Category: Ancestor Stories
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Four Sets of Twins: Two Families, Remarkable Stories, and Missing Records
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Four sets of twins across two family lines—maternal great-grandmother Anna Hurkala Marcisak and paternal 2x great-grandmother Julia Clarke Smith. I can prove three sets: Bernard and James Plunkett (Brooklyn, 1851), Eva and Adam Marcisak (1911), and Paul and Pauline Marcisak (1922). But the fourth set remains lost in that seven-year…
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Life Before America: Farming, Famine, and the Roots of Emigration
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Before my ancestors became Americans, they were farmers in three very different European worlds. Life before emigration meant surviving conditions most of us can’t imagine. My Swedish great-grandfather David Sten worked isolated farmsteads created by enclosure reforms, where winter brought only six hours of daylight and families lived scattered across…
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A Quick Look at My Ancestors Who Chose the Urban Chaos of NYC and Brooklyn
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When it comes to urban, you don’t get much more urban than New York City and Brooklyn. My ancestors chose to live stacked on top of each other in buildings where you could hear your neighbor sneeze three floors up. But that urban density brought revolutionary infrastructure changes that transformed…
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The 1973 NPRC Fire – When Flames Destroyed Military History
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On July 12, 1973, flames tore through the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, destroying 16 to 18 million military personnel files in a four-day inferno. No duplicate copies existed. No microfilm had been made. For genealogists researching World War II and Korean War veterans, this fire remains one…
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Unlocking Family Histories: The Power of Cemetery Research
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Cemeteries hold a special place in every genealogist’s heart, preserving not just our ancestors’ remains but their stories carved in stone. From Brooklyn’s Holy Cross Cemetery to Queens’ Calvary Cemetery to Pennsylvania’s Byzantine Catholic burial grounds, multiple branches of my family tree found their final resting places in three states.…
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Finding the Lost Daughter: The Search for Letitia Plunkett
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Every genealogist has that one ancestor who simply vanishes from the records. For me, it was Letitia B. Plunkett—my great-great-grandfather’s youngest daughter. I had census records showing her as a child and young woman in Brooklyn, and then nothing. She seemed to disappear into thin air after 1910. But people…
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In the News: David Sten’s American Life Through Newspaper Headlines
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When Swedish immigrant David Svensson Sten arrived in America in 1926, he probably never imagined his life would be so thoroughly documented in local newspapers. Over 29 newspaper mentions spanning 1939-1960 reveal how deeply he integrated into his Delaware community. From a dramatic 1939 car accident that made multiple headlines…
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Education: It’s More Than Just a Report Card
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When I examine my family’s educational history, I see more than report cards and diplomas—I witness the dramatic transformation of American education itself. From Slovak and Polish great-grandparents who couldn’t read to siblings with master’s degrees, our four-generation journey mirrors America’s evolving commitment to universal education. In the 1870s, students…
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Hidden in Plain Sight: The City Directory Advantage
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City directories offer genealogical gold beyond census records, providing annual snapshots of ancestors’ working lives from the 1800s through 1930s. These published guides documented not just occupations and addresses, but revealed family relationships, economic mobility, and neighborhood connections that census records often missed. My great-great-grandfather William Dowling’s progression from peddler…
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Forged by Mystery: How Childhood Playtime Shaped My Genealogy Obsession
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I blame Nancy Drew. And Encyclopedia Brown. And every cryptic puzzle in Martin Gardner’s Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing. Growing up in the mid-1970s, I devoured mystery books like other kids consumed Saturday morning cartoons. When I finally graduated to adult mysteries, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot taught me that the…