Personal Archives - Page 4 of 5 - Zalewski Family Genealogy

Weekly History..or Not

Posted on 27 September 2009by Brian Zalewski

Sadly, there isn’t really any weekly history for these 7 days. There are a few dates from my French-Canadian ancestors, but I don’t have much more info on them then just dates and that’s not too exciting to read.

I haven’t actually been doing too much genealogy research lately, so I don’t have a lot of news. Though, I have been helping a friend of mine by doing some basic research for him. I thought I’d help get him started since I have a lot of paid access to Ancestry, etc that helps a lot.

He, fortunately, had found a book on his mother’s family that goes pretty far back into at least the early 1800s into Virginia with a lot of sourced information. I decided to do some of his other lines. I actually found a good bit of information by just using the census records (and a few others.) It’s amazing how much info you can really get from those.

It’s new territory for me since a lot of his family is from Montana and then from the southern states of Missouri and Georgia, etc. All of my family research has been is mainly Wisconsin and then into Canada and Europe. It’s neat to do research in other states.

Family Tree Personal Zalewski

Dusty Old Letters

Posted on 6 February 2009by Brian Zalewski

When I bought my house in 2005, I ended up purchasing my grandparent’s house. My grandpa had passed away in 1999 and my grandma was moving into an assisted living apartment since she hurt herself in a little fall. I did get a very nice deal on the house. It’s perfect “starter” house, being the house that they bought new in 1955 and that my dad and his siblings grew up in.

When she moved, a bunch of boxes were left in the basement. Most of it was just things like blankets and pots and pans, things she doesn’t need right now. I found one box a few months back when I was taking inventory that I saw had funeral cards and old newspaper clippings in it. Today, I decided to just browse through them to see if there were any of my ancestors that I could use to squeeze out some more information.

I only found a few funeral cards on the top and they were probably of old friends, I assume, and not relatives. But, I did find a nice collection in the news clippings box. Most of the items were just random clippings of recent photos and articles from the newspapers. But, I did find a nice selection of old obituaries, though. A couple were straight from the newspapers and a few others were copies. The obituaries that I found were from Emma Jane (FIRMENICH) COOK (my gg-grandmother), George S COOK (Emma’s 3rd husband), Margaret (STEARNS) BRAATZ (my gg-grandmother), Frank F BRAATZ, Sr (her husband and my gg-grandfather), and Margaret (SCHUMACHER) STEARNS (her mother and my ggg-grandmother.) Most of the obituaries didn’t have any new info of note, but the big find was the last one. In my tree, all I had was “Margaret” listed and her death date. This obituary gave me her birth info and her surname, which is brand new to me. Plus, it listed all of her siblings and locations. I need to start looking for SCHUMACHER now, any tips?

Another treasure find in the box was some old letters written to my grandfather from his parents in 1941. It seems, from the address that he was in navy school in Pensacola, Florida. There are about 5-10 letters all written from March 31, 1941 to April 27, 1941. One weird note here is that my great-grandmother, his mother, Emily (TROKA) ZALEWSKI, passed away on May 1, 1941. In the later letters that I just quickly scanned through, there is no mention of being sick, etc. So, this points to her death being quite sudden as she was only 45 years old at the time. Maybe my grandfather saved these letters due to the fact that he was away in Florida when his mother died. There are no letters beyond the April 27th one. I am in the process of scanning them so I can read them and archive them. This is the only comunication from my great-grandmother that I’ve found. Then, I plan on taking this box over to my grandmother since I’m assuming she’ll want it.

History Personal

Presidential History

Posted on 20 January 2009by Brian Zalewski

Today is a historic day in America. It makes me feel good to see how far we’ve come as a country. Hopefully, I’ll be able to remember this day and tell my kids and grandkids about it. That made me look into my family tree to see what my family may have been doing during important presidential milestones.

1789 – I don’t think I had any family in America in 1789 when George Washington became the first President of the United States. Most of my ancestors came to America much later in it’s history.

1861 – A lot of my family was already in America by the time Abraham Lincoln took office in 1861. A few of my ancestors even fought for the Union in the Civil War. They were probably also very shocked when Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.

1933 – Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the 32nd President. FDR has been consistently ranked as one of the greatest U.S. presidents in historical rankings, alongside Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.All of my grandparents were alive (though probably young) at this time, but may have remembered FDR since he was in office for 12 years.

1963 – My dad always tells me that he remembers where he was when JFK was assassinated. I imagine it may have been the same way for my ancestors during Lincoln’s assassination. Back then, the news would’ve come a bit slower, maybe even a few days later.

So, good luck to our 44th President, Barack Obama and here’s to many more historic Presidential moments.

English Family Tree Personal

The Royal Line

Posted on 4 January 2009by Brian Zalewski

Hello again! Been doing a bit more research lately, so I’ve stepped up my postings (which isn’t too hard to do I guess.) Just remember that even if I’m not posting regularly, I am always available for comments, emails, research questions, etc. I just may not be actively searching at the time, but I will respond.

I was in the process of cleaning up my wife’s family tree yesterday so that I could print out some information to give to her parents as sort of a secondary gift. She had two names in her tree that were missing information. Those were her great-great grandparents on her maternal grandmother’s side. She said she had issues finding any information. So, since it’s been awhile since either of us had done any research on that line, I thought I’d log into Ancestry and just do a basic search. This “basic search” lasted me over 3 hours and gave us some amazing information.

I started by searching for Julius BANNACH, who is my wife’s great-grandfather, and then I’d work from there. My first search brought up Julius in another user’s family tree, named “Shannon Family Tree.” Julius’ wife was named Marie SHANNON, so this was good. I clicked on this link and it brought me to the tree and then I hopped on over to Marie’s information. Right away I saw that it had her parent’s names listed as George SHANNON and Mary DAKINS, so this is good information already. I am always aware that a lot of these trees do not list many sources, so I did enter this info with that in mind and a note to double-check what I can.

I entered the info and then went off to George SHANNON’s information. Sweet! This also lists his father and mother as Nathaniel SHANNON and Rosina Winslow ARNOLD. This is getting good. I keep doing this with the SHANNON line over and over. One odd thing I noticed is that she comes from a line of Nathaniel SHANNON’s that goes for like 7-8 in a row. What are the odds of that? (I guess creativity doesn’t run in the family. I kid.)

The SHANNON line finally runs it’s course in the year 1655 in Londonderry, Ireland. Ok, so I started this, I was going to finish it and enter what I can. So I started by going back and running each line until it ends.

Long story short, I don’t think I’ll ever get all of this info entered into our tree since I’ve now connected my wife (obviously tentatively, need to check the sources) to multiple Dukes, Barons, Counts and Kings of England. Basically, once you break that seal you have access to so much information and connections since millions of people can trace their lines back here and thousands of people have done the research already. Fortunately, I have a copy of one of the Family Forest CDs, so I can see just how far back this line can go….very far. Sadly, my wife has cooler relatives than me, all I could connect myself to was Robert Goulet.

So, as I work my way through her line to double-check the sources and connections, it does give me some more interest in the Peerage and Royalty of England and also sparks my research bug again.

Has anyone else connected themselves to Royalty or other famous people?

Family Tree Personal Tips & Tricks

Interview

Posted on 23 July 2008by Brian Zalewski

I am hoping to spend some time interviewing my living grandparents. Obviously, I guess, though I would love to be able to talk to my late Grandpa Zalewski again. I have tons and tons of factual data; dates, times, places, etc. What I don’t have a lot of are stories and first-hand accounts.

My grandparents are getting old. They are all in their 80s now and you can tell that they have some issues getting around. I know my Grandma (Corrigan) Zalewski asks me the same questions about my house everytime I see her (I bought her house when she moved to assisted living) but she can rattle off stories and names like there is no tomorrow and she loves to do that. I can only assume it’s the same way with my maternal grandparents.

I picked myself up an Olympus audio recorder just for this purpose. It seems to do exactly what I need and nothing more. In my tests, it recorded great audio. I’d like to sit down with them and just start asking small questions and maybe bring up some names just to spark their memory. I picture talking to my Grandma about this like chipping the glass on a large aquarium and just seeing it crack open further before you’re hit with a deluge of water. This is why I want the recorder. I won’t be able to write, or even type for that matter, as fast as she can tell stories.

I know people have done this type of thing before. Does anyone have any tips or good interview questions to ask? Obviously, I know her, so I don’t need any sort of introductory-type questions.

Personal

Genealogy Gifts

Posted on 3 December 2007by Brian Zalewski

In the spirit of the holidays, I like to sometimes give the gift of genealogy to some of my family members. My grandparents, especially, love getting family history gifts. For a couple of years I’ve given my grandparents a nice, printed out copy of their family tree. My maternal grandmother loves to just sit and read it (usually correcting a few mistakes.) Though, I feel sort of boring giving them basically the same thing every year, even though it’s updated. I thought about making a really nice one using the Ancestry Press, but I doubt I’ll have the time to design it and get it printed and sent in time.

My paternal grandmother loves her Irish culture and history, so that one is usually somewhat easy. My maternal grandparents are German and then a mixed bag. What I need from them is photos. I have almost no photos from my maternal side. I have tons of photos from my paternal side, thanks to my grandmother’s collection. If I had photos, I could merge them nicely with a family tree to give them something that they can keep and cherish and possibly even hand down to more generations.

I know a lot of you out there are into genealogy and probably are more creative than I am. Are there any clever ideas out there for genealogy-related gifts, or even a creative spin on the old “Family Tree”?

Genetic Genealogy Personal Zalewski

Ancestry DNA

Posted on 23 October 2007by Brian Zalewski

As the news mentioned last week, Ancestry has opened it’s DNA area. I’ve been a user on Ancestry for many years and I also have become involved in Genetic Genealogy via the National Geographic study and also Family Tree DNA. So, I was more than happy to test our Ancestry’s system.

It was easy to transfer my data over from FTDNA to Ancestry. Currently, they can only transfer from FTDNA or National Geographic, though I imagine if you have your data handy you can convert it yourself. You just need to bring up your DNA data and type in the values into Ancestry from one of these two companies.

It took a few minutes after I entered it for it to find some matches, though unfortunately there are none before 26 generations out. They show you your matches in a nice graphical format including a map. They also give you an estimate of the number of years, along with generations, that this person and you may have a common ancestor.

If you have an Ancestry.com account and also have received your DNA info, I would recommend trying this out. Any and all data can help everyone!

Link: Ancestry DNA

Personal Site

Updates

Posted on 26 June 2007by Brian Zalewski

Well, my Grandpa is doing much better now. My wife and I visited him in the hospital on Saturday and he was his old joking self. Hopefully, he’ll be coming home shortly.

I’ve been out of the “genealogy circuit” here for the last few weeks, so that’s why I’ve been slow on the posts. I’m working on getting more information that will allow me to post more often, even when I’m not actively researching since I don’t always have time to do family research.

For all of you genealogy bloggers out there, where do you find the inspiration and information to be able to post quite often even when not actively researching? I’d like some tips to help me get the ball rolling.

Personal

From the Beginning..

Posted on 14 April 2007by Brian Zalewski

Joseph Zalewski & friends

The way that I got started doing genealogy research happened in 1999. I had always been somewhat interested in my ancestors, especially related to my surname, but most people are. My grandfather, Richard Zalewski, had passed away that year of cancer. Around that time, I had also run across some hand-written family trees and also an article in our local newspaper about familysearch.org. It had mentioned that the website was getting hammered by visitors since it went live and that they were working on fixing it.

When I got home I was able to get onto the site and did a general search on “Zalewski” and was amazed at all of the entries I received. From there I collected information from family sources, free resources on the Internet, and other sources. I can say that I would never be as far in my research as I am now without the power of the Internet. It just snowballed from there, as all genealogists know, “Once it hits your lips, it’s so good.”

I seem to be one of the minority of genealogy researchers that is of the “young” variety. I usually get weird looks when I’m scouring local cemeteries for headstone, since I can only be there to vandalize, I guess. Though, with the Internet, I am seeing a lot more younger genealogists and I think that’s great.

How did you get started in your genealogy research?

Personal Tips & Tricks

Two Become One

Posted on 7 September 2006by Brian Zalewski

I merged the two trees together, so there is now only one tree on the website. It’s much easier to search and browse now.

I logged back into Ancestry and found some new things that they have implemented. I’m really impressed with their “Personal Tree” option. What you do, like a lot of other sites, it upload your GEDCOM to it. It’s puts it into tree form, which you can share or not. But, the nice part is that it automatically searches the Ancestry site for matches. This makes it much easier that requiring you to type in the search info every time you want to find something. It now automatically takes into account birth, death, marriage, spouse, etc for you. It’s very nice. If you have an Ancestry subscription, give it a try, though I’m not even sure you need a subscription to use it.

Personal Zalewski

More Zalewski’s

Posted on 18 July 2006by Brian Zalewski

Oooh, a post title with a double-meaning.

Well, for one, there have been a few additions to the Zalewski Surname Project over at Family Tree DNA. Thanks to everyone who has joined! If you’re a Zalewski or related to one, see what you’re missing by looking at my Zalewski Surname DNA Study page.

Also, everyone can welcome Darcy Zalewski to the family. Darcy is my new wife and she is so excited to have a new, more-complicated name to use. Oh, don’t forget about being last in line for everything now.

I really need to get back into doing some more research on my family tree, but I just haven’t had the time. I also don’t want to waste my subscriptions, because you know how expensive they are.