It all started out innocently enough...
I just wanted to see one Polish birth record that Ancestry.com had been dangling under my nose for months... My goal was simply to have a few new tidbits of information to share with my in-laws over the holidays. Although that birth record turned out to be a dead end (see photo caption above) I was nonetheless able to bust down some other “brick walls” on my mother-in-law’s tree and expand it substantially. I got better at deciphering antiquated German cursive with some unintended results… I don’t know if the “Von” was BS to get the girl or what, but dude definitely didn’t come from German nobility.
After exhausting all the trails on all of those branches I turned my attention to my father-in-law’s gigantic Chicago Polish immigrant family. (Great documentary on the subject) It was rather confusing at first until I realized what I really needed to do was just document every descendant of his great-grandfather. Turns out there were two Ralph’s... an uncle and a nephew born a year apart.
Upon accomplishing that monumental task I still had well over a week to go on my subscription so I turned to my own well documented family tree… and discovered a HUGE mistake. I was completely wrong about the parents of my 2nd great-grandmother. This was disastrous! I had been spreading misinformation for over a decade… The obituary I found was hard to take, but undeniable. Turns out that this time two cousins had been born in the same year with the same first and last names.
Honest mistake... Just fix it and move on right? Nope… Not this jar head. I had to make amends, so I did descendancies for each of my 2nd great-grandmother’s siblings.
Well, once I had that chunk of my family tree fleshed out I turned to my father’s line… My surname. This time I decided not to go back so far. I brought it in a generation and focused on the descendants of my great-grandfather’s siblings and found immediate success! I was able to figure out some things that no one else on that website had before. I solved a mystery and proved it with a license for a woman’s 3rd marriage. She came from England with one husband and married a second just a year later. No one knows what happened to the first husband, and no one knew whatever happened to her after 1880. Until I found her and her maiden name on the aforementioned marriage license. Another success that was almost as satisfying was finding out whatever happened to great-grand aunt Hester. In hindsight it all seems super simple. I’ve got to admit I felt a little shame (for myself and every genealogist that went before me) the moment I found Esther. Yup… It was a nickname on the Census. I did finally find a birth record for Esther proving it was the name she was born with.
Isn’t that damned algorithm supposed to know all possible name variations?
Buoyed by these breakthroughs I went a little overboard. I did some calculating and realized that if I paid for another months subscription and worked my fucking ass off I could complete descendancies for all of my 2nd great-grandparents. Some of the work was already done. 12 years ago I sifted the wheat from the chaff to make sense of the myriad family trees online. I already knew the names and dates and in many instances the spouses and kids. But, it was a daunting task to fully document each and every 3rd cousin I could find. I had no idea how many there might be or what I was really getting myself into. After discussing this insane plan with my family, they were unanimously apathetic. I took that as a green light...
I went in hard and fast trying to be as efficient as possible. I spent every working day, 10, 12,… 16 hours... However long I could keep going. At one point I was sure I was going to run out of time. I put the hardest off for last. My great-great-grandpappy Will had 14 kids that made it past childhood. Last Tuesday I had 6 great-grand aunts and uncles to go and 12 days left on my subscription. I was nervous, but figured I had this in the bag.
At least I thought I did…
As I started on that very last great-grand uncle I realized I had passed over Mary Ellen. Everybody passes over Mary Ellen… Even though she’s right there on the 1870 Census. For some reason she’s not in many folk’s trees. Somebody skipped her somewhere and then everybody copied everybody else. That’s why I don’t link to other trees or findagrave anymore. I stick to actual historical documents and nothing else. If you’re going to copy a tree, copy mine. It’s fully documented as well as possible.
Anyhoo… This gargantuan project was completed last night at about 6 o’clock with 5 days to spare. I’ve now tracked down the descendants of 14 out of 16 great-great-grandparents. (Don’t ask about the other two... Their names do not appear in my tree for just cause and at least one of my great-grandfathers would applaud that decision.) In the end this equated to 52 great-grand aunts and uncles. This doesn’t count those that died in childhood, never married, or dropped off the historical radar. It doesn’t count my great-grandparents themselves, that was done the last time I went on a genealogy binge. I tracked down every one of their kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids, and so on. In the last two months I have added over 5,000 people to my tree, although most are in-laws attached collaterally… I discovered that 4 of my distant cousins passed away after the project began.
The 1950 Census will become available this Spring and I am fully prepared.
I’ve done a lot of thinking over the course of this project about the state of relations in this country. I’m sure a good number of the cousins I’ve identified are proud Trump supporters. They’re spread out all over this country from coast to coast and top to bottom including Alaska and Hawaii. They come from every walk of life. One is in the Automotive Hall of Fame and another has a Superbowl ring. Most were just farmers or miners. A surprising number were textile workers... I’m looking at you Greenville, South Carolina. They’ve all got a story, and my collection of dry documents doesn’t begin to tell it.
There is one thing I can say about them… None of them were more or less American than any other. I have ancestors and cousins that have fought in every War this country ever engaged in. Many of them as United States Marines. One cousin died on Iwo Jima, another survived the Battle of Belleau Wood. (Fun fact: Their ancestors all emigrated here at some point.) My connection to them or to any of my other kin makes me no more American than anybody else. Neither does my military service.
The first thing I did as soon as I accomplished my mission today was check the lists at seditiontracker.com to see if I recognized any names from my tree. Thankfully, I did not.
I’ll soon return to focusing what investigative talents I possess on the insurrectionist scumbags who think their love of god, guns, and Trump make them better Americans than the rest of us.