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From: Joanne <>
Subject: [HUNGARY-L] Re: Advice For Beginners
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 12:29:07 -0400

I am new to this list but there seems to be alot of new researchers and I
thought you may find this article helpful. It doesn't take the place of a
good "how-to" genealogy book and belonging to a genealogy society
but.......and I also want to up front apologize that this is long but it is
a copy, with a few minor changes, of an article that I wrote to another
genealogical list and it was also published in Pathways and Passages, the
newsletter of the Polish Genealogical Society of the Northeast in the fall
1997 issue. The suggestions in this article will work for any country not
just those I site.

Also I have another area to check--old Christmas cards. My mother and I
were cleaning out a closet---my grandmother died in 1963 and we thought we
had cleaned out all her stuff (she lived with us) but in the back of what
had been her closet we just found a bag of Christmas cards. Looking thru
the cards we thought about all these people that we knew but then we saw a
card with a name we had never heard of! Well the last name was the same as
my great grandmother's maiden name so of course I was interested. I went to
the Social Security Death index on line and found where this person had
died. I then got the local newspaper thru my local public library and found
the obit which listed the children. Then to the phone book in the library
for the city that the daughter lived in and wrote a letter and just this
week I received a letter from a cousin---I never knew that relatives of my
great grandmother (who never immigrated) also came to the US and she knew
nothing about us either! Total cost of this find----a 33 cent stamp to the
daughter--and the fun and excitment of the search!

Good luck to all thsoe new to this most addicting hobby.

Joanne
Central PA

ADVICE FOR BEGINNERS

I just finished reading a few letters and felt that I had to write. I
probably will get a lot of feedback about this but I think it needs to be
said to all those relatively new to genealogy. I have been addicted to
genealogy for over 20 years and have done many lines, both my own and my
husband's. Some go back to the 1600's and some only go back to the late
1800's. We've covered England, Ireland, Germany, Poland and Slovakia. I
realize that it is every genealogist's dream to get information from
somewhere other that the U.S.A.--but you can't until you have exhausted
every source here in this coutry. And there are many! I realize that this
is not as exciting, but it is necessary.

There are archives in your country of origin, but their staffs need
inforamtion to pinpoint a document. You can't write to an archive in Poland
with only a name and a date and expect a positiive reply. It would be like
searching for a needle in a haystack. They don' t have every document ever
issued in their country, alphabetized and waiting at their fingertips just
to send to you. And then sometimes we wonder why they get so negative when
they receive a request from those "Americans" who are so impatient for a
baptism record of a great grandfather who was born "about 1880 somewhere" in
their country.

There are many sources here in the U.S. that are obvious--death certificates
(but always remember the latter are "second-hand" information),
naturalizations, census, etc. But there are others to try:

1.) Check baptisms of their children here in the U.S. Many ethnic U.S
churches would also record the parents' place of baptism to "prove" their
(i.e. parents') baptism. And look at all the children--my great grandparents
had 10 children and only one had a church in Poland listed. I might add,
this was the only document I found with their village listed, and it wasn't
on my grandmother's baptism! So don't confine your research to direct-line
ancestry.

2.) Check who were the godparents for their children, and who they were
friends with. Talk to everyone who may have known them. Many times a
census here in the U.S. almost reads like the church records in the
ancestral village--in other words, many times more than one family came and
settled in the same area here, too. So if there is no inforamtion on your
direct relatives, try their friends' records. This may at least narrow the
area of your search down. My great uncle was a "runner" to Slovakia for the
area coal mines--his son told me how his father made at least 4 trips "back
home" with the sole purpose of getting more men to come work the mines. And
the list of residents of one row of company houses here reads like the
village in Slovakia.

3.) Funeral homes are usually very good and helpful sources of a great deal
of information. Plus they have exactly the same information that was
supplied for the death certificate, plus most have more, so you can save
yourself a few bucks. We found one of my husband's "lost" great great
aunt's descendants because the funeral director gave me the name of the
person who paid to have the grass on her grave mowed every year--a call to
this person turned up a granddaughter. Plus I have found funeral directors
go out of their way with information. When I asked for some information on
a relative, he also sent me all the funerals they had handled with the same
surname. What a gift!

4.) Check the court houses for unusual documents--land tranfers, wills, even
disputes among neighbors, orphans, etc. My grandfather and his half brother
filed a document in our local court giving up any rights they had to family
land in Slovakia to their sister---there was her name and the address where
it was sent in Slovakia.

6.) And I can't say enough about the LDS. If you look at baptisms,
marriages, and deaths yourself, you will find so much more than what is just
reorded on one document from an archive. Plus some records also list house
numbers, and this can lead to realtives as you go back thru records. The
cost is minimal when you see what you gain. Also they usually did not travel
great distances to marry, so after I had looked at all the baptisms,
marraiges, and deaths of my great grandparents and their ancestors in
"their" village, I then ordered the records for the village churches within
a 10 mile radius. This lead to the marraige record of my g-g-g-g-g
grandparents in 1812 in a village about 6 miles away from where my great
grandparents lived. Digging deeper in these records then gave me the family
of my g-g-g-g-g grandmother as this was "her" village--something I would
never have known from the village records I initally looked at.

Also remember "George" and "whatever" you find are "Americanized" names. For
example, in Poland, the Latin church baptism will have "Adalbertus", his
family called him "Wojtek", his marriage record may have "Wojciech", the
German ship's captain listed him as "Albert" and the records here in the
U.S. call him "George"--and this is all the same name! So don't say these
are "different" names.

Sometimes their place of work found the Polish names with all the consonants
too hard to pronounce and would just say, "From today your paycheck will say
'John Smith'" and from that day he was John Smith. So don't always assume
that every "Wawrezyniec" will be "Lawrence", or "Stanislawa" will be
"Stella", they could just as easily be James or Mary!

6.) Talk with the "Senior Citizens" in the neighborhood. And please don't
ask specific names and dates. Let them talk about their lives and the lives
of your relatives--record if possible. Sometimes I have found that if you
ask the elderly a specfic date they will just say they "don't know". Two
very dear ladies in their late 80's helped me more than I can say just by
telling me stories. Previously, before I had known better, I had asked if
they knew if my great grandmother had any siblings here in the U.S and they
said they "didn't know." But when they started remembering a funeral they
had attended as young girls, the one thing that really impressed them was a
man who came in a "fancy buggy with a pretty horse." When I asked who this
was they said "your grandmother's uncle" (in other words, my great
grandmother's brother). I got more names and relationships from the
discussion of this one funeral then I would have ever had from just asking
specific dates and names. Plus I learned so much of what life was like for
my relative,which I believe is just as important to genealogy as collecting
names and dates!

7.) When you finally find a village and it is a "large, famous" city, don't
just look at records there. Yes, I kow people were born in these cities and
they immigrated too, but many immigrants came to work the coal mines and
steel mills and weren't the shop owners of the cities. But when asked where
they came from, they would give a town that would be recognized by the
ship's captain, Ellis Island clerk, court house clerk (people who didn't
speak their language would have trouble spelling it "right"). So it was
easier for my grandfather just to say "Lomza" (something easier for the
clerk to recognize) then his village of Szwendrowy Most which was 40 km.
east. And don't shake your head that you "don't believe it"--we travel alot
throughout the U.S. and when asked where we are from, rather than say the
small town we live near, we just say we live "an hour south of Penn State".
We don't even use a town! Everyone just nods in understanding, but a
genealogist in 100 years will have fun trying to locate this on any map! So
don't ask why your ancestor listed the "wrong" place of birth on his
records. If you don't find your relative in the records where you think
these records should be (most of the time they aren't), you should branch
out to the neighboring villages.

I am sorry I have gone on so long, but I hope this will make everyone see
that there are lots of places to check before you can "get back to ______"
(you fill in the country of choice!)

And one last thing genealogy is so much fun and we can all share our ideas,
research methods, and it benefits all. This is not a solitary hobby! I have
made so many friends through this pastime and they have helped me so much--I
hope I have at least helped them too. Ask for help and directions, but
don't expect someone else to look everything up for you---that takes all the
fun out of genealogy!

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• [HUNGARY-L] Re: Advice For Beginners by Joanne <>