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Climbing my family tree, part 2: Grandma Josephine....
At the recommendation of a few friends, I signed up for ancestry.com and purchased a 6-month membership. It gives me a nice user interface to visually keep track of the people in my family tree, and easily add people -- mother, father, spouse, children (but not brothers or sisters). I wonder which JavaScript framework or library they're using -- Dojo, jQuery, or something else.
The hard part is trying to determine what to pursue first. After my father's family (parents and siblings), and my mother's family (also family and siblings), there are several areas of focus I can choose from -- my paternal grandfather's family, my paternal grandmother's family, my maternal grandfather's family, and my maternal grandmother's family. All four of my grandparents had passed away before my sister and I were born. So for us, "visiting the grandparents" was to go to the cemetery and tend to their gravestones.
Both of my mother's parents emigrated from Poland, so I probably wouldn't get very far if I restricted my searches to US records only. My ancestry.com account only covers US records, so this search will likely be deferred to a later date.
So, let's start with my father's mother's family, since I know them best. My maternal grandmother (Josephine) had 4 sisters (Frances, Vita, Mary, Concetta/Connie), and 2 brothers (Vincenzo/Jimmy, Veneard). All of them stayed in the Buffalo, NY area, as did most of their descendants. They became my extended family. We'd visit them occasionally, and would try to have family reunions every year at a local park shelter. And thus, it would be the most logical place for me to start. I can then report my findings on this branch to the surviving relatives when I see them on a future trip back home to Buffalo.
Starting with my grandmother's full name (including her maiden name), and her year of birth (1905), I started with the US census records for 1910. I soon found the record for my grandmother and her family at the time. I now know the names of her parents: Nicolo and Sebastiana (Anna for short). (I don't currently know Anna's maiden name; I'll save that for later research.) They both emigrated from Italy in 1905, and settled in the "Little Italy" section of the lower west side of Buffalo, alongside the old Erie Canal.
I then looked at the New York State census records for 1915. (New York State used to conduct their own census on the years ending with 5.) As the census records listed their residences, I saw that they had moved from Lake St. to Dante Place. I remember my father mentioning something about growing up on Dante Place. Before he died, he gave me a book, America's Crossroads: Buffalo's Canal Street/Dante Place: The Making Of A City, which was written by a Buffalo News reporter and covered the history of this section of town. (Written in 1993, the book is now out of print, and copies go for more than $100 on amazon.com.) The book contained several maps. I also found a map of the area on the website of another Italian-American family whose ancestors also grew up in the area. I suspect the building they lived in was a 4-story tenement house. I also believe it was not a fun and safe place to grow up. (Dante Place, and the neighboring streets, no longer exist. The old canal bed was filled in, and several high-rise apartment buildings for low-income residents were built on the neighborhood site in 1951. A new road -- Marine Drive -- now circles these buildings.)
I continued looking through the census records for 1920, 1925 (NY), 1930, and 1940. (The Department of the Census releases census records to the public 72 years after enumeration. The 1940 Census records were released in 2012; the 1950 Census records won't be released until 2022.) As of 1940, the family still lived on Dante Place. My grandmother, and a couple of her sisters, married and moved out to live with their husbands, and so didn't appear in the census records. I noticed that there were several enumeration and transcription errors -- enumerators misspelling names, and data entry folks making typographical errors. I also found people listed in the census records that I didn't know existed -- siblings of my grandmother who died young. Or were those transcription errors? One listed a son, "Joseph", who was born the same year as my grandmother. Possible, but highly unlikely.
The next step is to look at birth records, marriage records, and death records, to help fill in the data gaps I have. I doubt these records are online, so I may be making a trip back to Buffalo in the not-too-distant future to research these.
The next area of research is my paternal grandfather: Salvatore. This will also be the topic of my next installment.
The hard part is trying to determine what to pursue first. After my father's family (parents and siblings), and my mother's family (also family and siblings), there are several areas of focus I can choose from -- my paternal grandfather's family, my paternal grandmother's family, my maternal grandfather's family, and my maternal grandmother's family. All four of my grandparents had passed away before my sister and I were born. So for us, "visiting the grandparents" was to go to the cemetery and tend to their gravestones.
Both of my mother's parents emigrated from Poland, so I probably wouldn't get very far if I restricted my searches to US records only. My ancestry.com account only covers US records, so this search will likely be deferred to a later date.
So, let's start with my father's mother's family, since I know them best. My maternal grandmother (Josephine) had 4 sisters (Frances, Vita, Mary, Concetta/Connie), and 2 brothers (Vincenzo/Jimmy, Veneard). All of them stayed in the Buffalo, NY area, as did most of their descendants. They became my extended family. We'd visit them occasionally, and would try to have family reunions every year at a local park shelter. And thus, it would be the most logical place for me to start. I can then report my findings on this branch to the surviving relatives when I see them on a future trip back home to Buffalo.
Starting with my grandmother's full name (including her maiden name), and her year of birth (1905), I started with the US census records for 1910. I soon found the record for my grandmother and her family at the time. I now know the names of her parents: Nicolo and Sebastiana (Anna for short). (I don't currently know Anna's maiden name; I'll save that for later research.) They both emigrated from Italy in 1905, and settled in the "Little Italy" section of the lower west side of Buffalo, alongside the old Erie Canal.
I then looked at the New York State census records for 1915. (New York State used to conduct their own census on the years ending with 5.) As the census records listed their residences, I saw that they had moved from Lake St. to Dante Place. I remember my father mentioning something about growing up on Dante Place. Before he died, he gave me a book, America's Crossroads: Buffalo's Canal Street/Dante Place: The Making Of A City, which was written by a Buffalo News reporter and covered the history of this section of town. (Written in 1993, the book is now out of print, and copies go for more than $100 on amazon.com.) The book contained several maps. I also found a map of the area on the website of another Italian-American family whose ancestors also grew up in the area. I suspect the building they lived in was a 4-story tenement house. I also believe it was not a fun and safe place to grow up. (Dante Place, and the neighboring streets, no longer exist. The old canal bed was filled in, and several high-rise apartment buildings for low-income residents were built on the neighborhood site in 1951. A new road -- Marine Drive -- now circles these buildings.)
I continued looking through the census records for 1920, 1925 (NY), 1930, and 1940. (The Department of the Census releases census records to the public 72 years after enumeration. The 1940 Census records were released in 2012; the 1950 Census records won't be released until 2022.) As of 1940, the family still lived on Dante Place. My grandmother, and a couple of her sisters, married and moved out to live with their husbands, and so didn't appear in the census records. I noticed that there were several enumeration and transcription errors -- enumerators misspelling names, and data entry folks making typographical errors. I also found people listed in the census records that I didn't know existed -- siblings of my grandmother who died young. Or were those transcription errors? One listed a son, "Joseph", who was born the same year as my grandmother. Possible, but highly unlikely.
The next step is to look at birth records, marriage records, and death records, to help fill in the data gaps I have. I doubt these records are online, so I may be making a trip back to Buffalo in the not-too-distant future to research these.
The next area of research is my paternal grandfather: Salvatore. This will also be the topic of my next installment.