Wanted: Greek Research Guidance

Irish United Nations Veterans Association house and

 memorial garden (Arbour Hill), 

William Murphy, 2011, Creative Commons, flickr.com.

This is the story of how one resource can open the door to many research tools. It all started because of my Greek ancestors. My husband and I will be headed to Athens in the fall of 2015 for our next family history trip.

Athens. Panorama from Acropolis towards
 northeast and Mount Lycabettus, Tomisti,
2011, Wikimedia.

After traveling to the Czech Republic and Switzerland in 2013, I have some experience in getting prepared to make the most of my time in Europe. In my blog post of Oct 30, 2013, I discussed how I found my wonderful Czech heritage guide, Marie Zahn. The unforgettable trip with Marie to my grandfather’s ancestral village coupled with the genealogical information that she located before we arrived resulted in a very successful visit. This experience lead me to look for a guide in Greece.

But this quest proved much harder than I thought. I explored the subject of heritage guides in Greece in different google searches (trying to use just the right combination of words,) but nothing solid turned up. I e-mailed Rick Steves’ travel advisory site staffers, (a great site for travel information) but they had no leads either. 

Used by permission of publisher

On one of my google searches, I put “Greek genealogy resources” and a listing for a “Greek Family Research Toolkit” from Family Tree Magazine popped up. A copy of this issue is available at Family Tree Magazine's online store.

As I looked down the list of web sites in the tool kit, I saw this intriguing entry: Hellenic Genealogy Resources Facebook Group.

Facebook logo, 2013,

 Facebook, Inc., Wikimedia.

Now I had already searched Facebook groups under “Greek,” but I had not thought to look under “Hellenic.” The link in the Family Tree list (from 2012) was no longer active but now I had the name. I excitedly opened Facebook and entered the name I hoped to fine.

And there it was – the Hellenic Genealogy Resources Group!  (You must be in Facebook to see the group.) I saw that it was a closed group, so I clicked on “join” and the next time I checked, I saw a  welcome message from the administrator of the group, Dawna Stevens.

Listen, Ky, 2008, Creative Commons, flickr.com.

Having found the group, I could hardly wait to make contact.  In my “hello and thank you for letting me join message,” I asked if anyone knew of a Greek heritage guide. By the next day, Dawna Stevens had given me two possible candidates. This kind of treatment, of being heard, is something so wonderful to encounter when you are searching for information.
 I will write another post as I explore a research partnership with these new Greek contacts.

Another Facebook group I found in the Family Tree Magazine “Greek Family Research Toolkit” is Hellenic Genealogy Geek. I was intrigued by the term “Geek” – these must be very determined, focused researchers. Only a few weeks after joining this group, I received an e-mail announcing the “First NationalHellenic American Genealogy Conference” to be held in New York on Saturday April 25, 2015. This isn’t the first time that I have wished to live closer to New York City! The conference is co-sponsored by the Hellenic American Chamber ofCommerce and HellenicGenealogyGeek.com. The conference syllabus promises an exciting, information-packed day. Not only are there some intriguing presentations, but the conference is free!

The conference opens with Peter C. Moskos speaking on “Greek Americans: Struggle and Success” which is the title of a book by the same title he co-authored with Charles C. Moskos.

A presentation by Dr. Louis Katsos, titled the “History of Hellenic Lands,” focuses on how research in Greek records is impacted by “geography, boundary changes and village name changes.” Herein lie the sand traps that befuddle many a genealogist!

Bunker, Michael Coghlan, 2009,
Creative Commons, flickr.com.

In the afternoon, Peter W. Dickson, a contributor to Greek Americans, will be speaking on “Using DNA in Greek Family History Research.” How DNA can help in family history research is one of my favorite topics!

I found another lead in the Greek Family Research Toolkit -- a link to Lica Catsakis’ website, Greek Genealogy - FamilyHistory, How to find Your Greek Ancestors. Dr. Catsakis is the author of Family History Research in Greece. This is a description of the book that appears on her website:

“Eleven Chapters: Beginning your Research, Sources for Genealogical Research, Greek History, More about Greece, Greek Migration, Locating Places in Greece (with details about various gazetteers – geographical dictionaries), Churches and Religious Denominations (with addresses of dioceses, and Patriarchate), Research by Mail (with form letters for civil and church archives in Greek and their English translation, and Family questionnaire for relatives to fill in information about common ancestors), Learn about Names, The Language (with basics about grammar and a list of words you will see in Greek records), Numbers and Units of Time. 

Two Appendices: Glossary (of Greek and English words); and Greek Given Names their Variations, their English Equivalents, and Name-days.

Pictures of ancestors and of the land, Maps, and photocopies of samples of Greek Records andCertificates.”

Isn’t it amazing how one resource, in this case Family History Magazine’s "Greek Family Research Toolkit," can lead one to discover all this:

• Two Facebook groups on Greek Genealogy Research
• Referrals to Greek Heritage guides
• The Hellenic America Chamber of Commerce
• The First National Hellenic American Genealogy Conference
• A manual on how to do Greek Family Research by L. Catsakis

categories: genealogy tools, genealogy professional, genealogy groups

Counties Have Genealogies, Too

If we look at the meaning of the word “genealogy” online, on the Merriam-Webster site, we find several definitions, including:

“an account of the origin and historical development of something”

This definition is helpful  because it makes us aware of the broader meaning of the word “genealogy” that includes more than just people. When we research the genealogy of our ancestors, we have to remember

that geographic places (rivers, streams, mountain peaks etc.) and man-made places (towns, counties) also have genealogies.

View from a bridge over the Smith River, Fieldale, Henry County, Virginia., MarmadukePercy, 24 April 2010, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Melinda Kashuba has written a very helpful book (the author is updating the material for a new edition) for genealogists, Walking With YourAncestors,

Used by permission of author 

that teaches how to use maps and geography to research the comings and goings of our forebears. We learn a very important fact in this book: counties in America (during and after colonial times) were not fixed. Rather they were fluid. Often counties divided and then divided again, forming new counties. Some counties get eliminated in this process.

What were the reasons for these changing boundaries? Kashuba gives several reasons. If you have traced ancestors during colonial times in America, you already know about land speculation. In Kashuba’s words:

“New counties were carved out of sparsely populated regions for the purpose of promoting settlement because being part of an established county rather than unorganized territory was thought to be an effective selling point.” (p. 43)

Another reason for an existing county to be divided is explained by Kashuba:

“Residents often promoted separating into a new county, particularly when the trip to their current county seat was especially onerous. The ideal trip from the outlying hinterland to the county seat and back would be about a day’s time. Smaller counties were often created to satisfy these complaints by residents.” (p. 43)

This desire of residents to have a county seat nearby is of great significance to genealogists. The way that residents could let their desires be known is by petition to the legislature and thus a record was created!

The Library of Virginia has an on-line, searchable database of legislative petitions.

You can find the title of a petition, the county it came from, the date it was filed and where it is located in the library. Unfortunately, you must go to the library in order to view the document on microfilm.

Facebook logo/icon introduced in April 2013, 19 April 2013, Facebook, Inc., 

Wikimedia, in public domain.

Now, if you don’t live in Virginia, getting to the Library could be a problem. This is where belonging to a genealogical community is so valuable. Lincoln County GenealogicalSociety of WV has a group on Facebook, LCGS WV, where you can share information and ask questions.  Patty Butcher Tyler, a member of this group, transcribed two petitions, that she found in the Library of Virginia's legislative petitions collection, from Cabell County, WV residents, requesting a new county be formed. Both petitions, one dated 1840 and a subsequent one dated 1860, were sent to then Governor of Virginia, John Letcher (who served as governor from 1860-1864) in 1860.

Governor's House, Richmond, Va, Mathew Brady, ca. 1860 - ca. 1865, National Archives and Records Administration,  ARC identifier: 524418, public domain.

These petitions are a godsend to genealogists because they can be used to place ancestors in a certain time/area. And their neighbors are also shown as signers of the petitions. Finally, we are so fortunate to have the original signatures of these petitioners. I am so lucky that my ancestor, Franklin Johnson, was one of the Cabell County, WV residents who wanted a new county.

Patty ButcherTyler first published an article, including some of the pages from the petitions, in the Lincoln Standard . Here is a page from the article showing the second petition with Franklin Johnson’s signature:

 

 Library of Virginia, Richmond, Legislative Petitions, Reel 32, Box 45, Folder 56 Petition of Citizens.

Now that we have seen how legislative petitions can be helpful for genealogists, let’s return to county boundary changes and see how these changes affect research. Melinda Kashuba cautions researchers:

“To be efficient and successful in the research of a specific locality, you need to know what jurisdiction that locality fell under during the time your ancestor or research subject lived there. Your ancestor may not have traveled any farther than from his cabin’s porch to the well and back and spent his entire life in one place, but the territory he lived in became a county and that county became part of a state. Those county boundaries may have moved and shifted over time as new counties were added and old counties were abolished….Your ancestor may disappear from his county’s records, when in actuality the boundary shifted and suddenly he and his family were recorded in the records of a different  county.” (p. 42)

My Johnsons and their Franklin and Shelton cohort families lived near Peter’s Creek in Virginia in the 1780s to early 1800s. In order to see what county Peter’s Creek was in from the earliest colonial settlement to the 1800s, I needed a tool. AniMap is a database mapping program that “contains more than one million locations of: cities, towns, townships, courthouses, cemeteries (and geographic features) listing over 50,000 places no longer in existence.” (CD jacket of AniMap 3.0.2)

Used by permission of AniMap

When I plotted Peter’s Creek in Virginia in AniMap, here are the county changes I saw:

Date	County
1669	Charles City
1703	Prince George
1745	Brunswick
1749	Lunenburg
1765	Halifax
1773	Pittsylvania
1782	Henry
1791	Patrick

In AniMap, you plot a place and the program shows you the changing county boundaries of that place. A caveat is that minor geographic features or towns from two or three hundred years ago may not be in the AniMap database. If your feature is not in AniMap, chances are that another neighboring place will be in the database.

When you begin using AniMap, I suggest that you print out the manual (available when you install the program) to help you master the steps of “plucking” or selecting the place you want to know how the county changed over the years and “plotting” or placing that feature on the map.

An online database of geographic features is the Geographic Names information System (GNIS) at the United States Geological Survey.

USGS office, 30 July 2010, photographed by Billy Hathorn, Wikimedia, 

 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This database contains over two million feature names in the US and its territories. It's a great place to start searching for ancestral place names.

In this post, I have discussed the genealogy of counties in America and how important it is to know the county your ancestor lived in and to realize that the county may have changed several times over the years. In order to find an ancestor’s records, you may need to search in several counties. I have highlighted AniMap, a very helpful software program that lets you know with confidence the county your ancestor was in at what time, and GNIS, an online gazetteer.

Categories: document types, genealogy tools, genealogy groups, genealogy professional

"H" is for Heritage Books

On May 4, 2013, I attended a day-long educational meeting, held at the Georgia Archives, of the Georgia Genealogical Society. This was my first visit to the Georgia Archives, and as I mentioned during some earlier blog posts, you never know what materials you will find in a library or archives.

No matter what town, city or state you find yourself in, the local library and genealogy society will likely have some out-of-state material.

I was amazed to find several shelves of books on North Carolina (as well as many other states) in the Georgia Archives. I came across what is known in genealogical circles as a “heritage book.” This type of family history can focus just on one family, as in the heritage of the Shelton Family, or can focus on many prominent families in a particular county, as did the book I found in the Archives -- The Heritage of Old Buncombe County Volume I. Before I discuss this particular heritage book, I want to talk about this genre of genealogy books in general.

Connie Lenzen, a Certified Genealogist, talked about “county-level heritage books” in the article, Heritage Books and Family Lore, that she wrote for the National Genealogical Society’s journal, the NGS Quarterly. 

In this article, Ms. Lenzen first describes family lore or oral tradition as “one of the oldest sources of family history and one of the least reliable.”  We all have come across these family stories that have been passed down from one generation to another with no documentable source detail. Did the story really happen?  

Onkels Rekruten by Gustav Igler, Illustrirter Katalog der internationalen Kunstausstellung im Königl. Glaspalaste in München 1883, 4. Auflage, München, September 1883, wikimedia

It’s only fantasy until documented facts are brought forth. Ms. Lenzen cautions family historians to carefully evaluate and try to verify these stories  -- whether they come across them from interviewing family members or find them in “county-level ‘heritage books.’”

In the article, Ms. Lenzen provides an excellent definition of these county heritage books and how they often come about:

“As commonly structured, their publishers focus upon an area (geographic), solicit local-(genealogical) society sponsorship, invite area residents to submit family sketches, and then publish the contributions unedited and – almost invariably – undocumented.”

Forewarned with this information from Ms. Lenzen, I opened The Heritage of Old Buncombe County Volume I:

Used by permission from OBCGS

From the title page we see the book was published by The Old Buncombe County Genealogical Society located in Asheville, NC. The mission of the Society is stated right at the top of its website: " ...to serve the community through its publications, workshops and otherwise as a medium of exchange of genealogical information."

Map of Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States with township and municipal boundaries, US Census, Ruhrfisch, June 2007, wikimedia

In the book, the selected families from different parts of Buncombe County are presented alphabetically, and I was so excited when I came upon “Roderick Shelton and Descendants” # 571, p. 324. I looked at the author and another surprise – it was Kenneth C. Wilde, the researcher I introduced in my post of May 24, 2013. Because I already knew of Mr. Wilde’s professional research background, I was sure that I would find sources in his article. He cited Buncombe County land, jury and census records. Mr. Wilde also included “family lore” about Glumdalclitch, a.k.a Mary Franklin, whom I introduced in the May 24, 2013 post, but he used the word “claimed” to let his readers know that this story is just that, a story, until documentation is found.

One of the most valuable parts of the article for me came at the end when Mr. Wilde listed his lineage or Ahnentafel, starting with William Duckworth Franklin, said to be the son of Glumdalclitch, the ancestor that we may both have in common. We all love to compare our family trees.

 Family record of [blank] / Chapman Bros. Lith. Chicago. c1888,  Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

What have I learned about heritage books? They can provide an introduction to families in a county, give some local color and be a good resource. But the careful genealogist must be sure to check the information to see if sources are given. Where to find heritage books? Be sure to check libraries (on-line catalogs), local genealogical societies, and family search wikis, see my post of March 12, 2013, to locate individual and county-level heritage books.

Remember, a heritage book is just one tool to get you started. If you really want to ascertain the authenticity of the information in a heritage book, follow the five steps outlined by Connie Lenzen in her article  Heritage Books and Family Lore which involve thoughtful analysis of the story and checking of the “facts” in period sources.

Categories: genealogy groups, genealogy tools

Checking Out the Czechs

Did you know that the regional archives in the Czech Republic

are in the process of digitizing their records? More about this later in this post.

The theme of this post is two-fold. First, I want to reiterate once more that a genealogist never knows where precious information may come from. No matter how distant, we should never overlook any possible source.

Two heads, 1830, A.H.Maurer ,public domain, wikimedia

 And second, two heads collaborating on a research question are so much better than one.

In my blog post of September 19, 2011, I wrote about the pleasures of working with another person to tackle genealogical research. I have been very fortunate to be partnering with my sister, Monique Whitman, to ferret out the details of our Czechoslovakian Holub ancestors’ lives.


It’s amazing how much more two can unearth than one!

Monique asked our mother’s advice on whom she might contact in order to find out more information on our maternal grandfather,  Frank (Frantisek in Czech) Holub. Well, our mother recalled that Frank had remarried when she was about twelve. Monique did some serious sleuthing and found that Frank’s second wife was Angeline (Ann) Oslakovic Holub, they married in 1939, and the marriage lasted the rest of Frank’s life.

During her research, Monique discovered a relative of Ann’s who is still alive! When she contacted him, he not only remembered Frank Holub, but he had Frank’s baptism record from

CIA Czech Republic map in public domain, wikimedia

Czechoslovakia (The Czech Republic.) Who knows why or how he had this document. But it just goes to prove that we genealogists never know where our next record will be. Here is the baptism certificate:

As you can see, the document is in Czech. Monique used some on-line translation sites, such as Google translate to figure out the headings on the left side of the certificate. Here is what she came up with:

Politicky okres = political district

Soudni okres = judicial district

Misto narozeni cis domu = birthplace

Krestni List. = baptismal certificate

Den, medic, a rook = day, month, year

Narozeni = date of birth

Krtu = baptism

Dubna - April

devatenact set tri = nineteen hundred and three

Jmeno ditete = name

Nabozenstvi = religion

Rimsko katolicke = Roman Catholic

Loze = box, bed, club, society

Otec = father

Matka = mother

Praze = Prague

Knez = priest

Kmotr a svedek = Godfather and witness

Porodni baba = midwife

Now we had a structure to begin to understand the document. But the need to know more was too great for me. What I needed was a human translator! I decided to check out the new Czech society I recently joined, the Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International, to see if they might have a listing of translators. And yes, right on the first page, left column was the link I was looking for: Translators. When I clicked on the link, I found an alphabetical list, read the descriptions of people’s research expertise, and chose Judy Nelson. I e-mailed Judy to discuss her services and was amazed and delighted when she sent me this translation the next day:

(upper left - ) Czechoslovakia, district Benesov, county Vlasim, town born Naceradec no. 139.

(upper right-) book 8, page 208

Baptismal Certificate

Born 20 April 1903, nineteen hundred and three

Baptized 26 April, 1903

Name of child Frantisek (Frank, Franz)

Religion  Roman Catholic

Legitimacy - Legitimate

Father Josef (Joseph) Holub, born at Volesne, Benesov, a cottager at Naceradci no. 139, legitimate son of Jan (John,Johann) Holub, worker at Volesne and Antonie (Antonia) born Zemanove (Zeman) at Dolni Lhoty (Lhota), Ledec.

Mother Marie, born at Prague, book 2, page 441, illegitimate daughter of Marie Lojinove, legitimate daughter of Vaclav (Wenceslaus,Wenzl) Lojina, worker at Bukove, Pribram and Barbora (Barbara) born Krasu (or Krasn) at Rosovic, Pribram.

Priest - Antonin Filip, priest at Naceradci.

Godparents Frantisek Hausner, shoemaker at Horni Lhota no. 7 and Barbora, wife of Antonin Kroupa, farmer at Lhota 4.

Midwife - Terezie Doubkova, examined (like licensed) at Naceradci no. __.

At administrative office at Naceradci.  the 7th February 1924.  Alois (Louis) Strnad _____ (his title, illegible)

From this document, we finally found out the name of Frank’s mother – Marie Lojinove born in Prague. Oh, what joy! None of the American records that Monique and I had found mentioned Frank’s mother.

Načeradec, the Czech Republic, 2009 by cs:ŠJů, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

We also saw that our identification of Frank’s father as Josef (Joseph) Holub living in Naceradec was corroborated by this record.

In addition to translating the baptism record, Judy alerted me to the fact that the Czech Regional Archives are digitizing their records. Now Monique and I can search for the records of Frank Holub’s parents and grandparents and even further back.

Teamwork pays off in many ways in life, but in genealogy the rewards can be amazing. If you want to move forward in your research, it is to your advantage to find others with similar interests. Joining genealogical societies, like the Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International, is one way to find communities of people to work with.

And looking closer to home, you might find siblings and cousins who are eager to join you in unlocking family history.






Categories: genealogy groups

By Their Church, Ye Shall Know Them

“By their affiliations, you shall know them” to restate a familiar biblical quote. Many genealogical experts urge us to look at the groups our ancestors joined to learn more about them. One of the potentially richest sources of information for genealogists is the church where our ancestor worshipped. The records created by churches sometimes include, and may go beyond, the sacramental records of baptism, communion, confirmation and marriage.

As I have mentioned before in this blog, serendipity along with the steady mining of information from a variety of sources can sometimes result in unexpected and amazing finds. Last year I became aware of the Chicago Genealogical Society On the CGS website, I clicked the publications tab and found the listing of the contents of copies of the quarterly journal of the Society, The Chicago Genealogist, going all the way back to 1969. But the best news of all is that the Newberry Library in Chicago has digitized all the copies of this journal.

It is a two-step process to find articles of interest in The Chicago Genealogist. First, you look at the list of articles on the CGS website. When you find an article of interest (be sure to note the date, volume, number), you search for it on the Newberry’s digitized collection.  From this page, you can click on “Advanced Search” at the top and search for the exact volume.

I made a list of several articles I wanted to read, including “Some Early Irish Residents of Chicago’s West Side” in vol. XI #3 Spring 1979. When I located the article in the Newberry Library's collection, I was astonished to see what it actually was: “A list of contributors to the building of the main altar at Holy Family Catholic Church during the years 1863-65.”

As I looked down the list of names of parishioners, I saw some of my target surnames (J. Carney, Patrick Kearney, J. Duffy), as well as names from their collateral families (Anthony Dinan, Bernard Cosgrove, John Cosgrove, T. Cosgrove).

This find was exciting because I had been stuck in my Irish paternal great great grandparents’generation: my great great grandfather John Carney/Kearney and my great great grandmother Mary Duffy. I had found little information about them. They are identified as my great grandmother’s (Mary Carney/Kearney Kries Lauer) parents only on her second marriage application.

I have found mention of people in John’s and Mary’s  close social circle (collateral families) on baptism records. Julia Mercer Cosgrove is listed as a baptismal sponsor for Patrick William Kearney, the son of John Kearney and Mary Duffy. In the next generation, Catherine Sweeney Brookins Dinan and her son, Charles Dinan, were baptismal sponsors for Henrietta Kries, the daughter of Mary Carney/Kearney Kries and Henry Kries.

With this list of altar contributors, I had moved back a generation. But there was more to be found in this journal article. At the very top of the first page, the transcriber, Thomas M. Cook, gave the source of this list: “…originally published in Holy Family Parish, by Bro. Thomas Mulkerins S.J., Universal Press, Chicago, 1923.” And Cook even tells his reader where to find the book: “A copy of this book can be found in the collection of the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle Library.”

Another caveat to researchers that genealogy experts put forward is that if at all possible, a researcher should always go back to the original source. You never know if mistakes were made by an indexer or transcriber or if information was left out. So I needed to consult Brother Mulkerins’ book on the first parish of my Chicago ancestors.

I went to the University of Illinois Chicago Campus and searched for the book on the UIC library page. I found that there were two copies, one in Special Collections which was non-circulating and one in the stacks. I telephoned the library just to be sure the latter could be requested through Interlibrary Loan (ILL). Fortunately, I was able to obtain this treasure through my local library’s ILL program.You can also read Holy Family Parish online at archive.org. 

One of the key elements of the book is the parish map that is included. I was actually able to locate the area where my great great grandparents lived (Halsted and Maxwell/Hastings) on this map.

 As I looked through the history of Holy Family Parish, I found several items of great interest to me that did not appear in the altar contributors’ list; in fact, although that list was crucial for me to identify ancestral surnames and to tie them to later generations, there was so much more to learn about the church and the community it served:

1. What the land around Holy Family Parish looked like when the     church was built in 1857.
2. Why so many parishioners were included as contributors to the altar society drive.
3. What the neighborhood was like – what kinds of commercial establishments lined the streets.

When Father Arnold Damen began work on building Holy Family Church in 1857, this is what the area looked like, according to Father Mulkerins:

“…the territory allotted to the parish was a prairie during part of the year and a swamp during another with scarcely a structure worthy of the name of house in the entire parish, and only a few scattered cabins here and there.”¹

But it seems that things certainly changed once the church was built:

“Even in those early days it had already become a matter of quite general knowledge that the establishment of a Catholic Church…generally had the effect of drawing people to the vicinity….In an incredibly short time there were numerous families living near the site of the church, and there were numerous additions to the industrial plants.” ² And why was this?

“…wise business men knew well that amongst the Catholic population…there would be many who would make suitable employees.”³ 

The second fact that I learned from reading Holy Family Parish was about the altar society contributors’ list itself. There were about 800 names on the list but most of the donations were only $1.00. What was this all about? Well, it seems that Father Damen preferred to make sure everyone in the parish could enjoy the blessings that came from contributing to the building of the new altar. He and his assistants went door-to-door to see that no one was overlooked. And in addition to the heavenly blessing that a donor would receive, Father Damen added as a further inducement that “each donor was to have his or her name engrossed on parchment and placed under the altar.”⁴ 

The third piece of information I gleaned from Mulkerins’ history of Holy Family Parish is perhaps the most important. The book actually could serve as a “Fodor’s Guide” to Chicago’s Near West Side in the nineteenth century. We learn first about one of the hallmarks of poverty that still exists today: stores that sell alcohol abound in poor neighborhoods:

“Many of the grocery stores in the early days and up to the eighties (1880s), were a sort of combination of saloon and grocery….The grocery stores were very numerous everywhere in those times, and there were no department stores then as now….They were very numerous, sometimes two, three or even four on the corners of intersecting streets and possibly a few more within the block.”⁵  

Between pages 725 and 747, Father Mulkerins takes us on a walk through the neighborhood and describes the commercial establishments, other than grocery/saloons, including: drug stores and shoe stores, bakeries and undertakers, coal businesses and hay stores, candle manufacturers and hardware stores, house movers and dry goods stores, meat markets and ice cream stores, hatters and leather stores, and tobacco stores and livery businesses.

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)

 Yes, Holy Family Parish was a magnificent discovery. I learned that before my great grandparents attended St. Patrick’s Church, their parents were members of Holy Family Parish. I had the opportunity, one that is so often out of reach to genealogists, to “tour” the neighborhood where my people lived, shopped, worked and worshipped.

Notes:

1.    Thomas M. Mulkerins, Brother, Holy Family Parish, Chicago: Priests and People (Chicago, IL: Universal Press, 1923), 718.
2.     Ibid., 719
3.     Ibid., 719.
4.     Ibid., 58.
5.     Ibid., 720.

Categories: genealogy groups