Nothing beats first-hand interviews

My husband and I, along with his cousin, visited two members of his extended family last Saturday.  These are 2nd cousins, the grandchildren of his grandfather's brother.  I had several questions I hoped they could answer regarding their grandparents. 

First, I had been told their grandfather, Nickolas Eterovic, had been married twice.  I knew his first wife Dora died sometime before the 1920 census, when Nickolas reports he is a widower.  She and Nickolas had married in Croatia some years earlier and they had two daughters.  Then Nickolas came to America by himself and she and the girls followed in 1913 and Dora had a son later that year.  The two cousins thought she may have died in childbirth, but since she died long before they were born, they weren't sure.  Unless I can find a death record for her, which I have been unbable to do so far, the circumstances and date of her death may remain a mystery.  However, they did know the name of his second wife, and I have found records on her.  She died before Nickolas as well, leaving him a widower for a second time.

I also wanted to know about their uncle, the child who had been born 10 months after their grandmother arrived here.  They were able to fill me in on him and his children.  So I was able to add a few more people to the family tree. 

I also learned a bit more about their immediate family.  They were the oldest and youngest  of five children born to the daughter of Nickolas and his first wife. Two of the girls became nuns.  One even began her own congregation that served the poor in Guatemala.  The other belonged to a cloistered congregation of Carmelites.  Only the youngest daughter married, and I was fortunate to see pictures of her grandchildren.

I'm planning a visit with another branch of my husband's extended family in two weeks.  This will help fill in some more blanks. 

The visit taught me a valuable lesson.  While I can learn a great deal on my computer, at ancestry.com, familysearch.org, and many other genealogy sites, there is nothing quite as exciting as hearing firsthand from members of the family.  Sometimes, it is the only way to have mysteries solved. 

Irene Killoran Schulien

I have written before about how fortunate I am, in my genealogical pursuits, to have come from the town of Lima, Ohio, where nearly every issue of the Lima News prior to 1977 is online.  Since both of my parents were born there, and their families lived there for several generations, the database is a goldmine.  When I am trying to solve a genealogical mystery regarding a family member, after I go to census records, birth records, and death indexes, I head straight for the Lima News database.  It's amazing how much I can piece together from newspaper articles.  There are marriage announcements, which generally list family members.  There are graduations, births, obituaries (which sometimes give you whole family trees), and other interesting tidbits, like who visited whom, who played baseball for the local teams, who attended what churches, who ran off to get married, who was hospitalized, who got arrested etc.

Yesterday, I was trying to find the birth and death dates of one woman who was not actually a biological relative, but who married my mom's favorite uncle, my Great Uncle Rod. Her name was Irene Killoran and, while I had actually met her and Rod a couple of times when I was a child, what interested me most were the stories my mother told me about Uncle Rod.  Since then, I've heard more stories from my cousin Tim, and I really wanted to see what I could find out about Irene who must have been a saint, from what I've heard about the antics of her husband Rod.

I knew Irene had been born before the year 1900 and I also knew she lived to be about 100, so I couldn't find her obituary in the Lima News, but I suspected I could find other clues about her.  As I searched through the database I began to piece together a picture of her family, and soon I was headed down a rabbit hole, determined to reconstruct this family that wasn't even related to me.  (That's how addictive genealogy can be.)

First, I found a story about the death of a sister, Esther Killoran, at the age of 22 from pneumonia, which seemed incredibly tragic. In that story, I discovered the names of all the siblings: Helen, William, John, Ralph, Esther, and of course, Irene.  From census records, I was able to confirm the names of the brothers and sisters.  Then I found a story about Irene's older brother William, who was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1922, and who performed Irene and Rod's marriage ceremony in 1942. Sadly, another story informed me that William died of a heart attack in 1948, at the age of 53, just a few months after he conducted the funeral service for his mother, Mary. She and her husband, James, who had died years earlier, were children of Irish immigrants. 

So as sad as it seemed that two of these children had died young, Esther at 22 and now William at 53, there was more tragedy to be discovered.  Irene's older brother John was a physician and in the course of being summoned to treat patients at the scene of an automobile accident, he stepped on a live electrical wire and was electrocuted in 1946. With this much tragedy in one family, I couldn't stop looking.  I wanted a happy ending: grandchildren who would carry on the family name and keep the memories alive, but there were few grandchildren.  As a priest, William had no children, and John had but one daughter.  I knew Rod and Irene didn't have children as they were in their forties when they married.  And Esther had died unmarried at the age of 22.  So I had to continue searching.  Two more siblings of Irene remained – her older sister Helen, and her younger brother Ralph.  I discovered that Helen married in 1923, just a year after her sister died, and had two children, one named after her deceased sister.  I found the marriage announcements for the two sisters and in both, their mother Helen is missing.  One girl is listed as being the daughter of Joseph E. Morris, the other is listed as the daughter of the late Joseph E. Morris and Helen Killoran Morris, but at the time of the wedding, there is also a stepmother named.  I searched for hours for a hint of what had happened to Helen.  Did she die?  Were they divorced?  But I found nothing.  I know at least one of the girls had children, but I lost the trail after I discovered that fact.  I don't know if the other daughter had children.

So I turned to Ralph, who apparently moved out of town and married.  However, once someone moved out of Lima, it was hit or miss on finding a story about them.  Sometimes the paper printed stories about former Lima residents, but usually only when a relative who still resided there gave the paper the information.  So I have lost the trail on Ralph Killoran.

It may seem odd that I wanted to discover more about a family that was not related to me, but genealogy buffs will understand.  Once you start reading stories about people, you feel you know them in some small way, and you want to find out, almost as if you were reading a novel, how it all turns out.  Sadly, I don't know how it all turned out. I know that two children of Irish immigrants married and had at least 6 children.  (Another story in the Lima News reported on the severe burning of a one year old son, so there may have been at least one child who did not live to adulthood.) I know that three of those children died as young or middle-aged adults.  But I don't know what happened to Ralph and Helen and I don't know if there were grandchildren other than the three girls I mentioned. 

But, aside from all the tragedy I discovered, I learned another thing.  I learned that Irene Killoran Schulien was a rarity in her family.  Born in 1898, she died in 1999, at the ripe old age of 101. 

Busy, Busy, Busy

After several months of finishing up my book The Waiting Room, then working on my husband's family history book, I've returned to play with all my family trees.  I've lost count of how many I have - maybe 10.

What sent me back was the desire to have all the data accurate in a couple of trees.  One is the Eterovic side of my husband's family.  This weekend, we are going to visit with an elder of the family, an 87 year old woman who can give us some information we've been unable to get anywhere else.  Her younger 78 year old sister should be there, too, so hopefully between the two of them, a few family mysteries will be solved. 

I've also recently been in touch with another in-law of the family who's been doing genealogy on the Yeseta side of the family.  We plan to meet with him and his family soon, so maybe I'll be able to fill in a few other gaps on the tree. 

What I've been doing for the past few days is taking all the data from the ancestry trees and making sure everything is correct on the Family Tree Maker trees.  The first are on the ancestry website, the second are on my computer and don't require me to be online. So if I ever stop using ancestry, I'll still have my trees (at least I think I will.) The Family Tree maker trees are also the only ones that will allow me to create genealogy reports (those crazy documents where everyone is assigned a number), so I began creating some today.  Actuallly, the software creates them and I just check to make sure there are no mistakes.  (There are always mistakes.) 

I started with my husband's grandfather's ancestors (Eterovic) and the report was 3 pages long and included 5 generations.  Then on to my husband's grandmother's ancestors (Yeseta).  Again, three pages and 4 generations.  Then, just for fun - since I am not yet ready to create a family history book for my family - I created a report for my maternal grandmother's German ancestors.  It was 12 pages and 10 generations. So I decided to go for broke and do a report on my paternal grandmother's ancestors.  Her family is English, Scottish and German, and goes back to before the time of the Mayflower.  The report was 59 pages long, so I didn't print it.  But one of these days I'll have to get back to it and check it for errors.  That could take a month. 

All of this is keeping me very busy, all while I'm supposed to be planning my trip to Ireland.  At least life isn't boring!

The Generosity of Amateur Genealogists

I have recently been reaching out to members of my husband's family, trying to finish up interviews and gather as many old photographs as I can in order to complete the family history book.  A planned interview for this weekend with a senior member of the family had to be postponed due to illness, but hopefully will be rescheduled soon. 

In the meantime, I have reached out to some of my husband's cousins.  Through one cousin, I was put in contact with an in-law who has reportedly done extensive research on the family.  I only recently found this out and am anxious to see what he has compliled in his research and trips to Croatia.   Once he had my email address, he was more than willing to share his information with me, and will be sending me his findings next week. 

I have also contacted a few people through the message service offered by ancestry.com, and they have all been willing to help out with information on their branches of the family.  Consequently, there are now 3055 names in my husband's family tree.  After my upcoming interviews, I expect to add a few more. 

Of course, the internet and specifically ancestry.com has made all of this possible.  When I think of my father trying to gather information through letters and phone interviews, writing to libraries and city records' offices,  and only towards the end using email, I realize how fortunate we amateur genealogy sleuths are.   Much of what we search for is online, thanks to the efforts of countless volunteers who have taken the original records and put them there.

And as these generous genealogists share their findings with each other and the entire genealogical world, and as we who benefit from their generosity are able to add more and more names to our family trees, it becomes clearer and clearer how connected we all are to each other, not just electronically, but also biologically.  

Goals for the New Year

Last year was a big year for me.  In finally finishing my book, The Waiting Room, I closed a chapter in my life.  Not only did I accomplish something very important to me, in a way I also said good-bye to my parents again.  Even though they passed away over two years ago, writing about them nearly every day for over a year kept them in my thoughts constantly.  Now, it is time to return to genealogy and involve myself in family activities. 

And, in that regard, this is looking to be a busy year.  In June we will be traveling to Seattle for my son Terry's graduation from Seattle Pacific University (with a Master's in Education) and in August, we're heading to Ireland to meet a distant cousin, explore some genealogy, and get to enjoy the land of my great-great grandparents' birth. There will be at least one family wedding to attend, and a number of wedding and baby showers.  But in between all the planned vacations and events, I have some genealogical goals.

First, with the help of my husband, I'm writing an  Eterovic family history.  Last year I hired researchers in both Croatia and the Czech Republic and I have all of their findings dating back to the 1700s.  I have already written most of the narrative regarding the genealogy, but I am waiting on a few pictures and stories.  I have also collected Croatian recipes and even tried cooking a few.  Most of the narrative is already written. What remains on my to-do list are a few interviews with senior family members.  In the meantime, my daughter-in-law, who is an amazing artist, is working on the cover.  Fortunately, one of my husband's nephews went to Brac, Croatia on his honeymoon and brought back pictures of the towns of Milna, and Pucisca, the birthplaces of my husband's grandparents, and one of those pictures will be the focus of the cover.  My hope is to have the book completed and printed sometime in March. 

Once that project is finished, I want to return to my father's side of the family.  So another goal is to see if there is anything else I can find in the nearly non-existant Irish records regarding Ned Brennan and Mary Fahey, my 2nd great grandparents who arrived in America from Ireland in 1860, the year before the beginning of the Civil War.  I have asked a research company to do some preliminary work for me and they have suggested several possible avenues they can follow to see if there are any other hints regarding the family.  I have also been contacted by a second relative in Ireland who may be able to put me in contact with her uncle, who has done some genealogical work on the family.  Then, of course, I hope to meet more family members when I visit Ireland.  Maybe someone will have information that has so far eluded me. 

A third goal is to find out more about my mother's side of the family. Her ancestors are from Germany and Belgium and while I have many names and dates, there are a few ancestors who remain a mystery.  One is her great grandfather, Herman Henry Frecker.  He died in his thirties and while I believe I have located a sister and mother, I know very little other than the fact that he was born in Germany and lived in Delphos, Ohio.  Recently, my cousin Tim sent me a newspaper article announcing his death.  It said only that he had been ill for years because of multiple tumors.  I don't know when he arrived in America or how old he was when he came, though Tim believes he may have been born at sea on the journey from Germany.  I have so far been unable to confirm that.  I'm going to look into the possibility of hiring a researcher in Germany, though the cost my be prohibitive. Maybe in another year or two, I'll travel to Ohio and spend some time looking into records there.  I'm certain there must be information locked away in some dusty library or county hall of records.  In the meantime, I'm also going to learn more about Germany, its history, and its many geographical regions. After my visit to Ireland, followed by a visit to Croatia in 2013, I may have to visit Germany myself.

A fourth goal is to work on another family history - that of my mother-in-law's side of the family.  Hers is the one that goes back to at least three Mayflower passengers.  I have already written some of the narrative, as I find it so compelling, and I'm anxious to put it all together for the rest of the family to see.  (Before I began doing this work they had no idea they were descendants of Mayflower passengers.)

Finally, like all professional and amateur genealogists, I look forward to the release of the 1940 census in April of this year.  That census alone will answer many questions about many relatives, and I can't wait!

So, in terms of genealogy, (as well as family activities and vacations)  it's going to be a very busy year and I look forward to many exciting discoveries.