Birthplace on Census Records

This week’s homework for Dear Myrt’s Tracing Immigrant Origins Study Group is to review census records to find country of origin for our immigrant ancestors.

Census records show the birthplace of my great grandfather Joseph Dachtera as

Prussia – 1900

Prussian Poland – 1910

Poland – 1920

They’re all correct

Poland did not exist as a sovereign nation when he was born – her lands had been divided up among her more powerful neighbors, Prussia, Austria, and Russia.  But at the end of World War I, Poland’s sovereignty was restored. In 1920 his birthplace was once again within the borders of Poland.

I’m tempted to write more here about the wealth of immigration information to be found in census records, but I suspect that may be part of our next assignment so I’ll hold off for now.

Schipp Family Passenger lists

My great-grandfather, Michael Schipp, emigrated from Prussian Poland in 1884. He traveled steerage class on the SS Westphalia. He arrived in New York, Castle Garden, and traveled to St. Paul, Minnesota with a probable stop in Chicago.  Here is an image if the Hamburg passenger departure manifest.

Michael’s wife, Elizabeth, followed in 1887 with their five children. Apparently Michael was doing well enough to pay for a second class cabin for his family’s voyage on SS Saale landing at New York’s Castle Garden. 

 In my experience, German departure manifests contain more information than U.S arrival manifests.

My video story of Michael and Elizabeth in Poland can be found at Michael and Elizabeth Schipp in Prussian Poland

Images from Ancestry.com

First names – Part I

Everyone searching for European ancestors has encountered first names that are unique to a nation or region.  Many of these are quite common and easily translated into English.  Every country also has some names that do not translate easily or/and are so old fashioned that they’ve been out of use for many years. Here a are a couple that I’ve encountered researching my Polish ancestors.

Kunegunda (Cunegunda)

 St. Kunegunda (1224-1292) Daughter of King Bela IV and niece of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, she married King Boleslaus V of Poland at sixteen. On his death in 1279 she became a Poore Clare at the Convent of Sandeck, which she had founded. She also built churches and hospitals, ransomed Christians captured by the Turks, and served the poor and ill. She is also known as St. Kinga. Her cult was confirmed in 1690. Feast day July 24.

Nepomucene

John of Nepomuk (or John Nepomucene) (Czech: Jan Nepomucký) (c. 1345 – March 20, 1393)^[1] is a national saint of Bohemia, who was drowned in the Vltava river at the behest of Wenceslaus, King of the Romans and King of Bohemia. Later accounts state that he was the confessor of the queen of Bohemia and refused to divulge the secrets of the confessional. On the basis of this account, John of Nepomuk is considered the first martyr of the Seal of the Confessional, a patron againstcalumnies and, because of the manner of his death, a protector from floods and drowning.

I have found only a few instances of this first name.  Since this is the patron saint of Bohemia, it leaves me curious to learn if there is a possible connection to Bohemia in my ancient ancestry.

More information about these two saints is found at CatholicOnline Saints and Angels

My first WWII ration book.

During Wold War II, rationing was the system put in place in the U.S. to make sure that everyone had access to the necessities of life – even if quantities were limited..  Everyone was issued ration books – I had one in my name when I was only 7 weeks old. Children were issued ration books to insure that families had access to adequate goods. When it came to rationed goods, a person was allowed to purchase only a certain amount at any given time.  The books contained stamps that were collected by retailers at the time of purchase.

In order to preclude a black market in ration stamps, retailers were prohibited from accepting stamps that had been removed from the books.  Rationed items included, rubber, leather, sugar, meat, fats and oils, and gasoline among other things. More information about rationing can be found here:   http://www.ameshistory.org/exhibits/events/rationing.htm

Short form Research Plan

I needed a plan to help me zero in on some specific gaps in my tree. My short form research plan is designed to help me isolate possible sources for each gap so that I can try to do a thorough search for each item and briefly record the results. This should help me organize these loose ends and keep me from redundant research.  (I hope.) There will probably be revisions to the form but this looks like a good place to start.

Research Plan (short)

Person	Seeking	Resources	Begun	Done	Result
Marianna Jaskowiak	Birth & Brother August 1849 Marriage 1867	LDS films Iwno 1199965 1199966
Nepomuceno Sip	Birth date Parents	LDS films Grabow 719471 719472
Magdalena Kaczmarek	Village Birth date Parents	Geneteka My Heritage??

Respect Your Audience – a minor rant

I’ve been watching tutorials for MS Movie Maker. A few of them are produced by Microsoft; but many are produced by user gurus and wannabe gurus. I classify some as “wannabes” because while their knowledge of the product is very good, their presentation skills, well, just plain suck.  Has our culture become so casual that a sloppy presentation manner is thought to be acceptable? 

One individual has produced several Movie Maker tutorials.  I’ve watch two of them and the video presentation is good; but I won’t watch any more of his work because of his careless and unedited narrative.

He burps. He sniffs. It even sounds like he blows his nose. UGH!!!  I can’t listen to him. This man is a social moron! (I did say it is a rant.)

I know that there are many tutorials on many subjects that are very well done by user gurus so I’m not condemning them all  Just the few who have no respect for others.

<<End of Rant>>

And I did manage to get my two StoryPress stories converted to YouTube videos.

War Baby on YouTube

https://youtu.be/B6nAXnUwd88

Schipp in Prussian Poland

https://youtu.be/ec4UMAIaU6w

Story Interrupted.

My favored family story platform, StoryPress.com seems to have gone belly-up. It was VERY user friendly and FREE. Easy to upload videos or photos and add narration. I discovered it when Thomas MacEntee announced he’d done a story about his mother.   This was shortly after I’d struggled to produce my first YouTube video.

I was amazed at the simplicity of StoryPress. It is disappointing that the site will be shut down at the end of September.  Apparently the venture was not profitable. They say they’ll review their business model to see if they can come up with revisions that will make it work for them.  I hope they are successful.

The good news is that I was able to download backup copies of my stories; and that the backup consists of separate image and audio files. I won’t have to start from scratch.

The goal is to create a history in an appealing contemporary format. What is the likelihood that my kids and grandkids would read it in a book?  Small. So multimedia is my choice.

A year ago my impatience led me to give up on Microsoft’s Movie Maker because it is not intuitive – at least to me. But I’m going to try it again after watching a couple of tutorials. (When all else fails, read the instructions.) It’s always a bit frustrating trying to learn new software but I’ll give it a go.

I’ll be redoing the stories I had on StoryPress and posting them on YouTube.  They are “War Baby” and “The Shipp Family in Prussian Poland”.  Then I’ll resume work on the next story about crossing the Atlantic as a passenger in steerage in the 1880s.

Back to the drawing board.