Hooray for Wild Cards!

 It's been awhile since I posted. I've been busily working on my genealogy with Zotero and Trello as my companions. I'll post more about those another time, but today I want to talk about wild cards. What is a wild card, you ask? Simply put, it is doing a search with an asterisk substituted for a letter or group of letters. This is useful when you aren't sure of the exact spelling of a name. For example, I have seen my Janco surname spelled alternately as Janko, Jansgo, and even Jansco. Rather than search for these individually, I could use a wild card to search for the name 'Ja*o'.

And that is exactly what I did early today. I've been searching for some time for my Paul Janco in ship manifests with no luck, even using creative spellings of the name. I knew that he was already in the US when the rest of his family arrived in 1911. Recently I found him in census records (another story!) and learned that he arrived in 1907. I did a quick search for him on Family Search, again with no luck! So I decided to try a wild card search.

First I narrowed my search. I knew that he family had arrived through the Port of Baltimore, and thought there was a good chance that he would have traveled through the same port before sending for his family. I knew I could widen the search to other ports if necessary, so I restricted my search to Baltimore Passenger Records. I typed 'Ja*o' into the surname box, but I knew that I'd searched for Paul Janco and Paul Jansco with no luck earlier. So on a hunch, I also used a wild card for the first name, typing in 'P*l'. I knew he was born about 1865, so I restricted the birth years from 1860-1870. I hit search and BOOM! — there it was! Along with yet another spelling — JANCSO.

Pal Jansco Maryland, Baltimore Passenger Lists, 1820-1948

From other information on the ship manifest, I can see that Paul is traveling to St. Louis to join George Kovacs. There is something written in front of Georg that I can't make out. I can also see that this is not the first time that Paul has entered the US. In 1904, he arrived in the US with a destination of Akron, Ohio.
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​You can see the full image here.

52 Ancestors in 2018 - Week 37: Closest To Your Birthday

The prompt for week 37 was ‘closest to your birthday’. I found no one in my database born ON my birthday, though I did find one who DIED on my birthday — my ACTUAL birthday; same year! But because he is only distantly related and I have done very little research on him, I’m don’t feel like I have anything interesting to say about him.

Instead I decided to look at one of the people with a birthday that is relatively close to mine — within a few weeks of my birthday. I’ve chosen to write about a cousin who is a bit of a mystery to me. His name was Luther Edward Davis, or Robert Russell Wille.

I knew my grandmother’s sister had a son, but that he was not ever talked about. We never saw Aunt Elizabeth often, as she lived ‘way out’ in South Dakota. I always thought of her as an old maid when I was a little girl, but it turns out she’d been married and had a son. That’s really all I knew for a long time. Then one day I found this piece of paper in my grandmother’s handwriting—

I did a little searching and found a few interesting things. First I found a 1940 census page for Fall River County, South Dakota showing 5-year-old Robert Wille living with his parents, Pearl and William. This isn’t much to go on, but the age is consistant for a child who was born in June 1934.

So I kept searching, and found the 1945 census cards for Robert Russell Wille, as well as Pearl Wille and William R Wille, all living in Hot Springs, Fall River County, with the same P.O. Box number. Robert is listed as age 11, which would have been the correct age for a child born in 1934. Now here is where it gets interesting! Robert was born in Bruce, which is in Brookings County, South Dakota, where my great-aunt lived. And more interesting, on the top of the census card for Robert it states ‘adopted son’!

I’ve found a listing in the SSDI for a Robert R Wille, born 8 Jun 1934, died 22 Oct 2011. I believe the card was issued in South Dakota, though I need to go back and read more about the SSDI to verify that.

I’ve also found a couple of marriages for a Robert Wille in Fall River County, South Dakota, with Robert’s birth year estimated to be 1934 or 1935, and a divorce; a California divorce for one of the marriages. I believe these all to refer to Elizabeth’s son, but I’ve not yet done enough research to be sure.

I’d like to find an obituary for Robert. I’d also like to know WHY he was given up for adoption. The little I remember of Elizabeth was that she was a single woman and while not poverty-stricken, probably didn’t have a lot of money. It’s possible she found herself unable to provide for her child when she was no longer a married woman. I wish I’d known enough of the story to ask questions while my Grandma was still alive, but I’m not sure I would have gotten that answers I was seeking anyway. This seemed to be topic not to be discussed!

I found a tree on Ancestry a few years ago, but I don’t have a paid subscription and did not see a way to contact the owner of the tree. I tried tracking her down on Facebook, but unfortunately while the response was very polite, the Facebook user apparently was not the person I was seeking .

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

52 Ancestors in 2018 - Week 43: Cause of Death

The theme for Weed 43 is ‘Cause of Death’. We know that everyone is going to have one, and some will be pretty unusual. And others are pretty common, at least at a particular time and place. Today I want to tell you a story about one such death. I have no sources for this story, other than oral history as told by my grandmother.

Grandma had a little sister, Elizabeth Janco, perhaps pronounced Jansgo where she was born in the part of the Kingdom of Austria-Hungary later known as Yugoslavia. Grandma loved her baby sister, and Elizabeth followed big sister Susie everywhere. One day they were outside playing, when little Elizabeth stepped on a thorn; a thorn from a locust tree. Not a big deal, right? It’s a little painful, but…

Have you even seen a thorn from a locust tree? These can be quite long and sharp. Here is an illustration of a twig from a honey locust.

Mathews, F. Schuyler, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

 As you can see, even the small thorns are a quarter inch or more! I’m not sure what variety of locust tree was growing in that part of Europe at the time, but any locust thorn was a hazard!
 

In addition to the immediate pain, there were other dangers—the danger of infection. This was the first decade of the 1900s. The tetanus vaccine had not been developed. That didn’t happen until the 1920s, and even then, it was not terribly effective. There was no neosporin to put on the wound, and no antibiotics to be given when the infection started. Penicillin was not discovered until 1928! I think we live in a world where vaccines and antibiotics are so readily available, we sometimes forget just how important they are!

But that was not the case for Elizabeth. Consequently, there was little to be done for her except to clean the wound and hope for the best. Unfortunately, little Elizabeth did develop an infection which Grandma referred to as ‘blood poisoning’. Sadly, Elizabeth sucumbed to the infection. Forever after, Grandma hated locust trees, cursing them whenever she saw one, and woe be it to the seedling that happened to sprout up in her yard!

While there was no happy ending for little Elizabeth, there was a bittersweet ending for Grandma. Shortly after the family came to America, her mother gave birth to another daughter—they named her Elizabeth! Grandma had another baby sister to love and protect.

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

Sources:

• "Tetanus", (tetanus.pdf), page 1, Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, viewed 22 Oct 2018
• "Alexander Fleming's Discovery of Penicillin", ACS website, viewed 22 Oct 2018

52 Ancestors in 2018 - Week 39: On The Farm

 I’ve missed a couple of weeks, but I’m back with Week 39. I’ll catch up on the others as soon as I can.
This week the magic phrase is ‘On The Farm’. I have a lot of famers in my ancestry — a lot! So rather than choosing one, I’m going to give a quick synopsis of the farming background I have.

 I have farmer’s in virtually every branch of my ancestry. I created this color-coded chart to give me a quick visual on my farming background and where the farms were located. 

 The white backgrounds are ancestors who either weren’t farmers, or I’ve not yet determined their careers. For the most part, the female ancestors are blank. In general, their occupations have been listed as ‘housewife’, however, if they were married to a farmer and lived on a farm, I’m pretty sure it would be safe to label them as ‘farmers’, too!
More recent generations, my parents and grandparents, have chosen occupations other than farming,

My mother’s paternal ancestor’s were from Italy, indicated by purple. My maternal great-grandfather did not farm once he came to the United States, but I have no doubt that he at least helped his parents with farming while he was still in Italy! Both he and his wife grew up in a very small village in Tuscany, and their parents and grandparents were all farmers!
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My mother’s paternal grandfather was also a farmer. He lived in central Illinois when he first came to the U.S. and may have farmed there. I’ve not found evidence of this, but I do know he owned a farm in Michigan, indicated by pink. Here is a picture of him on his farm, probably during the Great Depression.

 My dad’s side of the family were also farmers. My paternal grandfather farmed with his father as a young man, but moved on to other things as industry moved into the area. However as you move back, you can see that almost all of his ancestors were farmers, with farms very close in proximity. The red, yellow, and green all indicate farms in Fosterburg Township of Madison County, Illinois. The turquoise indicates a farm in the next county, Macoupin, that abuts to Fosterburg, so it was just a few miles away. Below is a plat map of Fosterburg Township illustrating just how closely located they were. 

 The red indicates farms owned by my dad’s paternal grandfather and his brother. The yellow and green are farms owned by his maternal ancestors. And the blue? Well that came as quite a surprise to me. It turns out that those farms were owned by farmers who are probably part of my sister-in-law’s ancestry! It just shows that you never know who you will connect with!

To learn more about my 52 Ancestors in 2018 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 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.)
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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.