52 Ancestors in 2018 - Week 35: Back to School

 ​Summer is coming to a close, and this week our theme is ‘Back To School’! I could talk about one of the many teachers in my family, but, the theme brings to mind memories of my ‘back-to-school’s and of my elementary school in particular. Milton School was attended not only by me, but also by my sisters and brother as well as my dad, and presumably his twin brother and older sisters. I recently found a collection of old yearbooks and PTA handbooks among my papers. Here is the cover of the Milton School PTA handbook from 1961-1962.

Milton School PTA Handbook Cover
1961-1962

Milton was an old brick schoohouse, originally built in the early 1900s as a 4-room school. It was added onto more than once through the years to accomodate an increasing population. The school was originally heated by a coal-burning boiler that was still in use when I attended, and I can remember the hills of coal and being scolded to stay away from them. Here is a picture of some of my teachers from Milton. The teacher in the center, Mrs. Pyle, was my favorite, not only because she was a kind and caring teacher, but also because I had her for two consecutive years. I’m not sure who the other teachers are, but I believe the one on the right is Mrs. Starkey, our music teacher. That may be one of our student teachers on the left.

Milton School Teachers ca 1964
photo taken by KM Kolk
digitized 2018

 As the school-age population dwindled through the years, the school became obsolete, and was closed after the 1983-1984 school year. The building has become somewhat famous since closing because it has gained the reputation of being haunted. The story goes that a little girl was murdered by the janitor, who was then found hanged in the basement. This supposedly happened in the 30s, but I’ve never believed it. That would have been about the time my dad was there, as well as parents of many of my friends, and I never heard even a whisper about it! The building hosted ghost tours at one time and was featured on an episode of ScyFy’s Ghost Hunters as well as an episode American Hauntings podcast (Season 1- episode 3). The building was also the site of an investigation by Ghost Research Society.

Milton School was given a second life when an art glass company bought the building in the 1990s and used it as a factory for their work. About ten years ago, the building was revived once again as The Milton Schoolhouse, a small business incubator. The owners have invested a lot of time and money to renovate this formerly condemned building. A few years ago I met up with some grade school friends who I had not seen in 35-45 years or more. We stopped in the coffee house, and then took a tour of the building. It was fun to visit our old classrooms and reminisce about past good times, as well as see the new incarnations. The photos below are of Mrs. Pyle’s classroom and the cloak room. The owners have done a great job with the building!

Milton School - April 2015
photos taken by KM Kolk

 To learn more about my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks project, read my introductory blog post.

52 Ancestors in 2018 - Week 34: Non-Population

 It’s Week 34 of the 52 Ancestors challenge, and the magic word this week is ‘Non-Population’! I’ve been wanting to look for the non-population schedules for some time. Shortly after I started my family history journey, about 15 years ago, I’d found 24-year-old Samuel Weiss living with his parents in Brighton, Macoupin County, Illinois. He was marked as ‘Idiotic’ on the census form.

 That seemed a pretty cruel classification at the time, but I’ve since learned that there was a precise definition for the word ‘idiotic’ when used for census purposes. I also learned that I might find more information on a ‘non-population’ schedule of the census, in this case the DDR, otherwise known as the 1880 Special Schedule of Defective, Dependent, and Delinquent Classes. I didn’t know where to find these, but this week’s challenge has inspired me to explore. I found that these schedules are available on Ancestry.com, so I did a quick search to see what I could find.

  I do not have an Ancestry subscription, but I am lucky enough to live in a library district that DOES have a subscription that can be accessed in the library by anyone with a vaild library card. And a few years ago, Ancestry made this worth even more by allowing me to have my discoveries emailed to me. Since I do not frequently have time to run to the library to find one item, I keep a list of items to search for, and frequently my list of ‘finds’ gets quite long. I’m not as good as I could be about processing my finds when I get home. This is a long way to explain my surprise when I discovered that I’d found Samuel in the DDD over a year ago and had done nothing about it! I didn’t even remember I’d found him!

  Once I realized I’d already found Samuel in the schedule, I quickly downloaded the page and examined it. The first thing I learned is the precise definition of ‘idiot’ when used in the 1880 census. You can read the detailed description from the schedule page below*, if you are interested. What I learned about Samuel made me sad. Here is what I learned.

As mentioned on the population schedule, in 1880 Samuel lived in Brighton in Macoupin County, Illinois. The DDD tells me that he was partially self-supporting (the population schedule indicates that Samuel worked on a farm, presumably his father’s). His head size was classified as ‘natural', apparently a synonym for ’normal’. The sad fact that I uncovered?; the supposed cause of his idiocy was a fall little Samuel had taken when he was only six months old! How sad, and probably guilt-inducing, for his mother!

According to Find A Grave, Samuel died at age 36 and is buried in Rosebank Cemetery, Dickinson County, Kansas. He may have been living with an older brother who had migrated with his family to Kansas sometime before 1900.

* From the 1880 Special Schedule of Defective, Dependent, and Delinquent Classes:

“The object of this Supplemental Schedule is to furnish material not only for a complete enumeration of the idiots, but for an account of their condition. It is important that every inquiry respecting each case be answered as fully as possible. Enumerators will, therefore, after making the proper entries on the Population Schedule (No. 1), transfer the name (with Schedule page and number) of every idiot found, from Schedule No. 1 to this Special Schedule, and proceed to ask the addition questions indicated in the headings of the several columns.

The word “idiot” has a special meaning which it is essential for every enumerator to know. An idiot is a person that the development of whose mental faculties was arrested in infancy or childhood before coming to maturity.

It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the stupidity which results from idiocy and that which is due to the loss or deterioration of mental power in consequence of insanity. The latter is not true idiocy, but dementia or imbecility. The enumeration desired for the Census is of true idiocy only. Demented persons should be classed with the insane.

Enumerators may obtain valuable hints as to the number of idiots, and their residences, from physicians who practice medicine in their respective districts.”​

To learn more about my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks project, read my introductory blog post.

52 Ancestors in 2018 - Week 2: Favorite Photo

Susie Janco - 1920
photo from the collection of Susie Petrini
digitized by KM Kolk - 2007

It’s hard for me to pick a ‘favorite’ anything. I get hung up on ‘I like this one a lot but is it REALLY better than that one? So instead of showing you a ‘favorite’ photo, I’m going to show you one I like a lot. This is a photo of my grandma, Susie Janco, posing in front of an airplane. Handwritten notes indicate this photo was taken in 1920, and other photos of Grandma in the same dress and hat, presumably taken on the same day, show her posing in what appears to be a city. As she lived in the St. Louis area around this time, I suspect this could be Forest Park.

The photo really maked me wonder about the story that goes with it. Was this the airplane of a barnstormer? Barnstorming was an early aviation practice in which a pilots would land his or her plane in random places and take passengers for a quick ride for a fee. Then they would move on to the next spot, often a farmer’s field. This was popular in the early 1920s.  This photo makes me wonder; did Grandma get on that plane? Or did she just pose next to it? If she did get in she never mentioned flying and as far as I know, she was never on a plane. And who is that in the shadows on the other side of the plane? At first I thought it was a shadow of Grandma on a backdrop, but I can see that the shoulders on the shadow are at an opposite slant. I wish I knew more about the circumstances behind this photo.

You can learn more about barnstorming in the 1920s here.
To learn more about my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks project, read my introductory blog post.

52 Ancestors in 2018 - Week 33: Family Legend

Photo from Wikimedia Commons Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria
Source: The Library of Congress - American Memory
Published in: The War of the Nations (New York), December 31, 1919

The prompt for this week is ‘Family Legend’. We all have them, right? But are they true? And if not, why does everyone keep repeating them? How did they even get started? Today, I’m going to share a relatively recent family ‘legend’ that shows how this might happen!

My story starts with a family gathering just two or three years ago. We were all sitting around after dinner, playing games and watching sports, when the topics of immigration and our ancestors came up. I mentioned a tidbit my grandma had told me many years ago about why her family came over from Austria Hungary. Her story, which she repeated to me more than once, was that her father, Paul Janco (I wrote about him for week 31) "knew that war was coming and that if his boys were going to fight in a war, he wanted them fighting for the right side!” So he picked up his family and settled them in the U.S. This was in about 1911, only a few years before the start of World War I. Grandma also mentioned that her father knew war was coming because he knew Archduke Franz Ferdinand would be assasinated.

As I told this story, I explained that I was never really sure what Grandma meant by "he knew Archduke Franz Ferdinand would be assisinated”. Did she use “he knew" in the sense that I used it with a child when he kept leaning back in his chair, and finally one day, he leaned too far and toppled over backwards. “I always KNEW that was going to happen if you kept it up!” Probably Grandma only meant that her dad knew the situation was tense and that assasination was a possibility. But did she mean that he actually KNEW about the plot, and was maybe even in on the planning? I’ll never know, I guess.

But what I DO know is that my nephew took that little tidbit and ran with it. “Cool! Our family started World War I!” Lots of laughter. It’s become a family joke that we bring up and laugh about anytime World War I is mentioned. We all know it’s not true, but it’s fun to laugh about.

But fast forward 100 years from now when a future great-great-great-grandaughter of my grandma is working on her family history. All she knows is that her mother told her that she can remember her crazy uncle telling the story of how his great-great-grandfather started World War 1. Will she take his story as fact? Will she repeat the story unverified? Will she spend countless frustrating hours trying to find evidence that verifies the story? Or will she MAYBE find evidence none of us today even consider to exist—will she verify that my great-grandfather WAS in on the assination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand? Not too likely, but it does make for an interesting story—and the start of a family legend! Beware!

To learn more about my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks project, read my introductory blog post.

52 Ancestors in 2018 - Week 32: Youngest

 Week 32 is brought to you by the word ‘YOUNGEST’! Anna Colk was the youngest child and only known daughter of Jacob and Mary Colk (later spelled Kolk). Very little is known about Anna. In fact, the only mention I’ve found of her is in the 1870 census, when she was found living with her parents and four brothers in Madison County, Illinois. Her age is stated as 2 years old at the time of the census, which was taken in July of that year. That indicates that her birth occurred 1867-1868. I’ve been able to find all four brothers in later censuses, but have been unable to locate Anna.

 

I can think of two possible reasons for my inability to find her. The first, and most obvious possibility, is that Anna may have died before the 1880 census was taken. A young child dying in the 1800s was, sadly, not an unusual occurrence. I’ve not been able to locate a death record yet, but because death records were kept only sporadically in Illinois before about 1877, it’s possible I never will.

The other possibility I’ve thought of is that she was not living with her father’s household in 1880. Anna’s mother, Mary, died in 1878, when Anna would have been only about 10 years old. It’s possilbe that with only four young boys and himself in the household, Jacob sent his daughter to live with friends or relatives when her mother died. She may be living in another household, even using a different surname. I’ll need to spend some time looking at census records to see if I can find an Anna who was about 12 years old in 1880 census that could might Anna Colk. With Anna being a relatively common name, I don’t hold out much hope for success.

Beyond that, I’m out of ideas. If you’ve got suggestions, please leave them in the comments!

To learn more about my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks project, read my introductory blog post.

52 Ancestors in 2018 - Week 31: Oldest

The prompt for week 31 is ‘OLDEST’.
(Remember, I am playing 'catch-up' and not doing the weeks in order!
To learn more about my 52 Ancestors in 2018 project, read my introductory blog post.)
​

My great-grandfather, Paul Janco, to my knowledge, was my OLDEST living relative at the time I was born.
Paul was born 9 Nov 1865 and lived in what was at one time part of the Austria Hungary empire and later, Yugoslavia. I’m not sure what the jurisdiction was at the time of his birth.

Paul was 87 years old when I was born, and died just a few years later on 2 May 1957 at the age of 91. I don’t know if I ever met him; I certainly don’t remember it if I did, as I was very young when he died. It’s possible I did not meet him, as my mother does not have fond memories of him and didn’t enjoy spending time with him. He never masterer the English language and she found it very difficult to communicate with him. Though I wouldn’t remember meeting him, I do wish I had at least one picture taken with him. That would be so special!

 

​I don’t know when Paul came to the USA, but I do know that he was already here when his wife and younger children arrived in 1911. Paul lived in the US for almost 50 years before his death.The family originally settled in the Peoria, Illinois area, where Paul’s wife died 5 Jan 1913, shortly after the birth of her last child . Paul later relocated to  Branch, Michigan, where he was a farmer. The farm was somewhat primitive, probably even by the standards of 1930s America, but it did serve as a refuge for Paul’s children and grandchildren during the great depression. I’ve been told stories of having no electricity and snow deep enough that it was necessary to dig ‘tunnels’ to the outhouse, with a rope strung to hang on to so that no one lost their way when making the trip to the outhouse.

52 Ancestors in 2018 - Week 1: Start

The prompt for week 1 is ‘START’. This prompt made me think back to how I got started on my family history research. The truth is that I have always been interested at some level on who my ‘people’ were. I can remember hearing comments as I was growing up similar to ‘she’s a SMITH’ or ‘she married a JONES’. My grandma also had handwritten notes with her parents’ names and their parents’ names—or as much as she knew about them. There was nothing formal—no family Bible, no photos of previous generations—just Grandma’s memories and her stories.

I knew even less about my dad’s side as both of my paternal grandparents died long before I was born. I knew their names, and that Grandma was from Germany and spoke German, and Grandpa was from Holland and did not speak German and got very annoyed when Grandma spoke German! (I’ve since found out that what I ‘knew’ was wrong. Both of my paternal grandparents were actually born in the USA!) I knew the WEISS surname was somehow connected to my dad’s family, but tI didn’t know how. And I had no idea, and no hope really, to ever go back beyond be great-grandparents, so I never pursued it.

Then one day, probably about 2002, after dropping my son off for swim practice, realized that instead of driving the 30 minutes home and turning around an hour later to drive the 30 minutes back, I could drive over and hang out at the library 10 minutes away! And as it turned out, it was the branch that housed the genealogy collection! I didn’t go planning to use the genealogy collection, but I had 90 minutes to fill, so I started browsing the shelves. I found a book by Robert P Sweiringa listing all of the Dutch households in the U.S. I’m not sure of the title, but I believe it must have been "Dutch Households in U.S. Population Censuses, 1850, 1860, 1870: An Alphabetical Listing by Family Heads”. Whatever the title, I found a Jacob KOLK living in Madison County, Illinois in the 1870 census listing! I was so excited! He had four sons, and I was able to find them in later censuses, and to link them to my grandfather! From there, I was off!

I’ve learned a lot about the process of doing genealogy since I made that discovery. I know I need to source my findings; to take good notes about what I’ve found and where I’ve found it. But I didn’t know that then. I only knew that I’d found them—my ancestors! I don’t have notes about what I found, and truthfully, I probably don’t need those notes. I have copies of the actual census records. But just the same, I wish I had a copy of that page, if only to help me remember how far I’ve come. Next time I go to the library, I think I will look for the book so that I can make a copy of the page!

I still haven’t traced the family back to Holland, and in a way I’m right back where I was back in 2002—feeling there is no hope to ever tracing the family back into Holland. But I’ve traced other branches of the family, including one branch back to Italy, so I will never say never. It just takes one breakthrough. I just have to START!

To learn more about my 52 Ancestors in 2018 project, read my introductory blog post.

52 Ancestors - Reboot!

 It's been awhile since I've blogged—or even worked on my genealogy, actually! I just got busy with other things and let it slide, and the longer I let it slide, the easier it became to ignore.

But in the past month, my interest has been reignited and I've been researching my ancestors and listening to some of my favorite genealogy podcasters. One of the podcasts I listened to was an episode of Genealogy Connection which featured Amy Johnson Crow, a genealogist whose blog I follow. On this episode, she discussed her 52 Ancestors project, and inspired me to try again.

I tried the 52 Ancestor in 52 Weeks project last year, and got off to a pretty good start—and then I stopped! This year the challenge is a little different. Instead of blogging about random ancestors, Amy is supplying a 1-word prompt each week to jump-start our blogging. The challenge started in January, and this is August, so I am about 30 weeks behind! Rather than try to catch up all at once, I am going to begin with the first word, Week 1, and then jump into this week's prompt. I will try to blog the new prompt each week, and at the same time, I will work my way through the old prompts. Hopefully I will do at least 2-3 posts a week until I am caught up. Obviously, these will not be in any particularly order, so I will be linking them here. I hope to have the entire list linked by the end of the year.

You can listen to the podcast that inspired me here and you can sign up for the challenge here.