Ludwik and Stella Sawicki

Stella and Ludwik Sawicki

ca. 1914

Stella and Ludwik (Louis) Sawicki are my Great Grandparents. Ludwik was born in August of 1863 in Pozen, Poland. He immigrated to the United States about 1885 and eventually came to live in Chicago, Illinois. He married Stanislawa Wieczorek, daughter of Andrzj and Antonina Wieczorek. Stanislawa (Stella) was born in 1868 in Pozen, Poland. I am fortunate enough to have a copy of their marriage license from Cook County and marriage certifcate from St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church.

Stella and Ludwik resided in a predominately Polish neighborhood in Chicago, IL. They had eleven children between 1890 and 1905. Six daughters and one son survived through adulthood and produced eighteen grandchildren for Stella and Ludwik. Thanks to FamilySearch.org I have found a number of the children's birth certificates and have even found several of the children's marriage certificates. I have also been lucky enough to have found the Sawicki family on the 1900, 1910, 1920 and 1930 Federal Census records.

Ludwik worked for the Steel mills for many years as did many relatives and neighbors. I never knew either of my Polish Great Grandparents for they already passed away many years before I was born. He died in 1937 at the age of 74. Stella lived until 1948. Both are buried on a small hillside in Holy Cross cemetery in Calumet City, Illinois.

I usually visit the graves of many of my Polish ancestors at Holy Cross cemetery twice a year. I attempt to clean off the headstones and usually look for more ancestors. Of course, I take pictures of the headstones and document where the graves are located to make finding them easier in the future!

Happy 101 Award

Thank you to Becky from Grace and Glory for awarding this really neat honor! I have enjoyed Becky's stories and pictures of her family history for quite awhile!

I am to name ten things that make me happy~~~gosh that is an EASY requirement! Here it goes....


1) All my children, I am blessed to be their Mom. I am trying so hard to document all of our good times together!
2) My sister and her family, my many, many cousins, and other family members who tolerate my consistent questioning about our ancestry.
3) I am so happy that I work at two different libraries. One an academic and the other a public. Both offering me opportunities to spread the "genealogy" bug to students, faculty, staff, and patrons! Thank you.
4) My friends who never seem to tire of my chatter regarding my newest "discovery" or brickwall!
5) My grandmother and my mother's recipe boxes! Not only are the recipes terrific, but many are in their own handwriting!
6) Family photographs, especially those from my mother and grandmother. I always love looking at them and discovering something new!
7) Chocolate cake, chocolate brownies, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate ice cream, get the idea?
8) A home cooked dinner that someone ELSE has made. I am not fussy! It will be delicious I am sure!
9) Dakota, Anya, and Kaylee, the family pooches~~ who keep me company and let me work without any interruptions by sleeping on my bed or next to my chair whenever I am on my computer.
10) My genealogy friends and internet friends who tolerate my gift of gab and never ending questions.

Now, I am to pass this terrific award onto other blogs that I enjoy. Here they are....

Judith at Genealogy Traces
Wendy at All My Branches Genealogy
Sheri at Twig Talk who is recovering from a really awful fall.
Leah at Random Notes
Elizabeth at Little Bytes of Life

I am delighted to see that the following blogs have already been awarded this honor as well:

Becky from Kinnexions
Apple from Apple's Tree
Jasia from Creative Gene

Wordless Wednesday, Chatty Cathy & Casper the Friendly Ghost

Chatty Cathy

& Casper the Friendly Ghost

Christmas ca. 1961

Using the library!

Elisabeth Rusch Sommer &

her granddaughter Julia K. Sommer

ca. 1880's

Elisabeth Rusch Sommer is my GG Great Grandmother. She was born in 1816 in Germany and died here in Chicago on December 30, 1899. Last year, through an internet connection, I was blessed in discovering a distant cousin who provided me with the above picture.

Well, it's a New Year, so it's about time I wrote about my continuing research on my Sommer/Rusch ancestors. I devoted almost all of 2009 to researching just these two families. I am happy to say I found quite a number of great connections and of course, with those connections come even more questions.

Amy Coffin from the We Tree blog came up with weekly blog ideas for all 52 weeks of 2010! Thank you Amy. Week one suggests using the library for your research. Great suggestion, for I work at both an Academic library and a Public library. Both of which can provide great resources for searching your family history.

I live in a pretty small community on the very south side of Chicago. My public library is small and unfortunately you wouldn't find too much information on genealogy on the shelves. However, thanks to an Inter-library Loan program I can request almost any book from any library in the United States. I request a lot of books too. I love using WorldCat and finding many many books on not only specific locations, topics, but also surnames! One of the books I am currently reading is the fourth edition of "In Search of Your German Ancestors" by Angus Baxter. I like this book so much I most likely will order it from Amazon.com. Many public libraries will have the library edition of Ancestry.com on their public computers. Who wouldn't love using Ancestry.com for their research? Although my public library doesn't subscribe to Ancestry.com, there are a number of larger libraries in the area that do subscribe to this great database. I can use their electronic databases when I visit their library.

At Governors State University library you will find the Chicago Tribune on microfilm going back to 1885! What a great resource for death notices and obituaries!

Another great resource I use at least once a month is the Chicago Heights Family History Center. I have requested many reels of microfilm from their library for my German family research. Thanks to those many reels of microfilm and many more hours reading them, I have discovered a lot of information on my Rusch and Sommer ancestors from Neckargemund, Germany. I am slowly connecting the dots, crossing the t's and dotting the i's!

Thank you Amy for suggesting people use their public libraries! They may also want to look at the local universities and Family History Centers too for discovering more information on their family history!

Saturday night genealogy fun!

John and Alma Guinee

ca. 1952

Weeee, I am home on a Saturday night and I am actually working on my genealogy! Thought I would see what Randy Seaver suggested for our Saturday night genealogy fun! I believe I can do this too!

Name one set of your great grandparents, list their descendants by generation, list how many are still living, and how many I have met. Here I go...

****I have chosen my great grandparents John Guinee (1888-1972) and Alma (Ball) Guinee (1886-1963). I may have met both of them, but if I did I was very young and gosh darn it, have no recollection of them personally.

****I used my Family Tree Maker program to create a descendant chart!

****John and Alma had:

1st generation: four children.

2nd generation: nine grandchildren, four are still living

3rd generation: forty-three great grandchildren,, I believe all are still living

4th generation: seventy-three great great grandchildren, I know one is deceased

5th generation: nine great, great, great grandchildren

***** How many have I met?

Well, I only know five of their grandchildren, although I am still trying to find two more that I believe are still alive.

I know/met via the internet twenty five of their great grandchildren

I know forty-four of their great great grandchildren.

I do not know any of the great, great, grandchildren, although perhaps some day I will!

I really only know my Grandfather's descendants the best. I have emailed several other cousins quite often, especially during the holidays. I continue to send out "are we related" letters each month and once in a blue moon actually get a response. I am currently waiting to see if I hear anything from three such letters!

These little exercise was fun and got me thinking of a few other areas I should explore to fill in some missing relatives!