More on Aleksander and Family!
I have discovered even more about my Buczek family than I did last week! It turns out that Wojciech, my great great grandfather, came to America twice before his son Aleksander finally joined him. He first came in 1909, then in 1912, he returned–this time accompanied by his 18-year-old daughter, Maryanna! Their destination? To visit/join his son, her brother, Antoni Buczek in Little Falls, New Jersey. So not only did I find that my great grandfather Aleksander had a sister, but he also had a brother!
Not only that, but a few lines below Wojciech and Maryanna were two other people going to the same address in Little Falls, New Jersey, one an acquaintance of Antoni Buczek and the other a cousin! Kicked myself for not thinking before to look through the lists and see who else was on the ship with them!
Finding Antoni’s passenger manifest, I found that a few other people on that list were also going to the same address as he was (in Little Falls, New Jersey), and he was going to visit his brother-in-law.
See? I meant it the other day when I said that it’s like piecing together a puzzle or finding clues to a mystery. The more clues I find, the more pieces I find, and the more new questions arise. It can be both exciting and frustrating!
Frustration stems from the fact that when you reach a dead end, there’s not a whole lot of things you can do to get past it, often simply because the records aren’t yet available online–yet! More and more are being added every day, so eventually a search you have done a thousand times before just might yield the results you want.
Keeping Up with the Joneses
Then again, the Jones line of my family continues to elude me. In speaking with my mother, I’m positive that the death certificate I found for Harry Jones (my grandfather Harry’s father) in Barre, Vermont is the correct one. [Sidenote: I also now know why his death certificate lists him as married but his wife’s name appears nowhere on it. It turns out, they separated when my grandfather was a teenager. He was deaf and his mother wanted him to have surgery in Boston to regain his hearing; “Old Man Jones,” as my mom said her grandmother called him, didn’t believe in doctors and refused. So she took her kids and left. They moved to Massachusetts and didn’t go back.]
“Old man Jones is no good!” Gramma used to say. He used to come down to visit us, but we couldn’t let her know he was there! ~ my mom
The death certificate for Harry is where my search remains. I’ve been able to find multiple census records for Harry, Sadie, and their kids; a few birth records; their marriage record…but I still am unable to find any record of Harry’s parents, John and Lydia/Lizzie (Murry or Murray) Jones. Hell, I even was able to trace Sadie’s family all the way back to the first Bears/Bearse to set foot on American soil in 1638, but I can’t find John and Lydia anywhere.
John was born in Wales, Lydia in New York. Harry was born in either Bombay, NY (per his death certificate) or in Malone, NY (per the birth record for Harry’s son David). I know that Harry was born in 1876, so I sat down the other night and read through every page of both the Malone, NY and Bombay, NY census records for 1880, thinking I might find them there, but no luck. I think there was an 1875 census for New York, so that might be the next thing I try. After that, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I might have to go through the entire census record for the three counties in upstate NY that are adjacent to where they ended up in Vermont, starting with the county that contains both Bombay and Malone, then working my way eastward. Not something I’m looking forward to. They had beautiful handwriting back then, but it can be a strain on the eyes sometimes, especially on a computer screen.
In the meantime, I’m hoping that I come across something somewhere that might shed more light on that family. Maybe a sibling for the older Harry, which would be a child for John and Lydia, or maybe an alternate name for John or Lydia. Until then, I’m at a loss.
Anyway, so goes my journey into the past!
Happy Digging!
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