Change of Plans

 

Sometimes, a change of plans can happen for the nicest of surprises. Today is one of those days. I had planned to launch into a new month of research on the third of my father-in-law's mystery ancestors for this year. Then, an unexpected email landed in my in-box which I simply can't not talk about. I thought about saving this post for next weekend, but since today's a holiday anyhow, I'll let that be my excuse to celebrate a little.

If you have been following A Family Tapestry for any amount of time longer than, say, the past couple years, you probably have picked up the notion that when I started this family history journey, I knew next to nothing about my own father's side of the family. Put it simply: I knew my dad's name, and a rough estimate of his date of birth somewhere in New York City—and that was it. He wasn't too helpful about adding any information, either; his usual response to my childhood pleas—delivered in a typical New York accent—was, "Ah, you don't wanna know that."

My older siblings and cousins and I eventually got together and compared notes on our respective parents from this side of the family. Bit by bit, we were able to assemble lines from census records and other details which revealed the story of a family with a far different surname than the one I grew up with: it was Puhalski. Or Puhalaski. Or, finally back in Poland, the family's origin, Puhała.

That search took years of sharing discoveries among ourselves, but even then, I'd run into people who warned me that what my cousins and I had found was simply a case of a woman—my paternal grandmother, Sophie Laskowska—marrying two different men. That was the usual way to explain away family records with two different surnames, not the alternate—and very possible—scenario of an immigrant deciding to unofficially change his own name.

Well, along came technology—we bandy about the term "AI" now—and changed all that. Unbidden and certainly unexpectedly, I got this email yesterday about a discovery regarding a newspaper printed over a century ago. The email was from the genealogy company MyHeritage, which a few years ago had acquired a significant collection of New York newspapers and state documents. With their release this year of OldNews.com, MyHeritage was certainly equipped to help me resolve that research dilemma, but I never dreamed it possible to actually find an answer to this problem in print, certainly not in the pages of any New York newspaper.

It was MyHeritage's SuperSearch function which did the heavy lifting for me, though I hadn't even the slightest notion that they were working behind the scenes to uncover answers for me. Thus, the unexpected email brought me, unbidden, the answer I thought I would never find.

That long-awaited answer was buried in the legal notices from the June 13, 1917, edition of the Flushing Daily Times, in the midst of articles on page three concerning rallies for the Red Cross, real estate sales, classified ads, and even a cartoon strip. In essence, at a "Special Term of the Supreme Court" for Queens County (but held in Kings County) on June 12, Theodore J. Puhalski petitioned to change his name to John T. McCann. In addition, the notice included the request for the petitioner's two children to also have their surname changed for "good reasons" and that their interests "will be substantially promoted thereby."

Makes one wonder what those "good reasons" might have been. Whatever they were, they remained as much a secret as the very court incident, itself—until, at least, a smartly set up computer system aided in uncovering details I never dreamed actually existed.

Today might be a different holiday celebration for you than the event I'm celebrating. For now, I'm cheering for this unexpected discovery, definitely a genealogy happy-dance-worthy moment. Tomorrow, we'll get back to work on previously scheduled research plans. I promise.

Newspaper image above from page 3 of the Flushing Daily Times for June 13, 1917, courtesy of OldNews.com at MyHeritage.com.