Various photos from throughout Margaret Bergmeister Pointkouski’s life. Top Row: First Communion Day (circa 1919-1920), with her first born – my dad (circa winter 1934-35), with husband James (1957), portrait (1972). Center: Bergmeister siblings in 1959. Bottom Row: portrait (circa early 1930′s), with husband James (1962), and with children (winter 1942-3).

Just the Facts:

• Parents: Joseph Bergmeister (1873-1927) and Marie Echerer (1875-1919)
• Born: 11 April 1913, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania
• Baptized: 13 April 1912, St. Peter’s RC Church, Philadelphia, PA
• Siblings: Marie (1898-1990), Joseph (1902-1986), Max (1905-1974), Julius 1908-19??), Charles (1909), Laura (1911)
• Married: James Pointkouski on 13 January 1934 in Media, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. The civil marriage was later blessed at St. Peter’s RC Church, Philadelphia, PA.
• Children: James and Jean
• Died: 14 January 1998
• Buried: 17 January 1998, Holy Redeemer Cemetery, Philadelphia, PA

Grandchildren & Second Cousins: From left to right: Mabel, Carol, Marie, Helen holding Robert with Suzanne below, and Margaret holding Drew. Marie and Margaret are sisters & Helen is their sister-in-law. Marie is holding her granddaughter Carol, Mabel’s daughter. Helen is holding her grandchildren, and Margaret is holding her grandson (my brother). Photo date – around spring of 1960.

Five Things I Learned About My Grandmother from Genealogical Records:

• Grandmom’s middle name, according to her baptismal record, was Hermina. No one knew where the name came from until I found Uncle Herman Goetz in my research, her father’s half-brother who was also her godfather. The reason why no one in the family remembered Uncle Herman is because he died in 1918 and she likely didn’t remember him at all.
• She was probably named after her maternal grandmother, Margarethe Fischer Echerer (1845-1895).
• Grandmom barely knew her parents. Her mother died in 1919 about six weeks before Grandmom’s 6th birthday. Then in 1927 when she was not quite 14, her father died.
• Although she was born in 1913, she is completely missing from the 1920 and 1930 census!
• Her first child, my father, was born less than seven months after the wedding.

The Pointkouski family circa 1960

Five Things I Learned About My Grandmother from My Dad and Aunt:

• According to my Aunt Jean, when Grandmom was born she was so tiny that she could fit into a shoebox. Her parents weren’t sure she’d survive – they had two children in between her brother Julius and her that only lived for one day. 
• My grandmother always said that her Aunt Laura was very good to her. Laura was Hilaury Bergmeister Thuman, her father’s sister. After her parents died, Aunt Laura and her husband, Uncle Max, were the closest thing to parents she’d have. Uncle Max died in 1941 and Aunt Laura in 1943 – while I’m sure Grandmom would have liked their support for much longer in her life, at least by then she had a husband and children of her own.
• A description of her parents was passed down, but I’m not sure if the memory came from my grandmother or her older siblings – likely the siblings since she was so young when her mother died. But, her mother was remembered as a very short, fiesty woman who ruled the household – and ruled her husband, Joseph, whom she called “Sepp” for short.  Although he was taller than his wife, he but obedient to everything she said.
• Grandmom met my Grandpop at her brother Max’s store. Grandpop worked as a truck driver delivering ice cream, and Max’s soda fountain was on his route. He spotted Margaret one day, and excitedly asked Max, “Who’s that?” Max looked around, “Her? Aw, she’s just my sister.”
• My Grandmom was called “Aunt Margie” by her nieces and nephews. She seemed to be very close to them, especially her nieces Marie and Mabel who were only 7 and 11 years younger than her (her sister Marie’s daughters). After Grandmom died, I found some correspondence in her house that she had saved over the years from her niece Helen and nephews Bob and Carl, all children of her brother Joseph.

Grandmom and me, 1977

Five Things I Learned About My Grandmother From Knowing Her:

• She always called my grandfather “Pop”
• She made ceramics as a hobby. Two that have survived over the years are a Christmas tree (with lights) and a candy dish shaped like a sleigh that says “The Pointkouski Family”.  I remember from my childhood that she made my brother a hockey player figurine (or was it a lamp?) with a Flyers jersey, and a Tin Man lamp for my father when he played the Tin Man in a show.
• She was a knitter and made afghans. I still have one she made for our family.
• She was blind in one eye for the last 20+ years of her life. I think it was due to glaucoma.
• She always signed her cards “Grandmom, Love” instead of the other way around

Happy Birthday, Grandmom!

Filed under: Bergmeister, Miscellaneous, Piontkowski / Pointkouski ]]> http://pastprologue.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/happy-100th-grandmom/feed/ 0 djpoint Various photos from throughout Margaret Bergmeister Pointkouski's life. Top Row: First Communion Day (circa 1919-1920), with her first born - my dad (circa winter 1934-35), with husband James (1957), portrait (1972). Center: Bergmeister siblings in 1959. Bottom Row: portrait (circa early 1930's), with husband James (1962), and with children (winter 1942-3). From left to right: Mabel, Carol, Marie, Helen holding Robert with Suzanne below, and Margaret holding Drew. Marie and Margaret are sisters & Helen is their sister-in-law. Marie is holding her granddaughter Carol, Mabel's daughter. Helen is holding her grandchildren, and Margaret is holding her grandson (my brother). Photo date - around spring of 1960. The Pointkouski family circa 1960 Grandmom and me, 1977 http://pastprologue.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/where-im-from/ http://pastprologue.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/where-im-from/#comments Sun, 07 Apr 2013 00:25:09 +0000 Donna Pointkouski http://pastprologue.wordpress.com/?p=2888 ]]>

Back in July 2011, Randy Seaver posted a “Saturday Night Genealogy Fun” (SNGF) challenge to create a “Where I’m From” poem using the template at this site. I started a post then but never completed it, and I stumbled upon the draft on my laptop the other day. Now Randy has posted the challenge again tonight! This time I decided to let my creativity out and came up with this little ditty about Where I’m From.  We all have a story – where are You from?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Where I’m From

I am from home-cooked meals, from chicken soup and Tastykakes.

I am from the city of brotherly love, rooting for the Fightin’ Phils and the Broad Street Bullies, from playing wiffle ball in the street and riding bikes down Kirby Drive.

I am from sweltering humid summers, occasional blizzards in cold winters, from honeysuckle and buzzing cicadas.

I am from laughter and stubbornness, from Jimmy and Chick, from Pointkouski’s and Bergmeister’s and Pater’s and Zawodny’s.

I am from factory workers and truck drivers, from part-time tap dancers and comedians, from hard workers earning a living but never doing what their hearts wanted to do most.

I am from using every pot to cook a meal and never going out with wet hair.

I am from Catholic school, from believing in the Real Presence and knowing good priests and fun nuns. I am from the rosary and down in adoration falling and holding hands to pray around the kitchen table.

I am from the Far Northeast in Philly, from Poles and Bavarians, from pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. I am from cheese steaks and hoagies, from chocolate and wine.

I am from the stowaway with the secret name, or maybe not, and from the baker called Sepp, and from the made-up surname that no one can spell.

I am from mysteries and myths, from faces in too few black and white photographs, from immigrants who left the only homes they knew to create a new one far away. I am from a family that didn’t hand down heirlooms but instead I inherited humor, love, and faith.

“The Passage of Time” – Photo by ToniVC at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonivc/2283676770/

Well, it’s been a long break here since my last post. I’d love to say it’s because I’ve been off having some fascinating adventures, but… not really. As luck would have it (or lack of luck), I’ve never had so many different things to blog about at a time in which I have no time for blogging due to other duties. There’s been a lot of genealogical discoveries in recent weeks, so I hope to have time to write about them soon. Rather than spending a lot of time writing my usual long, fact-filled posts, here’s a sampling of some of my recent genealogical adventures that I hope to post about in greater detail soon:

Have you ever found a birth record for someone that convinces you it’s your someone…only to discover that person’s death record a year later? Hmm, right name, wrong person…that makes me wonder if any of my “ancestors” in my tree are the wrong person because I didn’t check to see if “they” died as a child.

Have you ever come to a complete dead end only to realize that maybe, just maybe you’re looking in the wrong place for the wrong name?  In my case, I hadn’t considered that the professional translator I hired may have translated a record incorrectly. I’ve been searching for the wrong person. In the wrong town. It happens; even pros make mistakes. Get a second opinion.  Or third.  For me, the third time was the charm.

I recently found a connection in someone else’s tree. Someone else’s very well-documented and well-sourced tree. That’s never happened before. After receiving confirmation through additional research that we’re talking about the same person, I was able to add his research to my tree. Lots of information. Almost 50 new surnames. On some lines, I went back so many generations my head was spinning. A 13th great-grandfather? Dates in the 1500s? Mind. Officially. Blown.

Besides all the great new Bavarian surnames I’ve added to my tree, some first names that are “firsts” on my family tree are: Sebastian, Ulrich, Veit, Kaspar, Sabina, Gregor, Abraham, August, Agathe, Brigitte, Nikolaus, and Melchoir. And about a dozen men named Georg. And another couple of dozen Johanns to add to my multitude of John’s and Joe’s.

Finally, William at Among My Branches has given me the Liebster Award. He’s asked me to answer some questions:

• (1) How long have you been researching your family history? I officially began in 1989.
• (2) What made you begin researching your family history? I watched Roots in 1977 and wanted to do what Alex Haley did because I had no idea where my ancestors came from. In 1989, I had some time and a friend who was equally interested in learning her family’s history so we learned about how to research.
• (3) Was there an ancestor or relative in your family that was also interested in family history or preserved important documents and records? None at all.
• (4) Have you uncovered any connections to famous people? Nope. I descend from good peasant stock.
• (5) What is the furthest generation back that you have a photograph for that ancestor–i.e., 1st, 2nd, 3rd great grandparent, etc. I have photos of six of my great-grandparents. The oldest photo of a collateral relative is the brother of my 2nd great-grandfather.
• (6) Do you have any family recipes that have been handed down through the generations? No.
• (7) What was the country of origins for your grandparents? Bavaria/Germany, Tirol/Austria, Poland, and Bohemia.
• (8) Name a fun fact from your paternal grandfather’s ancestry? My paternal grandfather’s grandfather is the first Polish ancestor I discovered who was literate. He was a valet/footman.
• (9) Name a fun fact from your paternal grandmother’s ancestry? My paternal grandmother descends from a long line of Bavarian shoemakers and millers.
• (10) Name a fun fact from your maternal grandfather’s ancestry? My maternal grandfather’s family were weavers, shoemakers, and cloth merchants. I now work with the apparel and footwear industry.
• (11) Name a fun fact from your maternal grandmother’s ancestry? My maternal grandmother told me a lot of really interesting stories about her family that I’ve managed to disprove with my research!

My questions are a bit different. It’s not quite the Proust Questionnaire, but… I am not going to nominate 11 blogs because most of my blogger friends have either already been nominated, haven’t blogged for a long time like me, or don’t usually partake of award posts. So, any and all are welcome to answer my silly questions in the comments!

1. What’s the most unique ancestor’s first name in your tree? 
2. What’s your favorite ancestral surname?
3. Twitter or Facebook?
4. What’s the oldest verified birth year in your tree?
5. Kirk or Picard?
6. Who’s your favorite author?
7. Kelly or Astaire?
8. What’s your favorite sound?
9. What’s your favorite quote?
10. Who’s your favorite ancestor?
11. Which ancestor would you most like to meet?

Academy Award winning actor Timothy Hutton congratulates the author on her iGENE Awards.

Each year the (nonexistent) Academy of Genealogy and Family History (AGFH) offers genealogy bloggers the opportunity to celebrate the “best of the best” – our best blog posts for the previous year. In fact, I usually try to avoid listing my “favorites” at the end of the year in anticipation of the annual iGENE post. But this year, the Carnival of Genealogy is on hiatus and I missed the annual opportunity to continue the tradition. So in honor of the 85th Oscar Academy Awards tomorrow – and giving me a good reason to show the photo above – I decided to go ahead and present my own 2012 iGENE Awards anyway. So without further ado, the “Academy” has reviewed all of the entries, read the critics’ reviews, and counted all the votes…it’s time to roll out the red carpet and present the honors.  Welcome to the 2012 iGENE Awards starring What’s Past is Prologue!

Best Picture

 “Gorgeous!”  ~ Wendy Littrell of All My Branches

The Best Picture award goes to Sepia Saturday: Mom on a Bike from August. My mom strikes a pose in the schoolyard when she was fourteen. The photo is from 1950, but her sense of fashion is timeless!

Best Screenplay

“Your post is of great of encouragement to me that those who were once ‘lost’ may indeed be (and deserve to be) ‘found’.” ~ Cynthia Shenette of Heritage Zen

The story of my great-grandfather’s cousin in His Name was Józef Pater wins the award for Best Screenplay. And what a screenplay it would make! It’s the story of a decorated war hero who became a leader in the Polish Underground to fight the atrocities of the Nazi regime. Captured by the Nazis, he is given the opportunity to escape but passes to prevent repercussions for his imprisoned wife. Transferred to Auschwitz, Józef died as a political prisoner and his story was forgotten by his extended family – until now.

Best Documentary

“What a neat find, Donna. Guess it goes to show some of the best discoveries are accidental ones.” ~ Shelley Bishop from A Sense of Family

The winner of the Best Documentary goes to What Happened to Uncle Herman? which documented my investigation of why my grandmother’s uncle seemed to disappear from records. By tracking his life events and doing some additional research, I finally discovered what happened to poor Uncle Herman.

Best Biography

“Wonderful narrative!” ~ C. Michael Eliasz-Solomon, Stanczyk – Internet Muse™

For the first time in the history of the iGENE Awards here, the winner of the Best Biography category is also the winner of the Best Screenplay. Cousin Józef was by far the most interesting life story I’ve discovered out of all of my relatives so far.

Best Comedy

“I can go to bed tonight with a smile on my face.” ~ Michelle Goodrum of The Turning of Generations

The winner of the Best Comedy award goes to September’s post, I Was a Teenage Car Thief. It wasn’t so funny at the time, but incidents like this become funnier as they become history. Read about how my friend and I stole our teacher’s car in high school…or at least that’s how the story is told.

Previous iGENE Award Posts:

• The Envelope Please…2011 iGENE Awards
• 2010 iGENE Awards…and the winner is…
• I’d Like to Thank the Academy…2009 iGENE Awards
• The 2008 iGENE Awards

Surname - BERGMEISTER

Meaning/Origin – The Bergmeister surname is not listed in the Dictionary of German Names, Second Edition by Hans Bahlow, which is the reference book I usually use for my German surnames. However, in German berg means “mountain” and meister means “master”. According to Wikipedia, a Bergmeister was a mine manager or foreman in German-speaking Europe who, along with the Bergvogt, was one of the officials serving on a mining court (Berggericht). 

Countries of Origin – The surname Bergmeister is German. According to the World Names Profiler, the countries with the highest frequency per million residents are Austria with 21.83 individuals per million, Germany with 5.55, and Italy with 2.64.  The next highest countries (and their respective frequency per million) are Norway (0.28) and the United States (0.24).

Spelling Variations - Variations include PERGMEISTER or PERMEISTER. The name was originally spelled with a “P” but evolved into the “B” spelling by the 18th century. Other spelling variations may include similar names beginning with “BURG” or ending with -MASTER, -MEIER, -MAIER, -MEYER.

Surname Maps – The following maps illustrate the frequency of the BERGMEISTER surname in Austria and Germany.

Distribution of the BERGMEISTER surname in Austria.

Distribution of the BERGMEISTER surname in Germany.

SOURCE: Dynastree Surname Mapping database, http://www.verwandt.de/karten/absolut/bergmeister.html, accessed January 26, 2013.

Famous Individuals with the Surname - Jörg Bergmeister (b. 13 Feb 1976) is a race car driver from Germany. There was also a rather famous (and really cool-looking) motorcycle built in Bavaria in the 1950′s called the Victoria Bergmeister V 35.

My Family – My BERGMEISTER family comes from a small town in Bavaria, Germany called Puch which is located near Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm. My Bergmeister ancestors arrived in this town in April 1688 and apparently originated from Tyrol in the Pflersch valley near Gossensaß. Today this area is in the Bolzano province of the Trentino-Alto Adige region of northern Italy. For many years I wished I had Italian heritage only to find out that my Bavarian-Tyrolean ancestors come from what is actually Italy today.

My earliest documented ancestor so far with this name is Jakob PERMEISTER, a miller born in Tyrol who immigrated north to Puch by 1688 and purchased a mill. My line of descent is as follows (all were born and died in Puch and worked as millers until my great-great-grandfather): Martin (1689-1752) > Johann Paul (1721-1784) > Joseph (1763-1840) > Jakob (1805-1870) > Joseph (1843- before 1885) > Joseph (1873 in Vohburg a.d. Donau – 1927 in Philadelphia, PA, USA) > Margaret (1913-1998). This last Joseph was my great-grandfather who immigrated to the U.S. While the earlier generations of his family are well documented, I have yet to find the death date for his father Joseph, who worked as a flour merchant for the family’s mill.  More information on their children can be found on the Bergmeister Family Page. Today I am in contact with not only second cousins who descend from the same immigrant great-grandfather, but also with cousins in Germany who descend from other lines from both Joseph born in 1763 and Jakob born in 1805.

My Research Challenges – The challenge is finding records to connect the Tirol Bergmeister family with my ancestral line living in Puch in the late 1600′s. My fifth cousin once removed is diligently working this back in Germany. We would like to connect our Puch line with another family of Bergmeisters originating in Hördt in the Rhineland-Palatinate area of Germany (whose descendants immigrated to Philadelphia, PA, USA thirty years before my great-grandfather did). My challenges are 1) to continue with the research until the records end, 2) attempt to “connect” the various Bergmeister families to one common ancestor, 3) find the death record for my great-great grandfather some time before 1885 in or around Munich, and 4) contact descendants of my great-grandfather’s brother, Ignaz.

Other Bergmeister Families – As noted above, there is a branch of the family from Hördt that likely connects to our Puch branch back in the mid 1600′s. The name is uncommon enough for us to reasonably assume that all Bergmeister’s are related if you go back far enough!

Surname Message Boards – None that I have found.

Links to all posts about my Bergmeister family can be found here.

This post is #12 of an ongoing series about my family’s surnames. To see all posts in the series, click here.

My Aunt Donna’s blog is 5!

Tomorrow is the 5th blogiversary of What’s Past is Prologue! If blog years are anything like dog years, that’s a really long time. I’m humbled every year that I’ve managed to entertain, inform, and help others since I started this blog to entertain, inform, and help myself. I’ve found cousins, I’ve made friends. In five years, this blog has been viewed over 182,500 times and readers have left 1,665 comments. In 2012, I had 45,320 visitors (an increase since the previous year) for an average of 124 per day. And to that there’s only one thing to say about those statistics – thank you for visiting!

My five top posts (as in most visited) in 2012 were written in previous years. The top two posts written in 2012 were:

• TV’s Castle Can Help Solve Your Genealogical Mystery
• February: Short on Days, Long on Family Facts

My personal favorites over the last year were:

• Favorite Meme: The Genealogical Bucket List
• Most Comments: TV’s Castle Can Help Solve Your Genealogical Mystery
• Favorite Memory: I Was a Teenage Car Thief
• Favorite Reflection: 2012: A Look Back
• Favorite Research Posts (tie): His Name was Jozef Pater and A Great Discovery
• Favorite Silliness: Shades Birthday Edition: The Fountain of Youth
• Favorite in the A-Z Challenge: S is for Signatures

I hope you had some favorites, too. I was semi-successful at keeping up with regular posting barring the occasional vacation or unexpected hospital stay and I have plans to continue for many more years. And after FIVE YEARS I finally changed the theme ever-so-slightly – do you like the brand new look?

Thanks to all of my readers and all of the great friends I have made through this blog. Maybe I don’t write just for me anymore – I write for you, too!

My great-grandmother!

Genealogically speaking, I didn’t devote that much time to research but I managed to make some great finds with the little time I did spend on it! I continued to find Polish records online including my 5th great-grandparents’ marriage record from 1820. The release of the 1940 census was long-awaited, and even though it didn’t reveal anything I didn’t already know it was a lot of fun to find my parents and all of my other relatives. I was thrilled to receive my great-grandmother’s naturalization papers and see her photo. The biggest surprise of the year was learning that my 2nd great-grandmother, Elizabeth Smetana Miller, immigrated to the U.S. and lived here for over 20 years before her death in 1944. I think I’m still surprised by that discovery! I had the opportunity to meet my 2nd cousin Carl and his sons from the Bergmeister side. I also got to meet Bill, a “cousin of my cousin” who is descended from the sister-in-law of one of my dad’s uncles. Finally, a surprise phone call from my father’s 76-year-old cousin – one I didn’t know existed – allowed me to connect her via telephone with her 67-year-old half-sister to share memories of the father that neither knew well (one due to divorce, the other due to his death at a young age).

I had a few personal goals for the year, but I only made progress with three of them. They were: have a more positive outlook, cultivate my relationships with friends, and get back to exercising. My new outlook, old friends, and five months of regular exercise all helped considerably when I was faced with my first-ever hospital stay at the end of November for a colon resection. It’s funny how things work out that way…

My nieces and nephews

Looking back over the year, I was rather successful at trying to have a good time. I had many fun lunches, happy hours, and dinners with several different friends. I even cooked a bunch of dinners at my house and I was amazed every time that somewhere along the line I learned to cook without realizing it. I spent several holidays over at my brother’s house and spent some good times with my nieces and nephews watching Star Wars, going to the beach, and just having fun being silly. I finally broke the bad record of previous years and made it to the beach not just one day, but three different days! I hope my beach is still there since Hurricane Sandy hit that part of my state really bad in October. I finally made it to a Phillies game, attended a special event at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, saw my favorite Gene Kelly movie on the “big screen” again, and “won” an online auction to have lunch with my newest celebrity crush (we’re still scheduling the big event). I surprised myself by taking 10 undergraduate college credits in a subject I despise during a 7-week period, and despite spending one week in Europe and one week in the hospital I somehow managed to get a 3.55 average.

My travel time was limited this year, but I did go to Georgia twice for work as well as two new places: San Antonio, TX and Phoenix, AZ. The only trip I took for personal travel was special: after about fourteen years of promises, I took my 17-year-old niece on her first trip to Rome, Italy. It was trip #5 for me, but that didn’t make it any less special. We both had a great time and I hope it was as memorable to my niece as it was to me.

The Pointkouski chicks learning to cook in Italy

I like to remember my “entertainment” favorites every year as well as personal events. The two television shows I fell in love with this year will always be among my favorites because they’re just that good: Firefly and Leverage. Yeah, I don’t know what took me so long to find them either. I went for long periods without taking the time to read anything, but then I managed to read about 33 books between Memorial Day weekend and the end of September and found a lot of great authors in the process (Chris Ewan, Mark Mills, Pam Jenoff, Michael Curtis Ford, Sarah Jio, Isabel Wolff, Karen White). I especially enjoyed John Scalzi’s Redshirts, Kate Morton’s Forgotten Garden, and Felix Palma’s The Map of Time. In the world of music, I loved Matchbox Twenty’s new album, North, especially “Sleeping at the Wheel”. I also really liked P!nk’s “Blow Me (One Last Kiss)”, One Republic’s “Feel Again”, Lifehouse’s “In Between the Raindrops”, Sara Bareilles’ “Gonna Get Over You”, and Train’s “Feels Good at First”.

2012 brought me back to Rome – those coins thrown in the Trevi Fountain really do work!

Last year I said I was ending the year a lot happier, healthier, and content, so that’s how I started this year. Although spending the last month recovering from surgery has been a struggle to stay happy, healthy, and content, I think I’m on track to a much happier, healthier, and contented new year. And the world didn’t even end this month as “scheduled”! What’s on tap for next year? Well, there are more ancestors to find, cousins to meet, birthdays to celebrate, dinners to enjoy, friends to cherish, places to travel, books to read, people to meet, photographs to take, blog posts to create, music to play, exciting things to discover, and family to love. That, my friends, will make for a very good year!

Happy New Year to all of my family, friends, and faithful readers! I wish you peace, joy, love, and good health in 2013!

12. The world was supposed to be over by now…

11. Uh, some of my lofty goals were a bit too hard. I mean, what was I thinking? Twelve goals?

10. Several of my most inspirational long-time genealogy blogging friends (you all know who you are) took a blogging leave of absence and left me uninspired as a result. (Please come back!!!!!)

9. I was distracted by shiny things and spent too much of my free time reading my Pointer sister’s voluminous tweets.

My niece and nephews love Star Wars too!

8. I introduced the next generation to the wonder that is Star Wars.

7. I cheated on Facebook by having an actual real live social network.

Cast of TV’s Leverage: Christian Kane, Gina Bellman, Tim Hutton, Beth Reisgraf, Aldis Hodge

6. I spent a whole lot of time watching all 77 episodes of Leverage multiple times with great delight.

5. I was too stressed trying to complete the weekly Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge.

4. I still give up on translating Polish records that are written in Russian in under five minutes.

3. I bribed my genealogy-goal buddy, Lisa Alzo, with a case of slivovitz to stop bugging me about my progress.

2. I found out a lot of other great genealogy facts this year that weren’t on my 2012 wish list.

1. Occasionally hanging out with live relatives is more fun that looking for dead ones.

My parents on Christmas Day in 1955

I don’t see any mistletoe in the photograph, but it was Christmas day! My parents were not married yet – that would happen in about four months. I love the detail in the background of the photo – this was my paternal grandparents’ house. Note the 1950′s decor with the flowered wallpaper and flowered carpeting, upholstered wing chair with doilies on the arms, the steam radiator, and an ashtray stand next to the chair. I wish there were more photos from other parts of the living room! (There is another of my parents and aunt sitting together on the sofa – my mother must have had a change of clothes, because she is wearing a different dress but my father is dressed the same.) I also love the fabulous velvet dress on my Mom and the suit and tie on my Dad.

I would have to ask to be certain, but my guess is that my aunt took the photograph. She was 13 years old, and isn’t it just like a teenaged sister to annoy her big brother by taking a photo of him kissing his girl? Heck, I think I remember doing the same exact thing to my brother and his girlfriend about 25 years later when I was 13 and he was 21!

Photo by Leo Reynolds on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/3723131340/

Since today is December 12, 2012 — and I haven’t posted for a while — here are twelve things, genealogical and otherwise, that I have learned in this past year.

1. I learned what happened to my grandmother’s Uncle Herman.

2. I learned where all of my ancestors and relatives were living in the United States in 1940.

3. I learned that my great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Smetana Miller, actually immigrated to this country and lived here for 22 years before she died in 1944 in New Jersey.

4. I learned the names of two sets of sixth great-grandparents: Jan Pluta and Agnieszka Kramarska and Jan Redłowski and Józefa Lichańska. They were named on the 1820 marriage record of their children, Bartłomiej Ludwik Pluta and Helena Franciszka Redłowska. The father of the groom was a shoemaker, and the father of the bride was a cloth merchant who actually signed the marriage record  and gave me the oldest signature in my ancestral collection!

5. I learned quite a few death dates of Polish ancestors thanks to online records at Geneteka.

6. I learned what my great-grandmother looked like.

7. I learned a bit more about my grandfather’s missing sister and the man she married…I just haven’t blogged about it yet.

8. I learned I’m Scandinavian. Well, 46% of my DNA is… That means that my Bavarian ancestors and perhaps a few of the Poles once came from farther north. No wonder I can’t stand the cold – we’ve been heading south for thousands of years.

9. I learned that my father’s uncle had a daughter we didn’t know about. I was able to put her in touch with her half-sister, and they both learned a bit more about their father.

10. I learned once again that hanging out with other genealogists in a lot of fun (Slavapalooza ’12 was held in Philadelphia in late April).

11. I learned that sometimes you have to put social media, blogging, and the computer away and get out there and cultivate relationships in person. I was more social this year with dinners, dates, happy hours, and fun times with family and friends. When I wound up in the hospital a couple of weeks ago, my closest friends were by my side. It’s good to have friends that have known you since you were a teenager – they won’t let you get away with anything, they will make you laugh, and they will take care of you when you need it!

12. I learned to let go of negativity and find things to enjoy about life every day. I don’t have a single thing I ever really wanted in life and I’m happier than I’ve ever been.

Filed under: Miscellaneous ]]> http://pastprologue.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/12-things-i-learned-this-year/feed/ 3 djpoint Photo by Leo Reynolds on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/3723131340/