Even Farther Away From Home

 

If we put ourselves in our immigrant ancestors' shoes, we can see how long a trip those family members endured to arrive on our shores in America. Specifically, I'm thinking of my great-grandmother, Anastasia Zegarska Puchała, who traveled far from her home in the Pomeranian village of Czarnylas to the bustling shores of New York City.

Even farther away from home, as I discovered through the DNA matches descended from Anastasia's immigrant siblings, were those distant cousins whose Zegarski and Wojtaś ancestors traveled to Milwaukee in Wisconsin. But the story uncovered by my latest discoveries on this family line goes even farther away from home than that: I have some DNA matches who claim Australia as their home.

Wondering how a branch of my Polish family could have opted for such a direction, I had to seek out some explanations. In a more macro search concerning Polish immigration, I asked specifically for details on just who these Polish immigrants might have been who headed in that opposite direction.

To my surprise, there have been Polish immigrants arriving in Australia since the mid-1850s. While the Australian gold rushes might seem like a reasonable draw—and there were Poles among other Europeans seeking gold in Victoria, especially—the Polish arriving in Australia during that decade were noted to have established themselves in South Australia in a settlement now known as Polish Hill River. 

It is more likely, however, that any of my Polish relatives would have arrived in the subsequent century with the much larger group of displaced Polish people in the aftermath of the Second World War. This was a time period when the Australian population burgeoned with Polish immigrants, leaving their mark on the country's multicultural composition. Even last year, the estimated population in Australia of people who had been born in Poland was 47,680.

For those immigrating to Australia from Poland after World War II, we can now add their children and grandchildren who subsequently were born in that recently-adopted homeland—including those five DNA matches I've found who currently live there.

While that exploration of Australia's immigration history gives us a macro view of the Polish connection down under, what about the specifics of those five DNA cousins? If they descend from a Polish ancestor who was related to either my Zegarski or Wojtaś family lines, it may be difficult to construct the actual paper trail to document that connection.

While I can access transcriptions of Polish birth, marriage, and death records up to the first quarter century of the 1900s, nothing more recent has become available online for me to trace the connection. This may mean I'll need to rely on communicating in person with at least one of those DNA cousins to compare notes on the micro aspect of the more traditional paper trail of how we might connect.

However, I might have a plausible idea....

To See it With my Own Eyes

 

What is it about documents for family history? Somehow, I can't just accept that someone else saw it, or transcribed it, or referenced it. I need to see the thing for myself. And that is simply not happening for Nicholas Snider, the second great-grandfather I'm seeking on my mother-in-law's family tree.

Granted, the man was likely born in in the mid-1760s and made his trip from Germany to a very young United States of America in the early 1800s when record-keeping was not our nation's bureaucratic strong suit. Whatever records might have survived—if even required to be taken, much less kept for centuries—would certainly not be of a format we'd expect today.

Though I had already read reports, thanks to Ancestry.com, that Nicholas had arrived in 1804 on the ship Fortune, I wanted to see the actual passenger list. So naturally, I was excited to learn that there was a digitized collection at FamilySearch.org called Pennsylvania Landing Reports of Aliens, 1798-1828. I was not so delighted to learn the collection—all 636 images—is not searchable. But you can browse.

From the transcription, I noticed that the Nicholas in that ship's entry had traveled with Anna, presumably his wife, and a five year old son named Jacob. Their surname was spelled Schneider, no surprise for a family traveling from Germany, although our Nicholas' family eventually went by the more English spelling, Snider or Snyder. Along with Nicholas' entry in the passenger record were entries for two unnamed children, aged three and one, who were marked as dead.

But were these the entries for the right Nicholas Schneider family? That was my impetus for finding the original record, in case any other information might have been provided. In addition, slight changes to details I had found—such as Nicholas' wife's name being Anna Elizabeth, which doesn't fit a middle initial "M" from the transcription—urge me to find more information.

Whether I have the fortitude to last through all 636 images in the collection, I can't yet say. I suspect, given the size, I'll find a spot which is safely within the date range of that 1804 transcription, and go page by page through that section. And hope. The FamilySearch wiki entry for the collection doesn't give much more guidance; sometimes you just have to turn the pages for yourself.

A Life's Trajectory, Backwards

 

In looking at the First Families applications we've received in our local genealogical society, I often wonder what drew these immigrant families from far and wide to settle in our county. One applicant to our program wished to pursue his patriline back to England. His great-grandfather had settled in California with his parents by 1875, according to his naturalization records. And yet, as I explored the other side of his family—also settlers in our county—I discovered that their trail to San Joaquin County followed a different route.

Annie Caroline Sprengler, long before she met her husband in our county, was born in Utah—or perhaps Colorado, depending on which census record is consulted. Despite the unclear location of Anna's 1860 arrival, her younger sister Katherine was born six years later in California. The family was moving westward. But what brought them to any of these places? What was Anna Sprengler's life trajectory?

To determine this, of course, requires us to follow a person's life story backwards in time, step by step from the date at which we encountered them—usually, for our ancestors, through an obituary or death record—to their earliest record of existence. In Anna's case, uncovering her family's origin required tracing the pathway that brought her parents to the western reaches of the United States.

The Sprengler family was resident in San Joaquin County long before our First Families current cut-off century date of 1924. Anna and her siblings were fully catalogued in the 1880 census while living in O'Neal Township in what now includes the city of Stockton. Her father Valentine, by then fifty two years of age, was listed as a farmer from Bavaria.

Bavaria, however, far predated the time of this census report. Before arriving at any information on that location, there were several events to consider. That 1880 census reported an overview of the family's travels. Eldest child Theodore was born in Illinois while John was born in Iowa. It was this census which recorded Anna's own birth as being in Colorado, before her sister's 1873 birth in California.

It was their father Valentine's own entry in California's 1866 Great Register of voters which helped point us further eastward. According to the note there, Valentine was naturalized on March 30, 1860, in Fayette County, Iowa. 

This, of course, calls into question the report that his daughter Anna was born in either Colorado or Utah in July of that same year.

More records materialized to trace the Sprengler family's progress westward. A land record in 1859, drawn up in Dubuque, Iowa, for Valentine Sprengler "of DuPage County, Illinois," gave the precise location of his purchase of eighty acres in Iowa. This occurred only a few years after his 1854 marriage, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to German immigrant Anna Caroline Koerth.

The beauty of this marriage document was its thoroughness of detail. From that document, we discover Valentine's parents' names—Adam Sprengler and Kunigunde Kressin—and the place of his own birth. While the handwritten entry in Valentine's marriage record looks like his place of birth was "Obferbaum," a quick check of the Meyers Gazetteer provides the slight correction to Opferbaum, a location designated (in German) as "a district of the municipality of Bergtheim in the Lower Franconian district of Würzburg" in Bavaria. 

From Opferbaum in Bavaria to the German port of Bremen to sail to New York City in 1852, then continuing the route to Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa is all laid out by documentation. From that point to California by 1866 is less clear, but it's my guess that Valentine's wife Anna made the trip westward while carrying her namesake daughter. And it's certainly obvious that the entire Sprengler family made it to our county in plenty of time to be considered as one of our Pioneer Families. 

Tackling an Old Problem

 

Old research problems can be tantalizing and simultaneously frustrating. I thought I'd spend the weekend jumping back to tackle a DNA match's Olejniczak roots from my research project last month. By now, I had reconciled myself to the thought that DNA doesn't lie—and that Polish immigrants to America had good reasons to do their best to blend into the English-speaking background.

Thus, my question: was John Olenzak really the Johan Olejniczak who once had been baptized as Joannes Olejniczak, nephew of my second great-grandmother? Think again if you presumed this would be an easy project. The process of discovering that the Polish Jan Olejniczak was born on the same day as John Olenzak was not that difficult, but moving further into his family constellation introduced more problems.

For one thing, Johan's naturalization record—of which I only could find a transcription—indicated his arrival in New York City in 1905. Yet a passenger listing for a wife, two sons, a daughter, and two unmarried sisters-in-law showed an arrival in 1906. Obviously, Johan could have traveled ahead—his address at the time was given as the town of Neffs in Belmont County, Ohio. But the sticky part was that the names of these family members traveling to join Johan did not match up with later census records for the family, 

Traveling on the Zeeland from Antwerp were Stanislawa Olejniczak and her children Marjan, Stefania, and Stanislaw, plus Wladyslawa and Josefa Pruchniewicz. The problem is that the earliest census where I can find John's family in Ohio includes a son and two daughters—quite backwards from the passenger listing—and a wife names Pelagia, not Stanislawa as had been entered on the passenger list.

Now what? This is apparently not going to be the slam-dunk weekend project I had envisioned. Jan Olejniczak and his immigrant family will have to travel back to the genealogical drawing board with me and await yet another weekend before we can find any answers.

Finding the Path to America

 

If Lorenz Laskowski was the first of the three Laskowski siblings to leave the family home in Żerków for America, his younger sister Agnes was probably the last. Agnes, that woman of many sorrows we discussed last week, had married, birthed three children, then lost all three along with her husband. Two more records pinpointed her last days in her native Poland: her second marriage, to Ignatz Giernatowski in 1887, and the 1888 birth of the Giernatowskis' daughter Pelagia.

Records tracing the Giernatowskis' path to America thus needed to occur after Pelagia's January 1888 birth. The trouble is, finding that path of immigration turns out to be a challenge. Taking the simple route of consulting the 1900 census—where their Brooklyn, New York, residence was entered under the spelling Gernatofski—resulted in entries as misleading as the ones we spotted yesterday for Agnes' brother Lorenz. While the couple reported that by then, they had been married for twelve years, they claimed a year of immigration—1887—predating not only their daughter's 1888 birth in Żerków, but their own marriage there as well. And while Ignatz claimed he had at least initiated the naturalization process, I have yet to find his records. (The 1915 New York State census listed Ignatz as an alien.)

But when did they get here? And how? Their arrival likely predated the opening of Ellis Island, but that doesn't mean passenger records were non-existent before 1892. One entry on Ancestry credited the "Germans to America Passenger Data File" for an entry showing Agniska Geirnatowska, resident of Żerków, sailing from Prussia and arriving in the United States on August 13, 1888—a credible date, but how do I access the actual record? Clicking through to the source leaves me staring at a page which states, "We're sorry, this page is no longer available."

So, where did that page go? I searched online for further information on that title, and found a couple entries. One contained a clickable link in a FamilySearch wiki article on New York Immigration. The other was included in a list of links at Cyndi's List pertaining to emigration from Germany. But when I clicked on each suggested link, it brought me to the same place: an error message at the National Archives.

Oh, well...back to the drawing board, and reading through further instructions...

It's clear, however, that Ignatz and Agnes did arrive in New York City with their daughter, based on their appearance in both federal and state census enumerations. As for that daughter, the issue is compounded by Pelagia's appearance in various records as Blanch, Pauline, and Pleshia or Plashia. Agnes remained in Brooklyn up until the time of her death in 1926. We can only presume her husband followed her in death; once again, perhaps owing to the challenge of spelling his name, his last record of life's passing evades us.

The Impetus to Leave

 

Timelines are a useful tool for putting an ancestor's life in perspective. Juxtaposing the key dates in a relative's life alongside the timeline of local, national, or world history can help us understand why past family members made the choices they did. In the case of my second great-grandfather Mateusz Laskowski's children, however, combining the timelines of these siblings may help illustrate why at least this one family came to the conclusion that it was better to leave home for a foreign land rather than stay in unacceptable circumstances.

The impetus to leave, in the case of the three remaining Laskowski children, can be likened to that oft-used phrase, "the straw that broke the camel's back." No one unfortunate event was likely to have unearthed the entire family from the land they called home for generations. Taken together, though, the choice made sense.

Consider this timeline spanning thirteen years of the extended family's life in Żerków in the country that was then called Prussia. Beginning in 1874, four days after Agnes Laskowska celebrated her marriage to Alexius Szumski, her nineteen year old brother Joseph died.

That didn't necessarily usher in any sense of foreboding, though, for by the end of that year, the Szumski family welcomed in their firstborn daughter Victoria. Soon after, more celebrations came with Lorenz's marriage to Anna Blaszczynska in 1878 and Antoni's marriage to Marianna Jankowska the following year.

The year after that, though, everything seemed to change. Five year old Victoria Szumska, Agnes' daughter, died in November. The next summer, the siblings' father Mateusz died. Another half year later, Agnes' infant son Joseph died. Another six months later—and almost exactly a year after the loss of her father—Agnes' own husband, Alexius Szumski, died.

Mercifully, a break in tragedies for the next four years allowed the family some time to recover from their many losses—until their mother, Elżbieta, died in April of 1886. After that, it was Antoni's turn to lose a son, which occurred before baby Joseph turned two months of age in February of 1887.

That same year may have brought the turning point for the growing families of all three of the remaining Laskowski siblings. For one thing, widowed Agnes remarried that year. Though I don't have exact dates of emigration for any of the couples, the possibility must have been on their mind by then.

Reports of dates of travel given in various census records point to the late 1880s for each family's possible travels. Agnes and her new husband welcomed their baby daughter Pelagia into the family in January of 1888 before they left for America. Lorenz and Anna may have preceded them, as their daughter Harriet was said to have been born "at sea" in September, 1886. And once eldest son Antoni settled affairs after his parents' passing, he may well have been traveling ahead by June 1887 to make preparations for his young family to join him in New York City in February 1889.

The decision to make such a drastic move—even with extended family at one's side—must have come at great price. Seeing the combined timelines of each Laskowski sibling concurrently helps envision the many difficulties the extended family faced before coming to that final decision to cut their ties with their homeland.

Finding the Stop Between "Here" and "There"

 

It would be so handy in tracing the path of immigrant ancestors if they were careful to leave their homeland and go straight to their new home in that foreign land. In the case of Jan Olejniczak, however, there was this stopping place in between arriving here in the United States from his birthplace in Poland. And I couldn't locate that stopping point to even begin searching for records.

Thanks to discovery of a DNA match who descends from the man who might have been my family's relative Jan Olejniczak, I've been searching through records after his arrival in the United States. In the 1920 census, it was clear that before he arrived in the United States, Jan—his name now anglicized to read John—had not only married but become the proud parent of three children who were born in Germany: Kazmier, Louise, and Lottie. It took quite a bit of examining records of those three Olejniczak children to determine just where in Germany they might have been born. Eventually, the answer surfaced: a town called Reklinghausen.

Easy, I thought: I'll just look up the town in the online, searchable Meyers Gazetteer.

Not so fast, it turned out. "No results" was the answer to my query. I attempted the "sounds like" option, and got several results. Those, however, reminded me of my failed attempts at determining exactly which of multiple Polish towns with the same name might be the right location. So I tried a different approach.

While the original document I had viewed for the origin of Jan's children had spelled the German location as Reklinghausen, an online search yielded a Wikipedia article for the similar spelling of Recklinghausen.

In addition to discovering that the town had been the site of over one hundred witchcraft trials, I learned that it was part of the Ruhr area of western Germany, known for its coal mining activities. Chasing other resources, I gleaned some possible reasons why a Polish young man like Jan Olejniczak might have migrated to that far side of Germany: to get a job in the mines. In fact, Jan would have been in good company there. There was even a German term for those who came from Poland in that influx of Polish immigrants to work the mines in Recklinghausen: Ruhrpolen.

The migration of Polish workers occurred mainly in the 1870s. The significant fact was that most came from the same region where Jan was born. Yet Jan himself would barely have been an infant at that time. Presumably when he did make the move, he would have found a thriving Polish community of his former neighbors and associates when he arrived.

Still to be found, however, are any records of the birth of those three children of Jan and his wife, Pelagia. Nor have I been able to find a marriage record for the couple. The long tasks ahead also include locating passenger lists with the family's names, presumably in a predictable grouping. While I'll be searching to  find more of such genealogical tokens, in the meantime, I'll be tentatively adding this possible branch of the Olejniczak family into my own tree—and reaching out to connect with the DNA match who led me to this clue.

Back to the Question at the Beginning

 

I'm watching October run quickly through its last few days, which reminds me that I still haven't answered a question I stumbled over at the beginning of this month. In probing to see if I could learn anything more about the roots of my second great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak, were there any of her siblings or cousins who also left Poland for a New World?

Since the only sibling I could find was her brother Bartłomiej, dutifully recorded in Latin in church documents as Bartholomaeus, I looked at each of his children that I could find through online resources. Despite finding records for six children—and quite a few grandchildren who survived to adulthood—none seemed to have left the country for brighter prospects abroad.

Except for one.

That one left only a Catholic baptismal record under the Latin version of his name—Joannes for Jan—back in his hometown of Żerków. And then?

Best I could tell, it seemed as if Jan Olejniczak had disappeared. True, so many of the other descendants of my Olejniczak line seemed to disappear from available digitized records sources, too, so I can't put too much stock in noticing that absence.

There was, however, another tantalizing hint: a DNA match with someone whose roots included a surname which morphed from Olejniczak to Oleyniczak to, eventually, Olenzak. The immigrant's given name? John.

The DNA connection was a mere sliver of a segment—far too small to take seriously—but linked us to yet another DNA match on that side of my family who was far more closely connected.

Could this DNA match's ancestor have been the missing Jan Olejniczak, son of Bartholomeus—or Bartłomiej—my second great-grandmother's brother? It certainly will be worth a try to rebuild this match's tree in these last few days of the month, before we move on to another of my father's ancestors for November. There certainly is a gap in this potential immigrant's journey calling for further explanation.

Does Jan = John?It Depends

 

Take a name as common as John—or, if you are researching ancestors in Poland, Jan. Could that ancestor, having emigrated from Poland to an English-speaking country, have changed his given name? Most likely, I'd assume.

If that is so, would he also have changed his surname? After all, our Jan—or Joannes in his Catholic baptismal record in Latin—carried a most unlikely surname for blending into life in the United States. Could Olejniczak have morphed into Olenzak?

That's the type of questions I'm rehearsing in my mind as I trace the ancestor of one DNA match I've discovered. Given the tiny size of the matching genetic segment, the result could simply be telling me, "Yeah, they're both Polish." Or this could be a distant cousin.

Comparing the records doesn't help as much as I'd like. For one thing, the only record I've been able to find in Poland is the 1869 baptismal record giving Joannes' date of birth as June 8.

Looking at the possible ancestral link in my DNA match's tree, I'm starting from the most recent dates and working my way backwards in time. First record I can find is John Olenzak's 1963 obituary, published in the Massillon, Ohio, Evening Independent. 

This does not make for a smooth start. Right away, I notice John was said to have been born in Germany, having emigrated in 1895 to settle in Belmont County, Ohio, subsequently in Harrison County, then eventually settling in Massillon. Our Jan was baptized in the town of Żerków in Poland—not quite the same information. Still, due to geopolitical changes in the European map over the decades, this territory was indeed sometimes considered to be part of Germany. I decided to look further for more documentation.

John Olenzak's obituary provided names of family members. While it is unfortunate that no siblings or parents were mentioned, at least we know John's wife was named Pelagia, and that she died in 1924. In addition, three daughters were mentioned by their married names, as well as two sons, Kazmer and Sigmund.

With that, I was able to find John's entry in the 1920 census—and was encouraged to see the enumerator's handwriting clearly outlined the name as Olejniczak, not Olenzak. At the time, John and his family were living in Harrison County, and both his sons, Kazmer and Sigmund, could be spotted, along with his wife Pelagia and daughters Louise, Lottie, Gladys, and Wanda. I could see from the census that both John and Pelagia were noted to have been born in Poland, but the interesting detail was that all but the three youngest children were born in Germany.

The 1920 census noted that the family arrived in the United States in 1905 and that they were naturalized in 1913. That was good news, leading me to discover, in the citizenship records of Belmont County, Ohio, an index card showing September 4, 1913, as the date of naturalization for Johan Olejniczak.

An added bonus given in that index card: Johan was born in Michalowo, Poland. The bad news? The date of birth given in that record was July 8, not June 8. Worse, Johan's place of birth, given as Micholowo, could have been one of three different towns, all equidistant from our Joannes' baptismal location of Żerków. Granted, the distance, at least in today's economy, would be about a forty minute drive, but that is only provided Johan's birth was in one of those three villages. There is a fourth place with the same name which is, in today's terms, a five hour drive to the east.

The question then becomes: what if this wasn't the right immigrant John Olejniczak? What if our Jan didn't emigrate from his homeland at all? Or, considering another possibility, what if he did leave Poland for the United States, but settled somewhere else? There are actually several immigrants by that same name who arrived in America, including this possible John Olejniczak whose obituary ran in the same year as John Olenzak's—1963—but who settled in a location where others of my father's Polish ancestors also immigrated: to Buffalo, New York. What if my Jan Olejniczak did emigrate, but went to a more likely destination?

In the end, I did find that John Olenzak's Social Security information righted that birth date to June 8, 1869. Was that my Jan Olejniczak? At this point, the answer remains: it depends. If I pick and choose the right records, the documentation can look convincing. But in my case, I won't feel comfortable making that my conclusion until I find more documentation to fill in the blanks in this person's story. A lot more documentation.

About Face

 

What if the research direction you've chosen to pursue doesn't yield any answers? If I can't find further detail on my father-in-law's brick wall Irish immigrant Kelly ancestors, perhaps changing direction might help. Surely those Kelly siblings from the 1850s now have multiple descendants all over this country.

Pivoting about face may seem counter-intuitive, until I realize that even if our family didn't receive all those coveted keepsakes, someone in the family surely did. And it's in search of that "someone" that I'll reverse direction and look for descendants of James and Mary Kelly.

I usually make this a practice, solely because I have multiple mystery DNA matches whom I can't fit into the family tree schemata. Tracing each collateral line's descendants helps open up the possibilities for how each DNA match relates. But in this Kelly case, while I thought I had done a thorough job of this line, apparently I had neglected a few branches.

So it's back to tracing all the descendants of the siblings of my father-in-law's great-grandmother, Catharine Kelly Stevens. Actually, what launched me into that search was the thought that perhaps some of Catharine's brothers could have filed for naturalization, once they settled in Lafayette, Indiana. Unfortunately, all of them died before any census records could provide a hint of when that process could have happened—if at all. The only one alive for that 1910 census immigration question was the baby of the family, Ann Kelly—by the time of that 1910 census, widow Ann Doyle. As a woman, her citizenship status at that point would have been based on her husband, so no date was entered in the census.

While there are other routes for determining application for naturalization in earlier years—another task to add to that ever-growing to-do research list—I realized there are also several blanks left in that descendancy review for Kelly collateral lines. So, instead of looking backward in time for the next few days, I'll be looking ahead from that arrival point in Indiana in the 1850s, to see if I can find anyone who just might have been the fortunate recipient of all the family mementos—hopefully someone who would be willing to share what they've discovered about their roots.  

Still Off the Shelf: Irish Migrants in the Canadas

 

Some books take time to absorb. Back in July, as I was closing out my search for the Flannery branch of my father-in-law's roots, I received a well-recommended book which promised to broaden my thinking on the subject of Irish immigration. Since I've been traveling this summer, I took the four hundred page book with me on trips where I knew I'd have time to read (think long flights across the continent). And Irish Migrants in the Canadas certainly did give me food for thought.

One concept behind the book was author Bruce S. Elliott's intent to examine the stories behind Irish immigrants from one specific place—County Tipperary in Ireland—during a specific time period and headed to a specific location across the Atlantic. As the foreword explains, rather than discussing that migration as an "abstract process or an aggregate phenomenon," the book's goal was to focus on actual migrants and "trace the lives of a significant number of real people—not aggregated census numbers."

Thus, the author's breakthrough work pinpointed the stories of nearly eight hundred families on their journey from Ireland to Canada and beyond. That "beyond" is key for my father-in-law's family, as is likely for many of Irish descent who not only traveled further inland in Canada, but also migrated south to the United States, as did my father-in-law's ancestors. Many researchers, I'm sure, don't consider this possibility for their American ancestors, though I noticed through Gail Dever's blog, Genealogy à la carte, that an upcoming presentation to be delivered by Canadian Kathryn Lake Hogan for the Fairfax (Virginia) Genealogical Society reveals that there is a lot to be considered with this possibility.

What I am valuing about this book is the depth of thought put into the historical context of these Irish immigrants. Though I likely will not find any mention of my father-in-law's specific ancestors (spoiler: I already peeked at the index of names), the exercise of following the author's thinking behind his research approach will be excellent for developing a sense of what is necessary to understand about any given ancestral situation.

Though this month I am far afield of those Flannery ancestors headed to Ontario, focusing instead on why the Kelly family chose to route through New Orleans to Indiana, I believe the same research discipline will yield helpful details by broadening my perspective. The book may be slow reading, but I am tagging several passages with helpful reminders of how Bruce Elliott approached his study, and contemplating how I can adapt that method to use in search of the story behind each of my ancestral immigrant families.

Wondering Why

 

There comes a time when chasing our mystery ancestors that we begin wondering why. Why, for instance, did John Stevens, my father-in-law's great-grandfather, choose the port of New Orleans as his landing place after leaving his Irish homeland? Why did John Stevens' future wife, Catharine Kelly, and the entire Kelly family, also choose to head to New Orleans? And why did his brother-in-law, Michael Creahan, future husband of Catharine's sister Bridget Kelly, also head from Ireland to New Orleans?

When it comes to wondering why, I propose a universal resolution to that state of puzzlement: search for an answer. That, in effect, was what I did: look for reasons why these Irish immigrants to the United States didn't take the usual route to New York City—or even the less expensive alternative of moving to the British colony in Canada. That search, in fact, led to a productive exploration of this alternate destination.

As I discovered, the route from Ireland to New Orleans was a choice exercised by the Irish for almost one hundred years before the famine took its toll on the population of Ireland. It turns out there were logical reasons for such a draw. For one thing—a reason too easily dismissed in our less-reverent age, perhaps—the Catholic majority of that southern American port city was a draw to the persecuted Catholics in Ireland. Then, too—especially prior to American acquisition of the territory—New Orleans was once beholden to a nation which was not British, perhaps a draw for those Irish weary of their struggle with their English overlords.

Between 1842 and 1864, according to one estimate, 110,000 Irish entered the port of New Orleans. Another estimate pegs the number at 425,000 for Irish arriving in New Orleans. No matter what the count, the influx of Irish immigrants in New Orleans made the city the number two destination in the United States for Irish arrivals, second only to New York City.

When they arrived at the port in New Orleans, many Irish chose to move on to midwestern destinations, but a good number stayed and worked where they landed, just as did Michael Creahan. This, however, was not the easiest option in the long run. Given the climate and hazards of the environment there, combined with the usual jobs taken by many Irish immigrants—working at the port, or digging canals through mosquito-infested swamps—many died of yellow fever, cholera, or malaria. In 1850, for example, one New Orleans hospital admitted 18,476 residents suffering from such diseases, of whom 11,130 were Irish immigrants.

Another possible inducement to choose New Orleans as their destination might have been the cost of getting there. As one resource put it, cotton ships from New Orleans bound for Liverpool unloaded, then "filled their holds with human ballast for the return trip." The fare—for those who actually reached their destination—was a bargain.

Discovering these details through a little bit of research into a "side topic" helped enlighten me on the reasons why the Creahans, Kellys, and Stevenses might have chosen a destination far different than the one I assumed would be a more likely choice. It doesn't, however, provide me the documentation for their arrival—a task which we still will need to face up to in the coming days. More important than the paper proof that they arrived here in America—we already see signs of that occurrence in other records—what we need is a listing of the family constellations in each party's traveling group. And—though I doubt I will find it—some nod to the townlands they once called home in their particular county in Ireland.

At this stage, pre-discovery, at least we can hope.

Wanted: French Immigrants

 

It may come as no surprise to those of us studying our ancestors' immigration to the United States that there were ads beckoning certain ethnic groups to cross the ocean to specific locations. Those businesses behind the organization of huge projects, such as the canals or, later, the railroads, placed ads in foreign newspapers to recruit needed workers. Apparently, we can add French immigrants to that list of wanted settlers.

In the case of the French who settled in Indiana, they may have been influenced by a specific publication circulated in the French regions of Franche-Comté—home of the original Besancon—and Lorraine. Commissioned in 1835 by a group of businessmen in Louisville, Kentucky, the circular was entitled, "Guide for French Emigrants to the States of Kentucky and Indiana," according to an article by historian Ralph Violette in the December 1996 edition of the Besancon Indiana Chronicles.  

Louisville, while in Kentucky rather than Indiana, was a city with a distinctive French ambience in the 1800s, making affinity with France a logical outreach target. Still, the issue of how those French immigrants would actually find their way to that central part of the United States of the mid-1800s was another question.

According to the Violette article, French immigrants could have arrived in Indiana by several possible routes. One suggestion was by way of Stark County, Ohio, which already boasted a known French settlement. Another possibility was directly crossing over the state line from Louisville, Kentucky. This, of course, meant arriving in Louisville most likely by the river route up from New Orleans on the Mississippi, then up the Ohio River.

While the New Orleans route points us to research passenger records specifically from that city, that may not have been the route our Blaising family members chose. Most immigrants to Indiana through New Orleans settled in the southern portions of the state, not in the more northern Allen County, where the Blaising family lived. And yet, the possible ports of entry for those immigrants headed first to Stark County, Ohio, would mean searching passenger records for multiple cities.

The Violette article did emphasize the role of Catholic priests in encouraging French immigration to the Fort Wayne area, but did not leave any details about just how those priests and their traveling companions—or those who followed in their footsteps afterwards—might have gotten there. While I can now envision so many more possibilities for how the Blaising family arrived in Allen County, I am still in as much of a loss as to explain the route as I was at the first—all the more reason to head next to naturalization records.

Recapping Reports

 

To zero in on arrival dates for the immigrant Blaising family—all the brothers and the mother of my father-in-law's step-grandmother Theresa Blaising Stevens—I went back to the reports contained in the U.S. Census records. There, line items in the 1900 census, as well as the 1910 and 1920 enumerations, revealed at least what was reported by each resident in the United States.

Reports, of course, can be misleading. First, we need to rely on the enumerator hearing answers correctly, then writing them legibly enough for us to read. We also must hope that the enumerator gleaned his or her information from the source, not the neighbor down the street who was filling in while the hoped-for interviewees were away on an extended trip. Above all, we need to hope that the individuals themselves remembered and reported the correct answer. Otherwise, we are depending on answers as true which might be otherwise.

With those constraints in mind, here is what I discovered in all three enumerations, for Theresa's mother (before her 1907 death), her siblings, and her own report. 

According to Mary, the widowed mother, in the 1900 census she—or someone in her stead—claimed that she had arrived in the United States in 1868. This, of course, is not what was claimed in her obituary only a few years afterwards, but we will see how that report played out among her children's own census entries. Since she died in 1907, she was not found in any subsequent enumerations.

Henry, apparently the oldest son, also reported a 1868 arrival in the 1900 census, and noted that he was naturalized. However, ten years later, the 1910 census saw him change that immigration date to the 1866 date maintained by the family in his mother's obituary back in 1907. Once again, he claimed that he had been naturalized. Hoping to drill down to more detail in the 1920 census, I was disappointed to see some scribbled entries, overwritten by a clear "unknown" for both the date of arrival and the date of naturalization. Thus, Henry's entry doesn't provide us much help.

Next son Lawrence, who moved from Indiana to Albany, New York, appeared in the 1900 census with no arrival date and no information on naturalization status. By 1910, though, he reported arrival in 1866, and that he had been naturalized. Unfortunately, he died in 1918, so there was no way to follow him further in census records.

For next son Phillip, we run into conflicting data, which I suspect was partially owing to his own reports. Phillip, it appears, was married once in Allen County, Indiana, where his family had settled, but divorced and moved to Ohio, where he subsequently married and raised a second family. However, in later census reports, his age given and statement that he was married only once would have made me doubt I had found the right person, except that his residence in Ohio was reported in his mother's obituary. Nevertheless, in 1910, he reported arriving in the U.S. in 1876, and in the 1920 census, he claimed arrival in 1870 and naturalization in 1880, despite also stating that he was born in 1869 (while the 1870 census showed his age then as eight).

Son Louis was another Blaising child whom I couldn't find in the 1900 census. However, in 1910, he claimed arrival in 1866, though no word about whether he had been naturalized. In the 1920 census, he again mentioned arrival in 1866, and naturalization in 1876. Considering that the 1870 census had shown him to have been born about 1861, I tend to doubt that date of naturalization.

Son August was found in all three census reports, though in the 1900 census, all immigration information was left entirely blank. In the 1910 census, he referred to that same arrival date as many of his brothers: 1866. He also reported having been naturalized. But in the 1920 census, he switched the arrival date to 1868, and claimed naturalization in 1886.

Theresa herself included some variations from those dates given by her brothers, but that could possibly be due to reports actually being provided to the enumerator by her husband. In the 1900 census, she gave her arrival date as 1867, though in the 1910 census, she revised that date to 1866; there was no report of naturalization, but depending on the timeline of naturalization requirements for women, her marriage to an American citizen may have obviated such a need. Yet in the 1920 census, while keeping the 1866 arrival date, there was an entry on naturalization given as 1876 which was overwritten, making it unclear.

With the exception of the one brother, Phillip, dates given for arrival vacillated from 1866 to 1868. We can see from the siblings' mother's original entry that perhaps everyone followed suit—or perhaps by the time of Mary's death, the family gathered together to rebuild the family history in agreement. Variance in naturalization dates would be due to each person's own date for going through the legal process. Some may have started as soon as possible; others might have waited to begin the multi-year process.

At any rate, those dates will form a "ballpark" range for the next steps in the process. While I will want to seek out naturalization records for each of the Blaising brothers to glean details to guide me to their home town in Europe, I will need to also find passenger records or some sign of how they arrived in the New World. For that, we'll need to revisit our work from earlier this week just one more time.  

Reminiscing and Reconstructing

 

"Come with me, it will only take a few minutes of your time," beguiled a brief family history on the front page of the Spring 2001 issue of the Besancon Indiana Chronicles, the newsletter of the Besancon Historical Society. That promise led to reminiscing about "a woman like many women you know" from the descendants of the original French settlers of the Besancon community in Allen County, Indiana. 

The writer guides you down a country road, with the church steeple of Saint Louis Catholic Church pointing the way through farmland outside New Haven to a community called Besancon. There, reminiscences about family life center around Gladys Nail Lomont, born in 1903. These tales provide a snapshot of what life was like for children and grandchildren of the immigrant settlers in Indiana from faraway France, the story culminating in Mrs. Lomont's efforts with a committee to register the Besancon community on the National Register of Historic places and reconstruct the identity of a settlement her ancestors once called home through establishment of the Besancon Historical Society.

Reading the historic district application, completed in 1994 and certified in 1995, provides some background on the likely origin of the immigrants peopling the Besancon settlement. Though by 1880, the population of Jefferson Township, where Besancon was located, was seventy percent French (National Register of Historic Places, section 8 page 9), its parish—and now historic district—was later identified as the only remaining one among several French settlements in Indiana still retaining the ambience of a place  "predominantly an agricultural parish whose ancestors came from France." (See section 8, page 9.)

According to researcher Aurele Violette, history professor at Indiana University-Purdue University in Fort Wayne, the settlers at Besancon parish originated in eastern France. The professor fingered the specific area of the Franche-Comté, or "free county" of eastern France. An embattled location, this place was occupied throughout history successively by the Gauls, then Germanic tribes, and eventually became the unwilling subject of a tussle between France and Spain. In addition, some of the immigrants to Besancon traveled from French-speaking cantons of Switzerland. But primarily, Dr. Violette noted, "most settlers" had originally belonged to the diocese of Besancon.

That diocese, if you've lost track, would be located at Besançon in France, for which the wandering immigrants made their Indiana settlement the homeland's namesake.

Whether our Theresa Blaising, the only grandmother my father-in-law ever knew, came to Indiana with her mother and nine other siblings from that specific region—another author in that same Besancon Indiana Chronicles mentioned immigrants from the neighboring provinces of Alsace and Lorraine—this information helps us understand why anyone migrating from France would decide to choose Indiana. Whether following Catholic priests ousted after the French Revolution due to political pressures, or coming to America during times of our relative economic upturns, the French did heed the news in letters from friends and family who went before them to America, to seek their own betterment in the same path as their fellow countrymen now resident in places like Allen County, Indiana.

When the Winter Wolves Howled Around Their Doors

 

Long before my father-in-law's immigrant grandmother Theresa Blaising settled in her childhood home in Indiana, a group of several immigrants from her homeland discovered a wilderness swamp in Indiana and decided to claim it as their new home. That beginning was hardly promising; an early history of the Fort Wayne area mentioned that Jefferson Township—location of that swamp land where these French immigrants built their first homes—was in the 1840s a place where "the winter wolves howled around their doors at night."

Though those French immigrants first arrived in Allen County, Indiana, around 1840, it wasn't until 1851 that their settlement established its first Catholic church there. That church, called Saint Louis Besancon Catholic Parish, is still in existence today, including its several buildings alongside the historic Lincoln Highway—which road, incidentally, post-dated the immigrants' arrival by several decades. Those buildings now form a historic district, and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

That settlement, originally called New France, was renamed Besancon upon the arrival of the church's new pastor, Father Adam, who was said to have been a French refugee—a "political refugee," as one other local history article represented him (see page 3). That such turmoil in France caused his ejection from his homeland in 1870 resonates with the puzzling stories we've found on Theresa Blaising's own (possible) father from that same time period.

Besancon, the French immigrant settlement in Allen County, Indiana, was not necessarily a place easily found in online information. For one thing, it was never incorporated as a separate entity, geo-politically. Even looking at the usual Wikipedia entries for American counties, which generally include mention of both incorporated cities and towns and unincorporated "census designated places" and communities, there is no mention of Besancon. Even though the Allen County entry at Wikipedia includes a listing of six "extinct" communities, Besancon is not included at all.

Despite little mention of the location, Besancon eventually boasted its own Historical Society which, at least through the 1990s, was busy working to preserve the settlement's history. Though the organization, despite desperate pleas for help, apparently did eventually close its doors, thankfully its members opted to pass on their research and findings to the Allen County Public Library, which provides access to that material, much of it accessible online. 

It is the roots of that village and parish which most piqued my interest, though, for the reason the parishioners opted to change the name of their settlement was a hat tip to the place in France where the first members of that community originated: a place in France also known as Besancon. We'll see what we can find about that community connection tomorrow. 

The French? In Indiana?

 

When thinking about migrating ancestors, one question I concern myself with is how they got from their old home to their new one. With this month's research focus on my father-in-law's step-grandmother Theresa Blaising, that was my big question. It might have made sense for a traveling family from Europe to cross the Atlantic, headed for a major port on the east coast—New York, Boston, maybe even to Philadelphia. But Indiana? 

One guideline with following ancestors from their homeland is the concept that residents from the same region often followed the path of those friends or family who crossed over before them. Thus, so many Irish ended up in Boston, for instance, or Dutch to New York, or Germans to Pennsylvania. But French? In Indiana?

If I had really thought through the history of the state, I might have recalled that I already know differently. Long before Indiana even became a state in 1816, the French were roaming over its territory—as early as 1679, in fact. French trappers and traders became familiar with the land, not only where Indiana now stands, but up and down the midwestern waterways from what is now Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. So why couldn't I imagine a French widow and her ten children deciding to leave their homeland in France—wherever it actually was—to travel straight to New Haven, Indiana?

It was a reasonable doubt on my part. After all, when Theresa Blaising appeared in her mother's household for the first time in the 1870 United States census, New Haven was a town of barely nine hundred people—hardly the size which could command international headlines. But apparently, the county in which New Haven is situated—Allen County—boasted from the start at least four different settlements which included French immigrants: the village of Maples, the town of Monroeville, Mary Blaising's home in New Haven, and a fascinating place called Besancon.

While at this point I don't know whether Mary Blaising ever settled in Besancon—I only have her residence listed for the 1870 census, though she and her family were said to have arrived in 1866—it may be helpful to learn more about the history of that nucleus of French life so far from home. We'll explore Besancon, Indiana, more tomorrow.

"A Most Remarkable Woman"

We all have stories—at least in the New World—of ancestors who arrived on American shores and settled into life, whether following the same routine or following a vastly different path than they were accustomed to in the "old world." It makes me wonder, though, just why an immigrant ancestor chose the specific place which came to be the family's adopted home.

In the case of Theresa Blaising's mother, Mary Blaising selected New Haven, Indiana, as the next home for her children. By the time of her death in 1907, she—or someone among her children—was well enough connected to the community to have a tribute published on the front page of the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette. Headlined as "A Most Remarkable Woman," Mary Ann Blaising, at her death, became subject of a flowery composition which stretched well beyond the fold line.

The article was written in the sentimental style of that time period, and basically contained the same information we've already seen in her obituary. What I had hoped for, however, was some clue as to why someone in far away France would know to head thousands of miles away, straight to a town which, at the time, boasted a population of barely nine hundred people.

My first thought was to check the 1870 census and search for any other potential family members sharing her married name, Blaising. Other than her own household, though, the only possible surname match was actually spelled Blessing, not Blaising. Each of the children in that other household was born in Indiana, but the parents—Catherine and Peter—were said to have been born specifically in Wurttemberg. On the census page where Mary's own household was included, only a few nearby homes included people born in France, but no sign of any possible fellow travelers that I could find in that 1870 census.

My next thought was to examine the names of others buried in the same church cemetery where Mary Blaising was laid to rest. Again, the only contemporaries sharing that surname seemed to be Mary's own children, their spouses, or their descendants.

Another approach, which indirectly led to further information, was to look at the occupations listed for Mary's sons in the 1870 census. At the time, only two of her children were listed as working outside the home: Henry and John. The entry for each of her eldest sons noted that they worked in a stove factory.

Well, that's a clue, so off I went to seek information on a stove factory in New Haven, Indiana. 

I was unsuccessful in my attempt.

Meanwhile, plying Google with every keyword variation I could conjure up, I ran across some other information. A lot of information, in fact. Enough to fill yet another day's post, if not more—and it's well worth the review, in case anyone else is stuck researching the same heritage.

My approach eventually led to the many nooks and crannies of the Internet where unknown-to-me organizations (or even individuals) had posted what was important to them about the place in Allen County, Indiana, called New Haven.

While I'll save the main points of that search for tomorrow, I'll cut to the chase on where Henry and John Blaising were employed in 1870. It likely wasn't a stove factory where they worked; it was a stave factory. 

About Hugh

 

What I know about Hugh Stevens: nothing.

Well, that is not entirely true. I do know a few things. Those few things are not very useful, however, but a researcher has to start somewhere. This is my start.

The little I do know about Hugh Stevens is that he took the exact same route in arriving in Lafayette, Indiana, as did another Irish man by the same surname. That man was John Stevens, my husband's second great-grandfather. Oddly coincidental details about the two Stevens men make me wonder whether they might have been brothers, such as their place of origin—County Mayo, Ireland—and the route they took from Liverpool to the port of New Orleans. Even their date of travel was during the same month, only separated by a year's distance.

I found all that out by comparing notes on two slips of paper, each the Declaration of Intention or "first papers" signed to begin the naturalization process as an immigrant to the United States.

I've written about John Stevens' First Dec before—ten years ago on the eve of our trip to Ireland, in fact, posting a copy of the original—and revisited my Stevens research quandary a couple years after that. John had made his journey, according to his declaration, from his home in County Mayo to the English port city Liverpool, where he boarded a ship taking him to New Orleans. From there, he had taken another vessel up the Mississippi, then along a tributary river until he arrived at Lafayette, Indiana. 

According to the immigration record, John Stevens arrived in New Orleans in December of 1850. As I remember it, the curious detail about Hugh Stevens' First Declaration was that he, too, arrived in December, following the same route, but his arrival was a year afterwards. I can imagine the one Stevens man, John, sending a message back home to the other Stevens man, Hugh, in County Mayo, telling him it would be to his advantage to follow that same route.

Apparently, Hugh did so, for there is a document demonstrating his arrival and his specific route, but where he went after that point is still a mystery to me. That is what I'm hoping to set aside this month to discover. 

Taking a Few Steps Backwards

 

Ever so gradually, we take a few steps backwards in time, trying to coax history into revealing the story of our ancestors. In the case of Aunt Rose, my paternal grandfather's sister, I'd like to follow her immigrant story from the end of her life in the metropolitan New York City area to the beginning of her days, somewhere across the ocean in central Europe.

Once I found resources to look up articles mentioning her name in the lesser-known newspapers of the city, it was fairly easy to trace Aunt Rose's life from her marriage to post office supervisor George Kober, to his death and her subsequent—albeit brief—marriage to Julius Hassinger. But what about taking that life story's journey backwards? That was my next step. I wanted to see how far back I could go, while gleaning information I might have missed in previous visits to her saga.

There are a few reasons I need to retrace those research steps once again. For one thing, I have yet to locate any document of Rose's first marriage. Then, more importantly, I am lacking any record of her arrival in this country—an event which she, supposedly, shared with her mother and, hopefully, my grandfather. Furthermore, Rose's mother's own story is hidden behind a series of married surnames which come with little to no documentation of their own. Any clues I can find to point me in the right direction to find confirmation of those details would be so appreciated.

In review before launching out to discover the missing information, here's what I've already found. From Rose's appearance in the 1920 census along with her second husband George Kober and her ever-present mother Anna "Krouse," their date of arrival was reported to be 1883. This was the census which included the gift of an enumerator error showing Rose's origin in "Schwartzwald"—a designation which, interpreted, seemed to be "Black Forest," but turned out, to my delight, to actually refer to a place in Poland known also as Czarnylas. 

Moving backwards in time, I could also find Rose and her mother in the 1915 New York State census in neighboring Brooklyn. At that time, Rose was listed by her previous married name, Miller, though no husband was present in the household. Instead, there she was with her mother, this time listed as Anna Krausse. At that point, the mother and daughter had declared they had been in the country for the past thirty years—in other words, since 1885.

At long last, I finally was able to push back to the 1910 federal census and find Rose and Anna one last time. In this enumeration, the mother and daughter stated their arrival in New York was in 1884—yet another close but different year. Then, too, Rose, listing this as her first marriage—and yet with no husband present in the household—had her name given as Rose Muller, not Miller.

That, however, was not what concerned me. It was fairly easy to shift that one letter in subsequent searches to find Rose in previous records—though to no avail. It was the listing for her mother which totally threw me off. Gone was the surname Krausse, or Krouse, or any other of multiple spelling permutations. Surely a case of enumerator misspelling, rather than transcription error, this one bid me try searching once again for Anna—this time, using a wildcard approach. If I couldn't find either Rose or Anna in immigration documentation or passenger records with the more common names of Miller or Krauss, perhaps this new search option for a very different surname would lead me to a connection.