genealogy – Page 3 – It's All About Family

John Posluszny

I told you about John Posluszny’s death and burial here but I thought you might enjoy hearing about his life and family.

John was born in March 1880 and was the eldest of the children of Caroline Straub and Joseph Posluszny.

He arrived in the United States in 1899 at the age of 19 and spent most of his life in the Newark, New Jersey area. I have no ship manifest for his arrival, but used the year recorded on the federal census reports.

Both the 1905 New York State census and the Yonkers city directory lists John living in Yonkers on Washington Street as a boarder in a household and working as a hatter (the family occupation).

Something puzzles me though. Jumping ahead a few years, the 1910 Federal Census lists a son John, 7 years old, which means he was born about 1903 and in the United States. The 1905 census doesn’t include a child or a wife but you’ll see further down this post, a marriage license says his first wife died. The Posluszny Family portrait was taken about 1907 based on the appearance of young John (front row left) and young Walter (front row right). I think the picture of John and his son and the picture of the four brothers was taken at about the same time.

*John Posluszny and his son John abt. 4 years old*

He married Stefania Mariasz in March in 1908. She immigrated in December of 1907 with her sister Karolina and they were heading to their cousin, Johann Straub on Jefferson Street in Yonkers. Johann Straub and Jefferson Street are names that have popped up regularly for Posluszny family members when they arrived in the United States. The marriage license says John was married before and his wife had died. I have no record for that and no birth record for John Jr.

*John and Stefania’s marriage license 1908*

There is another mystery – “they” had a daughter Martha, who was born in Austria in 1907 and came to the United States in February of 1909! I’m not sure who her parents really were. Martha arrived with John Posluszny’s cousin Katarzyna Burek, but I don’t recognize that name. Is it possible that Stefania had her out of wedlock in 1907? Illegitimate children were not uncommon according to the birth records I’ve been poring over.

By the 1910 census, we find John and his family in Newark New Jersey. This census assumes that Stefania gave birth to both John and Martha (2 children born, 2 children living). They were renters and shared their home with Stefania’s sisters Karolina and Julia. Julia is listed as being married for 8 years and immigrated in 1903 with a final destination of her husband Josef Dosedla. I don’t know what happened to him but by 1914, she was married to Jacob Vervliet in New Jersey.

John and Stefania had a son, Stanley born in August of 1918, nine years after Martha and 15 years after John.

*Stanley Posluszny born 1918 – approx. 1921*

In 1920, John, Stefania, Martha (13), and Stanley (1-1/2) are living in Irvington, a town in Essex County, New Jersey. John and Martha are both naturalized citizens and John is still working as a hatter. The sister in laws have moved on and so has the oldest son John. I found him living in Wallingford Connecticut with his grandparents, Caroline and Jon Bonk and working at Wallingford Silversmith.

By 1930, John is a restaurant owner and also owns a multi-family home at 617 18th Avenue in Newark. His restaurant / saloon was at 672 South 19th Street which appears to be the same building, with the entrance around the corner. I took the 2007 pictures from Google Maps because in 2023, the building is in a terrible state of disrepair!

Martha was married at 22 in 1928 to Leslie Theobald, a police officer for Newark. They had a daughter, Dolores and they were divorced in 1941. Their daughter, Dolores married Theodore Kozlowsky in 1951 and they had three children. I’m still researching to add them to the family tree.

*Divorce notice for Martha and Leslie – note the item underneath. Dr. Gilbreth is the mother of the real “Cheaper by the Dozen” family!*

I have not been able to find any information on John Jr. after the 1920 census in Wallingford. There are some possible leads but nothing that confirms to me that’s my John.

Stanley was easier to find possibly because he was born in the late 1910s. He graduated from West Side High School in Newark and then from Northeastern University in Boston with a bachelor’s in science degree. He would later become a dentist. But first up was World War II.

He registered in 1940 while he was a student at Northeastern. On the form, he spelled his last name “Poslushny” unlike our “Posluszny”. This picture is signed “Stan Post” which some of the male family members adopted permanently but Stanley did not.

He enlisted in the Marines in March of 1942. This was only a month after his father died as a result of a car accident. In November of that year, he completed pre-flight training and was sent to the Naval Reserve aviation base in Squantum, Massachusetts which was in the city of Quincy.

From there he headed to Pensacola Florida where he was commissioned a second Lieutenant in the Marines Corps Reserve after completing the flight training course. He was designated a naval aviator and assigned to the Navy Air Operational Training Center in San Diego California.

I was surprised to find this article for the same event in my local Connecticut newspaper archives and wondered why. Then I realized his sister Martha, and probably her daughter Dolores were living in Wallingford! 105 Ward Street a multi-family home and part of Steinke’s Market. The original market was owned by Joseph Laçz and his wife Elizabeth Posluszny (John’s sister). It was then purchased by Mary Posluszny Biega and her husband and at some point purchased (?) by their daughter Mary and her husband Otto Steinke. Whew. Remember, this was shortly after Martha and her husband Leslie Theobald were divorced in New Jersey. Family taking care of family again.

In 1945 Stanley was flying in the Pacific Theater and this event was recorded in the Newark Evening News.

The military rolls for Stanley show him stationed from Virginia to San Francisco and ending out his career as a captain.

He ended up back in the New Jersey/New York area and I believe he was married, had three sons, and was then divorced. I don’t know when he continued his schooling to become a dentist. Interesting note – his aunt Mary Posluszny Biega also had a son, Stanley G. and he became a dentist here in Connecticut.

He headed out to Arizona in 1955, was married in 1959, and had a daughter. I found her name on Ancestry in 2012. We have corresponded and discovered immediately that we were family. We became a DNA match a few years ago and since we have shared matches, I have new names to check on.

Stanley passed away in 1984 when she was only 21, not unlike he and his father. She told me that her father hated the cold and hated funerals and wanted to be cremated but her Italian-born mother refused and had him buried. How ironic that the same thing happened to father and son.

*Obituary and headstone for Stanley J. Posluszny*

I hope you enjoyed this biography of John Posluszny and his family!

Favorite Photo

The Week 2 Topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is “Favorite Photo”.

This photo started me on my Ancestry Journey:

My mother’s oldest sister, Antoinette, known as Toots and Tootsie, was the family picture keeper. When I visited her in her little one room apartment, she would bring out the photos and tell me about the people in the photos. Some of the stories didn’t match the previous ones, but it was fun to just sit and listen to her. When she moved to a nursing home, my cousin Judy had the pictures and when she passed away, her husband gave them to me.

This photo is of the entire Posluszny Family, the maternal side of my family tree. In the front row is John Posluszny and his son John, Ann Straub Posluszny with her daughter Ann, Mary Posluszny (later to become Mary Biega), Caroline Straub Posluszny (at this time Bonk) and her son Walter, Elizabeth Posluszny (later to become Elizabeth Laçz). The back row is Joseph Posluszny, husband of Ann, Frank Posluszny, Charles Posluszny, John Bonk (the men’s stepfather and Caroline’s second husband, Walter’s father), Julianna Ingram Posluszny, and Conrad Posluszny (my grandmother and grandfather).

I have stared at this photo for so many years, just looking at the faces and wondering about them and their lives in Wildenthal (now Dzikowiec) before coming to the United States.

I marvel at the handsomeness of my grandfather (ok, he’s not really, but I am still related because he and my grandmother were 2nd or 3rd cousins), and I can’t get over the resemblance of Mary Posluszny Biega to my cousin Ann who has passed away.

I have individual pictures of a few of them, and some wedding photos that I treasure, but this photo is my favorite. It keeps me digging.

In The Beginning

It’s a new year and a new list of topics for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks! We’ll see how it all works out, but hopefully, I can also get some subjects on my hit list written.

Week 1 Topic for 2025 is In the Beginning. I’ve written a post already about how I got involved in Ancestry so I’m taking this in a different direction. What better topic than my parents who started it all!

My mother, Elizabeth Ann Posluszny was born in 1922, and my father, John Steven Jakiela in 1924. They attended Lyman Hall High School together and my dad’s brother Walter was in my mother’s graduating class. I don’t know if they knew each other through their school years.

After high school, my mother went to Lauren Business School in Meriden and then went to work at Factory A of the International Silver Company. My dad worked at the Wallingford Steel Mill during high school and continued afterward until he headed to England in 1943. He returned to that job when he came home in 1945, and then he moved on to the paint store.

My mother and my dad’s sister Helen worked together at International Silver and belonged to a bowling league. My Auntie Helen told me that he would pick them up and drop off my mother at her home at 121 Clifton Street, and then he and Helen would go home. Auntie Helen realized something was happening when my dad started dropping her off first and then taking Betty home!

She also told me that “your mother said he’d better get off the pot and do something or she was moving on”. Suffice it to say they were married on November 9, 1952.

A little fun fact: Before their wedding, in January of 1952, John took a trip to Florida. I have an undocumented memory of him and his older brother Steve going there to see their brother Walter when he arrived stateside from wherever he had been. I wrote about him in March of 2024.

John sent some cute postcards to Betty while he was gone. He even put little notes under the stamps.

Betty was 30 on her wedding day and John was 28. Her mother was a widow and John lived with his oldest brother and his family so there was not likely a lot of money for a wedding but it was still beautiful. She had a timeless dress that was later worn by my sisters for their weddings. John and his groomsmen were in handsome morning suits.

*Steve Jakiela, John, Betty, and Tootsie Posluszny*

They left for a Florida honeymoon from the reception.

They lived in Meriden early in their marriage as Betty continued to work in the office at International Silver and John continued to work for Lacourciere Paint Company.

They hung around with John’s sister Helen and her future husband Ticker (Joseph) Jordan. They were married in May of 1953. They all loved to spend time at the Rocky Neck State Beach and vacation together in South Carolina.

They moved from Meriden to a cute rental on Carlton Street in Wallingford which was 2 blocks from her childhood home. Janice, Gail, and I were born when they were living there and we were likely busting out of the seams when we moved a year later to our beloved home at 15 Atkinson Lane.

Their marriage wasn’t perfect, but it worked for them. My dad loved having three girls and always said he wouldn’t want it any other way. He took us on bicycle and walking adventures and my mother instilled in us the love of reading.

They were the beginning of our family and the families my sisters and I created.

Symbols and Signs

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!

Earlier this year, the words in the New York Times Connections puzzle on two significant days told me my mother was wishing us continued happiness.

Last year, my father-in-law checked in, sending me my special number, 717.

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.

Final Resting Place

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.

Mental Health

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”.

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.

Which brings me to something else my Aunt Tootsie told me in one of our conversations. She said “when he was in the hospital”, the doctor allowed him to have beer because “he needed it”. Crazy right? It makes me think he was maybe in a hospital for mental health issues. This post from conversations with my Aunt Judy and my cousin Judy, talks about my grandfather and grandmother relationship.

*Konrad with his daughter Julia in 1937*

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 Posluszny wedding photo. Brother Charles back left, step father Jon Bonk, back third from left, mother Caroline seated left, sister Mary seated right — *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.

The Posluszny Family. Elizabeth is bottom right, next to her mother. She is approximately 9 years old. — *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!

All Mixed Up

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.

My Favorite Discovery

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!

emails from 2/7/2001, 2/25/2001, and 11/18/2004

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.

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:

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!

Free Space

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!

Up next week: Favorite Discovery

The End of the Line….

The week 31 topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is End of the Line. This story will not go in the direction you automatically think of when hearing “end of the line”.

If my teacher was putting the class in order of height, “Nancy, you go to the end of the line” would not come out of her mouth ever in 8 years at Holy Trinity School. Only if I was being separated from my sister or friends because I couldn’t stop talking!

My ancestors did NOT bring the height to my family. At the time of their ocean voyages, my grandfather Charles Jakiela, at 17 was 4’9”. My grandmother Antonia Liro, at 21 was also 4’9”. I have no ship manifest for my grandmother, Julianna Ingram, but her sister Mary’s record says she was 4’8”. My biological grandfather, Jacob Engram Jr, is listed as 5’9” on his WWII draft registration card. He’s a jolly green giant compared to the others.

The height issue is evident in Charles and Antonia’s 1912 wedding photo which looks like they put their heads into cardboard cut outs of a bride and groom.

*Charles and Antonia Jakiela June 24, 1912*

Their four male children ended up between Steve at 5’5” and Walt who reached 5’9”. If his parents had been alive when he registered for the draft, he would have towered over them by a foot!

My dad, John Jakiela, was 5’6” and my mother was 5’3”. I always say, “if I wasn’t born a twin I bet I would have been taller!” But, in all seriousness, I’ll take my twin over the height.

*2nd and 3rd in line (Dana Smith leading the way)*

Janice, at 18 months older, always had 2-3 inches on us. Just enough to not have to hem every pair of pants she got! Gail and I had a 4” growth spurt in 6th grade and except for a few more inches between then and 18, we were done at 4’11”. In standing in a line by height, we’re forever in the front and the shortest of all the relatives.

It pays to marry up! All five of the next generation are over 5 feet and the two of the next generation look like they will be able to take their place at… the end of the line.