Wordless Wednesday - In Memory

Tombstone Tuesday (Almost)

Growing up my grandfather didn't know a lot about the family his parents left behind in Croatia. When we were young he told us that his father had brothers that came over to the US and worked in the mines in Canada. One brother was killed in a mining accident there.

Fast-forward to a few months ago and my grandmother found an old piece of wrapping paper that my grandfather had filled with information on his father's family. My grandfather says that he did this late one night after he and his father had had a lot to drink! This piece of paper has many good pieces of genealogy information - and it confirms what my grandfather has always said - his uncle - Juso Umiljenovic - was killed in a mining accident in Canada in 1934 - just one week before he was scheduled to return home to his family in Croatia.

Since there was a specific year given, I decided to try to find a record of Juso's death in Canada. A quick search on Ancestry.com and I had it.



I sent away for the official death certificate that you see above. It shows that Joe Umiljenovich died on September 4, 1934 in Britannia Beach, British Columbia.

I did a quick search on Britannia Beach and found this website. Looks like it was most likely a copper mine where he was killed. I haven't had a chance to do any further research, but was happy to find proof of an old story that had been passed down from my great-grandfather.

Week 12: Movies

Week 12: Movies. Did (or do you still) see many movies? Describe your favorites. Where did you see these films? Is the theater still there, or is there something else in its place?

My earliest movie theater memory was going to see the Muppets movie with my Dad and siblings. I don't really remember anything about the actual movie but after doing a little Google search I think it may have been The Great Muppet Caper from 1981. I do remember that McDonalds gave away glasses with Miss Piggy on them and we all got one. I wish I could remember what theater we went to but I can't. Maybe one of my siblings remembers? It could have been the Flicker Palace theater in Huber but I am not sure.

The other movie memory that really stands out was going with my Mom and sister Susan to see Dirty Dancing at the movie theater in Beavercreek. This came out in 1987 when I was in 8th grade. What a great love story! White keds and jean shorts were wardrobe staples that summer. Once that movie came out on VHS we rented it frequently!

Other than movie theater memories, my favorite movie memory is watching Girls Just Want To Have Fun over and over. We rented it so many times from the video store, it would have made more sense to just buy it! Heather probably watched it more than the rest of us though given her habit as a kid of watching movies on repeat.



I rarely watch movies now. My movie watching significantly slowed down after Natalie's birth. I could probably make the time to catch a few every now and then but when I have a quiet amount of time it's not always for a 2 hour stretch at once and there are often other things that need to be done if I do!

Please share your movie memories with us!

Tombstone Tuesday - The Missing Great-Great-Grandparent

Last month I wrote about visiting the graves of 7 of our 8 paternal great-great-grandparents. The only one we missed was Cyrus William Gray II - who is buried in Connecticut.

This week I was doing some searches on FindAGrave and came across a picture of Cyrus' tombstone. For those of you not familiar with it - FindAGrave is a website that organizes burial information by cemetery and allows users to upload pictures of individual gravestones. If there is a grave you would like a picture of - you can submit a request and a local volunteer may go take a picture and post it for you. I was lucky to find that someone had already take one of Cyrus' grave. Thank you ann for posting that picture!

Notice that his wife Anna is listed on the tombstone also without a death date. She was actually buried in Ohio instead (where she went to live with her daughter after Cyrus passed away).

Newspaper Archives - Uncle Teddy

This weekend I did some searching of newspaper archives online. There are quite a few websites now that will let you do full text searches of old newspapers and download the actual pages that you find. I found many fun things so I'll try to post one here each week as I work on adding these documents to my family tree.

One thing I found was the obituary for my grandmothers great-uncle Teddy. I've heard my grandmother talk about her mother's Uncle Teddy often - in fact - here's a quote from my grandmother:

"One of my mother's uncles had an ice cream store right across the street from where the church was. So after church we always went to their house to visit. And he'd always take us into the store and he'd have all these things on the wall - the banana splits, etc - and he'd ask us what we wanted. And he'd make us that. Uncle Teddy. That was my mother's favorite uncle too."

Below is the obituary for Theodore M. VanDerAa. It was published in "The Pointer" (Riverdale, Illinois) on Thursday, March 16, 1939 - and I accessed it through NewspaperArchive - which is a paid website that gives users access to billions of newspapers dating back to the 1700's.



Translation of the text:

Theo. M. Van Der Aa, prominent citizen and business man, suddenly passed away last Thursday, March 9 at 12:15 p.m. His death was caused by coronary thrombosis. In the morning he was very active, enjoying his usual health, and as late as 12:05 p.m. waited on customers in his store. Answering the call for dinner, he lunched and lass than five minutes after he entered death.
Mr. Van Der Aa was born in South Holland on January 23, 1882, son of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Van Der Aa, one of the community's first settlers. On March 20, 1901, he was married to Alice Van Vuren. Passing away on March 9, he attained the age of 57 years, 1 month and 17 days. He leaves to mourn his death his wife; one son, Michael; two daughters, Jennie (Mrs. Wilfred Rietveld) and Leona; two brothers, Harry and Nick; five grandchildren, and a multitude of friends.
Funeral services were held Monday, March 13, at 2 o'clock in the First Reformed church, Rev. J. S. Ter Louw officiating. The body lay in state at the De Young Funeral parlor until funeral time. Internment was at Oaklawn cemetery.
The officers of the South Holland Volunteer Fire Department, of which Mr. Van Der Aa was assistant chief and treasurer for the past twenty years, acted as honorary pallbearers, and the non-ranking firemen were pallbearers. He was a charter member of the local fire company, member of the Community and State Fire associations, and a member of the South Holland Chamber of Commerce. He owned and operated his present business since 1912.
No matter how old or young, Teddy, as he was known, was liked by all. His death is a great loss to the community, to the fire department, to his business associates, to grown school children and the present ones, whom he delighted in serving in twenty-seven years of business.

This newspaper clipping has so many important pieces of genealogical information - it's a great example of how important it is to use historic newspapers when doing family research. From this I learned the following (some of which I already knew - it just confirmed it):

- Teddy VanDerAa's birthdate
- His father's name (the Michael VanDerAa I've written about before)
- Teddy VanDerAa's wedding date and his wife's maiden name
- Teddy's children's names
- The cemetery where Teddy is buried
- Teddy's association with the local fire department
- How long he owned his business

And - of course - it was sweet to read the last paragraph describing how he will be missed by many.

Wordless Wednesday

Tombstone Tuesday - Arvin Olin

Arvin Olin is our 5th great-grandfather. He was born July 13, 1797 and died June 9, 1870. The above photo is from Standing Rock Cemetery in Kent, Ohio (not the best picture - I know.)

Our line leading back to Arvin is:

Jeanne, Susan, Heather (that's us)

David Austin Grubb III (our father)

Phyllis Gray France (our grandmother)

Carl Haymaker France (our great-grandfather)

Cora May Haymaker (our great-great-grandmother)

Oscar Fitzerland Haymaker (our great-great-great-grandfather)

Mary Rosetta Olin (our great-great-great-great-grandmother)

Arvin Olin (our great-great-great-great-great-grandfather)

When you get as far back as 5th great-grandparents - you have 128 of them. Hard to imagine. At this point - we only know the names of approximately a quarter of those 128 - but I'm working on finding as many others as I can!

Week 11 - Illness & Injury

This is Natalie watching the Legend of the Volcano Sisters (one of her fave Backyardigans episodes).

Week #11 – Illness & Injury. Describe your childhood illnesses or injuries. Who took care of you? Did you recuperate in your own bed, on the couch in front of the television, or somewhere else?

This prompt comes on a day when I am just getting home from a trip to the Pediatrician with my daughter who was diagnosed with Strep throat. Fortunately, her only symptom is a low grade fever and a little extra crankiness.
I am lucky that I was not a very sickly kid. I rarely got sick but when I did, it was real. I've never broken a bone or even sprained anything. I had some usual childhood illnesses - colds occasionally, flu and chicken pox. However, in high school I caught something a little less common: Pleurisy. Pleurisy is an inflammation of the pleura which is the membrane that surrounds and protects the lungs. I remember having a sharp pain in my chest/back for a week or more before I was diagnosed. It was a stabbing, knife-like pain and my family made fun of me about my "oh, the knife" pain. My mom finally took me to the doctor knowing that I was not usually one to be sick or have random pain. It's not anything that serious but it stands out in my memory because it wasn't your run of the mill illness.

I don't think I required much extra care but I'm sure my mom took good care of me like she always did. Even when I wasn't sick she made me breakfast every morning before school. We never stayed in our beds when sick but always made up our own "couch bed" and hung out there being waited on by my mom. When sick, this is the only time that we were permitted to have the cable channel changer moved from the top of the TV to next to us on the couch. Big excitement, that was!

Now I am off to snuggle with Natalie on the couch while she recovers with the help of her favorite TV shows. It's nice that TV controls are now wireless and there are On Demand cable programs.

Week #10 - Disasters - Hurricane Betsy

Week 10: Disasters. Did you experience any natural disasters in your lifetime? Tell us about them. If not, then discuss these events that happened to parents, grandparents or others in your family.

Thanks to our mom for the below post about Hurricane Betsy!

From 1963 to 1966 our family lived in New Orleans, LA and we experienced 3 Mardi Gras and 2 hurricanes. Those events were definitely the highlights of our 3 1/2 years in New Orleans. Hurricane Betsy made landfall on September 9, 1965. At the age of thirteen the hurricane was a big adventure. We had our batteries, water, and food that would not need refrigeration. We had a gas stove and hot water heater, so if our electricity went out, we still could cook and have hot water. The hurricane lasted all night and it sounded as if our little one story house would be blown down--but it was made of brick (those three little pigs had it right) and it made it through the storm. However, our trees and bushes around the house were not as fortunate. The two tall evergreens outside our front door collapsed onto each other making it impossible to get out the door. The tree in our front yard was uprooted and was leaning about 45 degrees to the right. Our dog spent the night under our car and was unharmed. As a kid, the best part of the storm was that we didn't have school for 9 or 10 days because it was that long before the electricity was restored. We played out in the street, took baths by candlelight and went to bed early because there wasn't much else to do. Even 46 years later I can still remember the power of that hurricane and how much damage it caused--the power of nature is quite impressive and not easy to forget.

Michael VanDerAa - Using Passenger Lists

***Update: I discovered shortly after posting this that some of the information listed below is incorrect. I wrote a new post here that updates and corrects what I've found.***

After writing my post last week about my great-great-grandfather - John Michael VanDerAa - my grandmother emailed me and let me know that I had the wrong picture - that the man in the picture was actually Michael VanDerAa - John's father (and my 3rd great-grandfather). She also told me what she knew about Michael VanDerAa - so I decided to find out more about him.

My grandmother said that she knew that he came over from Holland with his family and that he had five sons, one of which was her grandfather, John. I decided to search for an immigration record for Michael VanDerAa. Ancestry.com has an extensive list of passenger arrival records and that's where I began. Unfortunately the last name of VanDerAa is often misspelled and also mistranslated and I did not have any luck finding Michael VanDerAa. So - I went back to look at some census records to narrow down the time frame when I could assume he may have arrived. I also wanted to see if he had any family members living near him in any of the records - then I could search on their names also (especially since my grandmother seemed sure that he came over here with his family).

Very quickly I found Michael VanDerAa in both the 1870 and 1880 census, living with his wife Johanna and his children. And living nearby were two other men with the VanDerAa last name, born around the same time - Jacob VanDerAa and Garrett VanDerAa. This gave me a time frame (before 1870) and two other names to search with. So I returned to the passenger lists and searched again. This time I found them! During the indexing process - their name had been read as Vanderau.



Michael VanDerAa arrived in New York on May 3, 1856 on a ship called the Fairfield. The ship came from LeHavre, France. At first I only saw that he was traveling with his siblings - Jacob, Garrett, Wilhelm and Johanna. This was the support I needed to assure me that I had found the correct person. I knew that the census records from 1870 and 1880 were him by the location and names of his wife and children. The fact that Jacob and Garret lived next door to him assured me that they were most likely family - and their ages told me that they were probably his siblings.

But - as I looked closer at the full page of the passenger list - I saw something I missed the first time. Just above Michael and his siblings (with just one passenger listed in between them) was Leinhard and Johanna VanDerAa. Judging by their ages (54) - I had found Michael's parents. This was very exciting because my family did not know the names of the VanDerAa family before Michael (at least not that my grandmother had told me!) So - now we know that they were Leinhard and Johanna - and according to the passenger list - they were born in approximately 1802 in Holland.

One additional piece of research I did was to search for information about the ship they arrived on. In doing so I found an article in the New York Times from May 5, 1856 (two days after they arrived) that described the arrival of their ship and also their journey. The below article is a bit difficult to read, but it says that they left France on March 20, 1856 and while traveling there were 3 births and 4 deaths aboard the ship - and they experienced some difficult seas.


Fascinating to find out what their journey was like coming here to the United States more than 150 years ago. And now I have the names of my 4th great-grandparents that came from Holland. Looks like I need to learn about doing research in the Netherlands!

Genealogy Surprise!

Back in the 1970's my cousin worked on our family's genealogy. Because of his hard work, I started my research (in 2000) with many, many names and dates already known. But, as any good genealogist knows, the names and dates are not enough - the proof of each is what is really important. I have slowly been trying to work my way through all the information that he gave me so that I have the proof of each name, date and place.

Today I decided to look at the Gray family. If you look at our website you'll notice that we have a design called "Gray's Diamond". Our paternal grandmother's middle name was Gray. It was also the maiden name of her mother (Olive). Olive was born in Connecticut and I knew that her family was from that general area (near New York City).

To begin my research, I logged in to Ancestry.com and started searching for her grandfather - Richard Sylvester Gray. I started with him because his middle name is rather unique and I was hoping that would make for a quick and easy find. What I found was a book published in 1887 that was a history of the Gray name in the United States. In that book I found Olive's family and it was noted that her great-grandmother - Polly Gray - was still living at the time the book was published (1887) and that she lived with her granddaughter in Connecticut.

Knowing that Polly was living in 1887 and knowing the name of the granddaughter she was living with - I decided to try to find her in the 1880 census. A quick search for Polly Gray gave me not just the 1880 census, but also the 1860 and 1870 ones. Each time she is living with one of her sons. But the last one (in 1880) is what really surprised me. Here's a quick picture below with some key pieces highlighted.



It turns out that Polly (my 4th great-grandmother) was living with her son Henry and his wife Jane in 1880 in Brooklyn, New York. Not only that - but she was living on Graham Avenue. 520 Graham Avenue to be exact. Shocking for me to find this - because in 2008-2009 I lived at 538 Graham Avenue in Brooklyn - just one block away! Below are pictures of our street and our building. It's crazy to think that I used to walk the same streets as my great-great-great-great-grandmother - nearly 130 years later.

Wordless Wednesday