Finding My Roots in the Frigid North

Hey.  I am still here.  I have not frozen yet, though as I sit here typing I must say that my fingers are cold.  The official temp right now outside is minus 9 F.  That is bone-chilling cold.  All the schools are closed, mail delivery has been cancelled and because of an explosion at a gas transmission center yesterday, we have been asked by the utility and the Governor to keep our thermostats at 65 F.  I normally keep mine at 66 F during the day and 62 F at night so, fortunately, I am used to cooler temps indoors.  I haven't left my house since Tuesday noon when I went out to bring the trash can back inside.  And then I nearly froze my face 'cause I forgot to wrap my scarf around thinking it was just a minute to walk to the street and back.  It looks nice out, but truly, looks can be deceiving.

So, what else have I been doing all month?  Finding my roots.  I have made inroads.  An Ancestry member in Australia sent me info from a Polish website and I have traced back to my paternal great-great grandmothers and grandfathers in northeastern Poland.  Finally, after much searching, my cousin in New York (who I never knew about until last year) and I figured out that our grandfathers were born in Zapieczne, Poland - a small village in the Lomza province.  Yes, Lomza, not Lodz as I was told, but one can understand the confusion.  We think they were first cousins based on family lore.  Unfortunately, folks who remember this connection, including my mother who kept in contact with his grandmother, are all deceased.  I am still hoping that an uncle may have some old family records from my grandmother.

My paternal aunt, who is 90, says she never really was interested in family history.  That just is mind-boggling to me.  I have had several people tell me they have no interest in who their ancestors were or where they came from.  To me, that is the epitome of thinking you are the most important person in the room, JMHO.

Anyway, I am making headway.  I found a distant cousin on my mother's side of the family who actually visited Cordenons, Italy to search old records.  Interestingly, he and I are not DNA matches, but I am a match to his brother.  He grew up in Fort Frances, Ontario, where my grandparents went when they came here from Italy (even though we have no Italian DNA, lol).

The search is made even more interesting by names.  Using the same first names for children born in each generation is a real nightmare on the English and Irish sides of my ex-husband's family.  In my family, it is the changing of a Polish first name from Wladislaw to 'Steve', 'Ladislaus', 'Walter', or whatever for example.  Then on the Italian side is the spelling of last names.  The Marius family in the USA is the Mariuz family in Canada.   I am thinking that the use of the letter 'Z' is more in keeping with the Hungarian background we seem to have.

And ages.  We always used to laugh about my paternal great-grandmother's age because no one seemed to know how old she really was.  Her funeral card says she was born in 1883.  If that were true, she would have been eleven when her first child was born.  I think not.  Going through old census records and her three immigration records of her arrivals in the USA (yes, she travelled back twice to Austria), it seems she was likely born in 1874, somewhere near what is now Nadolany, Poland in the southeast part of the country.  But hey, I also found older men who fudged their ages on marriage licenses when they were marrying younger women, lol.

One of my favorite shows is 'Finding Your Roots' on PBS.  Every week I am amazed at what celebrities find out about their past.  Often you hear a celeb say, 'I was told...'  NOT.  So, yesterday I called my sister and asked her where she heard that some members of my mother's family left Canada to go to South America.  She could not remember who said it, but does remember hearing it.  Well, I did too.  But, when I searched immigration records, I could find no evidence to support it.  I did find records showing them crossing from Fort Frances, Ontario, to International Falls, Minnesota.

So, did they go south to America? and not to South America?  Sure seems like it.

I hope to solve more mysteries about my roots.  I find it fascinating.   Already, one of my sons has had his DNA done.  I am thinking of using 23andMe to find more matches.  It is an adventure right on my computer and who knows what lies in store.  We'll see.

Thanks for stopping by and stay warm if you are living under this air mass that has broken off from the polar vortex.