Barbara Elaine (Collins) Moran 16 Apr 1924 – 11 Jan 2011
My wife lost her paternal grandmother early this morning. She wasn’t doing too well for the past few weeks, so she is now free from that pain. I’m sad that my daughter was not able to meet her great-grandmother, but great-grandma was able to see a photo of Aerissa. Plans are still up in the air, but we may be making a cross-state drive sometime in the near future for the funeral, which may be interesting with a 2-month-old baby.
Today would have been my grandfather’s 89th birthday. Richard Joseph Zalewski was born on December 9th, 1921 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The 2nd child of Joseph & Emily (Troka) Zalewski.
He passed away in April 18th, 1999 when I was freshman in college. His death, and a few other moments in 1999, was the reason I became interested in Genealogy and the researching of my family tree. The funny part is that my Zalewski line is probably the one part of my tree that I could use more information on. Information that he probably had.
He was taken early from us by pancreatic cancer. Of all cancers, pancreatic cancer has one of the highest fatality rates and is the fourth-highest cancer killer in the US. Everyone probably knows someone who has died from pancreatic cancer, including celebrities such as Patrick Swayze.
If you’re in the giving mood, please give to one of these pancreatic cancer researchers:
It’s been 5 days since Aerissa was born. Today is the day that she was scheduled to be born. We were supposed to be going in last night to start the process. It’s still 6 days from her original due date, which was November 10th. Since she’s very healthy, I’m glad she came early. The other day I finally added her to my family tree software, which felt really good. For one, it finally merges my wife’s tree and my tree together. Now I do feel more of a connection to her ancestors now that they are the ancestors of my daughter.
She joins a small group of people in her family tree with the same birthdate:
Her maternal 5th-great-grandfather, Peyton WEY. Born in Fauquier County, Virginia in 1805. He lived to 76 years of age, passing on 4 May 1882 in Wisconsin.
Her maternal 4th-great-granduncle, Thomas Peyton WEY, son of Peyton WEY. Born in Virginia in 1835.
Her paternal 4th-great-grandaunt, Elisabeth Maria FIRMENICH, sister of Mathias FIRMENICH. Born in Eicks, Rheinland, Prussia in 1844. She later married August GRIEPENTROG.
Randy Seaver of GeneaMusings has posted this week’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun. The prompt for this week is as follows:
1) Read Brenda Joyce Jerome’s post Who or What Do You Blame? on the Western Kentucky Genealogy blog. She asks these questions:
* Can you identify person or event that started you on this search for family information?
* Did you pick up researching where a relative had left off?
* Did your interest stem from your child’s school project on genealogy?
* If you have been researching many years, it may be hard to pinpoint one reason for this journey.
2) Write your responses on your own blog, in a comment to this blog post, or in a note or comment on Facebook.
I can’t exactly identify one person who started my interest in genealogy. I remember going to family reunions for my paternal grandmother’s family, the descendants of Thomas J CORRIGAN, and meeting all kinds of people who were supposedly related to me. I never really took interest in the family tree stuff there, but I was pretty young at the time. Problem solving, for some reason, has always been somewhat easy for me and depending on what problem I’m solving it can also be fun. This is probably the main reason I enjoy genealogy so much. It’s a very personal problem to solve and it involves lots of information and logic. To be honest, I don’t remember a genealogy project in school. If I did do one, I guess I didn’t save it. When looking through some of the files my mother gave me, I also don’t see any trees my brothers did. Maybe our school district didn’t do it.
I became interested specifically in genealogy in about 1999. Two different events prompted me to look more into my personal history. First, my grandfather, Richard ZALEWSKI, passed away in April 1999 and then a few weeks later I read an article in our local paper about FamilySearch.org. It was about how much traffic the site received when it first opened, which took the site offline. This event is also mentioned on the FamilySearch Wikipedia entry, “May 1999: Website first opened to the public. It almost immediately went off-line, overloaded because of extreme popularity.”
Those two events happening pretty close to each other made me think of my personal history and how I should probably at least do some basic digging before I lose my other grandparents. Thankfully, all three of my other grandparents are still with us. As with most genealogists, this basic digging just wasn’t enough. I opened Pandora’s Box, so to speak.
On my paternal grandmother’s CORRIGAN side of the tree, I did receive a lot of research that was already done by my great-granduncle, Edwin CORRIGAN, and other family members for the family reunions we had. My paternal ZALEWSKI line was barely touched as was my maternal side of the tree, so I did have a lot of work cut out for me. Many thanks to my parents and grandparents for giving me the information I needed. It turns out a lot of it was around, just not organized like it is now.
Now, it’s my job to plant the seed into my daughter’s life (and possibly other children if that happens) and let them run with it. Maybe in 20 years she’ll do a blog post, or whatever crazy thing is around then, about me.
With this week being about a month away from the birth of my baby daughter, it got me thinking about how she may or may not enjoy genealogy. I will have no hard feelings about it if she takes no interest in it. I know I probably would’ve snubbed my nose at it when I was a young’n.
Though, this also got me thinking about how to use it to her advantage. For one, almost every kid gets the “Trace Your Family Tree” assignment in elementary school. When that time comes, I think we’re pretty well set. The other way we could use this for her would be in certain history classes. If you tell her that her 4th-great-grandfather, and a few others, fought for the Union army in the Civil War, this may make learning about it more exciting. I was never much of a fan of history classes when I was in school. I trudged through them, but really only learned enough to get by. Now, after getting into genealogy, I love history and watch a lot of the shows about certain aspects of history. I am usually much more interested in history that involves my ancestors.
Have any of you used genealogy to help kids, or others, in school?
That’s what the banners and balloons should read in November when our baby arrives. According to the Ultrasound technician, we’re having a girl and she sounded pretty confident. Finding out now is exciting to us. People always seem like we should wait until it’s born to find out, but we’d rather find out now. It gives us a fun surprise early and from what I’ve heard, you sometimes don’t get to enjoy the surprise during the delivery since there is so much other stuff going on.
As for having a girl, I’m very excited. I’d be just as excited either way, but I was secretly hoping for a girl (maybe 60/40 girl/boy.) I grew up a boy (surprise!) and I had two brothers, so a baby boy didn’t seem that crazy to me. I know how to handle a boy. Having a girl is another story. I have very little experience with little girls. Thankfully, my wife is a girl (no way!) so I’ll have help there. When you find out the gender a lot of things go through your mind. Now you can get a clearer picture of the future. Beforehand, it was somewhat blurry. All thoughts had the baby replaced with “generic child” in my brain, now I can put a face, or at least gender, on it. Obvious thoughts of “Daddy’s Little Girl” and all that stuff float on through sometimes. It’ll sure be an experience and I’m ready for it.
As for a genealogy point-of-view, we’ll be able to give her a pretty clear picture of where she gets certain traits. Obviously, as a girl, she won’t get my Y-DNA passed down to her, but she will get her mother’s mtDNA. We just need to get her mother an mtDNA test at some point to pinpoint her maternal genetic genealogy. The way it looks, it’s possibly English or at least from somewhere in the UK, but we don’t have enough info, yet.
My wife, who is much better with the written word than I am, has been blogging about the new baby experience on our website. Feel free to pop on over there.
On National DNA Day, April 23rd, there was news that 23andMe was selling the “Complete Edition” of their genetic test for $99. The usual price for this test is $499, so a savings of 80%. I couldn’t pass up this deal since a) I am always curious about data and information b) I wanted to go deeper into my ancestry with DNA as I’ve only done basic tests. I also planned on getting it for my wife, also, but by the time we checked the site later in the evening the price was back to normal even though it was only about 8PM here.
Well, I sent in my sample and it says it will take 6-8 weeks for results. I got my results about 4 weeks later, so that was a surprise. The Complete Edition also includes the “Health” information, which is interesting. As they mention many times, I take all of that information with a grain of salt, even though there isn’t anything major to worry about in my results.
But, this site is less interested in what type of earwax I have or my Alcohol Flush Reaction and more interested in my Maternal and Paternal DNA information. I had previous known that my maternal line was H and my paternal line was R1a1. This gave me some insight into my genetic history, but it was a basic overview. I now know more details.
My maternal line has been traced in more detail to the H11a group. Their site describes it:
H originated in the Near East and then expanded after the peak of the Ice Age into Europe, where it is the most prevalent haplogroup today. It is present in about half of the Scandinavian population and is also common along the continent’s Atlantic coast.
My maternal line is basically all German, as I wrote about in a recent SNGF post.
My paternal line (or my Zalewski line) has been traced in more detail to the R1a1a subgroup.
R1a1a is the primary haplogroup of Eastern Europe, where it spread after the end of the Ice Age about 12,000 years ago. The haplogroup is most common in a swath from Ukraine and the Balkans north and west into Scandinavia, along the path of the men who followed the receding glaciers into Europe. It is also common near its presumed point of origin in south-central Asia. R1a1 is one of the two most common Y-haplogroups in Slavic-speaking populations.
That makes sense, since the Zalewski line traces back to Poland/Prussia, which is in the area mentioned.
The site also has a nice “Relative Finder” that will show you people who are more than likely closely-related to you based on your genetics. You can then send an introduction to them and if they accept, you can compare your basic results. I’ve sent a few intros to people who it predicts are somewhere between 3rd and 7th cousins to me. I have yet to receive a response, but it’s only been a few days.
All of the other info it gives like my “Health Traits” and my “Disease Risk” are interesting to browse. While they have useful info, such as certain risks, it shouldn’t (and doesn’t) affect my daily life due to the new nature of this field, but it’s nice to know.
I am forgoing the normal “Weekly History” post this week for a special announcement. It’s now been 12 weeks into the 36 weeks of the pregnancy of our first child. A big announcement that was hard to keep a secret until this point. 12 weeks is usually the point when most couples make the large announcement. Obviously, we told family and some others previous to this point. Our parents are very excited and everything is coming at us so fast, but it’s also extremely wonderful.
As a genealogist, this has another layer of joy for me. Now, officially, my tree and my wife’s tree are merged into one. Now when I do research on her tree, I’m actually doing it for my own child. They will come into this world with a pretty solid family tree already made for them. I’ve now ruined any fun and mystery they may find looking into their family history (haha.)
6 Weeks
From my wife’s description: I know, it’s hard to decipher this thing. Heck, it’s tough for me and it’s my baby’s first screenshot! (Well, it is a screenshot”¦) The big round part is NOT the baby, it’s the yolk sac. The tiny little blur between the arrows is the baby at 6 weeks. We’re 6 more beyond that and it has grown, but we haven’t had a new ultrasound yet. We did hear the heartbeat for the first time this week though!
Well, we’re taking this one day at a time and the mother is doing great. Completely prepared and also scared out of my mind of things to come, but in a good way.
Thanks for everyone who sent me an “Ancestor Approved” award.
In recognition for receiving this award, I will follow the directions and list ten things about my ancestors that have “inspired, surprised, humbled, or enlightened me and to then pass the award along to ten other bloggers whom I feel are doing their ancestors proud.” Though, I will not be passing it along to ten other bloggers since almost everyone I read has already received the award, but thank you to everyone.
As always, humbled by many of my ancestors for their courage and faith in leaving their homeland to come to a different country on the other side of the world.
Surprised at some of the chance moments that came to be for my ancestors to meet and fall in love.
Humbled by my great-grandfather, Joseph Zalewski, who between 1939 and 1941 lost his mother, his wife, and then his father.
Inspired by many of my ancestors who worked extremely hard everyday just to keep food on the table for their families.
Surprised about how closely-located all of my ancestors are. They go back many generations in this local area, or at least in Wisconsin.
Also, surprised that I have no (as far as I know) English ancestry. (Though, I do have Irish and possibly Scottish)
Humbled by my veteran ancestors who risked their lives for this country in the Civil War, World War I, and World War II and who knows how many wars in the past.
Enlightened by the jobs and skills my ancestors possessed. Sometimes they had to learn many things to survive.
Humbled to know that everything that my ancestors did in their lives all add up to me. If one thing were different, no matter how good or bad it was, I would not be here typing this.
Inspired by my ancestors to pass on their legacy and stories through my genealogy and this website.
