Archive for June 2023
I had already updated about locating my grandfather’s death record and confirming his date of death and the fact that he passed away while my father was an infant. What that research uncovered was that records from my father’s village are extremely limited, both church and civil records.
My Great Grandmother
The church death record listed my great grandfather’s name as Wasyl (Basilius, in Latin) and my great grandmother’s name as Anna. However, I know my great grandfather’s surname was Iwaniw as was my great grandmother’s married surname. But I don’t know what her birth name was. It’s not referenced on the death record. So, now I have to determine the best method to find my great grandmother’s birth name and details. Without actual records I’ll have to estimate dates and events and search from there. More or less trial and error. Were they married in Lutowiska? Or did they move from another location? If I can find their marriage record it will give a wealth of information.
My Grandmother
My grandmother’s name that I have is Matrona Smolii/Smoliw. There are 2 different spellings because my father used both spelling on different documents. His displace person registration record lists his mother’s name as Matrona Smolii. He lists her name as Matrona Smoliw on his SS-5 (Social Security application) and this spelling is used on his death certificate. I’m also search the different genealogy web sites (Ancestry, Family Search, and My Heritage) for a Matrona Smolii/Smoliw and have cone up empty. To me this means that there is no one else researching the Smolii/Smoliw family line.
So, to this end I’m going to be searching out the marriage record/certificate for my grandparents. This should give me information of my grandmother and, hopefully, both of my great grandparents. I was also thinking about finding my grandfather’s birth record/certificate but this would only give me information pertaining to him and I believe the records are limited in date range. But this will be alternative research path.
Tags: anna iwaniw, Austro-Hungarian, birth record, Family history, Galicia, grandmother, great grandmother, Iwaniw, iwaniw family research, iwanov, Lesko district, Lutowiska, marriage, marriage record, matrona, Poland, Slovakia, smolii, smolii family, smoliw, smoliw family
Posted in In Search of..., Mystery |
From November 13, 2019
In my last post I detailed some of the different documents that I received pertaining to my father’s time in Germany. So, my best guesstimate is that while he was in Sulmingen he was a farm laborer and while he was in Ulm he was a shoemaker/cobbler. While in Sulmingen his occupation as a farm laborer listed his employer as Theresia Ackermann. But I haven’t been able to find anything more about Theresia Ackermann. In Ulm, was my father an owner of a shoemaking shop or an employee of one? I have no details on either.
As I progress with my research my questions result in more questions and not answers. According to a record that I received from Arolsen Archives my father was taken from his home in Lutowiska to Germany in 1942. I can only presume that he was taken to a labor camp in Sulmingen Germany. But which labor camp? I cannot find any information on a labor camp in the region of Sulmingen.
I wrote to someone in the municipal office of the City of Sulmingen requesting any information about the marriage of my parent in 1945. I did receive a reply that they had found no information but had forward my request to the registry office in that city. I then received a response from the registry office stating that they had no record of the marriage there. However, they felt that the request was sent to the incorrect location. They believed that the request should have been sent to the Town of Sulmingen, which is now part of the Municipality of Maselheim. That person has forwarded my inquiry forward to there.
So, that’s where my research stands right now. I’m just waiting for information, I’m waiting to hear from whoever was forwarded my inquiry in Maselheim, I’m waiting to hear back from the Red Cross Tracing Service about their inquiry in the 1960’s regarding my father, and I’m waiting to find out additional information on church records from my father’s village of Lutowiska.
My next post I will update the status of the inquiry to the Red Cross Tracing Service.
Tags: Arolsen Archives, forced labor, Germany, iwaniw surname, labor camps, Maselheim, Red Cross Tracing Service, Sulmingen, Theresia Ackermann, Ulm
Posted in Archives, Re-Post, Update |
There are so many tasks to be accomplished when conducting researching into ones family history. I have confirmed the names of my father’s parents’ names, I have also confirmed the names of my mother’s parents’. I have filled in the gaps of family members within the family tree. I have confirmed the death of my paternal grandfather in 1919.
So, now I’m trying to address certain mysteries that I have no details pertaining to them. I’m going to expand on one of those family mysteries here. Back in the early 1960’s my family packed up the car and drove about 6 hours to Detroit, Michigan to attend a wedding of a bride who was named Iwaniw. That’s all I remember from that time (I was between 7 and 10 years old at the time, I think). My father, at that time, said that the bride and her family were not related. If true, then why would my parents undertake such a long trip to attend a stranger’s wedding in Windsor, Canada? What’s the connection with my family? If not relatives, are they close friends? I’ve never heard my parents speak of friends named Iwaniw in either Detroit or Windsor.
My mother spoke of a childhood friend who lived in Detroit (we stayed with them while there for the wedding) but never about any Iwaniws that ere close family friends or relatives in that area. I remember travelling with my parents to visit family friends in Toronto Canada, Troy New York, Kingston Canada, but this was the first (and last) time we travelled to Detroit Michigan/Windsor Canada. My mother had brothers living in New Jersey. All the information that I have from that trip is that the bride’s last name was Iwaniw, her parents were divorced, and there seemed to some drama that the bride’s father was going to walk her down the aisle. I remember that we crossed the US-Canadian border multiple times that weekend. We stayed with family friends named Andrijyashko <sic> in Detroit, who had 2 boys; one was close to my age and the other one was considerably older. That was the last time we ever visited them or ever heard of the Iwaniws in that area.
What I’m trying to do is fill in the details in my family narrative.
Tags: detroit michigan, Iwaniw, iwaniw surname, marriage, wedding, windsor canada
Posted in Mystery, Stories |
While conducting my family research I have been provided much information pertaining to both of my lineage surnames, Iwaniw and Tyzbir. I have been able to identify at least 2 other families in America with the last name of Tyzbir and I have been told of another one.
The 2 families I came upon were Tyzbirs of Vermont and the other were the Tyzbirs of Nevada. The other that I have been told about was Tyzbirs of Connecticut/Rhode Island. Neither of which are connected to my family line that I can find. In discussing this with my cousins in Ukraine, they inform me that there were three other Tyzbir families in the city they lived in and they were not related.
As for the Iwaniw lineage, that’s another story. If you’re on Facebook you just need to search on the surname of Iwaniw and you’ll be surprised on the number of Iwaniws that are found just on Facebook. Are we all related? Not that I can document. Although there are a few duplicate on the list and a few that I am fairly sure are related via other documented means, I don’t know where in the collective tree is the common ancestor is located. But then how can there be so many just on Facebook? A few years back when I was starting my family research I received an email from a researcher/historian named Maciej Augustyn (vbroda@poczta.onet.pl). I have misplaced the actual email but I had the foresight to print out a hardcopy of that email.
In that email, they were responding to a collaboration request I had posted regarding the Iwaniw Family in Lutowiska. I am going to transcribe what was in the email exactly as they wrote it:
“Mister Iwaniw!
My name is Maciej Augustyn. I’m historian!
Iwaniw was typical farmer family in Lutowiska.
In my archiv is list of voter from 1870. In Austriatime in Galicia voter was only head of family.
In this list write
Stefan Iwanow number of home 28
Fedio Iwanow number of home 17 (name Fedio = Fedor = Teodor)
Mikolaj Iwanow nr of home 111
Stefan Iwanow nr of home 16
In this time write another version You name Iwanov = Iwaniw.
Maciej Augustyn
Ustrzyki Dolne”
What I make of this is that the Iwaniw (Iwanow) surname was a fairly common name in the area. Similar to Smoth, Jones, or Brown in America.
So, without proper, legible documentation it is difficult to determine the relationship between different Iwaniw families that lived in Lutowiska, Lisko district in Poland. I had previously posted an update about my grandfather, Michael Iwaniw. But there was another Michael Iwaniw from Lutowiska. It was estimated that they were both born around 1880’s. The difference was that my Michael Iwaniw was married to Matrona Smolii and the other Michael Iwaniw was married to Kasia Iwaniw. My Michael Iwaniw had a son in 1918 but passed away in 1919 in Lutowiska. The other Michael Iwaniw had a son that was born in 1924 who then subsequently emigrated to Australia. Both of our families were resettled in 1951 from Lutowiska to Dudchaney Ukraine. That is where the other Michael Iwaniw died and was buried.
In conclusion, there are a few Iwaniw families in the world but I have no idea if we are related or not. I would love nothing more than to be able to document the relationships. These families are:
- >Iwaniws that emigrated to Australia – 2 different Michael Iwaniws born around the 1880’s and from the same village.
- >Iwaniws that emigrated to the State of Michigan, USA.
- >Iwaniws that emigrated to Wilkes-Barre, PA, USA – there is a strong indication that there is a family connection but nothing that can be documented with any certainty.
- >Iwaniws that emigrated to Argentina.
- >Iwaniws that emigrated to Great Britain. I use to communicate with the one family member that was their family historian/researcher but he passed away many years ago. We were never able to make a genealogical connection.
So, if you believe that we’re related we should communicate and compare notes. To contact me click on the Contact link above.
Tags: documentation, iwaniw family, relationships, tyzbir family
Posted in Update |
Previously, I wrote that I was looking for confirmation on the death of my grandfather, Michael Iwaniw. I was told and it was repeated to me that he had passed away shortly after the birth of my father. During my research I had come across another Michael Iwaniw that was close to the same age as my grandfather (born in the 1880’s) and was born in the Village of Lutowiska but was married to someone who was not my grandmother. Armed with this bit of information I began to formulate different possible scenarios. One scenario was that my grandfather divorced my grandmother and married someone else and started another family. But I had no documentation to prove this or disprove it.
So, finally, after exhausting all other research avenues with no results, I turned to the online Ukrainian/Galician community on Facebook. I realized that I was going to have to hire a researcher in Ukraine and/or Poland to search out actual documents pertaining to my grandfather. But which documents to search for? When I contacted the 2-3 researchers regarding locating record documents on my relatives, I come to find out that the amount of hardcopy documents are extremely limited. The one researcher in Ukraine informed me that the only records available in L’viv archives for the village of Lutowiska, Lesko district were the church records pertaining to the death records from 1918 to 1944. That pretty much determined which record was going to be searched for. My grandfather’s death record.
Where to start? The only place that could be started from. The information that was I told was that my grandfather died when my father was just a baby. My father was born in 1918 and that is the year that the church records start. So, I had the researcher start at 1918 to search for my grandfather’s record of death. If the record was found in 1918-1919 then it would confirm that my grandfather passed away when my father was a baby. If not, then other documents would be needed to be located and proved that the story that my grandfather passed away when my father was a baby would have been false.
You may be wondering what the final outcome was. The Ukrainian researcher was able to locate my grandfather’s record of death. The date of death in the church record was 29 January 1919 and the cause was inflammation of the intestines. He was 36 years old when he passed away. This puts his birth year at 1883. My grandfather passed away when my father was just 2 months short of his first birthday.
The record also stated that my great grandfather was named Wasyl and my great grandmother’s name was Anna. Unfortunately, her maiden name is not list in the record. If anyine that is reading this blog is located in or near the village of Lutowiska, Lesko district, Poland I’d appreciate it if you would be so kind as to snap a picture of my grandfather’s headstone in the Greek-Catholic cemetery there and email it to me.
The research service I used for my Ukrainian records search was Dorosh Heritage Tours and Ancestry Research (http://www.DoroshHeritageTours.com) and you can contact Andriy Dorosh via email at andriy@Doroshheritagetours.com.
Tags: church records, death record, Family research, family tree, grandfather, Iwaniw, iwaniw family history, iwaniw family research, January 29 1919, Lesko district, Lutowiska, michael iwaniw, Ukrainian, updates
Posted in Update |
