In trying to research and gather information about my grandparents on the Iwaniw side I came to a dead end. As I’ve posted before I have a copy of my grandfather’s church death record and I have copy of his church marriage record. Unfortunately, these result in more questions than in final answers. Both records show my grandfather, Michael, as the son of Basil Iwaniw. However, the dates don’t match. They are about 3 years difference. The marriage record state that Michael got married in 1902 at the age of 25. This would calculate his birth year as 1877. His death record states that he passed away in 1919 at the age of 36. This calculates his birth year as 1883. I haven’t been able to locate his birth record yet, but I’m working on it. It’s difficult because the records are actually limited or even non-existent for the period. I know that the name Iwaniw/Iwanow was a common surname for farmers in that region, but what are the odds of 2 different Michael Iwaniws with the father named Basil Iwaniw born 6 years apart?
It doesn’t help that a large portion of the church records have been either destroyed in the war or just simply lost.
So, I’m going to have to go back to the images of those records to determine if there are any other clues of information that I missed. One of the things you have to keep in mind is that there records were recorded by the parish priests and they not everyone would enter information that same way.
Posts Tagged ‘Iwaniw’
I know that it’s been quite a while since I updated the status of my family research. I’ve been spending a lot of time on MyHeritage.com working on the current family information and trying to clean up/verify the data the best that I can. I’ve also spending time on my family data files that I maintain on my laptop with Legacy Family Tree software.
So I’ve had to re-evaluate my efforts and decide where and how I want to spend my time and effort in conduction my family research. I’m at the point right now where my effort need to be focused on the actual records that are found in Eastern Europe. There is very little that can be found on line. Additionally, in discussing my family research with numerous researchers from Eastern Europe I have found that:
- The Iwaniw surname was a fairly common name in Galicia region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Therefore, just having the Iwaniw surname does NOT necessarily mean we are related. To determine that I would need documented lineage information.
- The other point is that official records from that region and time are extremely limited due to being destroyed during WWII or lost. I was lucky enough to find that my grandfathers death record survived as did his marriage record to my grandmother. I still have a lot to review to determine the best path to follow further.
I have decide to consolidate and focus my efforts to a couple of specific web sites. Currently, my family research/data is located/stored at:
- Tribal Pages – I will no longer be updating the information on this site. The data will remain but if you come across it exercise caution in utilizing the information found there. It probably isn’t up-to-date or current.
- Ancestry.com – even though I have found additional and new information on relatives and connections on here, I will no longer to updating the information found here. The information found here is more up-to-date than on Tribal Pages, it’s not going to be as accurate as the data on MyHeritage.com.
- Facebook Groups – I will probably be shutting down The Iwaniw Connection group and Iwaniw & Tyzbir Genealogy group. Neither group is generating any activity and no one is actually participating in any discussions or exchanging any information.
- Any Rootsweb web pages that I use to manage.
- I am divided on what I will do with The Iwaniw Project. This is an offline project where I am collecting publicly available information about people with the surname of Iwaniw.
If anyone wishing to contact me about my family research or wish to collaborate pertaining to family research can contact me through the form on this site.
In my last post I stated that I was going to search out information about my grandmother and great grandmother because I was running out of options/data regarding my grandfather but, at that time, I didn’t know where or how to start because I didn’t have much information about either of them.
However, thanks to the Polish Ancestry Researcher, Lucjan Cichocki, and the municipal clerk in Lutowiska, Poland I may have received the church record of my grandparents marriage.
There are a few inconsistencies that I need to resolve and explain. But if this is the true record of my grandparents marriage then it helps in explaining other data I received. One of those was about my grandmother’s maiden name. Some time ago when I was first starting my family research and while my father was still alive, I starting asking him the basic questions; i.e. what was your mother’s maiden name, what was your father’s name, etc. It was this time that my father told me that he never knew his father because he passed away when he was a baby. I acquired a copy of my grandfather’s death record confirming that he died when my father was just a baby, less than a year old. The death record listed my great grandparents as Basilius and Anna Iwaniw. Well, that didn’t help me with my great grandmother’s maiden name. I already knew that my great grandfather was named Wasyl (Basilius) and my great grandmother’s name was Anna from my father, but I didn’t know my great grandmother’s maiden name. According to the marriage record my great grandmother’s maiden name was Stefanow
Now, where did the Shubish come from? If you look at the record at the information regarding Matrona’s mother you’ll notice one of the surnames referenced is Skubycz. Could this be where my father got the surname from? Lucjan was kind enough to send me his translation of the information on the marriage record.
Here’s the translation:no. 15date 7/22/1902 (this is a Greek Catholic church record, there was no civil registration in the Austrian-controlled part of Poland back then)house no. 26the groom: Michael Iwanow, single, a son of Basilius Iwanow and Anna nee Stefanow, farmers in Lutowiska, a Greek Catholic aged 25the bride: Matrona Iwanow, single Greek Catholic woman aged 19, a daughter of Maria Smolij [who was] a daughter of Gregorius [and this Maria Smolij was] 1st married [to a man named] Skubycz [and then] 2nd married [to a man named] Iwanow, [Matrona and/or her mother was] from Michniowiec [I am not 100% positive about the place name]witnesses: Michael Iwanow, Joannes Iwanow, farmers of Lutowiska
- First married to Gregory Smolij
- Then married a man named Skubycz
- Finally married to a man named Iwanow.
But what was Maria Iwanow’s maiden name? The record doesn’t say. I could leave things as is because Matrona’s family line is not a surname that I am trying to research. Its purpose is to help me connect to others that are researching their family history that may be connected to mine. I’ve written to Lucjan for further clarification and explanation of the information in the record.
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.
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.
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 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.