Some dead guys

Several years ago, long before we began homeschooling, I was very interested in genealogy. Honestly, I think it began the minute my first computer was hooked up. My maiden name is pretty rare, and one of the first computer things I did was search my maiden name. The internet made it easy; Robert and I both have several unusual surnames in our families. It was also cheap--loads of free websites, contacts and more.

I've amassed over 4000 names of ancestors for my kids, along with some great stories. I've also met and befriended some distant relatives including Adriene, who had a role in changing our lives, and Robert's distant cousin BL who comments here sometimes. My Christmas card list has grown larger too. There have been some nice surprises, and some real doozies.

We discovered that my grandfather's family had come from Calgary--from Ukraine. (I'd had NO idea.) My uncle casually mentioned that he had a manuscript written by two of my great-grandmother's sisters detailing their lives from the late 1800s through the 1920s, moving between Ukraine and Canada, which the family did a few times. The book is amazing, a treasure. Here's an old photo that someone sent. See Mary, the little girl next to the baby on the bottom row; she's one of the two authors, along with a sister who hadn't been born yet.

Petro, my great-great-grandfather on the far right, is wearing a medal. He was a corporal in the army of Franz Josef I of Austria in the late 1870s, receiving this medal for "efficiency," and Petro learned to speak Romanian and German fluently, along with several Slavic languages. After seven girls, he was pretty pleased that his eighth child was a boy, and this picture from 1901 was taken to "show off" the new boy for the family back home.

Helena, the tall one in the back row, that's my great-grandmother. She stayed in Calgary when the rest of her family returned to Ukraine in 1902. Two years later, at 16 and 14, Katherine and Anne sent a letter to Helena, saying they were coming back to Canada. The girls traveled to Bremen, boarded a ship from Bremen to Montreal, and then were stowed away in a caboose to Calgary. When they arrived, Helena was gone. She'd met and married my great-grandfather, who'd come from Wales hoping to get rich mining gold in Alaska. Instead, they moved to Seattle where he drove a trolley.

I tracked down a woman from a small town in Canada who was big on local genealogy. Turns out she's another distant cousin. She KNEW my great-great grandparents. A few years ago, she sent me a towel embroidered by one of my great-aunts.


Holly and I started reading this book manuscript together a few years ago. And it is a book, 340 typed pages, double spaced. We stopped about 1/3 of the way through, I think she was bored by the descriptions of their farming life, and another book piqued her interest.

She asked today if we could read this again. You bet I said yes. I love reading this tale, I've read it a couple of times myself, furiously taking notes to further piece together their lives. The dedication on the book reads:

"Fore our family, who braved the unkowin,
allwyase fealing not good enough.
But we know that we procticly
added to this lovely World."

When we visited my mom this past summer, my aunt, uncles, cousins and families visited for a day. I think the dedication was right, that this family did add to this lovely world. That's my mom on the left, behind the little girl in pink. I'm in the next group over, standing right behind Holly and Trevor. I must be standing in a hole. I'm not that short!


When I read Chapter 1 to Holly tonight, Trevor was in his bed, listening and asking questions. He's not old enough for it yet. There are some adult themes, and he'd be bored long before that anyway. But this is a great book, and I'll read it to him in a few years if he wants. I'll probably read it myself again in between. After all, as the dedication says, this is "fore our family."