Sometimes my genealogy work causes me to feel pulled in many different directions. I want to spend more time researching my father's Irish family, but also his mother's colonial American roots. I want to look into my mother's German and Belgian ancestors a little more, and travel to Ohio to dig through records I can only find there.
But for now, I'm immersed in my husband's two families and the books I'm writing about both of them. The book on his mother's side of the family is titled: Pilgrims, Pioneers and Cowboys. This is an amazing family with ancestors who arrived on the Mayflower and others who came from Switzerland before the Revolutionary War. Many of them ventured out in Conestoga Wagons or on horseback to reach unsettled areas in Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa and beyond. And my husband's grandfather was a cattle rancher, an actual "cowboy," whose ancestors in Switzerland were also ranchers. Most of the text is finished for this book and I am putting the final touches on the genealogy reports before I send it off to the book designer and then the printer. But first I will publish another book.
That book concerns my husband's paternal side and its title is: From Croatia to California. All of the ancestors in this book came from a small island in present-day Croatia (Brac), except for his great grandfather, who was born in Bohemia, the modern Czech Republic. One generation of these ancestors, his grandparents' generation, all came to California in the early part of the twentieth century. And so, over the past year, I have contacted many relatives and had conversations with them about their part of the family.
On my husband's grandfather's side (The Terich side) 3 out of 5 siblings came to America. His grandfather, Anton or Tony, his great uncle Nickolas or "Barba Mico" and his great aunt Maria, who seems to have disappeared. (Two siblings, Ivan and Daniella, stayed on the island of Brac and raised large families there.) My husband and I have met with the descendants of Nickolas and learned what we could about that branch of the family. Then we turned to his grandmother's side.
His grandmother, Madalena Jeseta (changed to Yeseta in America) was the youngest of 6 siblings, although she wasn't the last to arrive in America. She had three sisters - Maria, Anna, and Selma - and two brothers - Ante or Anthony and Mate or Matthew. My husband and I have met with descendants of Anna, Anthony and Selma, and next week we will be having one last meeting with descendants of Maria and hopefully Mate. I say hopefully because we are not sure who will be at the event.
We are attending a luncheon at St. Anthony's Croatian Church in Los Angeles next Thursday. This is the church where many family members were baptized and married. They have a monthly luncheon where, I'm told, many of the long time members of the parish come to socialize. Some of the family members with whom we've already met invited my husband and me to come to meet other family members at the luncheon and we're going. I have many questions I hope to have answered, so I'm quite excited about it. These are mostly second cousins of my husband that he's never met so he's eager to go and learn more about his extended family. And we're also anxious to see this 100 year old church so filled with history.
Once we have that meeting, I'll put the finishing touches on the book and send it off to the book designer. Hopefully, it will be ready for distribution sometime in May, and after finishing his mother's family history book I can get ready for my trip to Ireland, and the search for my Brennan ancestors.
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