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sappatoti -> RE: Discovering Your Past (9/4/2009 12:57:07 PM)
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Tracing our family's past has been a divided effort amongst many of us cousins. One set of cousins has spent their time working on our common grandparent lines (paternal in my case). They've been quite successful in detailing the roots. At some point in the future, they're going to present their findings in a sort of formalized way: books, charts, videos, etc. Basically, my paternal grandfather's family is British Isles and came into the US in the early to mid 1800s. My paternal grandmother's family is a mix of English and German ancestry and they, too, came into the US in the early to mid 1800s.
On my mother's side, another cousin has graciously taken over the tracing of our common grandmother line (my maternal grandmother). Again, this is an easily followed line and their progress is going smoothly. My maternal grandmother's lineage is mostly Irish and German, coming into the US shortly after the US Civil War, circa 1870s.
I have taken the task of trying to decipher my maternal grandfather's line, of which both sides of my grandfather's family have very unique and, unfortunately, undocumented stories. I am left with old pictures and stories as told by my mother and her alone (she is the last remaining survivor of her generation and before). As one can imagine, not being able to find documentation makes my task quite the enjoyable task of unraveling a mystery.
My maternal grandfather's mother was half-Ojibwe and half-something else. The story has been handed down through the family that she was born as a result of a US Indian Agent, assigned to one of the Ojibwe reservations in Wisconsin, raping one of the Ojibwe women. The tribe rose up and killed the agent and allowed my great-grandmother to stay on the reservation as long as her mother (a full-blooded Ojibwe) stayed there. Once my great-great-grandmother died, the Ojibwe released my great-grandmother from the reservation and into the care of a Protestant-run orphanage in Wisconsin. The story continues that the pastor and his wife who ran the orphanage officially adopted my great-grandmother, thus giving the woman their surname. It's at this point the documentation trail starts and the history of that line of my grandfather's family can be easily tracked.
My maternal grandfather's father's side is even more twisted than that. The short of it is that, as far as I can tell after reading historical texts, that side of the family came from the Danube River basin of Hungary, during the time of the great wars between the family rulers of Europe: the Hapsburgs, the Romanovs, and their allies of France, Spain, England, and the Ottomans. From the text books written after that time, it appears that very little documentation from the period of 1850s to 1880s remained in that region of the world, as most of it was burned through the result of the various battles, rebellions of that age. Again, based upon stories told by my mother and my now deceased uncle, it appears my grandfather's family was politically aligned with the Russian-backed rebels in Hungary at the time of the Hapsburg-Hungarian alliance. They escaped from the region when the Hapsburgs ran one of their many purges and, by way of the Franco-Russian alliance, made their exile out of Europe via France. They were met off the coast of the US by government officials, given new names, and sent off to Newfoundland, Boston, or NYC for immigration; time frame about 1870s (pre-Ellis Island).
Getting immigration records from any of those three points of entry has been a bit of a challenge but every once in a while I'll check the Mormon's database to see if they've become available. There are historical accounts of immigrant ships being met out at sea and directed to one of those three points of entry. There was nothing clandestine or mysterious in that. It wasn't until Ellis Island came into being that immigrant ships steamed directly into NYC.
Maybe one of these days I'll find the single document that'll corroborate the stories I've heard, but until then, all I can do is to keep digging and rework the scenario with each new tidbit I dig up.
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