It's funny. It wasn't until I began combing my family tree for baby names that I realized that my side does not have any of those lovely, old fashioned, out of date names from days gone by. Names like Euphonia, Bartholomew, Phineas, Virgil, Adelaide, Clementine, Patience, Prudence or Edwina.
William, Maria, Michael, James and Katherine/Katerina dominate my side, with the occasional Olga and Ivan thrown in for good Ukrainian measure.
My husband's side has a nice mix of names, including Beatrice, Cora, Elijah, Wassen, Pearl, and even an Omer.
I'd love to give my child (due Sept 09) a beautiful, unique name but we are conscious of the teasing and fitting in. Childhood is tough enough without being saddled with a name like Althea or Theophilus (which sounds too much like acidophilus, the common ingredient in probiotic yogurt these days!)
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Even though I have no American ancestors (that I'm aware of) I often check the resources just in case I serendipitously find a familiar name. Not being American, when I use their records I rarely recognize the famous examples they use when providing instructions on how to use the resource. Before I was married I was often asked the same question by people I met. "Are you any relation to Terry Sawchuk?" Born in Manitoba, Terry became a US citizen when his NHL career took him south of the border. His parents followed him to Michigan . Through the US Social Security Administration I was able to procure Louis' Social Security Application. It lists his place of birth as simply "Austria" (which is maddeningly vague) and that his father's name was Paul Sawchuk. There is usually more useful genealogy information on marriage certificates so I returned to the Manitoba Vital Statistics website. I discovered that "Lucas/Lewis Shewchuk/Sawchuk" married Anna Maslak on February 4, 1922 in Winnipeg. The marriage certificate (1922-06-006110) reveals his father as "Paul Shewczuk/Sawchuk." Louis and Paul were born in Lovocko/s (?), Skalat, Ukraine. (A brief history lesson -- prior to WWI the province of Temopil (in which Skalat was a city) was ruled by Austria-Hungary, which explains why Louis stated he was born in Austria on his SS application. Borders and rulers were more fluid back in those days. The political upheaval that spurred many Austro-Hungarian-Ukrainians to emigrate is a long, sordid story that I won't address today.)
It was at this point that I realized the connection between Terry's family and my family was fading for three reasons: First, to my knowledge, we had never been Shewchuks. Secondly, my great-grandfather emigrated from Galicia, Bukovina, Ukraine. Looking at a map from the late 1800s the city of Skalat and the area of Galicia, Bukovina were in adjacent provinces in Ukraine. However, it's unlikely they were immediate family members as there is quite a substantial commute between them. The third reason that the connection was becoming iffy was that Louis was born in Austria in 1898, around the same time that my g-grandfather, Michael, was emigrating to Canada with a wife and two sons. So they are not the same generation. Further information about Paul (Terry's grandfather) is needed. Years passed, and I expanded my genealogy investigations to other members of the family. This puzzle remained in the back of my mind, however, like an annoying itch. Following my grandfather's death in 2007 many of his papers were given to me and I picked up the trail again after a serendipitous revelation. I was shocked to discover that my grandfather's name when he was a boy was "Shewchuk" as seen on his school certificates and birth certificate. I had no idea our name was Shewchuk at any point, and my father and his siblings couldn't remember this either as they'd all been born Sawchuk. Being unable to find my great-grandfather's death certificate under "Sawchuk" or "Sawczuk" I checked the Manitoba Vital Statistics site once again for a "Michael Shewchuk" who died in 1928. Success! Michael Shewchuk's death certificate (reg # 1928-06-010076) states that Michael, born in 1868 in Galicia, Poland, died in 1928 when my grandfather was 15, a fact he mentioned several times in our chats. Further confirming the relationship, the address listed as his home at the time of death is the same address (8-3-5E, District of Franklin, Manitoba) that is listed on my grandfather's birth certificate. This certificate yielded two other items of interest. The first is that Michael's father's name was Steve Shewchuk. Michael named his son (my grandfather) after his father. This was customary, but I could never (until now) prove that Michael's father would have been Steve as well. The second point of interest is that the informant on the death certificate was Mortey (?) Shewchuk, Michael's nephew. I don't remember my grandfather talking about any uncles or cousins and we certainly don't know of any so this is another lead which could be a link between my family and Terry's. So to sum up, Terry and I both have Shewchuks in our family trees. And they came from adjoining Ukrainian provinces. Coincidence? Or relatives? This is where the story ends -- for now. I remain cautiously optimistic that Terry and I are cousins, although much further removed than my grandfather realized. Edward Ball. The Genetic Strand: Exploring a Family History through DNA. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007, 265 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-6658-1 ISBN-10: 0-7432-6658-7. $28.99 Cdn. A decrepit secretary desk crafted sometime between 1790 and 1810 is handed down through the generations and ends up in the author’s possession. While cleaning it, he discovers a secret compartment with several hair samples taken from earlier generations of Ball’s family, roughly mid-1700s to mid-1800s when it was common practice to collect hair samples. Readers may remember that Edward Ball also wrote “Slaves in the Family,” the 1998 National Book Award winner that meticulously chronicles not only his own 300-year family history, but also the descendents of the families who worked on the Ball plantations. He brings the Ball family under scrutiny once again as he tackles the modern world of genetic testing using the biological evidence they left behind. Inspired by the fortuitous discovery of the hair samples, Ball decides to create a “genetic memoir,” one that would confirm or refute family chronicles that often contain hearsay. The premise of the book is simple: Could genetic tests tell us what we really are, in a verifiable, scientific sense? Using the hair samples for DNA analysis the author receives test results that baffle and intrigue him, leading him to explore possible indiscretions in his family’s history that may have been taboo or were simply hushed up and lost over time. In his eagerness, Ball demonstrates how easy it is to get caught up in the possibilities of how generations might have diluted the blood line. Of particular interest is the case of his great grandmother, Kate Fuller, whose entire ethnicity and lineage is abruptly called into question as a result of one particular DNA analysis. No genetic analysis would be complete without also discussing population movement such as the “out of Africa” theory, that anatomically modern humans had originated in Africa, then had migrated out and around the world some 100,000 years ago. It is through genetic mutations and the markers they leave behind for future generations that link modern DNA to human origins in Africa, Asia, Europe or North America. The moral of the story is that science is not omniscient. Realizing that the tests are not flawless, even in the exacting world of DNA analysis, Ball takes the hair samples for multiple testing to a variety of genetic labs throughout the US, Canada and the UK. The author acknowledges the subjectivity of using old hair samples. Considering that “[age] is bad, water is bad and heat is bad” the fact that these hair samples “stewed” in a hot, humid environment (Charleston, South Carolina) for 200 years is one reason to take the DNA results with a grain of salt. One minor aspect of this book disappointed me. Ball does not include citations for the supporting academic articles to which he refers throughout the book. I would have thought that for all the effort Ball made to be scientifically thorough and accurate he would have included more of his sources in footnotes or appendices. He drops notable scientific journal names without further comment. For example “[he’s] published on these markers in journals such as Genome Research and the American Journal of Human Genetics.” As a science geek I would have appreciated more detail on these papers.
This book deftly marries science and genealogy. However, readers looking for scandalous discoveries about the genetic purity of the Ball family will be disappointed. The author generalizes the DNA testing experience to what it means for the future trends of genealogy, rather than focusing on how the results influence his own ancestors. As the author states, “the surprises come from what the scientists do to the evidence, not from their revelations about it.” Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book. The author has an engaging and amusing style of writing, describing his initial discovery of the hair samples as “little extras Louis and Mary Leakey might have kept on the mantel.” The book reads as a narrative and is aimed at people who are keen to jump on the forensic bandwagon to shake out “real” relationships and ethnicities in the family tree. The topic is appearing increasingly in professional genealogy magazines (e.g. “From DNA to Genetic Genealogy,” APG Quarterly, Mar 2009) and, judging by the number of websites devoted to genetic testing and genealogy, is becoming more mainstream for the amateur family historian. It is not really a book readers need to keep in a personal library, but worthwhile to read if one is considering DNA testing of family members. |
Why a blog?Family history just fascinates me. And not just my own. There are many facts and people that have been lost to time. I really enjoy puzzles and sometimes I come across some really interesting mysteries in my genealogy travels. I'll post some of my musings here. Archives
November 2015
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