Zalewski Family Genealogy

The first furniture

That’s what the banners and balloons should read in November when our baby arrives. According to the Ultrasound technician, we’re having a girl and she sounded pretty confident. Finding out now is exciting to us. People always seem like we should wait until it’s born to find out, but we’d rather find out now. It gives us a fun surprise early and from what I’ve heard, you sometimes don’t get to enjoy the surprise during the delivery since there is so much other stuff going on.

As for having a girl, I’m very excited. I’d be just as excited either way, but I was secretly hoping for a girl (maybe 60/40 girl/boy.) I grew up a boy (surprise!) and I had two brothers, so a baby boy didn’t seem that crazy to me. I know how to handle a boy. Having a girl is another story. I have very little experience with little girls. Thankfully, my wife is a girl (no way!) so I’ll have help there. When you find out the gender a lot of things go through your mind. Now you can get a clearer picture of the future. Beforehand, it was somewhat blurry. All thoughts had the baby replaced with “generic child” in my brain, now I can put a face, or at least gender, on it. Obvious thoughts of “Daddy’s Little Girl” and all that stuff float on through sometimes. It’ll sure be an experience and I’m ready for it.

As for a genealogy point-of-view, we’ll be able to give her a pretty clear picture of where she gets certain traits. Obviously, as a girl, she won’t get my Y-DNA passed down to her, but she will get her mother’s mtDNA. We just need to get her mother an mtDNA test at some point to pinpoint her maternal genetic genealogy. The way it looks, it’s possibly English or at least from somewhere in the UK, but we don’t have enough info, yet.

My wife, who is much better with the written word than I am, has been blogging about the new baby experience on our website. Feel free to pop on over there.

Now on to paint the nursery this weekend.

My maternal results

On National DNA Day, April 23rd, there was news that 23andMe was selling the “Complete Edition” of their genetic test for $99. The usual price for this test is $499, so a savings of 80%. I couldn’t pass up this deal since a) I am always curious about data and information b) I wanted to go deeper into my ancestry with DNA as I’ve only done basic tests. I also planned on getting it for my wife, also, but by the time we checked the site later in the evening the price was back to normal even though it was only about 8PM here.

Well, I sent in my sample and it says it will take 6-8 weeks for results. I got my results about 4 weeks later, so that was a surprise. The Complete Edition also includes the “Health” information, which is interesting. As they mention many times, I take all of that information with a grain of salt, even though there isn’t anything major to worry about in my results.

But, this site is less interested in what type of earwax I have or my Alcohol Flush Reaction and more interested in my Maternal and Paternal DNA information. I had previous known that my maternal line was H and my paternal line was R1a1. This gave me some insight into my genetic history, but it was a basic overview. I now know more details.

My maternal line has been traced in more detail to the H11a group. Their site describes it:

H originated in the Near East and then expanded after the peak of the Ice Age into Europe, where it is the most prevalent haplogroup today. It is present in about half of the Scandinavian population and is also common along the continent’s Atlantic coast.

My maternal line is basically all German, as I wrote about in a recent SNGF post.

My paternal line (or my Zalewski line) has been traced in more detail to the R1a1a subgroup.

R1a1a is the primary haplogroup of Eastern Europe, where it spread after the end of the Ice Age about 12,000 years ago. The haplogroup is most common in a swath from Ukraine and the Balkans north and west into Scandinavia, along the path of the men who followed the receding glaciers into Europe. It is also common near its presumed point of origin in south-central Asia. R1a1 is one of the two most common Y-haplogroups in Slavic-speaking populations.

That makes sense, since the Zalewski line traces back to Poland/Prussia, which is in the area mentioned.

The site also has a nice “Relative Finder” that will show you people who are more than likely closely-related to you based on your genetics. You can then send an introduction to them and if they accept, you can compare your basic results. I’ve sent a few intros to people who it predicts are somewhere between 3rd and 7th cousins to me. I have yet to receive a response, but it’s only been a few days.

All of the other info it gives like my “Health Traits” and my “Disease Risk” are interesting to browse. While they have useful info, such as certain risks, it shouldn’t (and doesn’t) affect my daily life due to the new nature of this field, but it’s nice to know.

Anyone else in either of these haplogroups?

I am forgoing the normal “Weekly History” post this week for a special announcement.  It’s now been 12 weeks into the 36 weeks of the pregnancy of our first child. A big announcement that was hard to keep a secret until this point. 12 weeks is usually the point when most couples make the large announcement. Obviously, we told family and some others previous to this point. Our parents are very excited and everything is coming at us so fast, but it’s also extremely wonderful.

As a genealogist, this has another layer of joy for me. Now, officially, my tree and my wife’s tree are merged into one. Now when I do research on her tree, I’m actually doing it for my own child. They will come into this world with a pretty solid family tree already made for them. I’ve now ruined any fun and mystery they may find looking into their family history (haha.)

6 Weeks

From my wife’s description: I know, it’s hard to decipher this thing. Heck, it’s tough for me and it’s my baby’s first screenshot! (Well, it is a screenshot…) The big round part is NOT the baby, it’s the yolk sac. The tiny little blur between the arrows is the baby at 6 weeks. We’re 6 more beyond that and it has grown, but we haven’t had a new ultrasound yet. We did hear the heartbeat for the first time this week though!

Well, we’re taking this one day at a time and the mother is doing great. Completely prepared and also scared out of my mind of things to come, but in a good way.

Thanks for everyone who sent me an “Ancestor Approved” award.

In recognition for receiving this award, I will follow the directions and list ten things about my ancestors that have “inspired, surprised, humbled, or enlightened me and to then pass the award along to ten other bloggers whom I feel are doing their ancestors proud.” Though, I will not be passing it along to ten other bloggers since almost everyone I read has already received the award, but thank you to everyone.

1. As always, humbled by many of my ancestors for their courage and faith in leaving their homeland to come to a different country on the other side of the world.
2. Surprised at some of the chance moments that came to be for my ancestors to meet and fall in love.
3. Humbled by my great-grandfather, Joseph Zalewski, who between 1939 and 1941 lost his mother, his wife, and then his father.
4. Inspired by many of my ancestors who worked extremely hard everyday just to keep food on the table for their families.
5. Surprised about how closely-located all of my ancestors are. They go back many generations in this local area, or at least in Wisconsin.
6. Also, surprised that I have no (as far as I know) English ancestry. (Though, I do have Irish and possibly Scottish)
7. Humbled by my veteran ancestors who risked their lives for this country in the Civil War, World War I, and World War II and who knows how many wars in the past.
8. Enlightened by the jobs and skills my ancestors possessed. Sometimes they had to learn many things to survive.
9. Humbled to know that everything that my ancestors did in their lives all add up to me. If one thing were different, no matter how good or bad it was, I would not be here typing this.
10. Inspired by my ancestors to pass on their legacy and stories through my genealogy and this website.

Thanks again to Laura Ann at Dreaming About Home, Theresa at Tangled Trees, Julie at GenBlog, and Miriam at Ancestories for giving me this award.

Sadly, there isn’t really any weekly history for these 7 days. There are a few dates from my French-Canadian ancestors, but I don’t have much more info on them then just dates and that’s not too exciting to read.

I haven’t actually been doing too much genealogy research lately, so I don’t have a lot of news. Though, I have been helping a friend of mine by doing some basic research for him. I thought I’d help get him started since I have a lot of paid access to Ancestry, etc that helps a lot.

He, fortunately, had found a book on his mother’s family that goes pretty far back into at least the early 1800s into Virginia with a lot of sourced information. I decided to do some of his other lines. I actually found a good bit of information by just using the census records (and a few others.) It’s amazing how much info you can really get from those.

It’s new territory for me since a lot of his family is from Montana and then from the southern states of Missouri and Georgia, etc. All of my family research has been is mainly Wisconsin and then into Canada and Europe. It’s neat to do research in other states.

When I bought my house in 2005, I ended up purchasing my grandparent’s house. My grandpa had passed away in 1999 and my grandma was moving into an assisted living apartment since she hurt herself in a little fall. I did get a very nice deal on the house. It’s perfect “starter” house, being the house that they bought new in 1955 and that my dad and his siblings grew up in.

When she moved, a bunch of boxes were left in the basement. Most of it was just things like blankets and pots and pans, things she doesn’t need right now. I found one box a few months back when I was taking inventory that I saw had funeral cards and old newspaper clippings in it. Today, I decided to just browse through them to see if there were any of my ancestors that I could use to squeeze out some more information.

I only found a few funeral cards on the top and they were probably of old friends, I assume, and not relatives. But, I did find a nice collection in the news clippings box. Most of the items were just random clippings of recent photos and articles from the newspapers. But, I did find a nice selection of old obituaries, though. A couple were straight from the newspapers and a few others were copies. The obituaries that I found were from Emma Jane (FIRMENICH) COOK (my gg-grandmother), George S COOK (Emma’s 3rd husband), Margaret (STEARNS) BRAATZ (my gg-grandmother), Frank F BRAATZ, Sr (her husband and my gg-grandfather), and Margaret (SCHUMACHER) STEARNS (her mother and my ggg-grandmother.) Most of the obituaries didn’t have any new info of note, but the big find was the last one. In my tree, all I had was “Margaret” listed and her death date. This obituary gave me her birth info and her surname, which is brand new to me. Plus, it listed all of her siblings and locations. I need to start looking for SCHUMACHER now, any tips?

Another treasure find in the box was some old letters written to my grandfather from his parents in 1941. It seems, from the address that he was in navy school in Pensacola, Florida. There are about 5-10 letters all written from March 31, 1941 to April 27, 1941. One weird note here is that my great-grandmother, his mother, Emily (TROKA) ZALEWSKI, passed away on May 1, 1941. In the later letters that I just quickly scanned through, there is no mention of being sick, etc. So, this points to her death being quite sudden as she was only 45 years old at the time. Maybe my grandfather saved these letters due to the fact that he was away in Florida when his mother died. There are no letters beyond the April 27th one. I am in the process of scanning them so I can read them and archive them. This is the only comunication from my great-grandmother that I’ve found. Then, I plan on taking this box over to my grandmother since I’m assuming she’ll want it.

Today is a historic day in America. It makes me feel good to see how far we’ve come as a country. Hopefully, I’ll be able to remember this day and tell my kids and grandkids about it. That made me look into my family tree to see what my family may have been doing during important presidential milestones.

1789 – I don’t think I had any family in America in 1789 when George Washington became the first President of the United States. Most of my ancestors came to America much later in it’s history.

1861 – A lot of my family was already in America by the time Abraham Lincoln took office in 1861. A few of my ancestors even fought for the Union in the Civil War. They were probably also very shocked when Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.

1933 – Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the 32nd President. FDR has been consistently ranked as one of the greatest U.S. presidents in historical rankings, alongside Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.All of my grandparents were alive (though probably young) at this time, but may have remembered FDR since he was in office for 12 years.

1963 – My dad always tells me that he remembers where he was when JFK was assassinated. I imagine it may have been the same way for my ancestors during Lincoln’s assassination. Back then, the news would’ve come a bit slower, maybe even a few days later.

So, good luck to our 44th President, Barack Obama and here’s to many more historic Presidential moments.

Hello again! Been doing a bit more research lately, so I’ve stepped up my postings (which isn’t too hard to do I guess.) Just remember that even if I’m not posting regularly, I am always available for comments, emails, research questions, etc. I just may not be actively searching at the time, but I will respond.

I was in the process of cleaning up my wife’s family tree yesterday so that I could print out some information to give to her parents as sort of a secondary gift. She had two names in her tree that were missing information. Those were her great-great grandparents on her maternal grandmother’s side. She said she had issues finding any information. So, since it’s been awhile since either of us had done any research on that line, I thought I’d log into Ancestry and just do a basic search. This “basic search” lasted me over 3 hours and gave us some amazing information.

I started by searching for Julius BANNACH, who is my wife’s great-grandfather, and then I’d work from there. My first search brought up Julius in another user’s family tree, named “Shannon Family Tree.” Julius’ wife was named Marie SHANNON, so this was good. I clicked on this link and it brought me to the tree and then I hopped on over to Marie’s information. Right away I saw that it had her parent’s names listed as George SHANNON and Mary DAKINS, so this is good information already. I am always aware that a lot of these trees do not list many sources, so I did enter this info with that in mind and a note to double-check what I can.

I entered the info and then went off to George SHANNON’s information. Sweet! This also lists his father and mother as Nathaniel SHANNON and Rosina Winslow ARNOLD. This is getting good. I keep doing this with the SHANNON line over and over. One odd thing I noticed is that she comes from a line of Nathaniel SHANNON’s that goes for like 7-8 in a row. What are the odds of that? (I guess creativity doesn’t run in the family. I kid.)

The SHANNON line finally runs it’s course in the year 1655 in Londonderry, Ireland. Ok, so I started this, I was going to finish it and enter what I can. So I started by going back and running each line until it ends.

Long story short, I don’t think I’ll ever get all of this info entered into our tree since I’ve now connected my wife (obviously tentatively, need to check the sources) to multiple Dukes, Barons, Counts and Kings of England. Basically, once you break that seal you have access to so much information and connections since millions of people can trace their lines back here and thousands of people have done the research already. Fortunately, I have a  copy of one of the Family Forest CDs, so I can see just how far back this line can go….very far. Sadly, my wife has cooler relatives than me, all I could connect myself to was Robert Goulet.

So, as I work my way through her line to double-check the sources and connections, it does give me some more interest in the Peerage and Royalty of England and also sparks my research bug again.

Has anyone else connected themselves to Royalty or other famous people?