Turning to Timelines

When puzzling over a brick wall ancestor, it sometimes helps to turn to timelines to ferret out the missing information. In Anastasia Zegarska's lifetime saga of many married names, I'm still trying to determine when she married which husband, and when the previous husband might have died. After all, I've run into some conflicting reports concerning her daughter Rosalia, giving me doubts about which husband came last—not to mention which husband's name Anastasia used when she left her home in Pomerania to sail for America.

In brief, today's my day to lay out the dates, with links back to the appropriate documents, where available. After we sort out the mess, tomorrow we'll take a hard look at the one document which has me all confused. There may be an explanation...if we can find some missing documents.

So, for Anastasia, a.k.a. Anna, here we go.

• 1848: Anastasia born in Schwarzwald (Czarnylas, Poland), as estimated from her marriage record
• 1868: Anastasia married Thomas Puchała in Schwarzwald
• 1872: Anastasia mentioned in baptismal record of daughter Rosalia in Lubichowo
• 1910: Anastasia entered as "Annie Kusfkr" in the Brooklyn, New York, household of daughter Rose Muller in U.S. Census
• 1915: Listed as Anna Krausse in Brooklyn household on Knickerbocker Avenue with daughter Rose Miller in New York State census enumerated on June 1
• 1915: November 15 marriage record of George W. Kober and Rose Miller identified Rose as a divorced woman for whom this was her second marriage; document identified Rose's current address in Brooklyn as Knickerbocker Avenue, but states her maiden name was Krauss and her mother's maiden name was Anna Zegar
• 1920: Anna "Krouse" was listed in the U. S. Census as mother-in-law in the household of George W. Kober and his wife Rose, now living at 729 96th Street in Woodhaven, part of the Borough of Queens in New York City
• 1921: A newspaper report of her death in The Brooklyn Standard Union on September 29, 1921—including the right house address and city (but not street) of the Kober household—listed her name as Anna "Kraus"
• 1921: Her death certificate listed her name as Anna Kusharvska on the front of the document, yet on the reverse, spelled that surname as Kusharvoska; with her daughter listed as "Mrs. Geo. W. Kober" and the place of death given as 729 96th Street in Richmond Hill 

There, like a sandwich, we have documents in both the earlier and latest segments of Anastasia's life in America listing her surname as some variation on what seems to be the unusual surname of Kusharvska. Yet, other records seem to hint that Anna went by the name Krauss in the earlier years of her residence in New York City. 

My main goal in ferreting out Anna's married names is not only finding the identity of these two men in her later life, but determining what name she chose to represent herself when entering this country as an immigrant. Her second and third marriage record plus that record of her passage to America would be useful to find. It may all come down to which surname she went by—and how she, or those officials documenting her identity, might have spelled it.