The topic for week 38 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is Symbols. You can probably figure out that it’s actually Week 52 of 52 Weeks and so I’ll pick and choose the remainder of the topics to fit in with the topics for 2025. Anyway… Symbols!
I’ve written about the signs that my departed loved ones send me. My dad sends dimes and cardinals, and I find those dimes in the craziest places!
Psychic mediums tell us to open our eyes and ears to the messages of love that surround us because the signs are there. Two books I really enjoyed on the subject are “Signs: The Secret Language of the Universe” and “The Light Between Us”, both by Laura Lynne Jackson.
The most recent sign came early Christmas morning, at 2:15 AM to be exact, when a little wind-up musical box began playing its tune, “Deck The Halls”. I found this in my in-laws’ home when we were cleaning out after my father-in-law passed away in 2022 and it has been sitting on a shelf in a bookcase outside our bedroom. It doesn’t play any music unless you wind it up on the back, and once it’s played out, it stops.
We both woke up with a start and I grabbed my phone, thinking it was ringing but I never have my ringer on! I leaped out of bed and only had to go a few feet to the source. How the heck did it start playing? It played so briefly, that I thought I had imagined it. 2:15 in the morning!!
It was another sign.
My husband’s biological father passed away on Christmas morning in 2005. We don’t know the exact time because it happened in Washington State and we live in Connecticut. We received a phone call that Christmas morning around 7am after we had finished opening presents.
Could it have been him? Because it was the anniversary of his death, both our minds went to him. I also remembered that he came through at the end of a recent reading I had with my wonderful psychic medium. He was in the background and we decided to keep him there. Maybe he just wanted to make sure we got the message that he was thinking of us. It would be just like him to use the method he did! So we laughed, went back to bed, and I moved the darn music box down to the first floor!
Signs from our loved ones are all around us. We just have to be willing to recognize them.
The theme for Week 37 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is – Tombstone.
In October of 1941, my great aunt, Stefania, wife of John Posluszny, my grandfather’s oldest brother, passed away. She was 56 years old. She left behind her husband, a daughter Martha 35, and a son Stanley, 22. I found this information on Find a Grave because a gracious volunteer uploaded the information from the cemetery – Holy Sepulchre in East Orange, New Jersey.
In the early 2000s, when I received ancestry material from my cousin Judy, there was a funeral card for my great-uncle John Posluszny.
Funeral card information for John Posluszny
The translation reads:
Jan (John) Posluszny at the age of 61 He died on February 1, 1942 the funeral took place on February 5, 1942 Corpses(?) placed in the cemetery Rose Hill, Linden, NJ He asks for a Hail Mary and eternal rest for the peace of his soul Funeral Home Souvenir – W.A. Ruckiego
From this card, I requested a copy of his death certificate from the New Jersey state archives, but they had no record of it. The only death information available was his record in Find a Grave and I read that he was buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in East Orange, and not in Rose Hill in Linden. Hmmmm.
Somewhere around 2006, I spoke to my mother’s cousin Ann Bonk Monroe (she passed away in 2011), and I must have asked her about this. My notes from our conversation say she told me that all she remembered about his death and funeral was hearing her family talk about how the wife wanted him cremated and the family was very opposed to it. Ann would have been 16 years old at the time. Since Stefania died before him, it must have been his daughter Martha who scheduled a cremation, but why a cremation?
Shortly after, I sent an email to Rose Hill and corresponded with Jim. He told me he was unable to find John or Jan Post, he wrote, “However here is some information that I did find about the service. I pulled the original diary from that year and found that there was a cremation scheduled for John Posluszny at 11:00 on 2/5/42 but it was cancelled. The funeral home was Rucki Funeral Home. I do not know the reason other than it was cancelled. I checked to see if (it) may have been rescheduled later, but I couldn’t find it.” Hmmm.
As this was going on, I had a DNA match with someone named Janine Posluszny. I emailed her in 2012 and it wasn’t until 2018 that I received a response from her. Her father was Stanley Posluszny, John and Stefania’s son! She grew up in Arizona and said “My father hated the cold. If I remember correctly his father died in a snowy road car accident???” That was new information for me!
This search for information on John Posluszny’s death may have started 20 years ago, but with these people, I just can’t quit. Saturday, I started looking for obituaries for John and Stefania. I am still surprised that Ancestry hasn’t revealed them to me. I checked Newspapers(dot)com, nothing, nothing, nothing. I checked Google newspaper archives, but there were no New Jersey papers for Newark.
So crap shoot, I google Newark newspapers and find the ONLINE newspaper archives in the Newark Public Library!
Enter in names and dates and violà! First up is the death notice for Stefania his wife in the Newark Evening News on October 31, 1941.
Death notice 10/31/1941 Newark Evening News
Next up was searching for John which didn’t take long.
John Posluszny’s death notice 2/3/1942
I was struck by the word “Suddenly”. I thought if it was a car accident like Janine said, there might be an article about it. I found the paper for February 2nd and started at the beginning of the newspaper. A few pages in I caught the words “Auto Accidents”.
Details of accident that killed John Posluszny – he also went by the name of “John Post”
Such a tragedy! Never get out of your car!
I think the reason he was going to be cremated was, Stefania had died only 3 months before the accident. Martha who was married, but soon to be divorced, was now responsible for her father’s funeral and burial and maybe the expense was too much for her to take on and the cremation was the cost-effective option.
I emailed a request through Find a Grave for a volunteer to take pictures of Stefania and John’s grave sites and hopefully someone will have some spare time to do that.
This new found information has answered the questions I had about John’s death and burial. Hopefully soon I will have a picture of his – Tombstone.
The topic for Week 36 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is “We Don’t Talk About It”.
My grandfather, Konrad Posluszny, committed suicide in the early morning of December 28, 1944. He was a night janitor at the Wallingford Steel Mill, where he had access to the offices and storerooms and that is where he got the gun he used. It was written up in the afternoon Meriden Daily Journal on the 28th, and then the next day, the morning paper, the Meriden Record, had a much more dramatic telling of the tragedy.
Years after it happened, my Aunt Tootsie told me “a gypsy told my father he was going to die by a gun and so he didn’t allow them in our home”.
Newspaper articles from 1944
As the second article mentions, he might have been “brooding over the dangers that might befall his son” my Uncle Connie who was assigned to duty in New Guinea. My uncle was a cook in the Army but I never found any records for him in the Fold3 website. My Aunt Judy did talk about him having to “pack up the kitchen” when they were being relocated.
Julianna (Gram), Connie, Konrad (Gramp) 1943 or 1944
Would he have committed suicide because he was worried about his son? Not likely, unless there were mental health issues to begin with.
Another piece of the puzzle comes from my first experience with a medium in 2013. I realize a lot of people don’t believe in mediums or what they say, but hey, my grandfather believed what the Gypsy said! This medium said my grandfather committed suicide, was there with my mother, he later mentioned the gun shot and the depression he suffered from all his life. If you’re interested you can go to YouTube, search for CT Buzz and the look for Medium and Life Guide Phil Quinn. It’s 7:40 long and you might recognize a younger me in the screenshot. During either this reading or another, Phil told me that my grandfather suffered from profound depression and he didn’t have a joyful day in his life.
That makes me think about how he started out as a hatter, ended up with a hat company of his own, he had a patent for a cleaning solution for straw hats, but died as a janitor at a steel mill. I told the story about the family profession here. I feel such sadness for him to have had so much and then nothing. Was it because of this depression that caused my aunt to say her mother had more balls than her father?
Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only person in the family suffering from mental illness…
My great-uncle Frank Posluszny, spent at least 10 years in the Essex County Hospital (for the Insane) in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. The 1910 and 1920 censuses, show his occupation as a Hatter. However, by the April 27, 1930 census, he was an inmate at the hospital and was there again in the 1940 census. A section in this census asks if this is the same residence as 1935, and the response for Frank is “same residence”. I have not been able to find any death record for Frank but it might be safe to say he spent the rest of his years at the county hospital. He and his wife had three children.
Frank and Josephine’s wedding photo. His brother Charles is top left, stepfather Jon 3rd from left, mother Caroline seated left, and sister Mary seated right
My great-aunt Elizabeth Posluszny Laçz, left her husband and two children behind and disappeared in 1923 or 1924. Her sister Mary, hired a private detective but he never found her. She came up in a medium reading I had years ago and I was told she had a complete breakdown and created an entirely new life. I have never found records of her or her children but I wonder if there is a trace of them among any of my DNA matches.
Posluszny family photo – Frank 2nd from left in back, Konrad back far right, Elizabeth front right seated
I never had a conversation with my mother about the death of her father. She was 22 when it happened and I can’t imagine how they felt getting that knock on their door that morning. All I knew as I was growing up was that he died a long time ago.
Today we are all better educated about mental health and we are able to express how we are feeling either to each other or a therapist. A little part of me knows that the DNA we got from our dad’s side of the family evened us all out!
I sadly didn’t remember the anniversary of Pearl Harbor until I was heading to bed last night.
I wanted to re-share the story of my Uncle, Walter Jakiela and his experience at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. He was 19 years old and 3 weeks out of radio school.
Recently, one of my favorite bloggers wrote about what she is thankful for.
I’ve been thinking the same lately as I leave my house in the morning. It helps to ease my everyday anxiety by getting me to think about something other than what happened in high school or where I’m going to be 10 years from 6 months ago!
It might have something to do with the book I’m currently reading, “Solito” by Javier Zamora. It’s a memoir of his travels in 1999 with a group of 8, originally strangers, led by a coyote from La Herradura, El Salvador, to the United States when he was 9. His parents were already in “LA USA”. Everyone thought the trip was two weeks long which, at the point of my spot in the book, is three months.
It also brings to mind the people in North Carolina who suffered through Hurricane Helene. Many are still living in tents and others, in homes, just recently got potable water. It was such an unexpected weather event that hopefully they will never see again in their lifetimes.
We’re heading over to celebrate Thanksgiving with family of family, people whom we’ve been sharing this holiday for over 20 years, and hopefully there will be 20 plus more to come.
I’m grateful for my family, my home, my health, fresh water, inside plumbing, food readily available, a vehicle to get from place to place, and our business.
The Week 35 Topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is All Mixed Up.
If you’ve ever known twins, if you are a twin, or if you have family members who are twins, you know what I’m talking about.
My mother asking Janice to pick out a specific twin
Through elementary school and beyond we have been mixed up. Our children have turned to “the other one”, and people in grocery stores are embarrassed when they realize we’re not who they think we are, no matter how much we reassure them “it’s ok! Just tell me your name and I’ll tell her you said hello!”
I’m dealing with an All Mixed Up situation as I’m combing through Birth, Marriage, and Death records of my grandfather’s birthplace in Poland. A distant cousin received the records from a researcher and he passed them on to me. I’ve added information to Charles Jakiela’s immediate family including his sibling’s birth records, and his father’s remarriage after his mother died. But the jpg file are out of order of the books so I’ve been flipping back and forth trying to follow the dates. I finally made a list showing the page numbers in the books along with the file number.
My intention is to go through the records and chart the family names, dates, and house numbers to see where the matching parental names are. There are so many Jakielas, Murdzeks, and Pernals, all names I know are part of our ancestry. Then I plan to take names and birth dates and cross reference them to naturalization records and enlistment forms processed in Connecticut because I know there is a Lubatowa connection from looking through them in the past. There is also a Jakiela and Murdzek connection in Pennsylvania that I’d like to finally uncover. It would also be sweet to finally figure out where connect on the family tree!
This kind of research is what I love to do so hopefully it will be fruitful.
The topic for week 34 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is Member of The Club. I looked at that and thought SWEET! It was a subject I wanted to share.
The Improved Order of Red Men is a national fraternal organization that goes back to 1765 and was one of several patriotic societies founded before the American Revolution. Other groups included The Sons of Liberty and the Sons of St. Tammany. Originally known as Red Men, the members concealed their identities and worked “underground” to help establish freedom and liberty in the early Colonies. After the War of 1812, the name was changed to the Society of Red Men and in 1834 to the Improved Order of Red Men. In Baltimore, Maryland in 1847, the various tribes came together and formed a national organization called the Grand Council of the United States. With the formation of a national organization, the Improved Order of Red Men spread, and within 30 years there were State Great Councils in 21 states with a membership of over 150,000. The order continued to grow and by the mid-1920s there were tribes in 46 states and territories with a membership totalling over one-half million.
The organization believes in: *Love and Respect for the American Flag *The American Way of Life *Keeping alive the customs and legends of a once-vanishing race *Creating and inspiring a greater love for the United States of America *Linking our members together in a common bond of Friendship and Love *Helping those in need with organized charitable programs
The Women’s Auxiliary of the Improved Order of Red Men was The Degree of Pocahontas. It was believed that Pocahontas’ brief life presented a touching and beautiful picture of grace, beauty, and virtue, as well as “constant friendship to the palefaces.” The group patterned itself after the virtues of the original Pocahontas, those virtues of teaching kindness, love, charity, and loyalty to one’s nation. (information from the official website http://www.redmen.org)
The first “tribe” in Connecticut was the Hammanssett No. 1 tribe in New Haven established in 1880. Within 50 years, there were 38 additional tribes of seven thousand members along with the Degree of Pocahontas with several thousand members of its own. The Wallingford men’s tribe was Owenoco and the local women’s tribe Cheyenne Council No. 20.
Notable Connecticut men involved in the group included three Connecticut governors – Raymond Baldwin, Marcus Holcomb, and John Trumbull.
My Aunt Tootsie became involved with this organization in the early 1940s and was very active in it for over 40 years. Until I saw the article below, I didn’t know another aunt, Florence Jakiela, was also part of the group, so that was an interesting find!
In addition to meetings, the Red Men and Pocahontas groups held fundraisers and presentations such as this one from 1955. (Notice the ad about Caplan’s being closed for George Washington’s birthday!)
Tootsie met her first husband Lester Schmitt through the Red Men organization. Lester is 2nd from left in the photo below and I thought he looked a little like Bob Hope in one of his movies. They dated for many years before they married as he lived with and cared for his mother in Torrington and she did the same for my grandmother in Wallingford.
Years after Lester passed away, she married her second husband in 1978. He and his first wife were friends with Tootsie and Lester through the Red Men organization.
It was in the late 1960s that the Degree of Pocahontas decided to create a girls’ group, Silver Cloud Council. It was made up of nieces, granddaughters, and neighborhood friends of the Pocahontas members, and we met one Friday night a month. My mother was likely happy to have us out of the house for that one Friday night!
The Red Men building was located at 50 South Whittlesey Avenue in Wallingford and, at the time, it was incredibly dark and scary. Our meetings were on the second floor and they were very ceremonious. We had to be reminded of the process at every meeting. The parts of those evenings I remember the most were: 1) wanting to watch The Brady Bunch and Partridge Family (no DVR back then!), being annoyed that we couldn’t, and trying to get it tuned in on an old television set there; 2) running around the building with the other girls; creeping up the stairway to the cupola at the top of the building; and 3) sneaking down the basement stairs to peek at the organization’s bar!
In addition to meetings, we marched in parades including our town’s Tercentenary (300 years) parade in 1970. We definitely weren’t thrilled about that!
My sisters and I moved on from the group after 2 years at the most and I don’t have any memories of Aunt Tootsie participating after that. Two of the ladies in the group passed away in 1973 so that would have definitely shrunk the local Pocahontas council.
The Improved Order of Red Men tribe in Wallingford disbanded and the building was sold and now houses a law firm. There are still active tribes in Connecticut and 126 tribes throughout the United States.
The Week 33 topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is – My Favorite Discovery. I’ve had a few discoveries over the last 25 years. My favorite discovery has a good side / not-so-good side, but it makes me happy.
The road to this discovery started in 2004, when my cousin Judy Posluszny Behme passed away and her husband brought me all her ancestry paperwork. She and I were working parallel, we didn’t share information or ask questions about what we had. I knew she was also working on it, but not much more!
The papers included email correspondence from someone named Joanne. Judy had sent a letter to Anna Engram, Joanne’s mother. I don’t know whether the letter was ancestry-related or just perhaps a Christmas card to Aunt Tootsie’s list of people. Who knows how long it had been since cards had been sent out but it was a smart idea to use the list for information too!
The top 2 emails are from Joanne to Judy in February 2001, 2 weeks apart, and the bottom one is my email to Joanne in November of 2004.
Joanne responded right away. She still didn’t know who she visited as a young girl but recalled a wedding in Wallingford “of a woman relative who was marrying at ‘mid-age'” and “this may have been a cousin? to my Dad”.
Through our emails, she told me about her father, Jacob Engram Jr., and his father, Jacob, who immigrated from Austria-Hungary and was a farmer. While growing up her father lived in the vicinity of today’s Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, and later on a rented farm in the Pelham Bay area. I knew there was some family connection because my grandmother loved her flowers and tending to her gardens.
My Aunt Judy helped put some pieces together in a phone conversation in November 2004. According to Judy, Uncle Jack Ingram had a farm “in Long Island”, and her parents would go there from Yonkers and help out. Uncle Jack had a son, Jack, who was in World War I and Aunt Judy remembered her mother kept up her Christmas tree until February, when “her nephew” Jack came home. The dates don’t add up but it’s interesting how that story got passed down. Jack served overseas during World War I from July 18, 1918, to July 13, 1919.
We continued our correspondence through the remainder of the year and determined that she attended my parent’s wedding on November 9, 1952. 72 years ago today! Joanne was only 7 years old so an older bride and a partially bald groom would be considered “mid-aged” in her eyes!
We emailed back and forth a few times and then didn’t talk again until 2016 and again in 2018. Life is like that sometimes!
And then, her kids gave her a DNA kit for Christmas in 2018. In March of 2019, we confirmed we were related. Oh boy, were we related! We were so much related that she and I shared twice the cMs compared to me and my first cousins. It also explained why some DNA matches were only between us and not between my maternal cousins.
I went to the experts – the Ancestry DNA Facebook group. My question “Why do I share 1,040 cMs with this person and only 527 and 467 with my first cousins” was met with “You need to talk to your mother”. Since my mother had been gone for 32 years by 2019, I answered my own question.
Joanne was my half aunt and her father, Jacob Engram, Jr., was also my mother’s father.
Jacob Engram abt. 1918 22 years old
Shocked is putting it mildly.
My initial reactions were: 1) The work I’ve done on the Posluszny and Straub side was all for nothing!, 2) All the DNA matches associated with the last name “Duy” made sense because that was Jacob’s mother’s maiden name and, 3) not only were Julianna and Konrad Posluszny related (3rd cousins perhaps), but geez, Julianna and Jacob were related as well!
If there was any question of being related, I have the photographic proof:
Betty 1934Jacob and Joanne 1951Janice 1964
That would probably be the bad side of the discovery because it did shake me up a bit.
I’m fascinated by the timing because my grandmother and family were living in New Britain in 1921 when she would have become pregnant. Did she know? Did she tell him her suspicions? Did their relationship continue after my mother was born? This is where I’d love to be a time traveler (and I’d have to let it happen again so that I would be assured I exist!).
The good side of the discovery is that I have an aunt! Jacob married in 1934 and had a daughter in 1945. Although she and my mother never knew each other, they did meet and/or knew about each other as a part of the family. Joanne lives in Pennsylvania and we have not met face to face yet. We are Facebook friends and we share any ancestry information we come across.
So this event would definitely qualify as my favorite discovery!
Last night the New York Yankees kept their World Series hopes alive by beating the Los Angeles Dodgers 11-4 and bringing the series 3 games (Dodgers) to 1 (Yankees).
My dad was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan and continued to root for them after they took off for Los Angeles after the 1957 season so he’s probably cheering them on from up above!
He did get to see the Yankees win the Series in 1950 when he drove his older brother and his friends down to Yankee Stadium to watch the fourth and final game of the series. I wrote about it in June 2023, The World Series Chauffeur.
I hope you enjoy it and Go Yankees? or Go Dodgers?
The topic for Week 32 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is Free Space. I have a feeling the topic means a post of my choosing. Maybe that’s why it has taken me a couple of weeks to write a post!
This week will be for updates on new information, the family found, and a little “how I did it back then”.
There has been a big push to scan records for online searches. There are two sites – Geneteka and Skanoteka – and both take a little getting used to. Above is the record for my grandmother, Julianna Ingram. To find the record first I had to locate the Padew records, the years (some have large ranges), the record type (U-birth, M-marriage, Z-death), and then start browsing the records. Above the circle area, the section of the book is shadowed. If there’s nothing on the 2 pages I head to the next. This record raises questions about her date of birth. It was 1888, and I think it’s under March because she was baptized on the 4th. I can’t quite figure out the date but all my other records indicate the 19th of February. It confirms the names I already have of her parents and grandparents. His occupation is agriculture and I noticed today that it says “colonist” after his name. I will check the records I have for the Ingram family!
Another good find that solved a mystery was Charles Posluszny’s birth record. Why? I had his date of birth listed as November 1888, and his brother Frank’s was September 1889. Now, that’s not an impossibility, but after some searching, I found his record, and he was born September 18, 1884!
For both the Posluszny/Ingram Family and the Jakiela Family, I have had distant family contacts share their information which has been a great help, but sometimes creates more mystery! On my Posluszny side, Kerry, who lives in New Jersey. We are related through the Straub/Burghardt line, including my great-grandmother, Caroline Straub Posluszny Bonk. We know that Julianna Ingram and Konrad Posluszny were 2nd or 3rd cousins so even though my mother isn’t a Posluszny, she shares DNA with Caroline. Crazy right?
On my Jakiela side, in 2013 through an Ancestry message board, I was contacted by someone whose family spelled their name Yakiela. That was a first for me and I bet they just got tired of correcting people on how to pronounce their name. It was spelled Jakieła. The J was pronounced as a Y and the ł has a “waa” sound. We pronounce it with a Ja (like Jar), Key, La, but people look at it blankly until I tell them. Anyway! We are related! We have a DNA match but haven’t found the person who connects us. We have shared hints over the years and when he paid someone in Poland to research family records, they accidentally sent him the actual scanned records and he shared with me! They revealed that my grandfather, Charles, lost his mother when he was only four years old, and then lost his wife, Antonia, when his youngest (my dad) was turning 3. In addition, I found a marriage record for my great-grandfather, Ignacy, and his second wife nine months later.
When I started working on family ancestry in the early 2000s, there was internet access, but not the online records available today. Census records are made available 72 years after they are collected. 1930 records were made public in 2002, 1940 records in 2012, and 1950 records only two years ago. I remember how excited I was to see the 1940 records!
Before that, I would head to the library to check town directories, use the microfilm for newspapers when I had dates, or even just an idea of one, and visually scan all the local sections. If I found a record online that I thought was important, I would write a letter to the town clerk or library to see if they could provide information. There was a lot of waiting for word back!
Now, through Newspapers(dot)com, I have that at my fingertips and use all sorts of word combinations for information.
The hardest part of the research and information is “where did I put that!”, especially with records that have been downloaded. I’m beginning to keep a list.
You would think that at this stage, I’ve found everyone within the last generation or two there is to be found right? Well, just last month (September 2024), I received a message from someone whose husband, Ben, discovered my blog. HIS great-grandfather was Charles Jakiela, my grandfather. His father was Ed Jakiela and his grandfather, my Uncle Eddie! Ben’s wife, Noel, and I have spent some time sending information back and forth. His father Ed, was married and had a son, David. About 1988, Ed’s wife passed away. I remember my dad driving to North Carolina with Uncle Eddie for the funeral. Ed remarried someone much younger and they had Ben. Ben knew nothing about his Jakiela family or that Uncle Eddie had four siblings! Ben and Noel live in South Carolina with their three sons and one daughter and it’s nice to know there are more Jakielas out there!
I hope you enjoyed a look at my ancestry research. I look forward to sharing new discoveries and more stories in the future!
It's All About Family 