"But Mom, Everyone's Doing It"

 

After searching yesterday through archived New York newspapers to find any mention of Uncle John's in-laws using their assumed surname Hark, I decided to go through the whole process once more for the original surname, Aktabowski. After all, I might have missed something.

What I did miss was the sense that far more of the family had chosen to go the name-change route than those who opted to remain with tradition. Even in the families of the oldest of the Aktabowski siblings who had kept their original surname—John's wife Blanche's two oldest brothers—their own sons later decided to go with the more streamlined Hark alternate identity. There were so many who had preferred this sleeker image that I could imagine them all whining, much like complaining teenagers, "But mom, everybody's doing it!"

That, of course, meant that for each descendant, I needed to pinpoint just when the name change occurred. The problem with that plan was that I had seen very few of this family who appeared to have an official sanction permitting such a legal change. I had to go back and double check: just who can change their name, how can they do so, and where would I find such records.

In the process of this inspection, I found plenty of guidance online. There were case studies on difficult-to-trace sources of aliases. Getting closer to the crux of my own research project, I even found an article about the difficulty of tracing name changes among Polish immigrants. I found helpful tips from state archives, such as this article from the Massachusetts Archives on documents in their holdings specific to family history—especially their subheading on documents related to name changes. 

One way immigrants to the United States can officially change their name is through the naturalization process—but not all of the name-changing members of the Aktabowski family were immigrants. Many of them were native-born citizens, and had made the choice to change their name well into adulthood. The problem was, I just wasn't finding any record of such changes. 

Granted, according to the FamilySearch wiki on the topic, there are a few resources for searching through the court record index in the pertinent county location in New York. Ironically, the only Aktabowski in-law whose name change I could pinpoint to any court record was that of Uncle John's New York native sister-in-law, Theresa Aktabowski, who had married an Italian immigrant—Antonino Cappadona—who asked for a name change to Thomas Captain once his citizenship request was granted.

As for the one legal document I've been able to find referenced for any of the Aktabowskis themselves, it was through a newspaper report, just as an article at GenealogyBank had suggested. A son of the oldest Aktabowski brother had petitioned the court for a surname change to Hark. Gerard Aktabowski made that request in 1945, when he was twenty two years of age. But he didn't make it in the city in which he had been born and raised, but in Palm Beach County, Florida. If it hadn't been for that newspaper being included at Newspapers.com—and my subscription linking that service with my Ancestry account—I would never have known to look for such a record in Florida.

The fact that so many of the Aktabowski family had changed their surname made for an interesting readout when the Queens borough Daily Star published the guest list for Uncle John's daughter Frances' wedding in its August 27, 1929, edition. Uncle John's Laskowski relatives' names mixed in not only with Frances' groom's Hanlon family, but with both Aktabowskis and Harks, and even editorially-incorrect "Horks" as well. At least now that I'm working on this branch of the family history, most of those are names I can pinpoint, regardless of the way each relative chose to represent that surname.

Lithuanian Notes

 

One benefit of discovering such an archived historic newspaper resource as Fultonhistory.com is that its collection includes all those small neighborhood newspapers that family history researchers might otherwise not even know about. For instance, in searching for mentions of Uncle John's Aktabowski in-laws with their alternate identity, the Hark surname, I found some entries about social events involving several of the Hark brothers.

The location of those newspaper entries was in one interesting column, a resource I'd have hardly expected to find in any of the well-known New York City newspapers, such as The New York Times or even the Brooklyn Eagle. On the pages of the Queens Ledger, a paper devoted to only one of the five boroughs of New York City, I found a column with the title, "Lithuanian Notes."

Written by columnist Josephine Zembrosky, each edition was filled with snippets of social interest. Notes of birthday greetings mingled with reports of local bowling leagues and news of those returning home from military duty overseas. Included in that media melange for one edition in 1945 was the following entry:

Mr. and Mrs. William Hark, Jr., of 52-71 66th Street became the parents of a son, William Peter, on August 27. Grandpa William Hark, Sr., and great-grandpa George Belinski of 69th Place are busy receiving congratulations.

It was interesting to find that entry in a newspaper column for Lithuanian social notes. After all, Uncle John's heritage was Polish. That, however, did not mean that his wife's family shared that same origin. In fact, searching for Bronisława Aktabowski, Uncle John's wife, had always been challenging—and not simply because she chose to change her given name to Blanche. In census records which asked for such information, the Aktabowski heritage was represented variously as Polish or Russian, probably depending on the correct political designation of the region at the time in which that information was gathered in records regarding their family.

However, with this recent discovery of the family mentioned in a newspaper column focused on a heritage from Lithuania, was that revealing a hint as to the true origin of the Aktabowski surname? Or was it a hint of the ethnic heritage of yet another family line which had intermarried with the Aktabowski family?

I have yet to pinpoint that detail, but it is the tiny clues available in local newspapers such as this discovery of the Queens Ledger which bids me to keep searching a bit further in this record resource at Fultonhistory.com. 

Hark! Do I Hear Music?

 

It was years ago—now that I think of it, perhaps decades ago—when a fellow Aktabowski researcher shared a photograph with me. It wasn't the usual type of family portrait you'd expect to see from a fellow family historian; it was actually a shot of a theater's marquee. The main point of sharing the photo was the name on the marquee: Hark.

Hark was the surname several of the Aktabowski brothers, Uncle John's in-laws, chose to use when they reinvented themselves from children of Polish immigrants to New York City entertainers. My understanding was the reason their name merited this placement was that they were musicians. I wanted to confirm that family's music legacy.

Certainly, with such a history, the Hark names would merit placement in the typical publications reviewing the many performances around the big city. After all, the Hark brothers would have been right in the middle of the vaudeville era, I reasoned. There had to have been some mention of their act if this were indeed a valid family recollection.

Where do you go when you want to find such reportage? Since nothing had been coming up on searches through Newspapers.com, I switched to seeking answers on the obvious choice for New York newspapers: the website known for the longest time as "Old Fulton New York Post Cards." 

Now located under the more streamlined name and URL, Fultonhistory.com, this website started as the creation of one man scanning one newspaper in 1999. Since then, it has blossomed into a collection of nearly sixty million newspapers, not just from the New York area, but from all along the eastern seaboard and reaching into the midwest and even Canada. The website has merited a Wikipedia entry as well as one in FamilySearch.org's own wiki.

Because of the immensity of the site—three times the size of the Chronicling America project at the U.S. Library of Congress—experienced researchers recommend that those new to the collection review the site's FAQs page, or take the time to read other articles on tips about using the site's search engine.

With that, I launched into my search for the Aktabowski, er, Hark brothers in New York City show biz. I was, unfortunately, less successful than I hoped I would be. One early entry—in The Daily Standard Union for May 24, 1918—did include a mention of music being provided by Benjamin and Frank Hark, but the event was a farewell party at the Saint Aloysius Young Men's Association for four members being sent to train for military service at the close of the World War. While this was most likely a memorable evening for many, it was not exactly the type of music performance I was expecting.

There was one other search result which seemed promising, though. Published in Billboard on July 3, 1909, under the heading for "New York Vaudeville Notes" came a long listing of acts currently showing at several venues. By the time I reached the bottom of the column and the heading for the Fifth Avenue Theatre, unfortunately, the ink on the corner of the page faded so badly that I could only make out the name William Hark. Was that our William? It would be hard to know with just that one, nearly obliterated entry.

While I may not have found the entries I had hoped to find on the Hark brothers' show biz careers, the Fultonhistory.com website did not disappoint. I did find several articles on the Hark family members for two different generations among the hundreds of hits reviewed so far. And I am far from done. With more mundane topics such as graduations, weddings, and funerals, the entries give me substance on the full spectrum of life for family members beyond their theoretical few minutes of fame—if there ever were any such moments. We'll take some time this week to review what I've found so far.

I'm Still Listening

 

Knowing my paternal grandparents' extended families included several with musical talents, I wasn't surprised to learn that some of them considered themselves to be in the entertainment industry. After all, these were sons of immigrants who settled in New York City, where there were plenty of opportunities to hit it big with such talents.

To discover that several of Uncle John's in-laws went so far as to change their surname from the unwieldy Aktabowski to the more streamlined Hark, though, seemed an act that was a bit too corny. Still, I thought it might be worth a try to find them under their new, non-Polish-sounding surname in the city's newspapers of that time period. Result? How about hundreds of entries printed in December newspapers for church choirs singing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing." Not the kind of helpful leads I had envisioned—though I'll surely keep listening for any further notes on those Hark brothers in show biz.

For my next act, I tried searching through the listings of each Aktabowski brother in the census records for their time period in the early to mid 1900s. After all, that was my research plan after I decided how to handle mid-life name changes. I needed to check the score on how many of the brothers actually went with the stage name instead of their Polish-born father's surname.

Not all of the sons made the change, it turns out. That was probably influenced by which ones were in the entertainment field, and which sought their living by more mundane methods. Eldest son Benjamin, for instance, raised a family of at least five children on the commissions he made as an insurance agent—and somehow survived in business despite keeping his Polish surname. Next eldest son John took a position as a glass blower to support his family of three children, also opting to stick with tradition. 

It wasn't until we get to son William, six years younger than his eldest brother Benjamin and long after Uncle John's wife Bronisława was born, that we begin to see family members willing to shed their traditional Polish surname for a more Americanized—or at least streamlined—model. William, who also married a woman named Bronisława who was dealing with her own Polish name issues, may have followed his wife's lead. She had reinvented herself as Bessie for the 1920 census, so it is no surprise to see the entire family listed with their brand new surname model as Hark for the 1930 census.

I kept looking at records to see if anyone else in the family followed this act. Sure enough, in that same census year, William's younger brother Gustave, though (incredibly) keeping his foreign-sounding given name, also opted to transform himself into a Hark. And yet, after that point, no one else among his brothers seemed to follow suit—with the exception of Zygmunt, who seemed to disappear so completely that I suspect he chose a more radical transformation for his own identity.

That, at least, narrows the search field for me to the two brothers—William and Gustave—who opted to liven up their act with a streamlined name. Now that we have that list narrowed to two, we can try putting our ears to the ground again and listen for any new clues about an act involving the Hark brothers.

Everything Changes

 

Last weekend, I taught a class on using social media for genealogy. While this is one of the subjects I enjoy presenting on, it is also a topic which needs frequent updating. Why? Because social media is constantly changing. In fact, just after I had updated my presentation's section on that flighty online entity now known as "X—formerly Twitter" and shared someone's, um, tweet about where that online genealogy community had migrated, what should occur but that one of the newer options had already decided to close its virtual doors, effective the beginning of this month. With social media, everything is subject to change. 

We can expect the online world to be rapidly changing; it's the nature of that universe. But this weekend, I took in an entirely different scene of change. It just so happened that I picked the most perfect weather for a getaway to the ocean. Soaking up the sun as I stared out over the mesmerizing blue of the water, I was reminded that the last time I had visited this beautiful spot, it was after a raging storm had blown waves high over the cliffs and across the shoreline road—surely a terrifying sight to the homeowners in the nearby neighborhood. It wasn't hard to spot the reminder of those sudden changes, even in this beautiful sunshine. The walking path—stairs and all—had been bitten into by a raging sea which was determined to leave its mark on land once considered safe. Everything changes, even the rocks bolstering solid land from the encroaching sea.

So here I am, struggling to sort through the changes in Uncle John's family, especially the changes in surnames for both his own and his wife's Polish immigrant relatives. And I sit here, wondering how anyone could consider changing something as immutable as a name, when it obviously happens all the time. If a business can morph from one form to another, why not an individual? If even the coastline lies defenseless against forces of the sea, why do I expect my ancestors to exist through history like some human rock of Gibraltar?

There has been a trend, lately, to view our genealogy through the lens of social history. Taking the macro history which swirls above our heads as it impacts the entire world and blending it with the micro history of our ancestors' personal timelines can give us a far different readout of what life was like for those relatives of ours as they traveled their own lifespan. Those events, whether enormous or inconsequential, became a part of the barrage of changes having an impact on our ancestors. Changing choices, changing paths, changing both big and small decisions, those swirling influences made our ancestors the people they turned out to be.

If, instead of simply picturing our ancestors through the three main lenses of vital records—birth, marriage, death—we could portray them as the living, dynamic, changing individuals they surely were, I think it would bring them to life for us, once again. If nothing else, perhaps that would allow us to understand them a bit better, especially for the choices they made—or failed to make. Given the span of an entire lifetime, surely for this we should also be encouraged to realize everything changes.  

It's a Rule

 

Uncle John may have married a daughter of Polish immigrants named Aktabowski, but that doesn't mean his young bride wished to keep her name unchanged. His wife Bronisława soon morphed into a person named Blanche, but that wasn't the only change she and her Americanized siblings underwent. Though Blanche changed her surname legally by virtue of her marriage to John Laskowski, her many brothers eventually found their birth name of Aktabowski to be too cumbersome for the lively scene in New York City entertainment. Several of them not only chopped off the last syllables of their surname, but altered the initial sound, as well: from Aktabowski to Hark.

That action, of course, presents problems for those of us trying to trace our family history. How do we record such changes? What, for instance, do we do when we have no documentation to verify the name was changed legally, but we know from personal experience that those relatives went by the preferred, newer surname? There has got to be a rule, I think, but in looking for any, I can find others who, long ago, weighed in on the dilemma, but none advocating for any one standardized rule. With that in mind, I decided to formulate my own "style sheet" (to borrow an old copy editor's term) for handling how I represent the timeline of name changes. With that plan of attack, I can now simply say, "It's a rule."

Here's how I handle such name changes through any given person's lifetime. When I find a document showing a different name than the last time in which that person appeared in records—say, moving from the 1910 census to the 1920 census—I will make a note in that person's profile page on Ancestry.com. As I attach the specific record to the person's profile page, I open up the "edit" function and actually note that this was the first time I saw that new variation appearing, and what it had morphed from.

If, for instance, I found Blanche's brother listed in the 1910 census as an Aktabowski, living at home with the other confirmed members of his family, but then find his World War I draft registration card—with that same address listed for the card as had been for the previous census record—showing a different surname, I will flag the change in comments when I attach the new record to the brother's profile page.

As for the name heading the profile page for that individual, I list that person's name at birth, much like we do when handling any woman in our family tree (entering her by her maiden name). It is the next generation at which I will carry the new surname forward, mainly if birth records show the updated, Americanized surname.

Of course, if someone actually went through the legal process of changing their surname—as some immigrants did when filing naturalization requests—that provides an actual paper trail pinpointing date as well as substance of the change. Those records, however, are sometimes hard to come by, and the only indication may be circumstantial evidence. City directories, for instance, might be great for pinpointing when a person used a specific name, but they are not legal documents. 

I have yet, for instance, to find any record of legal action regarding my own paternal grandfather's name change. Seeing so many of his brother-in-law's wife's family changing their surname opens my eyes to just how many others engaged in the same process. Everything from prejudice against immigrants—especially those, at that time, from non-western European homelands—to desire to fit in at their place of work may have been motivations for such changes. Lack of money or know-how to navigate the legal maze of accomplishing such name changes may have complicated matters. But somehow, those names got changed—and have ever since kept the rest of us descendants puzzling over just how to demonstrate the connections.

As for Bronisława, er, Blanche, we'll be following her family this month—especially the collateral lines—to trace the roots of this Aktabowski line and its related surnames. But first, let's consider what became of her many siblings after her marriage to John Laskowski.