So not many words today. Instead, the first batch of scanned images taken from the Family Archives:
I have perhaps 150 more photos to scan. This should be an interesting few weeks!
Saturday, March 6, 2010
A Small Sampling of Photos
I realize that there are a lot of words on this blog. And that for most of you, all those words devolve into a slow, low drone, until you're Ferris Buehler, and I'm that nebbishy teacher asking, "Anyone? Anyone?"
So not many words today. Instead, the first batch of scanned images taken from the Family Archives:
Some of the family, dressed in souvenir Hawai'ian garb, brought by Grand-Ma and Grand-Pa after their trip to the islands. Photo taken at 66-6th Avenue, North Tonawanda, circa 1967. Front row (L-R): Cousin Chris, me, Cousin Gregg, Cousin Jeff. Middle row (L-R): Grand-Ma, Aunt Kathy, Unca Pete. Back row (L-R): Grand-Pa, Mary Beth, Dad.
First day of School, September 1972 or 1973. Photo taken at the corner of Sweeney Street and Payne Avenue, in front of the Carney's chestnut tree. L-R: Thad, Mary Beth, me (note the salmon shirt and the jaunty striped pants with fashionable bells), Todd.
Photo appears to have been taken in the back yard of the white house on Sweeney Street, 1975 or 1976. Mom's thumb appears on left side of image. The rugby shirts were handmade by Mom. Front row (L-R): Mitchell, Thad. Back row (L-R): Todd, Mary Beth.
Colonial Williamsburg, Summer 1974. There is so much to like in this photo. Mitch is in the foreground. Thad is behind him, having just placed his tricorn hat upon the head of a seemingly agreeable sheep. (I imagine the sheep at Colonial Williamsburg frequently have to put up with such impositions. Such is the price of celebrity.) Those little spots are sheep poop.
I have perhaps 150 more photos to scan. This should be an interesting few weeks!
So not many words today. Instead, the first batch of scanned images taken from the Family Archives:
I have perhaps 150 more photos to scan. This should be an interesting few weeks!
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Little Miracles
I am ill today. This is one of those classic illnesses, vicious and intense, my stomach churning like a family of badgers moved in and immediately began remodeling.
This is somewhat unusual for me. I don't vomit often: an important facet of My World View is that if you've taken the trouble to eat something, you hold onto it, right to the end, as it were. I will spare you the details, Gentle Reader: suffice to say this afternoon's activities made up for several vomit-free years.
This has led me to an unassailable conclusion: Someone has poisoned me.
That's not really what I wanted to write about today.
There is a little cemetery in Tonawanda, at the corner of Main Street and Kohler Avenue. It is the parish cemetery for St. Francis Roman Catholic Church, located on Tonawanda's Adams Street. My mother told me that my great-grandmother, Josephine Siedlecki, was buried there. My first stop in Buffalo (after a couple of hot dogs at Ted's Red Hots) was St. Francis Cemetery.
It is not a particularly big place, a large triangle bordered by Main, Kohler, and a line of railroad tracks. Many of the headstones are badly worn, some have toppled over, others poke out of the ground at cockeyed angles, a crooked grin of marble and granite. The snow was crusted, but pristine: it looked like no visitors had come to this lonely corner for many, many days.
There was no way of knowing where to start looking. One of the first rules of family history research is that "oral history" is mostly a multi-generational game of Telephone: stories are told and retold, each teller adding some details and deleting others until you're left with something that's mostly myth. My mother's recollection that her grandmother was buried "in that little cemetery" in Tonawanda might be completely off the mark. There are at least four other cemeteries within a mile of St. Francis, and our people attended Our Lady of Czestochowa Parish, not St. Francis. Saturday was cold, and wet, and snowing. A good number of the headstones appeared to be buried under drifts. This seemed like a fool's errand.
I said a prayer, asking for help, and entered the graveyard. This is where the little miracle comes in.
I entered the cemetery at its back entrance, closest to the train tracks, walking in a nearly straight line, slogging through knee-deep snow drifts, for about 200 feet, where I found this:
The inscription reads, "Our Mom, Josephine Siedlecki, 1883 - 1920". "Siedlecka" is the feminine version of "Siedlecki": when a woman marries, she takes the feminine version of her husband's name.
I took some other photos, just to give you a feel for the needle in a haystack aspect of this search:
Back home, I discovered that OLC had been founded on 3 May 1903. The first parish hall was a white clapboard structure, rented from a local Protestant congregation:
This is somewhat unusual for me. I don't vomit often: an important facet of My World View is that if you've taken the trouble to eat something, you hold onto it, right to the end, as it were. I will spare you the details, Gentle Reader: suffice to say this afternoon's activities made up for several vomit-free years.
This has led me to an unassailable conclusion: Someone has poisoned me.
That's not really what I wanted to write about today.
There is a little cemetery in Tonawanda, at the corner of Main Street and Kohler Avenue. It is the parish cemetery for St. Francis Roman Catholic Church, located on Tonawanda's Adams Street. My mother told me that my great-grandmother, Josephine Siedlecki, was buried there. My first stop in Buffalo (after a couple of hot dogs at Ted's Red Hots) was St. Francis Cemetery.
It is not a particularly big place, a large triangle bordered by Main, Kohler, and a line of railroad tracks. Many of the headstones are badly worn, some have toppled over, others poke out of the ground at cockeyed angles, a crooked grin of marble and granite. The snow was crusted, but pristine: it looked like no visitors had come to this lonely corner for many, many days.
There was no way of knowing where to start looking. One of the first rules of family history research is that "oral history" is mostly a multi-generational game of Telephone: stories are told and retold, each teller adding some details and deleting others until you're left with something that's mostly myth. My mother's recollection that her grandmother was buried "in that little cemetery" in Tonawanda might be completely off the mark. There are at least four other cemeteries within a mile of St. Francis, and our people attended Our Lady of Czestochowa Parish, not St. Francis. Saturday was cold, and wet, and snowing. A good number of the headstones appeared to be buried under drifts. This seemed like a fool's errand.
I said a prayer, asking for help, and entered the graveyard. This is where the little miracle comes in.
I entered the cemetery at its back entrance, closest to the train tracks, walking in a nearly straight line, slogging through knee-deep snow drifts, for about 200 feet, where I found this:
The inscription reads, "Our Mom, Josephine Siedlecki, 1883 - 1920". "Siedlecka" is the feminine version of "Siedlecki": when a woman marries, she takes the feminine version of her husband's name.
I took some other photos, just to give you a feel for the needle in a haystack aspect of this search:
Back home, I discovered that OLC had been founded on 3 May 1903. The first parish hall was a white clapboard structure, rented from a local Protestant congregation:
The original OLC Church, Oliver Street, North Tonawanda. Prior to 1922, Oliver was an unpaved road.
In 1919, a fire destroyed the church school. The iconic red brick building, the building that still stands as the heart of North Tonawanda's Third Ward, was not completed until 9 December 1928. At the time of Josephine's death, OLC was a foundling parish in a very poor section of town. Neither it nor the other, more established Catholic parish in North Tonawanda, Ascension, had its own cemetery. St. Francis Cemetery would have been the nearest hallowed ground for area Catholics. In the area where Josephine is buried, nearly every readable headstone bore a Polish surname.
Josephine was thirty-seven when she died. She has laid in this lonely place for ninety years. And I was led to her.
They yearn for this, our kindred dead. They yearn to be remembered, to be acknowledged, to be loved. They want their stories told.
Jeffrey R. Holland teaches that we know very little of the afterlife. The one thing we know, says Elder Holland, is that there will be families there. The living must seek out the dead. We have to remember. We have to forge those welding links. Last Saturday afternoon, I walked with my great-grandmother.
I look forward to meeting her.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Buffalo
I have just returned from a two day trip to western New York, where I conducted about ten hours of family history research.
Just a few observations:
-- Buffalonians are old. The median age is 38.6, well above the national average, and close to sixty percent of the population is 35 or older. In Houston, my home, about 42 percent of the population is 35 or older, and the median age is closer to 32. The difference is noticeable: there aren't many kids in Buffalo. There are, however, lots and lots and lots of old people. They drive Buicks and use coupons at fast food restaurants.
--Buffalo is stuck in a time warp. Driving from the airport to my hotel, I set the radio to scan the FM dial. Within a half minute, I'd heard snippets of Billy Joel's "You May Be Right", Queen's "Killer Queen", and Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back In Town": every station is a classic rock station. And there may not be a place in North America where there are more middle aged men sporting earrings and pony tails. It's unnerving, standing next to a guy on the far side of fifty and noticing that long and wispy thing curled in the hood of his jacket is not an unusually large piece of lint; it's the trailing end of his 'do. And nothing will disabuse you of the notion that you'd look jaunty in a little gold earring, than seeing someone roughly your age with such a hoop protruding from his creased, middle-aged lobe. Not a sight for the weak. I ate breakfast one morning in a place called Amy's Cafe, a friendly little joint that appears to be run by a collective of gentle souled, Whole Earth lesbians. I saw an advertisement for a Hertel Avenue establishment called Terrapin Station, "Proudly Serving Your Grateful Dead Needs Since 1988." Jerry Garcia died in 1995. Apparently word hasn't reached Hertel Avenue. I don't know of another place, aside from a few isolated enclaves in Greater Boston and possibly in the San Francisco Bay area, where people even have Grateful Dead Needs.
-- The North Tonawanda police LOVE their sirens. I was in North Tonawanda for a total of twelve hours this weekend. In that time, I heard sirens six times. "Must be a crime wave," I thought. A quick check of the "Police Blotter" section of the online edition of the Tonawanda News turned up the following offenses from the weekend: a citation for fishing without a license; a citation for driving an uninspected vehicle and for having an inadequate muffler; two DWIs; a charge of second degree harassment; and a charge of third degree assault (which I think is something like giving a guy a wedgie). Based on the insistent drone of the sirens, I thought the Capone gang was back in business.
-- Buffalonians smoke. Smoking happens in Houston, but it's an activity that's touched by a deep sense of shame. You see the smokers, milling like pigeons outside of office buildings, sad little clusters of three and four, slump shouldered and eyes downcast, avoiding the glances of the clean-lunged passersby. In Buffalo, everybody smokes. And
they are unapologetic about it, dragging deep and blowing great plumes into the air, tossing their butts with a flick of thumb and forefinger, every man Humphrey Bogart, every woman Marlene Dietrich. (This is not entirely fair. First, not everyone smokes. I noticed no small children smoking. And there is an interesting subgroup in Buffalo -- call them The New Urbanites -- who mostly work white collar jobs in banking or education and who live in Buffalo because of its fortuitous combination of inexpensive, quality housing, close proximity to Toronto and Manhattan, and ample opportunities for hiking, camping, canoeing and cross-country skiing. These folks, robust and ruddy as kids in a Komsomol recruiting poster, all drive Subaru Foresters. They are Unitarians. I fear them. Second, there is a grand difference between feeling like Bogart or Dietrich, and being them. These Buffalo smokers -- from the beer bellied goodtime gals dressed in full Buffalo Sabres regalia to the wizened, leathery little guys perpetually dressed in work clothes, even though they haven't held a job since Chevy shut down the Vega line back in '77 -- they aren't a pretty sight.)
-- Buffalo is beautiful. There are the obvious glories -- the majestic Falls and the amazing Niagara Gorge, the ample turn-of-the-last century architecture, the blessed lack of traffic (Buffalo's population density is 727 people per square mile. Houston's is 3,330 per square mile. There are more than a million people in western New York, but that's less than a quarter the population of metro Houston, and they are so spread out, you never feel crowded), the char-broiled Nirvana that is Ted's Red Hots -- but the beauty is deeper than that. There is a resilience here, a commitment to community. At 2:00 on a Monday afternoon, the North Tonawanda library was filled with people, people reading books, people using the free Internet service, people doing their taxes. They were out in force, talking to one another, complaining to one another, commiserating with one another. I saw the same thing in restaurants and grocery stores, this fellowship of survivors. You don't see that in Houston, where people tend to go from home to car to work to car to drive-thru and home again with a minimum of human interaction.
I have enough material for about a month's worth of entries. More tomorrow.
Just a few observations:
-- Buffalonians are old. The median age is 38.6, well above the national average, and close to sixty percent of the population is 35 or older. In Houston, my home, about 42 percent of the population is 35 or older, and the median age is closer to 32. The difference is noticeable: there aren't many kids in Buffalo. There are, however, lots and lots and lots of old people. They drive Buicks and use coupons at fast food restaurants.
--Buffalo is stuck in a time warp. Driving from the airport to my hotel, I set the radio to scan the FM dial. Within a half minute, I'd heard snippets of Billy Joel's "You May Be Right", Queen's "Killer Queen", and Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back In Town": every station is a classic rock station. And there may not be a place in North America where there are more middle aged men sporting earrings and pony tails. It's unnerving, standing next to a guy on the far side of fifty and noticing that long and wispy thing curled in the hood of his jacket is not an unusually large piece of lint; it's the trailing end of his 'do. And nothing will disabuse you of the notion that you'd look jaunty in a little gold earring, than seeing someone roughly your age with such a hoop protruding from his creased, middle-aged lobe. Not a sight for the weak. I ate breakfast one morning in a place called Amy's Cafe, a friendly little joint that appears to be run by a collective of gentle souled, Whole Earth lesbians. I saw an advertisement for a Hertel Avenue establishment called Terrapin Station, "Proudly Serving Your Grateful Dead Needs Since 1988." Jerry Garcia died in 1995. Apparently word hasn't reached Hertel Avenue. I don't know of another place, aside from a few isolated enclaves in Greater Boston and possibly in the San Francisco Bay area, where people even have Grateful Dead Needs.
-- The North Tonawanda police LOVE their sirens. I was in North Tonawanda for a total of twelve hours this weekend. In that time, I heard sirens six times. "Must be a crime wave," I thought. A quick check of the "Police Blotter" section of the online edition of the Tonawanda News turned up the following offenses from the weekend: a citation for fishing without a license; a citation for driving an uninspected vehicle and for having an inadequate muffler; two DWIs; a charge of second degree harassment; and a charge of third degree assault (which I think is something like giving a guy a wedgie). Based on the insistent drone of the sirens, I thought the Capone gang was back in business.
-- Buffalonians smoke. Smoking happens in Houston, but it's an activity that's touched by a deep sense of shame. You see the smokers, milling like pigeons outside of office buildings, sad little clusters of three and four, slump shouldered and eyes downcast, avoiding the glances of the clean-lunged passersby. In Buffalo, everybody smokes. And
they are unapologetic about it, dragging deep and blowing great plumes into the air, tossing their butts with a flick of thumb and forefinger, every man Humphrey Bogart, every woman Marlene Dietrich. (This is not entirely fair. First, not everyone smokes. I noticed no small children smoking. And there is an interesting subgroup in Buffalo -- call them The New Urbanites -- who mostly work white collar jobs in banking or education and who live in Buffalo because of its fortuitous combination of inexpensive, quality housing, close proximity to Toronto and Manhattan, and ample opportunities for hiking, camping, canoeing and cross-country skiing. These folks, robust and ruddy as kids in a Komsomol recruiting poster, all drive Subaru Foresters. They are Unitarians. I fear them. Second, there is a grand difference between feeling like Bogart or Dietrich, and being them. These Buffalo smokers -- from the beer bellied goodtime gals dressed in full Buffalo Sabres regalia to the wizened, leathery little guys perpetually dressed in work clothes, even though they haven't held a job since Chevy shut down the Vega line back in '77 -- they aren't a pretty sight.)
A Komsomol poster. This one says, "Thank You Comrade Stalin, for our happy childhood!"
Bogey. If he were in Buffalo, he'd be wearing a Carhart coat over a flannel shirt and a Buffalo Sabres knit cap.
And he'd have a ponytail.
I have enough material for about a month's worth of entries. More tomorrow.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
I Owe Dan Brown A Big Apology
This morning, I mentioned to my wife that I thought I'd compiled at least 500 family names. She looked up from ironing a pair of pants, the faintest trace of a smirk ever so slightly curling her lip. "Really? Five hundred? You really think so?"
I have found a lot of ancestors. I've managed to trace names on my mother's side of the family far beyond my expectations, back six generations on one line. I've linked my father's side of the family to 17th century Ireland. I've discovered that McMurray men fought for the British crown all over the world, and that McMurray women bore children in British India and on a military ship bound for Canada. There have been lots of surprises, lots of discoveries.
None of it has been orderly. It's barely been coherent. I've flitted around like a sparrow who's flown into a plate glass window, confused and concussed, or like that creepy guy who used to bicycle all over North Tonawanda, the guy who had a one-eyed baby doll's head wired to the basket of his fat-tired bike and who had an attention span measured in nanoseconds: the sound of a fire engine or a flash of something shiny, and I'm madly off, pedaling in a new direction.
My wife understands this. In the last year, I have decided to learn conversational French, run a half-marathon, and read the complete works of Shakespeare. These goals remain incomplete, abandoned like American military equipment in southeast Asia, slowly consumed by the jungle of my arrested attentions. There is no reason for her to expect that this particular endeavor will fare any better. It's a hard truth, a wounding truth, but a truth nonetheless. A loved one's diminished expectations cut deep.
I sat here this morning, in full Black Knight, "it's only a flesh wound" mode, thinking, "I am going to count all the names I've found, and I will print the number in 100 point type on the ol' blog, and I will feel Vindicated! and Victorious! So I began my census.
Most of the work I've done has been among family members who lived in the 19th and 20th centuries. I feel very confident in the accuracy of this work (but even there, I've already found errors; more on this in another post). And I have, indeed, numbered dozens and dozens of family members from that era. The first three generations, including what I've compiled of siblings, sibling's children and spouses, and other extended family members, is close to 120 people. Go two generations more, and the number swells to over 200 people.
Once in a while, your research opens up in dramatic, Indiana-Jones-falling-into-the-Egyptian-map-room-and-finding-the-key-to-the-lost-ark ways. Of course, there are snakes. There are always snakes.
My research uncovered the work of some Intrepid Genealogist, who had done extensive work on the Pearce family line. I knew of this pedigree; working on the Anguishes and McMurrays and the Polish lines has been so interesting that I've never really looked at the information it contained.
Today, I looked. At first, it was exciting, even thrilling: name upon name scrolled across the computer screen. One hundred names. Two hundred names. Three hundred names, and I wasn't even tracing down all of the ancillary lines that curled like tendrils from the main vine. My heart raced. "Three Thousand Project?" I thought. "How could I have thought so small?"
It was then that the first snake slithered across the screen. After a long list of nice, normal, workaday names -- Daniel Pearce and Richard Pearce and John Tucker and Henry Stevens -- there was Lord John Ryves, scion of Damory Castle, Dorsetshire. The Ryves family were supporters of King Henry VIII, and were instrumental in establishing the Church of England.
I must confess a prejudice. I am very suspicious of family history that reveals either a connection to royalty, or a connection to infamy. My research has uncovered my relation to Jacob and Henry Anguish, both of whom, much to my chagrin, were allied with the infamous Butler's Rangers. There are some who would receive this information with glee, using it as an excuse to show up at Church activities dressed in buckskin and brandishing an Iroquois tomahawk. I know a man who is thrilled that his great-grandfather was hanged for horse theft. I think he's nuts. Shame is shame, no matter how old it is.
The royalty thing is worse. Despite my family's embarrassing past associations with imperialism, I'm an American, through and through. I don't need to be validated by knowing that some distant relation owned a castle back in the olden days. Frankly, I think a lot of this stuff is completely made up: it's a lot more fun to say great-great-great-great-great-great-great Granddad was King of Prussia, than a blacksmith or a farmer.
"You're overreacting," I told myself. "Royals kept records. It would make sense that a line this ancient would have some royal traces in it." I continued scrolling.
It got worse, snakier and less believable. King Louis IV. King Louis I. Charlemagne. Charlemagne. King of the Franks. Founder of the Holy Roman Empire. You know, Pepin the Short's kid. There is a family resemblance:
I have found a lot of ancestors. I've managed to trace names on my mother's side of the family far beyond my expectations, back six generations on one line. I've linked my father's side of the family to 17th century Ireland. I've discovered that McMurray men fought for the British crown all over the world, and that McMurray women bore children in British India and on a military ship bound for Canada. There have been lots of surprises, lots of discoveries.
None of it has been orderly. It's barely been coherent. I've flitted around like a sparrow who's flown into a plate glass window, confused and concussed, or like that creepy guy who used to bicycle all over North Tonawanda, the guy who had a one-eyed baby doll's head wired to the basket of his fat-tired bike and who had an attention span measured in nanoseconds: the sound of a fire engine or a flash of something shiny, and I'm madly off, pedaling in a new direction.
My wife understands this. In the last year, I have decided to learn conversational French, run a half-marathon, and read the complete works of Shakespeare. These goals remain incomplete, abandoned like American military equipment in southeast Asia, slowly consumed by the jungle of my arrested attentions. There is no reason for her to expect that this particular endeavor will fare any better. It's a hard truth, a wounding truth, but a truth nonetheless. A loved one's diminished expectations cut deep.
I sat here this morning, in full Black Knight, "it's only a flesh wound" mode, thinking, "I am going to count all the names I've found, and I will print the number in 100 point type on the ol' blog, and I will feel Vindicated! and Victorious! So I began my census.
Most of the work I've done has been among family members who lived in the 19th and 20th centuries. I feel very confident in the accuracy of this work (but even there, I've already found errors; more on this in another post). And I have, indeed, numbered dozens and dozens of family members from that era. The first three generations, including what I've compiled of siblings, sibling's children and spouses, and other extended family members, is close to 120 people. Go two generations more, and the number swells to over 200 people.
Once in a while, your research opens up in dramatic, Indiana-Jones-falling-into-the-Egyptian-map-room-and-finding-the-key-to-the-lost-ark ways. Of course, there are snakes. There are always snakes.
My research uncovered the work of some Intrepid Genealogist, who had done extensive work on the Pearce family line. I knew of this pedigree; working on the Anguishes and McMurrays and the Polish lines has been so interesting that I've never really looked at the information it contained.
Today, I looked. At first, it was exciting, even thrilling: name upon name scrolled across the computer screen. One hundred names. Two hundred names. Three hundred names, and I wasn't even tracing down all of the ancillary lines that curled like tendrils from the main vine. My heart raced. "Three Thousand Project?" I thought. "How could I have thought so small?"
It was then that the first snake slithered across the screen. After a long list of nice, normal, workaday names -- Daniel Pearce and Richard Pearce and John Tucker and Henry Stevens -- there was Lord John Ryves, scion of Damory Castle, Dorsetshire. The Ryves family were supporters of King Henry VIII, and were instrumental in establishing the Church of England.
I must confess a prejudice. I am very suspicious of family history that reveals either a connection to royalty, or a connection to infamy. My research has uncovered my relation to Jacob and Henry Anguish, both of whom, much to my chagrin, were allied with the infamous Butler's Rangers. There are some who would receive this information with glee, using it as an excuse to show up at Church activities dressed in buckskin and brandishing an Iroquois tomahawk. I know a man who is thrilled that his great-grandfather was hanged for horse theft. I think he's nuts. Shame is shame, no matter how old it is.
The royalty thing is worse. Despite my family's embarrassing past associations with imperialism, I'm an American, through and through. I don't need to be validated by knowing that some distant relation owned a castle back in the olden days. Frankly, I think a lot of this stuff is completely made up: it's a lot more fun to say great-great-great-great-great-great-great Granddad was King of Prussia, than a blacksmith or a farmer.
"You're overreacting," I told myself. "Royals kept records. It would make sense that a line this ancient would have some royal traces in it." I continued scrolling.
It got worse, snakier and less believable. King Louis IV. King Louis I. Charlemagne. Charlemagne. King of the Franks. Founder of the Holy Roman Empire. You know, Pepin the Short's kid. There is a family resemblance:
Maybe not.
Worse and worse, snakier and snakier. After scrolling through nine hundred years of pre-Charlemagne kings and their wives and consorts, I arrived at this entry:
First Name: Jesus
Last Name: Christ
Born: 8 March 0007, Bethlehem, Judea, Israel
Burial: 14 April 0033, Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, Golgotha, Judah, Roman Empire
Wife? Sure! Marianne migdal-eder, born about 0005 BC in Bethany, Israel; died "after AD 33, in France." This is, you may have guessed, the woman better known as Mary Magdalene. Children? Of course! Mrs. Antenor IV, King of the West Franks, was Jesus and Mary's little girl. (Can you imagine those family get-togethers? The holiday season is challenging for all of us, but when Christmas dinner is your father-in-law's birthday party, well, that's some tough sledding. You'd think being King of the West Franks would be good enough, but when you've married the King of King's only daughter...I feel for the guy.)
This whole thing has left me feeling depressed and queasy. I can see the Intrepid Genealogist, feverishly making connections, filling in the gaps with imagination and pluck until he or she has drawn an unbroken line leading straight to the manger at Bethlehem, shutting an enormous Book of Remembrance and saying, "There. That's done," and feeling very proud, indeed.
I am reminded of Paul's warning to Timothy: "Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do" (I Timothy 1:2).
This kind of nonsense is not why I am doing family history. I don't care about kings, and I am far more worried about whether I am behaving like Jesus than whether I am one of his distant grandchildren.
For now, there will be no more counting. It just makes my head hurt.
On the other hand, that pen cup on my desk does look remarkably like...a grail!
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Photos
It's cold and rainy and altogether miserable today, and I am in Day Three of a migraine, the kind of headache that feels as if someone has driven a knitting needle into my right eye, and is now trying to push it through the back of my skull. Not much writing today. Instead, photos, courtesy of the amazing Steve Litwin (who is the most dedicated protector of our family heritage that I know -- if you haven't thanked the Lord for Steve, you need to, today):
+Frances+Litwin+wedding.jpg)
Lolly Litwin, Flower Girl at Frances Litwin's wedding (date unknown)
Lolly Litwin at her wedding, OLC Church, May 1956 (I'm pretty sure that's Butch Socha in the background)
Mr. and Mrs. Bill Failing, May 1956
Rose Rusin-Litwin (l.), and her neighbor and in-law, Helen Moskal, NT, 1950's
Rose Litwin at Lolly's wedding, May 1956
Judy and Jerry McMurray's Wedding Photo.
Pictured (l - r): Kathy Siedlecki, Al McMurray, Donna Socha Gable; Judy Siedlecki, Jerry McMurray, David McMurray
Donna Socha's First Holy Communion
Pictured (l-r): Steve Litwin, Bob Litwin, Donna Socha, Judy Siedlecki, Sandra Socha
Judy Siedlecki's First Holy Communion
Pictured with her parents, Anthony and Mary Siedlecki.
Litwin's Bar and Grill is in the background.
Peter Siedlecki, 1944.
The inscription on the back reads, My First Photograph."
A wedding party from the 1920's (I've used this image before,
but this one has slightly better resolution).
Peter Litwin is front row, left, holding a baseball.
Wedding photo of Veronica Rusin and John Vrabec.
Back row (l-r): Piotr Litwin; Rose Rusin Litwin; unknown; unknown; Mary Rusin (Piotr's mother); Jan Rusin (Piotr's father); Anna Rusin Litwin; unknown.
Front row (l-r): Charles Stobnicki; Bronislawa (aka Bernice and Bertha) Rusin Stobnicki; John Vrabec; unknown child; Veronica Rusin Vrabec; Peter Litwin; unknown; unknown.
Alice and Emil Ziolek and six of their eight children
Helen Litwin Socha, Alice Litwin Ziolek
Sophie Litwin Kalata, Lolly Litwin Failing
Monday, February 1, 2010
Horn Section
Just a short entry today, while I ponder why someone from China keeps leaving cryptic messages ("Circumstances are the rulers of the weak, instrument of the wise") and links to what appear to be Asian dating services in the comments section of the blog.
Speaking of disappointing messages from Asia, have you noticed that fortune cookies don't contain fortunes anymore? It's hugely disappointing, after enjoying a fine repast of Mongolian beef or Sweet and Sour pork, to crack open that little cookie and find not a tiny scrap of intrigue ("You will soon take a long trip"; "Avoid men in black caps"; "Beware the Ides of March"), but what amounts to outtakes from one of Paster Joel Osteen's sermons: "If you want the rainbow, you must put up with the rain." "You are talented in many ways." "A good thing to remember is that someone's got it a lot worse than you do!" (That last one is an actual quote from Pastor Joel, so you see what I'm saying. The man is a walking, talking fortune cookie.) I say, less inspirational message and more weird predictions!
But I digress.
Today we have an amazing photo, from the amazing Steve Litwin. This is the Polish Marching Band of North Tonawanda, New York, circa 1912. The short guy, second from left in the second row, is my great-grandfather, Piotr Litwin. (There is another P. Litwin in the photo. That's Peter Litwin. Piotr married Rosalia Rusin, in 1915. Peter Litwin married Roaslia's sister, Anna. So the two horn playing Peter Litwins were brothers-in-law.)
Just a really cool photo for this first day of February...
Speaking of disappointing messages from Asia, have you noticed that fortune cookies don't contain fortunes anymore? It's hugely disappointing, after enjoying a fine repast of Mongolian beef or Sweet and Sour pork, to crack open that little cookie and find not a tiny scrap of intrigue ("You will soon take a long trip"; "Avoid men in black caps"; "Beware the Ides of March"), but what amounts to outtakes from one of Paster Joel Osteen's sermons: "If you want the rainbow, you must put up with the rain." "You are talented in many ways." "A good thing to remember is that someone's got it a lot worse than you do!" (That last one is an actual quote from Pastor Joel, so you see what I'm saying. The man is a walking, talking fortune cookie.) I say, less inspirational message and more weird predictions!
But I digress.
Just a really cool photo for this first day of February...
Saturday, January 30, 2010
War Is A Dreadful Sight To See
Some of you may recognize the title as the opening line from young Gerald McMurray's prize-winning poem, "War":
War is a dreadful sight to see
When all the boys are sleeping there
They are not sleeping; they are dead.
Some are in their foxholes when they are found.
Some never are found, and the ground is their bed.
My father was, if I remember right, in 7th or 8th grade when he wrote this poem. He would recite it at every opportunity, usually to comic effect. We would be in the car, in the summertime -- cars in our family were generally used, often rusty, and never equipped with air conditioning -- and we'd be blasting down the road, windows open but still sticky and uncomfortable, and people would be a little bit edgy (for that was another crucial facet of our automobile history: the cars were always one seat smaller than our number. Car travel was like a sad game of musical chairs, where the music never stopped and no one was ever "out," the backseat a constant, desperate shuffle for space) and Dad would ask, "Did I ever tell you about my prize-winning poem?" He'd draw himself up, set his jaw, and nobly intone, "War. A Poem By Gerald McMurray. War is a dreadful sight to see..." and we would laugh and listen and things would calm down a little.
There was a time when I loved all things military, loved the history, loved the uniforms and the noble sense of purpose. I had a big Civil War history book, heavy on maps and illustrations, that I carried everywhere, fascinated by the heroic portrait of Admiral Farragut clinging to the riggings and urging his crew to victory at Mobile Bay, haunted by Matthew Brady's photography, lost in the painstakingly drawn maps:
War is a dreadful sight to see
When all the boys are sleeping there
They are not sleeping; they are dead.
Some are in their foxholes when they are found.
Some never are found, and the ground is their bed.
My father was, if I remember right, in 7th or 8th grade when he wrote this poem. He would recite it at every opportunity, usually to comic effect. We would be in the car, in the summertime -- cars in our family were generally used, often rusty, and never equipped with air conditioning -- and we'd be blasting down the road, windows open but still sticky and uncomfortable, and people would be a little bit edgy (for that was another crucial facet of our automobile history: the cars were always one seat smaller than our number. Car travel was like a sad game of musical chairs, where the music never stopped and no one was ever "out," the backseat a constant, desperate shuffle for space) and Dad would ask, "Did I ever tell you about my prize-winning poem?" He'd draw himself up, set his jaw, and nobly intone, "War. A Poem By Gerald McMurray. War is a dreadful sight to see..." and we would laugh and listen and things would calm down a little.
There was a time when I loved all things military, loved the history, loved the uniforms and the noble sense of purpose. I had a big Civil War history book, heavy on maps and illustrations, that I carried everywhere, fascinated by the heroic portrait of Admiral Farragut clinging to the riggings and urging his crew to victory at Mobile Bay, haunted by Matthew Brady's photography, lost in the painstakingly drawn maps:
"Damn the torpedoes -- Full Steam Ahead!"
Matthew Brady.
The image doesn't do the maps justice...Trust me, they were amazing.
Vietnam was on television. Young men from our community were fighting (and dying) there, needlessly, shamefully sacrificed. I was too young to understand. I was too young to know that my dad was joking about winning a poetry contest; he wasn't joking about his message. Dad's buddy Norm Keller died in Vietnam -- his name is on that black granite monument in Washington -- and every time he mentioned Normy, Dad would get very solemn and tell us that Norm was a good guy, an athlete, a college guy, and that he'd been killed while trying to give aid to another wounded soldier, that he'd died for his country, that we must not forget him. I remember driving back from Aunt Gladys's house in Sanborn, risking the trip over the creaky, impossibly arched bridge that spanned the railroad tracks and cruising down Townline Road in the twilight, and seeing house after house with blue star pennants hanging in the front windows, not really understanding that every star stood for a boy who was far away from home, hunkered down in some southeast Asian jungle and praying that he'd live to go back home. War was a little boy's game, GI Joes and Civil War picture books, all strategy and uniforms, noble men and noble causes. It was grand and good and not real.
It's different now. Years and experience and a decade of war and I see the weariness, the soul ache in the faces of Brady's subjects. I think about Norm Keller, his life stopped at 24, and of the family he would never have. I think of the waste and wickedness, and the Blue Star parents and the Gold Star parents, and I think that war is a dreadful sight to see.
Unfortunately, war is also a great source of family history information. Death and destruction are usually accompanied by copious amounts of paperwork.
Peter Litwin, Walter Siedlecki, and Alfred McMurray, three young men who probably didn't know one another, but who are eternally linked through me and my posterity, all registered for the 1917-1918 United States draft. None of them, as far as I can tell, were ever drafted, although Walter did eventually enlist with Haller's Blue Army and fought for the Liberation of Poland in the strange years after the German armistice.
Here are their draft cards:
There is a lot of information here.
Alfred is 20; the registrar misspells his middle name as "Hermon," not "Hansen." He works as an electrician, and lives with his mother, Charlotte, at 137 Stenzil Street, close to the intersection of Stenzil and Oliver on the north side of North Tonawanda. That he lists his mother as next of kin implies that his father, James Ocean McMurray, was dead. Al is single.
Walter is also single, a 21 year old laborer at Buffalo Bolt. He was born in Suwalki, "Russia - Poland", his insistence on including Poland as an identifier when the Polish state had not officially exited for decades belies a patriotism that makes understandable his decision to join with Haller's liberation army later that year. He lives at 661 Oliver Street (which for those of you keeping score is the little white building between what used to be Bonk's Deli and what used to be Rudzinski's Hardware), and lists his next of kin as his brother (and my grandfather), Anthony. Anthony would have been six years old in 1918; my guess is that he was the only one in the family who could speak English.
Peter Litwin is still Piotr in 1917. He's married, with two children. He states his intention to become a citizen of the United States, although at this point, after about six years here, he's still a resident alien. He, too, lives in the Avenues and works at the Bolt.
Had a couple of things gone differently -- a draft number comes up, and a kid sitting in a trench in France takes a German bullet or contracts the flu -- our family might never have come to be...
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