Wishing my father a very Happy 86th Birthday & My nephew CJ a very 34th Happy Birthday!

Wishing my father a very Happy Birthday! 

 

Wishing my nephew a very Happy Birthday! 

Hope they BOTH have a great one!

The Chosen Ones - Ancestors in 52 Weeks

  This year's challenge is 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks and is run by Amy Johnson Crow.

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Week 34's theme is "Chosen Family." Family isn't always related by blood. Adoptions, step-children, foster children, and special friends of the family can be just as much "family" as those who share DNA. (I think I was 10 before I realized that my Uncle Bob and Aunt Mabel weren't actually related to us.) This is the week to highlight one of their stories.

This is an interesting topic as we've had a few people over the years which were "aunts" but they were more like great aunts. I found my husband's family did the same thing as my family with the great aunts and great uncles were just known as aunts and uncles. Therefore, I'm not going to use them in this sense but I can see where people do use them. 

Other people who were close to our family, but not actual blood family were few. 

Aunt Connie

Credit

Aunt Connie wasn't actually an aunt at all. She was a friend my mother somehow made and I'm not sure when, how or why. She lived in the same estate in Newburgh as we did when my parents were married. At that point Fleetwood was the main road and then looped up and around the tiny cul de sac where we lived. She lived towards the entry of the estate and lived towards the end of it. 

After my parents split, we visited her from time to time. In fact, one time we actually stayed downstairs where she was starting to make an apartment up and wanted us to rent from her. There were too many problems so we ended up moving out. However, we still visited her. 

In fact, I visited her back after I had married when we had some free time on our hands which was probably back around 2000 or so. However, she passed away in 2016. 

Ma Timberger

Credit: J. Fitzgerald

The other person who was like a part of the family was known as Ma Timberger. This is my ex brother in law's mother. 

We always had a good relationship with her. Like Connie, she was always in my life when I grew up. In fact, she helped me, and my mother, out in different ways over the years. In fact, it wasn't until I was in my mid teens I asked why she was simply known as Ma. It was because she was like everyone's mother so everyone just called her Ma even though her real name was Dot or Dorothy. I think when she worked at Shoprite she was only known there as Dot. 

Like Connie, she passed away as well. She died in 2009 after a long illness. 

Favorite Photos - 52 Ancestors challenge

This year's challenge is 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks and is run by Amy Johnson Crow.

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What is a favorite family photo of yours? If you're thinking, "Oh, but I don't have any old family photos," remember that you are a part of your family history! It doesn't have to be a photo of a great-great-great-grandfather. What about a favorite photo of someone in a more recent generation, like your parents, siblings, or even yourself. Why is it a favorite photo? What is the story behind it?

I'm not sure where to go with this question. I have older pictures of my grandparents and farther back, but none really could be termed favorite. I do have 2 pictures I like for different reasons. 

Picture 1:

I guess the closest one would be the one of my grandmother in the 1920s would be one of my favorites.

Jean Wojtkowski Schmitz taken October 11, 1929

Credit: M. Schmitz

In this picture, my grandmother, Jean, would have been 19 years old. She would have been in the United states for just over 9 years. 

The writing on the back is pretty important. It gives an address, what type of paper it was on and her name. I had never seen someone write her name this way until I saw this. 

It actually is the only time I've seen my grandmother's maiden name until her naturalization papers. 

She looks so young and healthy. You would have never figured she had already been through hell when they fled Poland. 

Nor does it look like she is in the middle of the Great Depression of 1929. Yes, the Great Depression started in August 1929 (2 months after it had started).  This picture was taken 13 days before the Stock Market Crash. 

It looks to be a very interesting time, but I think until the Stock Market Crashed, the family was doing well. I do know from talking to my father, Jean's father, Adam, had a huge trunk full of stocks that were worth nothing because of the crash. I wish I could have seen them and looked at them in depth. It would have been very interesting. 

In a way, I can see myself in her eyes. 

Credit: J. Fitzgerald - Myself and Brett when we were dating at Howe Caverns in NY. 

If you look at the eyes and shape of our faces on my grandmother and myself, you can see something similar. 

I think the innocent look on my grandmother's face in light of what is to come within weeks for my grandmother always has me fascinated with this picture. 

Photo 2:

This picture I had only stumbled upon when looking for more information on my grandfather as there is not much known about him at all. My father doesn't like talking about him, but there's not much written about him either. 

Credit: Department of US Naturalization - My grandfather Mathias Schmitz

Now I stumbled across this picture. This is from his Intention of Naturalization in 1930. At first I didn't think anything of it, but when you look at left eye in the picture, you can tell he had been in a fight or something because it is a swollen, black and blue eye. 

This made me laugh because who on earth would go and get a picture taken for important paperwork taken looking like this? 

I can only wonder what else he got up too if that's the case! 

Fresh Start - 52 Ancestors challenge

This is a prompt from 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks and is run by Amy Johnson Crow.

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Fresh Start - Perhaps you have an ancestor who had to make a fresh start after a loss or setback. Maybe you had to make a fresh start on researching a particular ancestor. (We all have that one person who we thought was an ancestor... and then we discovered we were wrong. Back to square 1!)

In the past few years, I've had a few fresh starts with different things in my life. I had split up one blog into a few different ones because the one had a mash up of different topics which didn't really relate to each other and it needed to become all uniformed and some kind of sense put into it rather than it was just all different aspects of me. 

This is when I split up my technology stuff from my genealogy stuff. There was also a whole my point of views on things as well, but I've let that one go as the others took off and over my life really. That is when I started over on writing on my ancestors and trying to tell their stories on this blog. 

Would you believe it's been 6 years since I started this blog? It feels like just yesterday. 

August 2, 2014 was the first post. Wow. How time flies by. 

Honestly until I started to sit down and write up this blog post, I didn't realize it was almost exactly 6 years ago. 

I guess this could be the answer to the fresh start of the blog. I do know I was regularly posting, but haven't been in the last year. I think that's acceptable due to the personal stuff that went on. Now there is this whole COVID-19 stuff going on and that's been taking it out of me too. 

But no more! I'm here and determined to catch up on all the blog topics I've missed out on. 

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New fresh start while I've been sent to the house without any chance for escaping for at least another 5 1/2 weeks. Ahhhh...