Sto Lat – 100 Years

If my grandfather Henry Pater was still alive, today would be his 100th birthday.   This post is in his honor: Just the Facts: Parents: Louis Pater (born Ludwik Pater, 1893-1957) and Elizabeth Miller (born Elżbieta Müller, 1891-1972) Born: 25 March 1912, Langhorne, Bucks County, Pennsylvania Baptized: 04 April 1912, Our Lady of Grace RC Church, [...]

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Who Needs an Index?

Genealogists are eagerly awaiting the release of the 1940 U.S. Federal Census in April 2012 so we can track down the information on all of our relatives. While Ancestry will have the images available for free, they will probably not be indexed for some time. For me, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing…my family’s track [...]

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Sweet Sixteen Redux

Back on August 9, 2009, Randy Seaver presented another Saturday Night Genealogical Fun (SNGF) challenge for readers to document their sixteen great-great-grandparents.  I responded to the call with Sweet Sixteen: My Great-Great Grandparents.  But, my tree was a little bare in some spots.  I did not know at least 4 names and was “iffy” on [...]

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Surname Saturday: DROGOWSKI

Surname – DROGOWSKI Meaning/Origin – The name DROGOWSKI (hear it pronounced in Polish) is derived from the Polish word drogi meaning “dear” .   (Source: Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings, Second Edition by William F. Hoffman) Country of Origin – The surname DROGOWSKI is Polish.  According to the World Names Profiler, Poland has the highest frequency [...]

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The Boy Next Door

In 1944’s movie musical Meet Me in St. Louis, Judy Garland’s character is in love with the boy next door.  She sings about him in the appropriately titled “The Boy Next Door”, written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane: The moment I saw him smile, I knew he was just my style, My only regret [...]

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Why Photographs Should Come with ID Tags

Genealogists frequently stress the importance of labeling photographs so that future generations know who’s who.  This is true even for our own photographs that we take today.  But while we may forget who are friends were twenty years later, would we forget a relative?  I can now tell you that yes, it’s possible, especially if [...]

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Surname Saturday: ZAWODNY

Surname – ZAWODNY Meaning/Origin – The name ZAWODNY (hear it pronounced in Polish) is derived from the Polish word zawodny, meaning “unreliable” or “deceptive”.  The root zawod- comes from the word zawieść, which means to disappoint or deceive. (Source: Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings, Second Edition by William F. Hoffman and the University of Pittsburgh [...]

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Another Zawodny Wedding

09 March 2010 – Correction!  This couple was mis-identified.  It is not the Tiernan-Zawodny wedding.  It is the wedding of Joseph Bergmeister and Helen Pardus.  For more info on why the identification was wrong, see Why Photographs Should Come with ID Tags. This month’s Smile for the Camera carnival theme is “Wedding Belles”!  Last June [...]

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Photo Mystery Solved

A mystery involving one of the family photos I have posted on this site has been solved!  Oddly enough, it was not one of my Photo Mystery posts, but it can still be considered a mystery of sorts.  Last June I posted the 1925 wedding photo shown to the left for the Smile for the [...]

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Road Trip, 1932

There’s a new carnival in town – A Festival of Postcards.  This carnival will be a bit more challenging than the others I participate in, because I do not have a large collection of postcards – and very few related to genealogy!  But half the fun is the challenge itself, and I was delighted to [...]

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The Slesinski Sisters: Part 3 – Research Confirmed

Part 1 of this series presented the photographs that led me to investigate the lives of my great-grandmother and her four sisters.  In Part 2, I detailed my genealogical research.  Years after I had completed this research, I received a happy confirmation in a rather unusual way.  My mother reconnected with her elderly aunt – [...]

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The Slesinski Sisters: Part 1 – The Photographs

Genealogists know that finding the “married names” for women is can be difficult.  Is it possible to research women without knowing who they married?  In the case of my great-grandmother’s sisters, the answer was surprisingly “Yes!”  This story is also interesting because it involves photographs – some that began the investigation, and some that proved [...]

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