The Iwaniw Family

One of the challenges in genealogy research is when one focuses on one member of the family tree in order to locate more information about them.  One of mine is Wasyl Iwaniw.  He is my father’s older brother and I think he was named after my great-grandfather.  So, in essence, I am researching my family tree that contains at least 2 KNOWN (at least to me) Wasyl Iwaniw’s.  One was my great-grandfather whose DOB is not known; and the other is my uncle who I have determined the DOB being around 1903. 

Now, I was contacted on Facebook by someone whose adopted brother was an Iwaniw and she was interested in learning if amybe there was a family connection.  Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate a direct connection to my own family tree, but this doesn’t mean that there isn’t some type of indirect connection.  I am still in the process of locating a connection between my family tree and other Iwaniw family group out of Wilkes-Barre PA (the majority of the members of this family now live in Virginia).  I was also able to connect with another family group in Australia who may have a direct connection to my own grandfather, Michael Iwaniw. 

So, now I have another person in Australia who, while trying to research her adopted brother’s Iwaniw family, came across another Wasyl Iwaniw who emigrated to Australia in 1949.  I thought that maybe I may have found my long-lost uncle.  But, alas, the DOB’s don’t match up.  This Wasyl Iwaniw from Australia (who I will call The Younger Wasyl) has a DOB of 1924.  21 years after my Uncle Wasyl’s (who I will call The Older Wasyl) was born.  The one promising aspect of The Younger Wasyl’s lineage is that he stated on his immigration papers that he place of birth was….Lutowiska, Poland.  Hmmm, guess where my father and his family are from?  You got it!  Lutowiska, Poland! 

This is definitely going to be worth pursuing.  I’ve requested additional records from the Australian body responsible for them.  I have some documents for Wasyl Iwaniw but the key bits of information are lacking.  I know that The Younger Wasyl embarked to Australia from Naples, Italy.  I also know that he stated that his last permanent residence was the British Zone in Germany (my parents came from the US Zone in Germany).  That he travelled to Australia on the USAT General M.B. Stewart.  That he arrived in Adelaide on July 20, 1949.  That he was married but I have no records showing any information about his wife.

As I get more information, I will try to detail it here.

It is with a heavy heart that I am posting the following obituary for my departed mother…

Well, I thought I might start posting on the new family blog site.  Unfortunately, I haven’t had an opportunity to get any info together to post about my family research activity.  BUT…I do have a couple fo groups on Facebook that pertain to the Iwaniw Surname.  One is called The Iwaniw Connection and this was created some time ago; it is open for anyone interested in researching the Iwaniw surname to join.  The other group I created was The Iwaniw Exchange and you can only join by invitation only (you have to have the surname of Iwaniw to be invited).

I’ve also created a a group for Iwaniw Genealogy and Tyzbir Genealogy, which are groups whose purpose is for collaborative efforts. 

That’s pretty mcu all I have at this time.

Terry
Connect with me on Facebook

Welcome to the new Iwaniw.net web site.  I decided to turn this into a blog site so that I could post information about what was going on in the family and to detail my genealogy activities.  I’ve decided to concentrate on keeping the online family tree web site updated in one location.  Instead of trying to maintain a different number of sites, I decided to keep only one updated.  I will be working on all of the other ones to have them point to the one site.   It gets confusing, but I’ll work it out.