FHL do indeed monitor the groups. Once I have my work in order, I plan to utilize two of the groups I joined to help with the tricky bits. 

I think I am close to making enough of a connection between these records and the records hosted at http://www.antenati.san.beniculturali.it

Old Skool Reels

I want to know Dominic Corgiat Loia and Mary Ruo Redda were. I want to know where they got married, who were their sisters and and brothers were. I want know about their lives. But my 

letters to Torino, Italy government and religious offices had gone unanswered. I don’t think my stilted Italian is so bad it offended the entire nation. 

I needed a recharge. I needed new way to come at the problem. I  looked around for ways to circle back that didn’t feel merely like chasing my tail. To the beginning I went. Not to the beginning of the paper trail but rather to to the beginning of of the search. I needed to refresh my skills and tune them to be more Italy specific.

I started on the FamilySearch.org training area. I watched a great video on records available in Italy with a wonderful section on civil registrations. (Ironically, I cannot find that video right now.) While the records I need are not online, the reference to them are online. FamilySearch has microfiche of statutory registrations of Corio, Torino. 

• Film Number: 2096348 

Items 1 - 2

Registri dello stato civile di Condove (Torino), 1866-1929

Condove (Torino). Ufficio dello stato civile

Matrimoni 1900-1910 -- Morti 1866-1910

Item 3

Registri dello stato civile di Corio (Torino), 1866-1929

Corio (Torino). Ufficio dello stato civile

Nati 1866-1880

• Film Number: 2096349

Item 1

Registri dello stato civile di Corio (Torino), 1866-1929

Corio (Torino). Ufficio dello stato civile

Nati 1880-1907

• Film Number: 2096351 *backordered*

Items 1 - 2

Registri dello stato civile di Corio (Torino), 1866-1929

Corio (Torino). Ufficio dello stato civile

Matrimoni 1869-1910 -- Morti 1866-1878 

Since the death and marriage records are backordered, I’ll only have 1866- 1907 births. Still pretty exciting. I’m not sure how much copies are going to cost. It has been 20 years since I have used a microfiche reader. While I wait for them to arrive at my local family history center I plan to make an an inventory and checklist of what I expect to find. 

Family Traditions: Galaretka Wieprzowa AKA Pig Jelly

We began talking about holiday traditions when were working in the kitchen while preparing Thanksgiving meal. My husband recounted how his Grandmother Wolff (Delores Spanheimer) was such a  wonderful cook. He remembered that during the holidays she would make three different kinds of cookies- familiar to us all- Pffeffernuesse, Almond Crescents, and Ice Box Cookies. My husbands father also loved to eat one of Grandma Wolff's more savory treats Siltz. He described it as pork in clear gelatin. My husband smiled as he remember how his father would eagerly await a new batch (molded in loaf pans) and slice up the loaves into rectangles to fit on on a Saltine cracker. Then, he would bring some fresh pepper on top and gobble it up. 

Maybe I would try to make this for the family? It sounded intriguing. I began looking looking for a recipe to approximate the dish. I first had to try a variety of spellings. On of my first results was from Google Books, called Mneme's Place:Book One by Glenn P. Wolfe. I giggle at the last name and went on to read the passage in question on page 233:

Siltz, for sure. Whatever else the contents, mason jar up to the lid with shimmering gelatin studded with cubes of fatty pink pork. And, to go with the silts, slices of pumpernickel or a heel a rye bread. 

This seemed pretty close to what my husband had described. And I could completely understand poring hot pork gelatin into mason jars since they'd be fine under the initial heat. And, even more promising, I now had at least one spelling to work with. 

I looked for recipes all over the web that would match, but nothing under that name or variation of that name. Just looking for a pork gelatin dish, I found a likely candidate from a recipe site I wasn't familiar with. The contributor thankfully included his or her source material, a local publication called What's Cooking in Niles. When I went back to Google books to investigate this book found that it was published by a Greek Orthodox church in Niles, IL. The book, which I have not seen or held, was published in 1989 by the Holy Taxiarchai and Saint Haralambos Church, likely as a fundraising effort. 

Of course I couldn't resist and I looked up the church right back into the search engine. When the little map automagically plotted to the right of the search results, it was I've never been but have poured over so many census records in that area that all the place names seemed all too familiar- outside Chicago. I plotted it on the full Google map and then turned on my Google Saved Places called Wolff genealogy.  Right there in front of me were the 1930 homes of several members of the family, including Grandma Delores Wolff,  within 10 miles of the church. I have no way of knowing if this was her recipe included, but I'd like to think that because they lived in that community, I might now have a recipe that may be a fair approximation of what she might of made.

By this time  I don't know if this was originally a Greek dish pick dup by the Poles, or a Polish dish picked up by the Greeks or neither of the above scenarios.  But I did find some commercial products listed here - looks like Polish to me. I didn't know how to pronounce Galaretka Wieprzowa, but I clicked listen to it on at the left window of Google Translate. With a new name, I found images that looked right on and a better(?) recipe under the Eastern European subheading. 

Arkadiusz Scichocki

So, after this research, I think its a lot like headcheese with yet missing the cooking the pigs head part, just the hooves and other meaty chunks. 

Ship Research Approach

With George Wolff's Solider's Petition for Naturalization in hand, I now had the month and year of his arrival. However, I still could not locate him using Ancestry.com's indexes nor by browsing the collection. I needed a strategy to reduce the number of record ships passenger lists.

First, I used the telegram and newspaper publication listing of safe arrivals back to Norway provided by the Norway Heritage site. I actually landed on the month of August but I noticed the url was constructed with a numerical date, so I just replaced the 08 with a 07.

Like this:
http://www.norwayheritage.com/t_transatlantic.asp?month=08&year=1891
http://www.norwayheritage.com/t_transatlantic.asp?month=07&year=1891

Not a big deal but I didn't readily see their navigation method.

In the month of July 1891, at least 72 vessels were reported back to folks in Norway as safely arriving. From there, I did a find on page and noted only the vessels that went from Rotterdam and bound for New York. I had six vessels now.

• 7/12 SS Obdam
• 7/13 SS Schiedam
• 7/18 SS Didam
• 7/19 SS Maasdam
• 7/23 SS Amsterdam
• 7/29 SS Spaarndam

The site warns that the passenger lists would be 1-2 days off from this date. Good to know.

By then using the Ships Arriving at the Port of New York 1890-1891 from Jewishgen.org, I was able to see just that ships that had folks aboard that were from Poland, Austria, and Galacia. I might be subject to the problems of indexing again, but at least the mistake would have to be repeated hundreds of times. I didn't winnow the further but now I had some more wiggle room around the dates, perhaps more accurate.

• 7/12 (7/10)  SS Obdam
• 7/13 (7/14) SS Schiedam
• 7/18 SS Didam
• 7/19 (7/16) SS Maasdam
• 7/23 (7/24)  SS Amsterdam
• 7/29 SS Spaarndam

Down at the bottom of the page they kindly list the National Archive Publication number as well as the reel number for Family History Archive.

I am interested in reels 571 and 572 of publication M237. At the National Archives, I didn't just dive in. I read the accompanying pdf to the M237 publication. Fascinating stuff in the sense it explains what might be missing, why and how it was gathered and indexed.

Ancestry.com has this collection (that's where either their indexing accuracy or my searching methods had failed). I have to keep my eye open for a male around 15 years old, from either Poland or Austria. I have seen obfuscated lines where he could be...but I am not writing him off yet.

Perhaps in line 12 or 13?

A day later I have eyeballed 4 of the 6 ships passenger lists. I didn't mention before that I plan on doing the same thing for April of 1891, since other records have that as his arrival month and July as his birth month. I haven't found him or his family yet on a ship manifest, but I haven't given up yet!

I did see an awesome record where "STOWAWAYS" was written next to two names. I guess they were found out upon somewhere along the journey or upon disembarking. Forgot to mention that NorwayHeritage.com has some nice prints of ships for sale. Consider it a donation or a present- win either way!

Private Collection Reveal

I was watching the YouTube versions of some Ancestry.com webinars this week  . In Discovering the Immigrants in Your Family Tree (embedded at bottom of post), the speaker was talking about four key facts you have to have about your immigrant ancestor before hoping over the ocean and digging in the new location. It is one of those lists that seem obvious and self-evident once someone else has put it down for you. But while you are in the thick of it, easy to miss. The desire to leap ahead is always so tempting. The speaker Mr. Kory L Meyerink, had this to say in the beginning of the video to be successful about going from new resident country back to old resident country:

Must completely identify the immigrant by obtaining:

• Name (in their native tongue)
• Date of a key event in the old country (such as birth or marriage)
• Names of close relatives - sibling, aunt, etc
• Specific town where he lived in old country

Those four main points were really his key message. I recommend watching the whole thing as he answers questions and explains how and where to obtain those four things. You need these bits to give you your search terms (names), to help you disambiguate people (dates and family units), and the last --biggie here--to know where to look (the town). I'll likely have to do a series of posts on my successes and failures on going from new country to old country. Perhaps writing it down will give me some focus and re-ignite the fire. 

About two-thirds of the way through he mentioned funeral home records as a resource. He stressed that they are private collections but if you can get at them, they can be very valuable. Hah! I gave myself a little pat on the back because about three weeks prior I had contacted the funeral home that handled the burial of my 2nd great grandfather. 

Maybe I should rewind- I contacted the funeral home chain that had bought several funeral home chains, one of which had bought the funeral home I was concerned with. I found myself looking at tax and business records trying to determine the chain of custody the original funeral home to guess the chain of custody for the documents I cared about. I had to bank much on potential since I wasn't sure that such documents 1) ever existed  2) been kept 3) been passed along as the businesses merged. Once I had found the mega-funeral home chain, I filled in the pertainant information about my request into a web form and crossed my fingers. 

Yesterday I got a call from Nancy of the mega-funeral home chain. She had found something and she'd pop it in snail mail. In her message, she even said,  "Bet you never thought you'd get a call back, hunh?" Honestly, I hadn't expected anything but I had hoped. Perhaps Nancy is a family historian as well helped a fellow researcher in need. Thanks, Nancy!




I am reserving time to watch the rest of the series. Oh and BTW, Ancestry.com is having a contest and the prize is a trip to Ireland called Coast to Castle. Like them on Facebook and then enter.

Pay Dirt!

I've been working on some family history off and on for about year. In the beginning I made some assumptions about other people's research. I assumed that others took the time to analyze the details of the evidence provided and in good faith record their findings. Willy-nilly and lackadaisical analysis is actually more common. I've made plenty mistakes, I'll continue to make more but it's not due to lazy thinking.

Anyway, I write that part above to come clean on my weakness- geography. It is touted repeatedly, and with good reason, as an indespensible tool and resource for family history revelations. Just as one uses time to get folks in order - one also needs to uses space to put them in their place. And I am just awful at spatial analysis. Once you know you are terrible at something you are either inspired to improve or avoid it at all costs. I'm the avoid sort.

So once many, many other avenues of investigation had petered out, I was left with maps, cartographic references, atlases, survey lines, and rail road routes. I had looked at the shifting borders of Poland, Prussia, and Germany. I had already studied morphing county lines in Missouri and Arkansas to learn where records were actually held. I needed to dig another way.

I would have never thought to have such success with something simple with a geographical flavor to it. I found 2 birth certificates and 7 death certificates. I merely kept going county by county in, Texas for example,  and then went by name. I know- dead simple, right? Although they are not indexed, searching by the then revealed informant in the same or neighboring county (of course not by memory, with the county map in another browser) kept the thread going for quite some time.

Resources: 
http://genealogy.az.gov
http://www.fold3.com/title_479/texas_death_certificates/
http://www.fold3.com/title_478/texas_birth_certificates/