Point of Origin

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Ancestry.com, Ellis Island, genealogy, Hungary, immigration, journey, manifest, origin, Sabados, ship, Szabados, Transylvania, US Census, Zselyk

Where do my ancestors come from?  It was a question I had asked myself many times, and I’m sure others have too.  I personally don’t know the exact makeup of my own family.  I have been told I have Native American ancestors on both sides, but as to those that came from other countries I am not certain.  The names of my own ancestors suggest that I likely have roots in England and Scotland.  At this point, I can’t pinpoint an exact location for my family, a specific point of origin from whence they came.

We had just found a possible match for Bill’s side of the family for his grandfather and great-grandmother, and in the ship’s manifest, it offered the information for the point of origin for these two travellers.

From the Alien Passenger Manifest of the S. S. Vaderland, sailing from Antwerp, June 27, 1908.

The name of the town these two came from was Zselyk, Hungary.  Now, the strange thing was, this somehow seemed familiar.  It seemed to me I had seen this name somewhere before.

From time to time, I go over records that I have looked at before, hoping to see if there is any other bit of information I can glean from them.  I was looking again at a copy of the 1920 US Census for the family:

1920 US Census data for my husband's great-grandparents and his grandfather. Joseph is the name that is cut off.

In looking at the columns showing nativity and mother tongue, I noticed the census taker had been extremely thorough (thankfully!) in his job, not only entering the country, but the city as well.

The name of the city is listed on the census as Tselyk and the country as Austria-Hungary.

Zselyk/Tselyk, Hungary/Austria-Hungary; I realized they were a match!  I couldn’t wait to find out where this city was, and so I typed Zselyk, Hungary as a search on Google Maps.  I got nothing back.  I tried Tselyk, Hungary.  Still nothing.

I was missing something.  I had forgotten that a lot had changed in the Hungary that Bill’s ancestors had left and the Hungary of today.  Hungary was a much larger country prior to World War I, as older maps will show.  After World War I, the country was divided up among several other countries, so it was possible that the city I was looking for was in another country altogether.

I decided to try another tactic and typed into my Google search engine “Where is the city of Zselyk, Hungary currently located?”  I started scrolling through the beginnings of the 386 hits I received, and one name popped up over and over again:  Jeica, Romania.  Now, searching for Jeica, I was able to find the town.  It lies on the western side of the Carpathian Mountains in the region known as Transylvania.

So, in this case, some of the family lore turned out to be true!  The family’s point of origin was a small village in Transylvania.  As to the part about vampires, Bill doesn’t mind garlic at all; it’s onions he can’t stand.

So, now the only person whose ship we needed to locate was Bill’s great-grandfather, the other Mihály Szabados.  The only trouble was, I was getting a lot of hits for the name, and nothing I was finding was making sense.  The point of origin was off, or the destination wasn’t right.  I thought perhaps I would need to put several possibilities in the Shoe Box for a while.

Then, I started to think about what Mihály’s most immediate destination would have been.  While ultimately, he was bound for Columbus, Ohio, his ship would likely dock somewhere on the East Coast.  The most likely destination?  Ellis Island.

Over 12 million immigrants started their journey into the United States through Ellis Island.  Through the ship manifests for the Mauretania and the Vaderland, I knew that the ships that had brought the rest of the family to the US had docked in New York; would I be fortunate enough to find my final ship had done so also?

So, I went to the Ellis Island web site and did a passenger search.  The information they asked for was simple:  (optional) first name, last name, approximate year of birth, and gender.  The 1910 US Census estimated the birth year as 1875; I asked it to search within two years before and after that date.  I received a total of five hits.  Most I dismissed right away because the year of arrival was way off.  In the response information though, they gave the point of origin, and for one, the place listed was “Zsalik”, which seemed a likely misspelling for Zselyk.

Alien Passenger Manifest for the S. S. Cedric, sailing from Liverpool on March 14, 1906, arriving in New York March 24, 1906.

When I saw the destination was Columbus, Ohio, I knew that I had found the right person.  In glancing just below Bill’s great-grandfather though, I noticed the name of another Szabados (Yanos, or Janos) that was crossed out.  I wondered why this had happened.  Had this other person died on the trip over?  Had he been turned away and returned to his own country?  Who was this person, and was there a connection between him and Bill’s great-grandfather?  For now, those questions remain unanswered.

On Ancestry.com, I found out why I had been having such difficulty locating the record.  The name had been transcribed incorrectly.  Instead of Szabados, they had transcribed it as Szahados.  I was able to take advantage of a feature of Ancestry.com that allows you to suggest a correction for information on a record.  By submitting a correction suggestion, it makes it easier for someone else to find a record.

I was able to find the records for Bill’s great-grandmother and his grandfather through Ellis Island also, but not for his grandmother, Mary.  I found this a bit strange at first.  Since I knew which ship Mary travelled on, I did a search by ship as well.  The Mauretania had records of going through Ellis Island in 1921, but nothing in July when Mary came to the US.  In 1921, there were changes in the laws (specifically in the quota laws that were adopted), but why that might have meant that Mary’s boat did not go through Ellis Island, I am not sure.

 

Intersections and Mergers

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Ancestry.com, Hungary, immigration, information, intersection, investigation, journey, merge, merger, path

In our journeys through life, two paths can come together.  They will sometimes intersect, crossing one another for a brief time.  When a marriage occurs, that intersection becomes a merger, as the history of one life melds into another.

My husband Bill and I had our paths intersect at first in the late 90’s, and before the end of the millennium, our paths had merged.  Over our years together, he has shared with me some of his family stories, and, with parts of my own family history becoming blocked off for the time being, I took the opportunity to now turn my attention to Bill’s family history.

On my side of the family, I still didn’t know when my ancestors had arrived in the United States or even from where they came.  On Bill’s father’s side of the family though, while he didn’t know the when, he most certainly knew the where.  His grandparents had immigrated from Hungary and eventually settled near Columbus, Ohio.  Family lore stated that they came more specifically from Transylvania.  He would joke about being from the area where Vlad the Impaler  (also known by his patronymic Dracula) ruled.  Mainly, he would reference Dracula, the character in Bram Stoker’s novel.  My “Hungarian Bloodsucker” as I would teasingly call my husband, also had another potential tie-in with vampires on his mother’s side of the family.  His maternal grandfather’s name was Schreck (a shortened form of Schreckengost, and Bill often wondered if Max Schreck, the actor who had played Count Orlock in F. W. Murnau’s silent classic Nosferatu, could possibly be related.

Bill's Dad (also Bill) with his mother Mary and father Mike. Funny...none of them look like vampires to me.

So, for now, putting thoughts of ancestors that could possibly turn into bats or go off in search of a blood feast, I started looking for records that could lead me back to the time when Bill’s grandparents came to the US.  It didn’t take me long to find them in the 1930 US Census (names of the children have been blurred for privacy).

Grandpa Mike (as Bill calls him) is doing pretty good for himself.  He owns a home, valued at $2,100.00 and he has four children already.  He is a laborer and works at a boltworks.

When I looked at the rest of the fields for this census data, I found that all of the children were born in the US, and that Grandpa Mike and Grandma Mary had not become US citizens yet.  Both could speak English though.  We do know that Hungarian was spoken in the home; Bill said that he can remember his grandmother speaking Hungarian most of the time to his grandfather, especially when she got angry at something.

Bill’s Dad, who was the youngest, was pushed by his brothers and sisters to learn English before going to school; they didn’t want him to struggle the way some of them did.

One last thing I noted on this census was the years that each had come to the US. Mike arrived in 1908; Mary didn’t arrive until 1921.  This meant that I would not be able to find her in any other US census previous to this one.  My search would then need to focus on Mike and his family.

Joseph is the name of the youngest son.

As you can see, Grandpa Mike’s father’s name is also Michael.  That made for some interesting conversations when I was trying to explain some of the records to my husband.  Grandpa Mike is working at the boltworks on this census too, while his father, Michael Sr., works for a scrap iron and metal company.  Bill’s great-grandfather has done well enough since coming to the US to own his home free and clear.

I was really surprised by the gap in Grandpa Mike and his brother’s ages.  I wondered if they had tried to have other children in the 14-15 year span between the births of these two boys.

I did note that Bill’s great-grandparents had come to the US about two years apart.  Apparently, Mike Sr. came over about 1906, and two years later, wife Anna came over with Mike Jr.  So now I was going to be looking for three boats and not two.  I would be looking for the boat that brought Michael over to prepare the way for this wife and son, the boat that brought Anna and Michael over to reunite the family, and finally, the boat that would bring Bill’s grandmother to the US where her path would intersect and later merge, with that of his grandfather.

 

Twists and Turns

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adventure, Ancestry.com, draft, findagrave.com, genealogy, information, journey, Lawson, path, road, shoebox, Whittaker

I was fortunate to know most of my grandparents.  On my father’s side, I did not get to know his mother; she died when I was just a baby.  His father remarried, and it was his second wife that I knew as my Grandma.  Once he died though, she moved away to be closer to her children from a previous marriage, and our family didn’t keep in touch with them.  On my mother’s side, I was very fortunate to have both grandparents alive to see many milestones in my life.  They were able to see me graduate from high school and later from college.  While they didn’t get to see me marry the first time (since I eloped), they did get to be there to see me get married to my present husband.  My grandfather died later that year.  My grandmother, now in her 90’s, is still with us.

I only ever met one of my great-grandparents.  My grandmother’s mother, Thenie F.  Whittaker Lawson, had come to Michigan to stay with the family for a time.  I was about eight or nine, and somehow, she intimidated, even scared me a little!  She seemed much sterner than the smiling image of her daughter above, and I don’t remember her talking much.  When she did talk, I don’t remember understanding her much.  She mumbled and muttered much of the time.  She was in her 80’s at the time, and was probably the oldest person I had ever seen at that time.

I remember the day that she died.  My Mom and Grandma had gone with her to the store (Yankees, I believe, but it might have been about the time they were taken over by Zodys).  I didn’t go into the store with them; I stayed out in the car (that was back in the days when people left their kids out in the car without fear of them being abducted or overheating).  What I remembered was the ambulance coming, sirens going off and lights flashing.  I don’t remember much after that other than going home.  I didn’t know what had happened to my great-grandmother until later.  She had a heart attack while in the store.

In trying to go back into Thenie’s history, I thought it would be easy.  After all, Thenie is a rather unusual name.  However, I didn’t realize how many twists and turns I would take with the name Whittaker!  It didn’t take me long to realize that this again, might be a journey that would not be the straightforward path I had thought it to be.

For example, here are some of the variations of Whittaker that I found on my initial searches:

• Whittaker
• Whitaker
• Whiteaker
• Whitacre

And, as to Thenie being helpful because of it being unusual?  I failed to take into account how census takers can mangle a name.  And, in this case, I feel they did more than just that.

I had to make some educated guesses with these records, and I believe they all are showing the same family group.  However, there is still a possibility that I could be wrong.  Judge for yourself.

This is the one census that I know is correct for my family. Notice though that my great-grandmother is listed as Thenia instead of Thenie.

If you think that’s bad, let’s go back to 1910.

Now, Whittaker has become Whiteaker, and Thenie is now Othena? What gives?

Now, here’s also where family lore and census data start to butt heads.  My great-grandmother did have a twin whose name was Mary.  However, family lore stated she died as an infant.  Yet, here she is, almost an adult!  The lone son listed here is named Vetery.  My great-grandmother had a brother named Vetter.

When I saw my great-grandmother listed here as Othena, somewhere in the back of my mind I could hear someone, in a voice very much like my grandmother’s saying to the census taker, “Now let’s see, we have a Sarah, a Mary, and a Thenie….”

When you get to 1900 though, things really start to get wonky:

OK, what is wrong with this picture?

OK, now the family has their last name listed as Whitacre.  Thenie has now changed into Venie.  The twin Mary is still there, and the birthdate is shown as May 1891 (which is the month and year of my great-grandmother’s birth).  However, there is a big difference in ages between the Rebecah here and the Rebecca of 10 years later.  I do notice though that the 1900’s Rebecah has 9 children of which 5 are living.  The 1910 Rebecca has 10 children of which 5 still live.

The big problem I had here was the mystery of the youngest child.  ‘Vetery’ who was listed as being about four years younger than the twins (and was listed as a son), had disappeared!  In his place was a daughter named “Legie”, born in June of 1896 (which is, coincidentally, when my relative Vetter was born).

Talk about a roller coaster ride!  I felt like I was zigging and zagging all over the place with these records.  Just when I thought I would find something that would tie everything up neatly, a wild curve sent me whirling into a spin!

Ancestry.com has the option of saving items you aren’t sure tie into your family tree to a ‘Shoebox’ so that you can review them at a later time.  I thought for sure that the 1900 and 1910 US Census records I had found would be in my Shoebox for a long time.  Then, one day, I decided to do a search on Vetter Whittaker trying to see if I could find out more about him, and I stumbled across this record that I think ties it all together:

Lige (or Leige) Vetter Whittaker – now it was all starting to make sense!

So, Vetter’s first name was Leige.  To me, this tied Vetter into the Legie that was listed in 1900.  Their birth dates were the same month and year.  They had somehow entered the gender wrong!  Could it have been that the census taker wasn’t paying attention and copied information from the previous line.  Had he made an assumption, thinking that Legie sounded like a girl’s name?  I know that I’ve seen pictures of very young children, both boys and girls being dressed very much alike.  If this boy got any hand-me-downs, they likely came from his sisters.  Could the census taker have put down ‘daughter’ without asking anyone what the gender of the child actually was?

It was about this same time that in my journeys out in cyberspace that I came across the website www.findagrave.com.  Find A Grave has contributors around the world that update, maintain, and add to the list of over 75 million grave sites.  Searching the records is very easy, and you can sometimes find a great deal of information.  Vetter was one of the first people who I searched for.  Not only did I find him listed, but someone had actually taken pictures of his grave marker!  Even more exciting was the fact that a piece on the head stone contained a picture of Vetter and his wife!

Vetter and his wife Arizonia. This is a close up of the picture medallion on their grave marker.

Eventually, I ran out of steam on this line as well, and so, I turned away from looking into my side of the family tree entirely and began to journey into my husband’s ancestral past.

The Long and Winding Road

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adventure, Ancestry.com, Arkansas, Dunklin County, Flint, genealogy, investigation, journey, Malden, Michigan, Missouri, path, road, Sevier County, Taylor, US Census, Virginia, West Virginia

When I decided to trace my great-grandfather’s journey from West Virginia to Malden, Missouri, I never realized what a long and winding road his path would take!  Malden was his family’s final destination, but by no means was it their only one.

I had already found a 1930 US Census that showed my grandparents had already moved to my home town of Flint, Michigan.  As my grandfather was their youngest child, it was likely all the children were married or out of the house.  Once I found the 1930 census, it confirmed my suspicions:

Portion of the 1930 US Census showing my great-grandparents.

My great-grandparents were living by themselves.  I knew where my grandfather was at this time.  Where were all of his siblings?

I did learn a few things from this survey.  My great-grandparents owned a home, valued at $1,500 (not bad considering that this was after the start of the Great Depression).  While you cannot see it from this except, my great-grandfather was not working, nor had he ever been a veteran.  There was a discrepancy between the 1900 US Census and this one:  back in 1900, my great-grandmother had been listed as being born in West Virginia like her husband, William Henry.  However, on this census, she was listed as being born in Virginia!  Which one was correct?

I decided to keep working backwards, and found them again in 1920 in Malden, Missouri, this time with one child still at home.

1920 and one child left in the house: my grandfather!

Georgia didn’t seem to know which side of the state line she was born on.  This time, not only is she born in West Virginia, but so are her parents!  In 1930, they, like her, had crossed over the border to be born in Virginia.

As I continued research on this and other parts of my family tree, I  would learn over and over again that records can contain inaccurate and sometimes misleading information.  I also began to distinguish between primary source data, and secondary source data.

The US Census contains a mixture of both.  It is a primary source for where a person resided on the date that the census occurred.  Much of the other data though is a secondary data source.  Ages and birth year and month, places of birth, and places of parent’s birth are second-hand information on these records.  Other records (like a birth certificate) would be a primary data source that could confirm the information on the census.

For now though, I would continue one more decade back and fill in the last gap.  With the information on the 1910 US Census, I would be able to see the movements of my ancestors over a 40-year span.

So:

• 1930 – Malden, Missouri
• 1920 – Malden, Missouri
• 1910 – ?
• 1900 – Daviess County, Missouri

My working theories were:

1. The family would still be in Daviess County.
2. The family would be somewhere in Missouri between Daviess County and Dunklin County, where Malden is.
3. Since some of the children had been born in Nebraska prior to 1900, the family might have moved back there for a time between the two locations in Missouri.
4. The family would have already moved to Malden.

It’s nice to have theories, but of course it is the facts that will show where their path had really taken them.  And, once again, the path led to a place I didn’t expect.

In 1910, my family lived in...Arkansas?

Here’s a copy of the 1900 Census too:

My Grandfather and His Family

It didn’t faze me in the least that in 1900 my grandfather was listed as Floyd R. and in 1910 was listed as Ralfa.  Ralph was his middle name, and Ralfa I am sure, was a misspelling on the part of some well-meaning census worker.  The M in Anna M. stood for Maud, so again, they had been easy to match up.  Of course, Hazel and Ethel were pretty obvious matches.

What of the other children?  Well, I knew from 1900 that my great-grandmother had nine children and eight were living.  I noticed in 1910, the number of living children had dropped to six.  Two of my grandfather’s siblings had died.  We knew for sure the four children listed on the 1910 Census were alive.  The four not on this census were Millard D., Oscar R., Boyd, and Lucy D..  Which two had lived, and which two had died?

I wondered what had brought my great-grandparents to Arkansas.  You could almost draw a line straight down from Daviess County to Sevier County.  What had sparked their southern migration?  And why, within 10 years, had they returned to Missouri, this time settling in the southeast corner of the state?

It was certainly a long and winding road I had discovered on my great-grandparents’ journey to the West.  From the information I had gathered so far, they had left West Virginia some time prior to 1885 (the approximate year their oldest known child was born in Nebraska).  They stayed in Nebraska long enough to have at least five children.  From there, the family traveled to Daviess County, Missouri, which is likely where my grandfather was born (and possibly at least two other siblings as well).  The unknown 9th child could have been born in any of these locations.  All we know for now is that as of 1900, the child no longer was alive.

By 1910, the family had lost two more of its children, and gained one new family member, a mother-in-law (which means this would be my great-great-grandmother).  The name is listed as what appears to be Luveza Olaker (Ancestry.com listed the name as Luvcza Olaker, but I think my interpretation of the handwriting is closer to the truth).  Two of the children had also moved on to their own paths in life.  The family had also moved south and slightly west to Sevier County, Arkansas, a county just to the east of the Oklahoma border, and not too far away from the northeast border of Texas.

Ten short years later, the family returned to Missouri, this time residing in Dunklin County in the town of Malden.  The 1920 Census only shows my grandfather residing in the home with his parents.  There is not information given on this Census to indicate whether there are fewer living children now; we only know that by 1920, my grandfather’s remaining siblings had left their parents’ home.  In 1920, I also learned that my great-grandfather was running a furniture store, and my grandfather was listed as being in sales (was he working for his father?).

By 1930, my grandfather had already moved out on his own and was working on raising a family of his own in Flint, Michigan.  His parents, still residing in Malden, were no longer working.  They lived in a house they owned.

I had exhausted this path for the moment, and so I turned to yet another detour.  However, a surprising piece of information would soon come my way that would confirm much of the research I had just done.

 

Road Blocks and Detours

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adventure, Air Force, Ancestry.com, detour, genealogy, Hungary, immigration, information, investigation, journey, military, Missouri, National Archives, road block, Taylor, US Census, West Virginia

In my earliest post, I mentioned that part of my motivation to begin research on my family tree was a request by my Dad to track down his brother’s children, whom the family had lost track of after their parents divorced.  I had decided to try and use the past to help make the link to the present.

However, my uncle was a rather elusive character in the past.  Part of that was the lack of information I had on him.  Sure, I had his full name.  I had his military service number.  I knew some of the general places he had lived, and one specific place (the one place we had as a family visited several times when I was young).  From census data, I was able to get an approximation of when he was born.  But as far as specifics, I knew little.

While I had gotten from the US Census data on Ancestry.com a year and a month of birth, I did not have an exact date.  My uncle had been in the Air Force.  I did not know when he enlisted or when he left the service.  My searches on Ancestry.com were not revealing much of anything on the Air Force at all.  It seemed strange, so I started expanding my search. which led me to the National Archives.

As I was looking around, I happened to spot a link about a fire in 1973, and so I decided to follow it.  I was dismayed by what I read.  Fire had devastated several of the records for both Army and Air Force personnel; 75% of the records for those in the Air Force discharged between September 25, 1947 to January 1, 1964 that were in alphabetical order after Hubbard, James E. were gone.  There had been no copies, and no indexes.  They were totally destroyed.

I felt I had reached my first major road block to any progress in finding the information I sought.  Military records might have listed information on my uncle’s dependents, so I might have gotten more information about them that way.  Without those records though, I might not ever be able to find the information about my aunt or my cousins.

However, this particular road block could possibly be cleared.  After all, what if my uncle was discharged after January 1, 1964?  What if his was one of the 25% that somehow survived the fire?  Without investigating further, I would not know whether the fate of my uncle’s military records was safe or in flames.

Since I knew that military records could be requested free by next of kin, I turned to the only living next of kin I knew of:  my Dad.  I made it as easy as I could for him.  I filled out the forms with all the data we had for my uncle, and then sent them on to him to sign and then mail.

While we waited for those records, I wasn’t going to stay idle.  I did take some detours on my journey at this time.  I decided to see how far back I could go on the Taylor side of the family tree.  I had found information on my great-grandfather, William H. Taylor, in Missouri in 1900, but not anywhere near where I expected him to be.  I knew based on the census data that he was born in West Virginia.  How had he gotten from West Virginia to Missouri, and from the upper part of Missouri down to the southeast corner?

My second detour would actually be a jump from the Taylor path completely.  I would begin researching my mother’s side of the family.

Finally, my third detour would not even be about my own family tree at all.  I would begin looking at my husband’s family tree.  My husband’s paternal grandparents had immigrated to the US from Hungary.  I wondered when and where they had arrived in the US, and from whence their journey had begun.

While I had hoped that at least part of this adventure would be a snap, it was proving to be a bit more arduous in the earlier stages.  Answers were not going to always come easily.  Genealogical records were not always going to be out in plain site, and not every person on my tree at Ancestry.com would have a hint leaf next to their name.  I would need to dig to uncover the information.  My ancestors were out there, waiting to be discovered, and I knew the best way to find them was to keep looking.  One path may be blocked, but others were open to travel and be discovered.