Not a Moment Too Soon

Finding that mention of the marriage of Helen Gramlewicz' sister Anna in her passenger records was a serendipitous discovery. I'm not sure I would have figured out what Anna's married name might have been, had I not stumbled upon that handwritten note added to Helen's records.

Still, discovering Anna's married name—Jablonski—wasn't enough to find any documentation of the marriage. True, I could, with the tip off of the name, find their entries in subsequent federal and state census enumerations, allowing me to discover the names of the next generation of Gramlewicz descendants in the United States. With the newfound knowledge that Anna's firstborn daughter, whom she named Irene Martha, arrived in 1917, it was a safe bet to assume Anna and Vincent Jablonski were married around 1916. But as to the wedding, itself, there wasn't much documentation to be found.

I tried, of course, to find any record online. The search for any Jablonski marriage records at FamilySearch via the New York, New York, Marriage Index spanning 1866 through 1937 yielded absolutely nothing. Of course, there was, theoretically, the possibility that young Anna and her beau had slipped away to be married outside the five boroughs comprising New York City. But who was there to elope from? Her parents and siblings had all left for Poland in 1912. The only family members remaining in the country were her aging uncle and aunt, with whom she shared their Brooklyn apartment.

There was another way around this search dilemma, of course: public notices published in local newspapers. While the Brooklyn Daily Eagle yielded nothing, it was the Old Fulton New York Post Cards website that came to my rescue.

Sort of.

You see, while I was able to find a mention of a marriage license issued to Vincent and Anna in the Brooklyn Standard Union, the unfortunate fact was that the genealogical patron saint behind that quirky website had somehow scanned that very page in such a way as to cut off the heading, which essentially meant that the issue's date was scrubbed from the digitized image. All I can go by is the search result entry which indicated—at least—that it was an edition published in 1916.

However, this is not the time to bemoan such a research quandary. There is a way out of this dilemma—if, that is, I am willing to wait a while. For not a moment too soon, we—at least, those of us who are researching our New York City roots—have been snatched from the fate of having to expend the time and money to head to the lower reaches of Manhattan and the city's archives there and personally crank through the microfilms in hopes of finding that very date.

On the same day I was pondering how I was going to resolve the absence of the marriage date I'm seeking, an email arrived in my inbox, trumpeting the news: "WE WON!" Apparently, the New York City Marriage Index—in this case, a later segment than the one I'm currently seeking—will just now become "free and open data." However, in the same email, the group making it so—Reclaim the Records—explained that the Index for the years 1908-1929 has now been digitized, thanks to the help of FamilySearch.org, and uploaded to the activist group's site at Internet Archive, where they can all be accessed freely.

Well, make that a little too freely. The data is there, all right. But you have to go find the specific names you are seeking. A little too daunting a task for me.

It occurred to me that, rather than hunting through the digitized file for the 1916 marriages in Brooklyn, New York, as found in the Internet Archive file, since FamilySearch was the one doing the grunt work, perhaps they got the benefit of also keeping a copy of the file.

True, they did show a file with a similar name on their own website. But remember, putting the file through its paces with a search for both Vincent Jablonski and Anna Gramlewicz yielded me nothing.

According to the Reclaim the Records email, they are working with others to get "some kind of standalone searchable version of that CSV data thrown together online" in the near future. My choice at this point: either wade through the data in hopes of finding Vincent and Anna, wait for those "genealogy nerds" to create the search mechanism, or try to hack through it all, myself.

Maybe I'll just opt for wandering around the data, myself. What gets poked and still doesn't explode can't hurt me.

Above: From the Brooklyn, New York, Standard Union in an undated 1916 edition: "Marriage Licenses...Vincent Jablonski, 23, of 149 Grand street, and Anna Gramlewicz, 19, of 137 North Ninth street."

"Always"

The assumption, in the case of most immigrants, is that they make their incredible journey to a new homeland with the intention of never again leaving. It is, after all, a hazardous enterprise to have crossed an ocean in search of a suitable place to call home, especially in previous centuries.

When Annie Gramlewicz's parents came to the United States in the 1890s, they knew exactly what it was like to take the cheapest passage possible for the long journey from Europe. One could presume that was a trip people seldom wished to repeat.

Annie and her siblings, having been born in New York City, knew nothing of the sacrifices their parents made to come to America. But they also knew nothing of what Mecislaus and Josefa remembered of the homeland they had left behind.

Apparently, the call of those memories overcame the lure of any opportunities the Gramlewicz elders might have enjoyed in their new life in New York. There was a reason why I couldn't find any trace of the Gramlewicz family in census records after 1910—and why their one daughter Annie had had to find a home with a relative by the time of the 1915 state census: the family had decided to return to Poland.

Until I received confirmation from my Polish cousin, whom I met online years ago, that the Gramlewicz family had returned to Poland, I didn't really know what had happened. Only when passenger lists started showing up in online databases was I able to piece together the story. Even then, the document I'm sharing today was a more recent discovery. Thankfully, it confirms the story, owing in great deal to the handwriting added to the image—which never, incidentally, would have shown up if the record was offered only as a transcription.

It was the journey of Annie's older sister Helen in December, 1920, which provided the most complete snapshot of the family's odyssey. Arriving in the port of New York on December 13 of that year, the S. S. Zeeland, sailing from Antwerp, had brought Helen back to the city of her birth.

The passenger list was full of questions that had to be answered, thus providing us, nearly one hundred years later, with a glimpse of Helen's plans, once she disembarked at the end of her voyage. We learn that Helen Gramlewicz reported her age, at that time, as twenty four, and that she was a single woman. She declared her occupation to be bank clerk. In addition to being able to read and write Polish, she could also do so in both German and English. Despite having been born in New York, Helen considered Poland to be the country to which she owed her allegiance, but intended that her future permanent address would be in New York City.

It was at this point on the passenger list that we are provided with the information pertinent to the question of what became of Helen's parents. She listed her last residence address to be in the city of Zerkow, Poland, and specifically indicated that that was where her parents resided at the time.

The second page of the passenger list provided more confirmation of Helen's story. She explained that she had been born in New York City and—this is the important, handwritten note that would have been omitted from any transcription—that her family had left New York in November of 1912.

Of course, there were more mundane—yet interesting—details on the form. We learn that Helen was five feet, three inches tall, with a fair complexion and blue eyes. Everything from the condition of her physical and mental health to her personal opinions about anarchy and polygamy were questioned as part of the routine screening on the second page of that form.

Interestingly, though she had left New York for Poland with her family in 1912, the passenger questionnaire revealed that Helen's purpose in coming to the United States was to never return to Poland, but this time, to "become a citizen of the United States." As to the question, "Length of time alien intends to remain in the United States," Helen declared, "always."

The one thing that proved the most pertinent to my search, though, was the detail of just where Helen planned to proceed, once cleared from questioning at the port of entry. According to the typed entry on the form, her next stop was going to be 1730 Stefan Street, Brooklyn—home of her brother in law.

Thankfully, someone had written in yet another note providing me, through that shared image, with the lead for what had happened to Helen's sister Anna. Next to the typed "brother in law" was scrawled the note, "and sister, Anna Jablonski."

Above: Sunset Over the Sea, 1887 oil on panel by American landscape painter, George Inness; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Glimpse of a Family's History

Finding Annie Gramlewicz's family seemed, at first, to be an easy assignment. After all, how many people could there be, out there in 1900s New York City, with a name like that?

Granted, at the time, New York had a population of just under three and a half million. Perhaps I was being a little too optimistic about possibilities. Then, too, I hadn't bargained for the many ways the surname Gramlewicz could be mis-represented. I discovered I needed to take into account such possibilities as Granlewicz—substituting an "n" for the required "m"—as well as Gramlewitz instead of -wicz. Then there was the insertion of an extra syllable, such as Gramalewicz. Or the mis-reading, come time for transcriptions, of some letters, rendering the surname Gramlewiez.

On a pursuit like that, wild cards became my best friend.

I first discovered Annie as an eighteen year old "saleslady" living in her uncle's household in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1915 New York State census. Before that time, I had been clueless that there even was such a surname in my family's history.

Of course, once I stumbled upon that surname, you know I had to find more. Since Annie was born in the United States—unfortunately, the census hadn't said anything more than that very generic indicator—it meant I should be able to find her in her own parents' household as early as in the 1900 United States census.

Fortunately, I did. Though Annie is quite the common given name for girls, it was coupled with that unusual surname. Sticking with the Brooklyn indicator from the 1915 census, I started looking first in Kings County, New York, hoping to find the Gramlewicz family intact in a nearby neighborhood.

The Laskowski household, where Annie had been living in 1915, was located near the corner of North Eighth and Berry Streets. Back in 1900, she was living in her parents' household on South Second Street. Along with siblings Boleslaw, Helen and Fred, then two year old Annie was in the household of her mother, listed as Josephine, and her father, possessing a poorly transcribed given name that appeared to be spelled Mearzslaw.

The 1900 census provided some helpful information. For one thing, it gave us the family's snapshot: Josephine had been married for seven years, and was mother of four children, all of whom were still alive at the time of that census. Though she and her husband were both born outside the U.S., their recorded birthplace—Germany—was likely the politically correct designation, at that time, for Poland.

The census revealed additional clues. While Annie's parents were both listed as aliens, her mother had arrived in the country in 1891, while her father had come in 1889. That meant her parents weren't married in their homeland, but had been married somewhere in New York—likely, as good Catholics, at the parish near their home, possibly the very same church where each of the children would have been baptized. Both of her parents were able to read, write and speak English. Her father was listed as a mason.

With the next federal census, some changes had come to the Gramlewicz household. By 1910, Josephine still was mother of four children, but those were the four children remaining out of what would have been a family of seven children. Of the original four from the 1900 census, only two were still alive: Annie and her older sister, Helen. Two more sisters had joined the family: three year old Wanda and her eleven month old baby sister Martha. In addition to having lost Boleslaw and Fred, another baby had been born to the family—and then died.

At this point, their father—this time, with his name spelled as Mecislaus—was listed as a building contractor, and the family had moved to an apartment on Sixth Street, in the neighboring New York City borough of Queens.

Knowing the family had been listed in the 1900 census in Brooklyn and in Queen for the 1910 census, it only stood to reason that I should be able to locate them in the New York State census for 1905. Given the myriad possibilities for misspelling, though, their entry was not readily apparent. It took a search, name by name, for wildcard possibilities with a fixed location of Brooklyn, to finally find them.

At least, I think I found them. In a jumbled up entry, in which a non-relative was inserted right in the midst of their listing, I found Annie, her parents and her one remaining sibling—Helen—under the surname "Gramlewitz" in the New York State census for 1905. On Stockton Street, back in Brooklyn, Annie's parents were listed as John and Josie. Granted, that might have been a stretch—until realizing that one of their son's birth record was listed with a first name of Jan (transcribed in error as Jane, but I have a copy of the actual certificate confirming the entry as Jan). Perhaps dad, usually listed as Mecislaus, was actually Jan Mecislaus. At least this man—whoever he was—had worked as a mason, too.

Using that same search technique didn't yield any results when I searched for the couple in the 1892 state census, despite the likelihood that they might have been married by then. More to the point, though, was the fact that I couldn't find any trace of the family—besides Annie at her uncle's house, of course—in the 1915 census. And by the 1920 census, the entire Gramlewicz surname had vanished from New York City records entirely.

There was, of course, a reason for that disappearance. And it wasn't something I could discover, even  through painstaking searches through census records for the rest of the state. It was mostly on account of the gift of the rest of the story, thanks to my Polish cousin, that I discovered what had become of the family—and why it was that Annie, alone, had remained in New York City.

There was, however, one additional document which helped reveal the story.

Above: Fairground in Kerselaere by Flemish Impressionist artist, Modest Huys; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

A Rare Encounter

When I first started researching my father's family, about the only thing I knew for sure was the name of his maternal grandparents: Laskowski. Anton (or sometimes Antoni) and Mary Laskowski had emigrated from Poland sometime in the 1880s.

Although that Polish country of origin was kept a deep, dark secret in the family for the next two generations, now that we have access to records as commonplace as the United States Census enumerations for 1900, 1910, and 1920, it's quite plain to see.

Perhaps that transparency would have been dismaying to my grandmother, their daughter, but she is no longer here to put up any fuss about revealing the secret she wished to keep. She was gone long before I arrived on the scene, let alone when I began to flex my genealogical research muscles.

That open record policy has done me a few more good turns, including the gift of clues tipping me off about related surnames in their family. In addition to the Aktabowski surname I'm pursuing, I found a young woman in the Laskowski household in the 1915 state census by the surname Gramlewicz. Head of household Anton had listed her as his niece, which, depending on the ethnic tradition, may have meant, literally, that she was his niece—or may have included one of any number of other euphemisms for familial relationships.

Although I tend to assume Anna Gramlewicz was actually Anton Laskowski's niece—likely, he had a sister who married a man by that surname—there was one other detail which opened up the possibility of a double relationship between the Laskowski and Gramlewicz families: according to Anton's 1935 death certificate, his mother was also a Gramlewicz.

There is both a blessing and a curse to researching surnames as rare as Gramlewicz. For one thing, if any entry is found under that surname, unlike such cases as researching Smith or Jones, there is a much higher probability that it is material having to do with one's own family. On the other hand, because it is such an unusual name, it runs a higher chance of being misspelled or misunderstood. Even when it is spelled correctly, uncertain transcriptions of handwriting can falsely render a correctly-spelled version of the name into something impossible to find on a computer-aided search.

We'll take a look, tomorrow, at some Gramlewicz records I have managed to find, over the years, but for now, let's consider the reverse of that quest of mine to find material on the Gramlewicz family: the possibility that someone else will find me.

For whatever reason, about ten years ago, someone halfway around the world from here sat down at her computer and typed in her surname to see what the search engine would bring up. Among the results—which, considering the word she entered was "Gramlewicz," couldn't have been too many—was a forum entry requesting more information from anyone else researching that surname. That entry was posted by—you guessed it—me. The woman, also a Gramlewicz descendant, was a Polish woman living in Italy who, thanks to her schooling, had learned to speak and read English.

She decided to send me an email.

As the blessings of researching unusual surnames go, you know the probability of our relationship was high. As the two of us exchanged emails over the course of the next few years, my newly-found distant cousin filled in the blanks for me of what became of my Gramlewicz family from Brooklyn, New York. She had known, from her childhood, that there was the occasional letter sent out to America from her older relatives, and that, for a long time, there would be letters in reply. Of course, at some point, the letter exchange vanished, but she had never made the effort to figure out what had happened—or who it was in that far-away place who had always answered those letters.

We think we had it figured out: it likely was Annie Gramlewicz, the eighteen year old niece found in the 1915 New York State census, who had taken a position as a saleslady in a Brooklyn store and asked to stay at the small apartment of her uncle, Antoni Laskowski.

The rest of the story—of why Annie didn't just stay in her parents' home in Queens, and what had become of them—was something we figured out, partly through discussions via email exchange, and partly as more and more census enumerations and vital records became available online.

That I had such a wonderful resources in this bilingual distant cousin from halfway around the world was a blessing, but it didn't last forever. Into every life must, at some point, come some turmoil, and unfortunately, this also happened to her. Sadly, I lost contact with her. Then, out of the blue, we reconnected—she had left Italy and returned to her parents' home briefly. And then, once again, no answer.

In hopes that, just like that last time over ten years ago, someone will stumble across this mention of the Gramlewicz family, I'll begin tomorrow to explain just what happened to Annie and her family. Maybe, just maybe, another virtual encounter will lead to connecting with family members once again.

Above: Sunset in Ostend, undated oil on canvas by Belgian painter Évariste Carpentier (1845 - 1922); courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Why Checking Collateral Lines is Not a Waste of Time

If you read my post yesterday about my current research strategy, you may have thought I am about to engage in a colossal waste of time. Despite the relative rarity of the surname—in this case, I'm pursuing the Aktabowski family in 1890s New York and New Jersey—it may not seem I have a strong enough indication that the surname is guaranteed to link to my Laskowski family.

Yet, what are the chances that a name as rare as that would not be related to the people in my family? I already have two instances of the name showing up in my family tree: most recently, with my paternal grandmother's brother's marriage to an Aktabowski from New Jersey, and in the preceding generation, a woman whose mother's maiden name was Aktabowska (the female form of that Polish surname). Since so few Aktabowskis had headed to the New York metro area in that time frame, what would be the chances that there was a connection?

Back in 2002, when I first explored that concept, I felt I was finding some encouraging leads. If nothing else, I was connecting with distant cousins who seemed to affirm the link. Since that was still part of the time period when genealogy forums flourished, I ended up meeting (online) a distant Aktabowski cousin with whom I exchanged a number of emails. We were both earnestly researching that line, and glad to share our discoveries with each other. Genealogy forums, back then, were great for making that sort of connection, and it seemed there were more of those types of researchers readily available and willing to intelligently discuss research possibilities.

Beyond that initial foray into exploration of that Aktabowski connection, I've since run into people, from time to time, who mention that their Aktabowski relatives would tell them they are related to my line. (Handily for me, not only was my father known in New York City circles on account of his being a professional musician, but from that exposure to the world of "show biz," my brother catapulted his own acting career and was well known in the New York City metro area, himself. It was often in reference to that relationship that the older Aktabowski generation would say, "You know, we're related to him...")

However, Aktabowski is not the only collateral line I'm pursuing in hopes of uncovering more about my paternal family history. Besides that confusing name swap on the death certificates for the female side of the Laskowski family, there was another surname that danced around the edges of the male side of the Laskowski line: Gramlewicz.

I first became aware of the Gramlewicz connection thanks to the 1915 New York State census. There, in the Brooklyn household of my great grandparents, Anton and Mary Laskowski, was someone listed as Anna Gramlewicz. She was listed as Anton's niece. She was eighteen years of age at the time, born in the not-very-helpful designation of "U.S." and was working as a saleslady.

As it turned out, since I had also sent for Antoni's death certificate—he died in Kings County in 1935—that very surname had shown up as the maiden name for his own mother. Thus, not only could I connect the Gramlewicz name to the right side of the family—and presume it was a sister of Anton who connected us with the Gramlewicz family—but that instance of the maiden name showed me that there was a likelihood of further intermarriage in the family, too.

Once I pursued that lead, again around 2002, the same sort of thing happened: I ran into a cousin who was also researching that line. Only this connection was a fascinating find. Just as others have found distant cousins interested in the genealogy of mutual family lines by Googling their ancestors' names, this cousin had found me via my posts on genealogy forums. There was one difference to this connection, though: this woman was herself Polish, and at the time was living in Italy. I would never have found her if she hadn't come looking for me!

Based on a few other facts we pieced together through online corroboration, we figured out we were third cousins. I'll share more of the story as to how our families connect tomorrow, but suffice it to say she provided me with information I likely would never otherwise have found through my own plodding research progress.

There was one critical ingredient I had contributed to the discoveries, though: if I hadn't thrown my query out into the researcher's ring, nothing would have been out there for anyone else to stumble upon. If I had focused solely on my own direct lines and never wandered beyond those restrictive confines, I wouldn't have made any public mention of the possibilities of specific connections. And if I hadn't talked it up about how these other surnames might somehow lead me to pertinent discoveries in my own research quandaries, those words wouldn't have been out there on which Google (and other search engines) could work their magic.

Above: New York State census for 1915, showing Annie Gramlewicz in the Brooklyn household of my great grandparents, Anton and Mary Laskowski; image courtesy Ancestry.com.
  

Coming at it Sideways: A Research Strategy

While having a father whose name regularly appeared in newspaper reviews might have been a great boost for filling in the blanks on family history, that was only a gift guaranteed to illuminate the story for one generation. Of course, as much as I wanted to know about my dad's life—yes, even the reviews at Billboard—it was the silence of preceding generations which begged me to pursue further back in time.

Those more distant generations, though, proved such a puzzle to me as to keep me stopped in my tracks. I needed a strategy—a research strategy to help me make an end run around my mystery ancestors.

I chose the unlikely surname of Aktabowski to aid my escape from that dominating brick wall. The choice was somewhat unfortunate at first—when I started this approach, it was back in 2002—because the surname was so rare that I found relatively little about the family online, or even in books.

I had what I thought might be a sound reason for my choice, though. It was all based on a conjecture spun off a discrepancy on two death certificates. The problem was this: on one death certificate, the maiden name of my great grandmother was Zelinski, while on her own death certificate, her father's surname was Jankowsky.

Ah, death certificates. You know the routine: the entire family is so distraught about the loss of a loved one—while all the while scurrying to notify relatives of the impending funeral and simultaneously attending to all the arrangements that needed to be completed before said relatives actually show up at the funeral. In the midst of all this turmoil, someone would pull key family members aside into an office, offer them a chair and another box of tissues, and ask for the details that must be affixed to the official death certificate.

At that point in time, the answers to such questions couldn't be farther from everyone's mind. People in deep distress sometimes cannot tell you their own full name, let alone the names associated with the dearly departed. Sometimes, the very mention of that loved one's name prompts heaving waves of sobs and great distress. Who cares where his mother was born? All that matters is that he is not here, anymore.

Yet, somehow, the funeral director—or whichever official scribe is tasked with the duty—comes up with answers with which to fill in each blank on the governmental form, and the death certificate is ready within days to duly note—and irrevocably so—the chain of events tying the generations together.

So, for my paternal grandmother's own death certificate, her bereaved husband declared in 1952 that Sophie Laskowska McCann's mother's name was Mary Zelinski. Yet, when Sophie, herself, was in that very same position only thirteen years previously, she noted that her mother Mary's father's name was not Zelinski, but Jankowsky.

Did Sophie not know her own grandfather's name? It could be possible; she left her homeland and, after a long ocean voyage, landed in New York City when still a small child. Possibly, she never saw her grandparents again.

As for Sophie's husband, reporting those same familial details for Sophie's own death certificate, it could have been one of many distractions which prevented his proper reporting of the facts: his distraught mind, his age at the time—he was seventy five when she died, and in ailing health, himself—his failing memory. Or, maybe he just didn't know. Perhaps he had heard others in the family mention that surname, Zelinski, several times and presumed it was the right name. Who knows? Maybe Sophie's mother was married before, and he gave a married name instead of the required maiden name.

Despite all that confusion, what caught my eye in these discrepancies was not the names associated with Sophie's maternal grandfather, but with her maternal grandmother. For Mary, Sophie's mother, may have had a mother with a maiden name spelled almost exactly like Aktabowski.

Why, you might be asking, would the name Aktabowski bear any meaning? What I had also uncovered, while working every angle I could on this poorly-documented immigrant family, was that Sophie had had a brother who married a woman with that very same surname: Aktabowski. In fact, it seemed that surname intertwined itself with the Laskowski family quite a bit.

My thinking was: if I can't find out anything about this Laskowski family, perhaps I can make some headway by taking the indirect route of studying those Aktabowskis and see if things were more completely documented for them.

And that is the pursuit I've returned to this line to clean up. I'm hoping there will be several more clues about this surname than there were, the last time I left this trail.

Above: Sophie Laskowska McCann as a young child; photograph from private collection of family.

Chasing Vanishing Collections

With so many documents of interest to genealogists getting digitized and added to online collections, there has never been a better time to research one's family history.

That, in itself, can inspire a false sense of security: now that those aging documents are safely digitized and accessible on the web, they will always be there for us to access, right?

Not necessarily. Take the instance of the very news clipping I wanted to share on today's post. Since my decision to revisit my research on my father's side of the family—a branch I hadn't worked on much in the past year—I had wanted to include some photos and news clippings of the family, starting with my own dad.

There is a reason for this. That photo you may have seen on Saturday's post, one shared with me by an older cousin, is a version of my dad I'd never seen. A much skinnier version. Definitely one with more hair than I'd ever seen. Since my dad was nearly fifty by the time I was born, he lived an entire lifetime before I ever came on the scene. He was, obviously, a very different person during those early years than the man I remember as my dad.

By the time I was able to flex my research muscles and try and discover exactly who this earlier version of my dad might have been, there were all sorts of online resources at my fingertips. I had the tools and I knew how to use them, so I came up with lots of great bits of personal history. Of course, it helped that the man was a professional musician in a city the size of New York during the heyday of the big band era.

Most of those research results I captured and stored on my old computer—you know, that wood burning computer I'm always sniveling about.

When it came to pulling those gems back out of their virtual storage vault to share with you, rather than booting up the old geezer, I decided the easier route might be to just go back and access them again on the online sites where I thought I had found them in the first place.

Wrong. Try as I might, I couldn't locate the specific newspaper item I wanted to find. I tried the two subscription services I use, plus two free resources on my go-to list—the New York Public Library's gateway to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the U.S. Library of Congress' Chronicling America site. The clipping I wanted to find seemed as good as gone.

Of course, you know the sorry excuse I have is that I never originally identified the news source from which I had first extracted the clipping. And it had been so long since I had accessed one other site that I had simply forgotten about its existence. (If you hadn't known about this newspaper archiving site with the improbable title, "Old Fulton New York Postcards," you might not have thought about using it, either.)

Thankfully, there it was, still in existence and still full of all the good stuff embedded in this crazy interface—you have to go view the site to see what I mean—but now also sporting the dignifying boast that it is now a resource link included in the NYPL's website.

The item I was seeking was part of a series of ads run in the Long Island Star Journal in the fall of 1942, promoting a dinner theater which featured variety shows on ice. What was surprising to me, at the time I found them, was that my father—whom I already knew was a musician—actually had his own band. His name was featured prominently in the ads, running during the months of October through December of that year, and into the new year of 1943.

However, despite that happy ending of relocating that source, it did remind me of the changing nature of online collections—and even the possibility that one of those websites we so take for granted now may not always be in existence online at some future point. Some websites feature collections which may have a temporary contractual arrangement with the hosting site—a contract which can expire, or not enjoy the same generous terms as were included in previous versions. If your special snippet of micro-history was included in one of those scenarios, what would become of your access to that document then?

Above: Ad for the Ice Revue at The Boulevard in Elmhurst, Long Island, in the borough of Queens in New York City; from the Long Island Star-Journal on October 3, 1942; courtesy Old Fulton New York Postcards.