Zalewski Family Genealogy

Well, not-so-good news today…

My grandpa on my mother’s side is in the hospital. He went in for what I think was quadruple-bypass surgery and at first he was doing well and starting to wake up. But, I got word earlier this evening that he took a slight turn for the worst when his body probably started rejecting the new changes. He’s a small, thin guy, but hopefully he can fight his way. So, whoever you are out there reading this, please send your “good vibes”, “happy juju” or whatever you have laying around his way. Thanks.

Update: He’s much more stable now. Hopefully, he starts feeling better.

The way that I got started doing genealogy research happened in 1999. I had always been somewhat interested in my ancestors, especially related to my surname, but most people are. My grandfather, Richard Zalewski, had passed away that year of cancer. Around that time, I had also run across some hand-written family trees and also an article in our local newspaper about familysearch.org. It had mentioned that the website was getting hammered by visitors since it went live and that they were working on fixing it.

When I got home I was able to get onto the site and did a general search on “Zalewski” and was amazed at all of the entries I received. From there I collected information from family sources, free resources on the Internet, and other sources. I can say that I would never be as far in my research as I am now without the power of the Internet. It just snowballed from there, as all genealogists know, “Once it hits your lips, it’s so good.”

I seem to be one of the minority of genealogy researchers that is of the “young” variety. I usually get weird looks when I’m scouring local cemeteries for headstone, since I can only be there to vandalize, I guess. Though, with the Internet, I am seeing a lot more younger genealogists and I think that’s great.

How did you get started in your genealogy research?

I merged the two trees together, so there is now only one tree on the website. It’s much easier to search and browse now.

I logged back into Ancestry and found some new things that they have implemented. I’m really impressed with their “Personal Tree” option. What you do, like a lot of other sites, it upload your GEDCOM to it. It’s puts it into tree form, which you can share or not. But, the nice part is that it automatically searches the Ancestry site for matches. This makes it much easier that requiring you to type in the search info every time you want to find something. It now automatically takes into account birth, death, marriage, spouse, etc for you. It’s very nice. If you have an Ancestry subscription, give it a try, though I’m not even sure you need a subscription to use it.

Looks like I’ll be back into doing some family genealogy research. It usually just takes something to re-spark my interest. Along with wanting to use my subscriptions, instead of paying for not using them, I watched a bit of a show on Irish immigrants on the History channel that helped me want to look again.

So, there will be more updated content here in the coming days and weeks. I still need to merge trees.

Oooh, a post title with a double-meaning.

Well, for one, there have been a few additions to the Zalewski Surname Project over at Family Tree DNA. Thanks to everyone who has joined! If you’re a Zalewski or related to one, see what you’re missing by looking at my Zalewski Surname DNA Study page.

Also, everyone can welcome Darcy Zalewski to the family. Darcy is my new wife and she is so excited to have a new, more-complicated name to use. Oh, don’t forget about being last in line for everything now.

I really need to get back into doing some more research on my family tree, but I just haven’t had the time. I also don’t want to waste my subscriptions, because you know how expensive they are.

Sorry that I haven’t been updating this site. It’s been an extremely busy month and I haven’t had much time to do much else. I don’t think that I mentioned it yet, but I’ll be getting married on May 27th. So, everything these last few weeks has been about that. That also means that I’ll probably be adding another family tree to mine to make it easier for us to keep it in once place. There should be more updates once this is all complete.

Well, no luck on the headstones I was looking for. We first looked at the cemetery in the old Dheinsville, Wisconsin near Germantown. I have an ancestor that’s listed as in this cemetery. Unfortunately, all of stones from that time period are beyond readable, some don’t even exist anymore. So, I couldn’t see if there were any other family members buried also.

I then went to the Fredonia area to check some of the cemeteries around there for some of my Quinette family. Supposedly, they passed away and are more than likely buried in the area. Well, we checked four of the cemeteries that we could find with no luck. Again, a lot of stones are very worn. Though, there are other cemeteries I didn’t find, so I may go back. It was also brought up to me that they may have been buried in the DePere area, since a lot of the rest of the family is buried there. It is possible that they traveled up there before they died. We’ll have to wait and see.

Well, it’s springtime (though snow is on the ground as I type) and it looks like its time to get some of those headstone photos that are needed. I have noted a bunch of them in the local area that I can hunt down. There are some farther away, such as in the northern tip of Wisconsin, but those can wait a little bit. I may make a day out of it and try to hit them all in one day. I have a few in the Green Bay area, some just north of here, and some in Washington County to check out.

Sometimes you find very helpful information from headstones and cemeteries. Sometimes you run into unknown family members buried nearby, or dates that you didn’t know about. I find it a useful, yet under-utilized piece of information for genealogy. A now, with the Internet, you can usually find some very helpful people that will take photos/notes for you in the area that your ancestors are buried. Here are some helpful sites:

• Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness [RAOGK] – Though, it’s not the prettiest site, it does have tons of helpful information.
• Find-A-Grave – You may get lucky and find an ancestor listed on here, or at least famous individuals buried in the same cemetery. You can add you own listings.
• Genealogy.com’s Virtual Cemetery – Similar to Find-A-Grave, but aimed more towards your normal individuals instead of famous people.