Granny
Gold Member
'Tis a puzzlement. I swear - I'm almost blind and crazy trying to get info about my Dad's family. Jesus crackers.
There's all kinds of info out there on my mother's family and little green leaves keep popping up all over the place, but I'm more interested in learning about Dad's family.
It's just the strangest thing. I've managed to identify my paternal grandfather's parents - but there is not one single thing about their entry into the US - other than it was in 1888 according to the 1900 censuses. You know, people came in at Ellis Island with a name, the immigration people couldn't understand the name so they took a wild guess ... and now they have a new name that might be close to their real name ... but maybe not. The censuses were all handwritten by the census takers, so depending on who was doing the census, you find more than one spelling of the same name AND you find your ancestors were Polish on one census, Prussian on another, and German on yet another.
I know the names of my paternal grandmother's parents because I have a copy of her application for Social Security - 1937. Do you think I can find them on a census? Noooo. I could see missing one census ... but ALL of the older censuses? I can't find them on the immigration records either. Do you have any idea how many people have passed through Ellis Island? And how many variations of names there are for the people who passed through?
It's fascinating and I've got my work cut out for me ... but it will give me something to do with my time.
There's all kinds of info out there on my mother's family and little green leaves keep popping up all over the place, but I'm more interested in learning about Dad's family.
It's just the strangest thing. I've managed to identify my paternal grandfather's parents - but there is not one single thing about their entry into the US - other than it was in 1888 according to the 1900 censuses. You know, people came in at Ellis Island with a name, the immigration people couldn't understand the name so they took a wild guess ... and now they have a new name that might be close to their real name ... but maybe not. The censuses were all handwritten by the census takers, so depending on who was doing the census, you find more than one spelling of the same name AND you find your ancestors were Polish on one census, Prussian on another, and German on yet another.
I know the names of my paternal grandmother's parents because I have a copy of her application for Social Security - 1937. Do you think I can find them on a census? Noooo. I could see missing one census ... but ALL of the older censuses? I can't find them on the immigration records either. Do you have any idea how many people have passed through Ellis Island? And how many variations of names there are for the people who passed through?
It's fascinating and I've got my work cut out for me ... but it will give me something to do with my time.