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 ‘michael iwaniw’
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.
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.