CategoriesGenetic GenealogyGermanPolish

Ancestry DNA Genetic Communities

Posted on 29 March 2017by Brian Zalewski

Yesterday, the big news across the Genetic Genealogy community was the release of Ancestry DNA’s Genetic Communities. According to Ancestry, these communities are built like this:

We find Genetic Communitiesâ„¢ by looking at a network of DNA connections we build using millions of AncestryDNA members in our database. When we build a network like this using millions of AncestryDNA members with billions of DNA relationships between them, we find groups of people in the network that have more DNA matches to each other than to people in other parts of the network. We call these groups Genetic Communities. We use a popular network analysis method called community detection to discover them.

So, it’s sort of a mix of DNA matches along with information from the millions of family trees built on the site. Together they can find a community in the more recent past. Previously, we only had ethnicity estimates to work with, but those were usually more broad and much deeper in the past. For example, here are my ethnicity results.

That Scandinavia one still confuses me a bit. but who knows where my deep ancestry came from. Those Scandinavians were known to travel.

My Communities

I have two active Genetic Communities, as do most people it seems. My first one is Germans in Brandenburg & Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (very likely >95%) which matches up very well with my known ancestry. The other one is Poles in Pomerania, which also matches up very well though their confidence is only at 20% for this one at the moment.

The German community points to this area, which is the original location of a lot of my German ancestry. The Pomeranian community points to a majority of northern Poland, which also has a lot of my ancestry. As always, click the images for a larger view.

Timelines

You can also break down the communities into time periods to find out more information about what happened in that area during those years. If I open up the time period when most of my ancestors migrated, it talks about that exact thing and also talk about how they came to the Wisconsin area.

So far these communities have been helpful and surprisingly specific and on the right track. Based on a lot of the messy, incorrect trees I see on the site I’d expect some skew, but I imagine those are not the majority. If you’re looking for much more insight on these communities, check out the great post over at The Genetic Genealogist. Ancestry has also put together a short video introducing the feature.

Categories2017 Project

Major William Vaughan

Posted on 22 March 2017by Brian Zalewski

The ninth ancestor in my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2017 project is Major William VAUGHAN. He is my wife’s maternal 9th-great-grandfather. I was interested in this line since supposedly up within William’s ancestry is a connection to the royal lines of England. I’ve spent some time recently trying to confirm my wife’s connection to Mr. Vaughan. I’m pretty confident that he is her ancestor, it’s confirming everything beyond him to the royal lines that is getting difficult.

She is related to William through her mother â†’ her mother â†’ her mother (Marie R SHANNON) â†’ her father (George Washington SHANNON) â†’ his father (Nathanial SHANNON [1]) â†’ his father (Nathaniel SHANNON [2]) â†’ his father (Nathaniel SHANNON [3]) → his father (Nathanial SHANNON [4]) â†’ his father (Nathaniel SHANNON [5]) â†’ his mother (Abigail VAUGHAN) â†’ her father (Major William VAUGHAN). You’re not going crazy, there are a lot of Nathaniels in a row. There are actually two more, Abigail’s husband was Nathaniel and his father is also a Nathaniel, making eight in a row.

Major Vaughan seemed like a pretty prominent man in the New England area in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Information says he was born in around 1640. Some info says he was born in Wales and some says he was born in Sussex in England, son of George and Mary (Boxall) Vaughan. His grandfather was Sir Roger Vaughan. He was in London to be educated in the mercantile profession by a man named Sir Josiah Child. He came to the new world from London in about 1664 settling in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

William was named one of the Royal Councillors of New Hampshire in 1681 and a Major, commanding the militia of the province. Soon after, he was imprisoned for nine months by what looks to be the (some say oppressive) new Governor of New Hampshire. It seems he had different views than the previous leader of the province. Under the new Lieutenant-Governor, he again commanded the Militia in 1690 and was reappointed to the Council in 1692. It looks like he also held the positions of Treasurer of the Province (1696-1698) and Register of Deeds (1697-1702). He was President of the Council from 1706-1715.

He married my wife’s ancestor, Margaret CUTT(S), in December 1668. Her grandfather was Hon. Richard Cutt of Bath in Essex County, England. He was a member of Cromwell’s Parliament.

Major Vaughan passed away at Portsmouth on 12 November 1719, at the age of 78. His large stone is located at Old Point Cemetery in Portsmouth.

In terms of DNA, I have yet to find Shannon matches in my wife’s DNA match lists. Though, I know there are some there as she has a lot of maternal matches.

CategoriesNon-Genealogy

Tracking the Water

Posted on 28 February 2017by Brian Zalewski

Heads up. This is going to be a non-genealogy post, but it may an interesting read to some. Fair warning though, it may get technical and geeky at times. People sometimes ask me how I set up the system in my house to track how often my sump pump is running, so instead of trying to remember everything, I wanted to post about it. This is the best place for me to do that.

A little backstory first. The house I live in, which was first purchased by my paternal grandparents in 1955, seems to have been built on a natural spring (actually, probably swampland like the a lot of this area.) Any time it rains, it seems the water from a large radius from here all flows to my basement. I have two sump pumps installed, the primary and a more powerful backup. I’ve only ever seen both run simultaneously twice, in June 2008 and August 2018, when we had a ton of rain, quickly. I did not sleep well for those few days. To help keep my sanity when I was away from home, I set up a system that tracks when the sump pump fires off. This information is then fed to a personal website of mine that shows the information in a few nice charts (how often it runs per day and how long in between runs.) The whole process is somewhat cheap, there is only one step that costs money (besides the sump pump/appliance)

The basic workflow of this process is this: water pours into my basement → sump pump fires off â†’ information is put in a spreadsheet. Then, when my website is viewed, this happens: Brian visits website â†’ spreadsheet info is pulled into website â†’ data is parsed â†’ data is shown in pretty charts.

Here is a more detailed workflow and some basics on each part.

Capturing the Data

  1. First you need at least one sump pump. Though, this would technically work on any appliance that plugs into a normal 120V outlet.
  2. Between my sump pump and the outlet, I have installed a Belkin WeMo Insight Switch Smart Plug. This device allows you to control the appliance plugged into it remotely from a smart phone. It can also interact with a website called IFTTT, which we will get to next. I did do this a few years back, Belkin may have come out with more powerful devices.
  3. The Belkin device is built to interact directly with a neat, powerful website called IFTTT (If This, Then That). It’s basically a site that does at least one thing when another thing happens, but it interacts with a ton of websites and apps you may already use. You can read a nice overview here. So, I built a “recipe” in IFTTT that when my pump fires off, the Belkin device sends the date and the status (On/Off) to a Google Spreadsheet. Took me two seconds on the site.

Viewing the Data

Now my device is constantly saving little bits of data on when it goes on and off (though, “off” isn’t as important to me.) That part is relatively simple and non-technical thanks to some powerful devices and web services. The viewing part is more geeky.

  1. I built the website to view this data by myself, mainly to see if I could. So, the first part required a web host (which I already have) that supports at least PHP, which I wrote it in. Technically, you could just run this on a locally installed web server for free, like Apache or use something like WAMP. I’d like to move some of this information to a MySQL database (for better historical archiving) instead of Google Spreadsheets, but I haven’t had the time.
  2. When I visit the site, the first part of the process goes to the Google Spreadsheet and grabs the current data in JSON format (just an easier format for the code to process.) You need to share your spreadsheet publicly for this to work (or use a more complicated authorization option.) Someone needs the exact URL to see it, so I’m not worried. There seems to be a max size for Google Spreadsheets of 2000 rows, so occasionally a new spreadsheet gets made and I need to re-point my code to the new sheet.
  3. The data is pulled in and parsed using mainly JavaScript to convert date formats and all that fun stuff and determine time between runs.
  4. The newly parsed data is then fed into a free library called chart.js that allows you to create powerful charts in JavaScript. I may try another charting script soon that I found, but chart.js is nice. I create two charts with the data.
    •  One chart that shows me how many times the pump ran per day.
    • The other chart shows me how much time passes between runs. The lower the number, the more often it is running, and vice versa. The light gray lines are the actual minutes in between. The blue line is a moving average of the last ten runs, which helps to determine the trend, better or worse.
  5. The other part of the page is a table showing the data for each time the pump ran. This just allows me to look through them all for anything out of the ordinary. For that, I just use an HTML table, but then I use a free script called DataTables that allows me to add some nifty features to it like sorting and pagination.

That’s about it. For only about $50, I’m able to have some peace of mind. There is a lot you can do with free applications and scripts out there. Next step regarding my sump pump is to get it attached the the city’s storm sewer so I don’t have to pump it down my driveway anymore. That will be more than $50. Next steps for the site are to hopefully get that information into a database so I can better look at the old data (which month does it run most, etc.)

Here are the items I used again in a nifty list:

Categories2017 ProjectBelgianDutch

Jacobus Van Parijs (1810-1848)

Posted on 25 February 2017by Brian Zalewski

The eighth ancestor in my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks project for 2017 is my maternal 4th-great-grandfather, Jacobus Bernardus VAN PARIJS. I am related to him through my mother â†’ her mother (Marjorie DeBROUX) â†’ her mother (Mildred VAN PRICE) â†’ her father (Peter VAN PRICE/VAN PARIJS) â†’ his father (Charles VAN PARIJS) â†’ his father (Jacobus VAN PARIJS).

The Van Parijs line was one that was difficult to find until I found it, if that makes sense. I started with my great-grandmother’s maiden name of Van Price and that’s all I had for years. I could never find more information. Then one day I ran across a forum posting somewhere that stated that Price and Parijs are interchangeable since they have the same sound. Once I starting searching for Van Parijs, everything fell into place. Van Parijs roughly translates to “of Paris” which makes me assume the line originates somewhere in France, which makes sense since the the line is found in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Jacobus Bernardus Van Parijs was born circa 1810 in Watervliet, East Flanders, Belgium which is adjacent to the Dutch border. His parents were Phillipus and Anna (JUNIS) VAN PARIJS. On 21 May 1835, he married Janneke DEES in the IJzendijke, Zeeland, Netherlands which is on the southern side of the province. Their son, my 3rd-great-grandfather, Charles, was born in July 1846, the last of their 5 children.

Jacobus died not too longer after Charles’ birth on 1 January 1848 at the age of 38. I have no specifics on his death besides the record of it, so I don’t know what took him that young. In 1848, there were many diseases or accidents that could have happened. His son Charles is my main Dutch connection and my immigrant ancestor who took his family to America in around 1874.

In terms of DNA, I have not found any direct connections that descend from this line specifically, so it is unknown.

Photo: IJzendijke, central square. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 by Michielverbeek.

Categories2017 Project

George Henry Cleveland (1871-1924)

Posted on 19 February 2017by Brian Zalewski

The seventh ancestor in my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is my wife’s maternal great-great-grandfather, George Henry CLEVELAND. The relationship line is my wife â†’  her mother â†’ her father (Lloyd GYRION) â†’ his mother (Luella May CLEVELAND) â†’ her father (George Henry CLEVELAND).

George was born on 12 July 1871 in Berlin, Waupaca, Wisconsin to Edward CLEVELAND and Nancy WHIPPLE. In 1880, the family was located in West DePere in Brown County. It seems George’s father may left the family or his parents separated sometime between 1871 and 1880 as his mother is now married to a Daniel MOON. In George’s obituary in 1924, it mentions his father, Edmund Cleveland, residing in California.

On the 4th of July in 1891, George married Harriet Adeline LANT (also known as Nettie) in Waupaca, Wisconsin. Between 1892 and 1914, they had a total of 7 children. My wife’s great-grandmother, Luella, was the second born in 1892. The family lived in Waupaca throughout George’s life until he passed away there on 3 December 1924.

He is buried with his wife at Lakeside Cemetery in Waupaca.

 

Categories2017 Project

Eva Sońefeld: Ancestor 6 of 52

Posted on 14 February 2017by Brian Zalewski

The sixth ancestor is my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks for 2017 is my paternal 3rd-great-grandmother, Eva SOŃEFELD. I am related to her via my father â†’ his father (Richard ZALEWSKI) â†’ his father (Joseph ZALEWSKI) â†’ his mother (Anna LINDNER) â†’ her mother (Eva SOŃEFELD).

Early in my research, I met another Zalewski researcher/cousin who was also researching the Frank & Anna (Lindner) Zalewski family. He had done some leg work and had guessed that Anna’s parents were John Lindner and Eva Zemfeld. He also mentioned that her surname may possibly be Jewish. Two things I found during my research on these lines, her surname was close to what he had and she’s probably not Jewish (at least my DNA thinks that.) Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get in contact with him in many years. He was having some issues with his sight and I thought some other health issues, so I’m assuming the worst (but I can’t confirm that, either.)

I found Eva’s name when I found the baptism record for their daughter, my great-great-grandmother, Anna Lindner in the church records of Schwenten, West Prussia in 1865.

Johan Lindner & Eva Sońefeld, 15 Sep 1865. Click for larger.
Katholische Kirche Schwenten (Święte, Grudziądz County, Poland), Taufen, Hieraten, Baptisms, 1865, Anna Lindner, 24 Aug 1865; FHL microfilm 72741.

Moving my way back from there, I also ran across Johann and Eva’s marriage record on 2 Mar 1862, also in Schwenten. From there I was able to get their ages and I worked my way back to around that time and found her baptism record in December 1842. This record, as with Anna’s, listed Eva’s parents as August SoÅ„efeld and Catharina Zielinska.

There wasn’t much in the Eva news up until very recently when doing research of Anna’s siblings I ran across a passenger list for her brother, John and posted about it. Listed along with John and his family was an Eva Lindner close to the same age as Eva would have been in 1908. So, now I know she probably arrived in New York in 1908, but that’s where the trail ends. She’s not listed in any 1910 Census Record that I can find and I’ve seen no death record. I’m not sure if she ever made it to Milwaukee with her family.

As for DNA results related to Eva, I’m not sure. I have a lot of paternal matches, but nothing yet solidly linked to the Lindner line. There is probably one in there somewhere, but I need to track it down. The Lindner line is pretty deep which may only show up in distant matches.

Categories2017 Project

Nepomucena

Posted on 6 February 2017by Brian Zalewski

The fifth ancestor in my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is my 3rd-great-grandmother, Nepomucena (Ne-po-moo-see-nah) Susanna (SYLDATK) SZULTA. I am related to her via my father â†’ his father (Richard ZALEWSKI) â†’ his mother (Emily TROKA) â†’ her mother (Clara SZULTA) â†’ her mother (Nepomucena SYLDATK).

Nepomuk

Based on records, she was normally known as “Annie.” According to a few name definition websites, her name is derived from the name Nepomuk. It was usually given in honor of the medieval saint John of Nepomuk (c. 1345-1393). There is some confusion as to what exactly the name means outside of the saint. All in all, there is some uncertainty and ambiguity surrounding the etymology of Nepomuk. The only thing that we can truly say for certain, is that the name is of Czech (and therefore Slavic) origin.

Some sources claim that Nepomuk literally means “from Pomuk” or “born in Pomuk” in Czech, but this is probably incorrect, as “from” is z in Czech and “born” is narozený in Czech. Instead, Nepomuk probably literally means “not Pomuk” in Czech, derived from ne meaning “not” or “no” and Pomuk meaning “Pomuk”.

Source

The SYLDATK surname roughly translates to “woman soldier” in Russian.

Poland

Ignatz & Nepomucena Szulta, unknown date

According to the church records of the area, she was born on 7 August 1853 in what is now Gowidlino, Sierakowice, Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Kashubia, Poland. She was baptized a week later on 14 August 1853. Not much is known about her early life in the area, but on 3 February 1875, she married Ignatz Peter SZULTA (Shool-tuh) in nearby SulÄ™czyno Parish.

Their first three children, including my great-great-grandmother, Clara, were born in the SulÄ™czyno area. It seems Ignatz emigrated first, spending some time in the Milwaukee area before the rest of the family, Nepomucena and her three children, arrived in November 1881. It looks like they lived on Sobieski Avenue in the highly-Polish Riverwest area of Milwaukee for the first few years.

Milwaukee

There are few details about Nepomucena’s life besides that standard records like the census. They had at least six more children born in Milwaukee for a total of nine. It notes that in 1910, at the age of 57, she was doing housework for another family. The photo above (on the post) is of Nepomucena and some of her descendants. She is on the bottom row, 2nd from the left. Clara, her daughter and my 2nd-great-grandmother is to the left of her and my great-grandmother and her her granddaughter, Emily TROKA, is above Clara. The only other one I know off of the top of my head is her son John, in the middle back.

Three days before Christmas in 1925, Nepomucena passes away. She is buried next to her husband at Holy Cross Cemetery in Milwaukee.

 

CategoriesMilwaukeeThe Zalewski ProjectZalewski

Zalewski Expert

Posted on 31 January 2017by Brian Zalewski

I’m not sure how I fell into it this past week, but I decided to jump head first into trying to find and record all of the Zalewski lines in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area. My main reasoning is to try to figure out where my great-great-grandfather, Frank Zalewski, was born (or possibly his brother Jacob.) Another reason is to try to connect some or all of them together. That is doubtful as a lot of them come from completely different parts of Poland or Russia and Zalewski is actually somewhat common over there.

This is also somewhat part of The Zalewski Project that I started. I did end up using a lot of the info over there to help figure out where to start.

Currently, in my RootsMagic database that I made specifically for this project, there are 586 individuals in 227 families. I have color-coded some of the main lines to help me better separate them and so far I have 8 major lines, with 2 of them (Frank and Jacob) technically from the same line, though we don’t know their parent’s names. One line also comes from the Stevens Point area in central Wisconsin, but they do come to Milwaukee and also connect to the Jacob Zalewski line at one point, so I included them.

Maybe someday I can add “Zalewski Expert, Milwaukee Area” to my genealogy resume. I’ve learned a whole bunch about the Zalewski families in the area already. I also started a subscription over at GenealogyBank to better search Milwaukee newspapers, which was very helpful. There is so much information in obituaries, wedding announcements and other random articles.

I’d love to see if any Zalewski descendants in the area have purchased DNA tests. If so, hopefully they can transfer their info over to GedMatch to see if we can determine where the Zalewski DNA is hiding.

If you have Zalewski connections in the Milwaukee area, give me a shout. I might have some information on it.

Categories2017 ProjectDeBroux

The Union Man

Posted on 28 January 2017by Brian Zalewski

The fourth ancestor in my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks project this year is my maternal great-grandfather, Leon Joseph DeBROUX. I’m related to Leon via my mother → her mother (Marjorie DeBROUX) → her father (Leon DeBROUX).

Leon was born on 2 November 1901 in the small town of Phlox, Langlade County, Wisconsin, which is very much the near center of the state. His parents were Joseph & Mary Philomene (LAURENT) DeBROUX. He had 5 brothers all with the middle name of Joseph and 2 sisters all with the middle name of Margaret.

Leon’s father passed away in 1918 in Phlox. Sometime between then and 1920, the family moved to DePere near Green Bay in Brown County to live with Leon’s aunt and uncle. About a year later, Leon was back in Phlox, this time marrying a local girl, Mildred Vida VAN PRICE. At the time, he was listed as being a “cheese maker” which is a standard Wisconsin job that every boy must do*. It may have been a rushed wedding, who knows, but the couple did have a child in September 1921. Sadly, the child did not make it. Two years later in 1923, their first son, Norbert, was born. He was better know later as “Dee Bee.” In 1927, my grandmother, Marjorie, was born after the family had moved south to Port Washington in Ozaukee County, where they would stay.

*May or may not be true.

Union Organizer

In 1940, Leon was listed as a laborer at the local chair factory, the Wisconsin Chair Company. By the 1950s, Leon was making a living as an AFL-CIO union organizer. I see his name mentioned many times in local stories about helping workers around the area. In an article from the Sheboygan (Wisconsin) Press in June 1953, it mentions Leon:

PORT WASHINGTON — Employees of the Harnischfeger Corporation, houses division, N. Spring St., Port Washington, voted recently to become affiliated with the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (AFL). Their vote was 92 for joining, 16 against, according to Leon DeBroux of Port Washington, union organizer who started on this project in May.

Hospital

One big thing that Leon was part of in Ozaukee County was getting the local hospital built. At the time, in 1938, there was no local hospital. Discussions were started after an accident in the area that cost the lives of five people because they had to go to outside hospitals. A few people, including Leon, met at his house in 1938 to figure out how to get a hospital built. In 1939, all of the planning came together and the building of a hospital was approved with the cornerstone being laid on November 3rd, 1940. St. Alphonsus Hosptial opened on May 1, 1941.

I find it quite interesting that this hospital weaves its way through my maternal family. My great-grandfather helped get it built. My mother worked there for many, many years. I was born there, as was my younger brother. Once the hospital moved to a larger facility to the south in 1990s (I think) they converted it into assisted living apartments and a nursing home. My grandmother, Leon’s daughter, would end up living there. She also sadly passed away there in 2015. I had no idea how connected our family was until I found the article about how Leon helped get it built.

Faint Memories

I was alive while Leon was alive, until I was almost three years old. I have this strange memory of him. Sometimes you think you have memories of someone you barely knew, but it was just from a family photo or something similar. I remember being on the ground by my great-grandfather’s feet at his house in Port Washington and he was using them to play around with me. I can see it pretty clearly in my mind, the chair, his feet, the living room, everything. There is no photo of a moment like this. It may be one of those early childhood memories that sneaks its way into adulthood, instead of getting forgotten like most of them. I do cherish it.

On 15 September 1982, Leon had a heart attack and passed away in Port Washington at the same hospital he helped build. He is buried in Port Washington at St. Mary’s Cemetery overlooking the rural fields of Ozaukee County.

In terms of DNA, I still definitely have DNA passed down from Leon. His mother, a LAURENT, connects me to my French-Canadian ancestry and is my connection to large family lines like the Cloutier line. I have a lot of matches on Ancestry, 23andMe, and GedMatch that I can tell are from that line.

CategoriesFamily TreeTechnologyTips & Tricks

Digital French

Posted on 22 January 2017by Brian Zalewski

For no specific reason this week, I decided to do some more research of my paternal French lines. I decided to start with my gateway French ancestor, Claude-Françoise QUINET, or as she is mostly known, Frances (Quinet) THOMPSON. She is my 4th-great-grandmother and probably the most distant ancestor that I have a photo.

I started at the FamilySearch wiki, which is always a good place to start when researching a new location. It has great articles on the best resources and where to find them. Much to my surprise, France has digitized and made available all of the civil and church records, at least from the Department I needed, Haute-Saône. The website was very easy to use once I was able to determine the locations I needed, even if it was in French.

I had a lot of the information for Frances and many generations back, but just the information, no sources or proof. This was probably entered back when I just found info and entered it like a rabid accountant. Fortunately, finding the actual records was made a bit easier as I had dates to work from. Most of them lined up perfectly and I was able to confirm and source dozens of baptisms, marriages, and deaths. I was even able to add one new generation back. I started my search in the early 1800s, but I was able to find records back to the late 1600s available on the site. Those were more hit-and-miss as I wasn’t able to find any of my ancestors in them.

Entry for the marriage of my 8th-great-grandparents, Claude Barbut (Claudius Barbu) & Jeanne Laurence Mignard (Joanna Laurentia Mignard) on 15 Jun 1716 in Contréglise.

Early on in my research, the records were in French, so just memorizing important genealogical words (i.e., baptism, marriage) and numbers was very helpful. At some point in the 1700s, everything switch over to Latin, which is a bit different to read (see the record above.)

I’m not completely finished digging through for the missing records and I have yet to see if any of my other possible French ancestors can be found in these digitized records. If you have French ancestors, make sure to look at the FamilySearch wiki.

Categories2017 Project

Crossing The Streams

Posted on 21 January 2017by Brian Zalewski

The third “ancestor” in my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks project this year is (in one direction) my first cousin, twice removed, Edward John “Edy” STRELKA. I say, “in one direction” because that is how I’m related to him through my paternal grandfather. If I go through my maternal grandmother, he is my great-great-grandaunt’s husband. I ran a relationship report on Edy for myself and found the 1C2R relationship through my grandfather. I ran it again on one of his children, and I am also a first cousin, twice removed to them, though through my grandmother’s line. Genealogy can be weird sometimes when people cross the streams.

My first connection to Edy is through my father â†’ his father (Richard ZALEWSKI) â†’ his father (Joseph ZALEWSKI) â†’ his sister (Martha ZALEWSKI) â†’ her son (Edy STRELKA). The second connection is through my father â†’ his mother (Mary Jane CORRIGAN) â†’ her father (Maurice CORRIGAN) â†’ his sister (Ethel CORRIGAN) â†’ her husband (Edy STRELKA).

Milwaukee

Edy was born 19 September 1909 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to John & Martha (ZALEWSKI) STRELKA. Martha is my paternal great-grandfather’s older sister. Martha passed away in 1930 at the age of 45 when Edy was 21. In July 1933, Edy married Ethel CORRIGAN, my maternal great-grandfather’s sister. It is actually due to this marriage that my grandmother meets my grandfather, so in turn, partly why I exist today. Ethel was living in Milwaukee in 1930 with her mother and a few other siblings. Her mother had re-married after my great-great-grandfather died in 1915. I’m told my grandmother was down in Milwaukee working when she met my grandfather.

I do actually have video of Edy, along with many of the other Corrigan family. I put it on YouTube a few years back. There is no sound, but I did put some quiet music over it. Edy was found and bookmarked in a few places, thanks to my first cousin twice removed, Jackie. You can view the video here. To view Edy’s clips, just browse to the description and click on the timestamps. It will take you there automatically.

The Grocery Business

Edy ran a grocery store in Milwaukee in 1940s/1950s called “Edy’s Food Market.” I found it listed in the 1950 Milwaukee City Directory. It was the earliest year I could find it. The directories they had from the 1940s were missing a lot of pages. It was located at 2900 N 7th St. Today that location is still a food store called 7th Street Foods, though the area may be a bit different. It’s also shown a bit in the video I mentioned above and linked in the video description. Before that, in 1937, it looks like Edy worked for the Chicago and Northwestern Railway Company as a Yard Clerk according to railroad employment records. According to his obituary, he also ran a place called “Edy’s Recreation” on E. Clarke St.

Edy and Ethel had two daughters. I don’t have a lot of information on the family after the 1940s, but at some point I think they moved north to Random Lake in Sheboygan County. Edy passed away on 2 May 1990 in Milwaukee at the age of 80. They are now buried at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Random Lake. They were originally interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Milwaukee. I know this because of the information I had and when I went to take photos a few years ago, I could not find them. The person working there told me they were moved to Random Lake. I’m not sure why.

DNA

In terms of DNA, I probably share some with Edy. Though, I do not have any known connections that descend from him. Since we both came from the Zalewski family, it’s very possible. We don’t share Y-DNA, since his connection to Frank & Anna Zalewski is through his mother. His mtDNA would be up through Anna’s line and then through her mother, Eva Sonefeld. I do have at least one known connection with the Zalewski line, though it matches one generation back before my great-great-grandparents.

Doing this post does give me a few things to do. I’m going to try to contact Edy & Ethel’s daughters, or grandchildren, to see if they may have any photos of Edy’s mother Martha and beyond.