We all different arenas in our lives, or at least we should. If you don't, you aren't stretching yourself enough, and I would encourage you to close this page and get out and "do something more than dream of your mansions above..." ;-)
Two arenas in my life that bring me some of the greatest personal joy are genealogy and blogging/journaling. Whenever I'm feeling a big off, if I delve into either of these two things, I feel much better afterwards. I won't lie though--they take some effort, and I don't always relish the idea of putting words to screen (right now is a perfect example). However, when I look at the thousands of pages I have now written about the ordinary and extraordinary in my life and in our family's life, I'm glad that I've done it because I could never go back and catch up.
My life in the genealogy arena has been almost as lengthy as my journaling life. I have journals from when I can first remember back in 1976 (and I used the lines in the journal to write my letters perfectly), and I have a Book of Remembrance that my mother helped me compile full of handwritten family group sheets and pedigree charts (again written in elementary lettering). I guess I like keeping a record of what has come before me and what is happening now.
I guess I can say that I have subset arenas as well in that I administrate different blogs based on the subject matter. I have kept blogs for all my missionary children's emails and letters home, as well as for our family's book club.
And perhaps reading is another arena in my life, although if I was to prioritize it, it would be a ways down the list although it hasn't always been that way. Growing up, reading was number one or two of my interests, and if I find a good book, reading moves back up, but as a general rule, I prefer magazines more. Current information that can be consumed in bursts.
However, with the advent of our family's book club (begun in January, 2018), I have rediscovered a love of reading. I do believe quite a bit of it has to do with the fact that we're studying only the classics, and the motivation to keep going naturally stems from knowing everyone else is reading along as well. It has been a true joy.
Yesterday, all of these arenas collided into one beautiful afternoon, and before my thoughts are sullied by the opinions or thoughts of others, I want to record it all.
I have been working on John's family's genealogy for several years. Okay, make that twenty years maybe. I started "helping" him before the advent of Ancestry and Family Search. I used to do things like order birth certificates by mail and comb through microfilm and microfiche. It was a much slower process back in the day. Besides being motivated to do it simply because I love the puzzle-aspect of genealogy, I do have an over-arching desire to seal the family of God together. I guess that comes from having so little extended family here on earth--I hope to have the giant extended family in the heavens. And I think too that I've leaned on the statement in the scriptures that the Spirit of Elijah will turn the hearts of the children to the fathers, and the hearts of the fathers to the children. Maybe, if I found some of John's family, his parents would take a liking to me.
But those thoughts are better reserved for some future therapy appointment.... Let's just focus on the puzzle aspect of it all, shall we?
John's mother's line is super short, because her grandparents or great-grandparents were all immigrants to the U.S. or Canada, and as any beginning genealogist knows, it can be difficult to cross the pond.
Years ago, I was researching her maternal line:
Kathy --> Mildred Pauline Ardus (whom I discovered is actually named Milija according to her birth certificate) --> Ani Bizalj.
And that's it. There was nobody further. And just finding that information took quite a while.
What can you take from that? Seeing Milija as a first name? That's very ethnic. And the surname of Bizalj? I mean, what IS that?
I did everything I could. Eventually (and that means years and years of researching), I found her on a ship's manifest with the first of her three children, coming over from a "residence" of Stubica to Calumet, Michigan (located at the very northern point of the Upper Peninsula). Looking on a map, Stubica is in modern-day Croatia.
Croatia? Really?
Our church doesn't have records from that area digitized, so I ordered the microfilm....in Croatian. And thank goodness for Google Translate, because it was invaluable in knowing if I was looking at birth records (rodenja), or death records (smrt). It felt like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack in the microfilms, and with John helping me, and knowing how frustrated he feels with genealogy, I was so hoping for a "find". However, there was nothing.
As a genealogist, I know that sometimes patience is the only solution to any problem. Somebody may come along and digitize some important church records, or they may post something on a group chat on Ancestry, or they may reach out to me based on my family tree. So I closed the chapter on that family for a while and moved on.
Well last week (and this brings another one of my arenas in that is remarkably connected to these others as well) I was working in the temple initiatory booth, and there were several German and Eastern European names--it absolutely kills me to hear the other workers not even TRY to pronounce them correctly--and into my mind, came Ani Bizalj again.
To be honest, this happens occasionally. Out of nowhere, a thought to research a certain family line will pop into my mind, and almost without fail (looking at you, William Kennedy), I will open all my materials, and the unfound names will fall into my lap. People speak of our ancestors, working behind the veil to help us find them, and I fully believe in that. I'm not the only person on the planet who has had some remarkable, miraculous experience in genealogy. However, this usually happens with names from my own family and not from John's.
So yesterday (you knew I would get here eventually, right?), I opened the family yet again, hoping that some foreign document would have been digitized which could send me in the right direction. There was nothing new, but Ancestry now has an option where, if the program thinks you might have a match with something that has been published, it will mark "Possible Mother" or "Possible Father" in neon green. I've seen it before, but usually it's just someone's guess and there is no source material, so I ignore it. However, with so little information about this family, I've been pretty desperate for anything. So I clicked on it.
It took me to a tree that had over 75,000 names on it (big-time strike, right there), but all of the details matched. However, there were no sources listed (Strike Two). But genealogy is nothing if it isn't people working together, so I clicked on the guy who created the tree, John Stefanac (good Eastern European name, so that was a hit) and sent him a short email, asking if he had sources for his information. It wasn't more than five minutes later that he wrote me back and told me that he had the actual church records from the actual towns (none of which were digitized). And he quickly mentioned that Ani Bizalj was his great-great aunt.
Mic drop.
A connection to Kathy's family in Eastern Europe? With a person who speaks perfect English (he was born in Australia but lives in Croatia and is a native speaker of Croatian)? For realz?
He continued by telling me exactly how he was related to her and told me that he would be happy to share any more information that I needed.
My. Mind. Was. Blown.
I couldn't think of anything else for the rest of the day. Here was a problem I had been working on for over twenty years, and it was solved in a click.
He sent me the document that he had created specifically for the Bizalj family (mentioning that there are very few descendants and he was so happy to connect with one), and it is so beautifully legitimate. It isn't just some "facts" thrown on a piece of paper, but it's notated like a dissertation. Three pages on just the Bizaljs (Ani was the only one to come to the United States or even leave Yugoslavia (what it was back in her day)), but on Ancestry, there are thousands of names that connect to the Jardas family (Ani's husband).
What blew my mind the most was thinking about the impact of this information on Kathy, on John, and on my children. Kathy is half Croatian, John is one quarter Croatian, and my kids are an eighth Croatian. Seeing as I'm 91% white Wonder Bread from the British Isles, being Croatian is completely EXOTIC! Of course, I might have known some of this information beforehand if Kathy had just spit in a tube for the $69.99 DNA test I ordered for her, but Crazy runs in the DNA as well.
Of course, the reaction to this information from the family and from Kathy specifically has been rather disappointing, and I unloaded my feelings about that on Cheese, but I look at it as another genealogy miracle that honestly wouldn't have happened if it weren't for me.
So back to that book club arena.
Rebecca recently chose "Journey to the Center of the Earth" by Jules Verne as our book club selection. I was reading it yesterday (while waiting for my allergy injection) and came across this beautiful quote:
(Yes family, I might have been able to translate this 30 years ago when I was translating Vergil as a freshman in college...but which means this:)
Two arenas in my life that bring me some of the greatest personal joy are genealogy and blogging/journaling. Whenever I'm feeling a big off, if I delve into either of these two things, I feel much better afterwards. I won't lie though--they take some effort, and I don't always relish the idea of putting words to screen (right now is a perfect example). However, when I look at the thousands of pages I have now written about the ordinary and extraordinary in my life and in our family's life, I'm glad that I've done it because I could never go back and catch up.
My life in the genealogy arena has been almost as lengthy as my journaling life. I have journals from when I can first remember back in 1976 (and I used the lines in the journal to write my letters perfectly), and I have a Book of Remembrance that my mother helped me compile full of handwritten family group sheets and pedigree charts (again written in elementary lettering). I guess I like keeping a record of what has come before me and what is happening now.
I guess I can say that I have subset arenas as well in that I administrate different blogs based on the subject matter. I have kept blogs for all my missionary children's emails and letters home, as well as for our family's book club.
And perhaps reading is another arena in my life, although if I was to prioritize it, it would be a ways down the list although it hasn't always been that way. Growing up, reading was number one or two of my interests, and if I find a good book, reading moves back up, but as a general rule, I prefer magazines more. Current information that can be consumed in bursts.
However, with the advent of our family's book club (begun in January, 2018), I have rediscovered a love of reading. I do believe quite a bit of it has to do with the fact that we're studying only the classics, and the motivation to keep going naturally stems from knowing everyone else is reading along as well. It has been a true joy.
Yesterday, all of these arenas collided into one beautiful afternoon, and before my thoughts are sullied by the opinions or thoughts of others, I want to record it all.
I have been working on John's family's genealogy for several years. Okay, make that twenty years maybe. I started "helping" him before the advent of Ancestry and Family Search. I used to do things like order birth certificates by mail and comb through microfilm and microfiche. It was a much slower process back in the day. Besides being motivated to do it simply because I love the puzzle-aspect of genealogy, I do have an over-arching desire to seal the family of God together. I guess that comes from having so little extended family here on earth--I hope to have the giant extended family in the heavens. And I think too that I've leaned on the statement in the scriptures that the Spirit of Elijah will turn the hearts of the children to the fathers, and the hearts of the fathers to the children. Maybe, if I found some of John's family, his parents would take a liking to me.
But those thoughts are better reserved for some future therapy appointment.... Let's just focus on the puzzle aspect of it all, shall we?
John's mother's line is super short, because her grandparents or great-grandparents were all immigrants to the U.S. or Canada, and as any beginning genealogist knows, it can be difficult to cross the pond.
Years ago, I was researching her maternal line:
Kathy --> Mildred Pauline Ardus (whom I discovered is actually named Milija according to her birth certificate) --> Ani Bizalj.
And that's it. There was nobody further. And just finding that information took quite a while.
What can you take from that? Seeing Milija as a first name? That's very ethnic. And the surname of Bizalj? I mean, what IS that?
I did everything I could. Eventually (and that means years and years of researching), I found her on a ship's manifest with the first of her three children, coming over from a "residence" of Stubica to Calumet, Michigan (located at the very northern point of the Upper Peninsula). Looking on a map, Stubica is in modern-day Croatia.
Croatia? Really?
Our church doesn't have records from that area digitized, so I ordered the microfilm....in Croatian. And thank goodness for Google Translate, because it was invaluable in knowing if I was looking at birth records (rodenja), or death records (smrt). It felt like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack in the microfilms, and with John helping me, and knowing how frustrated he feels with genealogy, I was so hoping for a "find". However, there was nothing.
As a genealogist, I know that sometimes patience is the only solution to any problem. Somebody may come along and digitize some important church records, or they may post something on a group chat on Ancestry, or they may reach out to me based on my family tree. So I closed the chapter on that family for a while and moved on.
Well last week (and this brings another one of my arenas in that is remarkably connected to these others as well) I was working in the temple initiatory booth, and there were several German and Eastern European names--it absolutely kills me to hear the other workers not even TRY to pronounce them correctly--and into my mind, came Ani Bizalj again.
To be honest, this happens occasionally. Out of nowhere, a thought to research a certain family line will pop into my mind, and almost without fail (looking at you, William Kennedy), I will open all my materials, and the unfound names will fall into my lap. People speak of our ancestors, working behind the veil to help us find them, and I fully believe in that. I'm not the only person on the planet who has had some remarkable, miraculous experience in genealogy. However, this usually happens with names from my own family and not from John's.
So yesterday (you knew I would get here eventually, right?), I opened the family yet again, hoping that some foreign document would have been digitized which could send me in the right direction. There was nothing new, but Ancestry now has an option where, if the program thinks you might have a match with something that has been published, it will mark "Possible Mother" or "Possible Father" in neon green. I've seen it before, but usually it's just someone's guess and there is no source material, so I ignore it. However, with so little information about this family, I've been pretty desperate for anything. So I clicked on it.
It took me to a tree that had over 75,000 names on it (big-time strike, right there), but all of the details matched. However, there were no sources listed (Strike Two). But genealogy is nothing if it isn't people working together, so I clicked on the guy who created the tree, John Stefanac (good Eastern European name, so that was a hit) and sent him a short email, asking if he had sources for his information. It wasn't more than five minutes later that he wrote me back and told me that he had the actual church records from the actual towns (none of which were digitized). And he quickly mentioned that Ani Bizalj was his great-great aunt.
Mic drop.
A connection to Kathy's family in Eastern Europe? With a person who speaks perfect English (he was born in Australia but lives in Croatia and is a native speaker of Croatian)? For realz?
He continued by telling me exactly how he was related to her and told me that he would be happy to share any more information that I needed.
My. Mind. Was. Blown.
I couldn't think of anything else for the rest of the day. Here was a problem I had been working on for over twenty years, and it was solved in a click.
He sent me the document that he had created specifically for the Bizalj family (mentioning that there are very few descendants and he was so happy to connect with one), and it is so beautifully legitimate. It isn't just some "facts" thrown on a piece of paper, but it's notated like a dissertation. Three pages on just the Bizaljs (Ani was the only one to come to the United States or even leave Yugoslavia (what it was back in her day)), but on Ancestry, there are thousands of names that connect to the Jardas family (Ani's husband).
What blew my mind the most was thinking about the impact of this information on Kathy, on John, and on my children. Kathy is half Croatian, John is one quarter Croatian, and my kids are an eighth Croatian. Seeing as I'm 91% white Wonder Bread from the British Isles, being Croatian is completely EXOTIC! Of course, I might have known some of this information beforehand if Kathy had just spit in a tube for the $69.99 DNA test I ordered for her, but Crazy runs in the DNA as well.
Of course, the reaction to this information from the family and from Kathy specifically has been rather disappointing, and I unloaded my feelings about that on Cheese, but I look at it as another genealogy miracle that honestly wouldn't have happened if it weren't for me.
So back to that book club arena.
Rebecca recently chose "Journey to the Center of the Earth" by Jules Verne as our book club selection. I was reading it yesterday (while waiting for my allergy injection) and came across this beautiful quote:
Et quacumque viam dedens fortuna sequamur
(Yes family, I might have been able to translate this 30 years ago when I was translating Vergil as a freshman in college...but which means this:)
Wherever fortune clears a way,
Thither our ready footsteps stray.
I'm thankful my footsteps were ready to walk us all down the path of connecting the family of God. However we do it--journaling, serving, genealogy--push yourself to bring everything together into something really wonderful.
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