Family Genealogy

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My sister and I have been working on the family genealogy on my father's side for a couple of years. Fortunately the family came from a small area of Croatia and were Catholic, so there are church records going back to apparently 1750. Some of the church records were in the Mormon Genealogy Library in Salt Lake City, but they had gaps. I have had to hire a genealogy service in Budapest, Hungary to go to Croatia to find the rest of the records. Besides the Mormon records, www.ancestry.com was also a useful souce. It is expected by 2001 all of the immigration records from Ellis Island will also be available over the Internet.

Anyway, both of us now wish we have interviewed family members while they were still alive. We are having to recreate information they could have just told us, plus I am sure many, many good family stories have been lost. Document what you can now.

This could be a good assignment for a homeschooled student.

-- Ken S. in TN (scharabo@aol.com), August 28, 2000

Answers

That is interesting Ken! I recently found out that my maiden-name(Felver)is Hungarian with a perfectly "Hun" sort of meaning.[The gist of the word seems to be"kick-b*tt"!]Also,recently found out my mom's maiden name is German (Dysinger:originally Deissinger).Beyond that I don't know much but would like to.Good "luck" with your search!!Blessings,~~Tracy~~

-- Tracy Jo Neff (tntneff@ifriendly.com), August 28, 2000.

My Dad is really into geneology! I enjoy looking at all the names, because I'm a 'name nut'. Flewelling comes from Llewelyn, Llywelyn, Llewellen, Flewellen ect... Dad actually discovered that we could be related to Pocahontas:O) Pretty neat!

-- Abigail F. (treeoflife@sws.nb.ca), August 28, 2000.

Sometimes you turn up odd things.

The family name in Croatia was Sarabok (although alternately spelled Sarabok/Sharabok/Scharabok in records). We always thought it was a reference to a place, such as Kenneth from Sara Town, since my Grandfather Adam insisted it was von Sarabok and in German von means either of or from.

Genealogy service in Budapest told me in the Hungarian language sarabok is the name of a field tool we would call a grubhoe. Name eventually came to refer to those who used it - common field labor. Oral information is the family immigrated to Croatia from somewhere else, and Hungary is just across the River Drava from the family village of origin. Family immigrated to Milwaukee as Sarabok, but the name changed to Scharabok. They would have been living among Hungarians at the times, so perhaps were teased about the name and Scharabok sounded more sophisticated.

As far as we know we are the only family in the world with this surname, so it could die out. I know of a woman in Wisc. with the last name of Myear. She is the sister-in-law of my godmother. From what I can tell she is the only Myear in the U.S. and she is in her 80s.

-- Ken S. in TN (scharabo@aol.com), August 29, 2000.


How does one begin to research records? Could someone point out a website for newbies? I'm mildly interested, but my mom, who spends more time on the web than I (amazing!)would really be interested. Thx.

-- sheepish (rborgo@gte.net), August 29, 2000.

It would be strange to be the only ones to have that surname! There are quite a few Flewellings/Flewwellings around here. When the Llywelyns came to North America, they landed down south, I think. Dad likes to joke that the farther up they came the poorer they got :O) We have Dutch friends and their last name is Stam, which means 'tree trunk'. My brother claims we have royal blood and descended from Prince Llywelyn the Great, the first and last true king of Wales. He hasn't been able to prove it. Its sort of funny, because friends of ours also have a Welsh surname, Plewes, but they were peasants. It's certainly lots of fun!

-- Abigail F. (treeoflife@sws.nb.ca), August 29, 2000.


OK NOW YOU HAVE REALLY FOUND ME OUT I'M ADDICTED TO FAMILY HISTORY & STORY TELLING!!!!!!! Here are a few sites for Sheepish(but with the move you are not going to find the time now--so copy for latier) Hope someone else who has the passion will enjoy these sites also! Here we go: www.genealogy.com ,(all havw www. in front of them)vitalrec.com, pastconnection.com, genalogybulletin.com, familytreemagazine.com, ellisisland.org, gengateway.com, familytreemaker.com, genelogytoolbox.com, genealogyportal.com, my-ged.com, genexchange.com, nara.gov., genealogy.org, livingheirs.com, interment.net, roots.web, linages.com, gensource.com, familysearch.com, genswap.com, helpimlost.com, worldgenweb.org, cencus-online.com, gbnf.com, familyhistory.com, yourfamily.com,storypreservation.com------------that is just a few-- if ya need more let me know! Happy hunting!!!!! I'm really into prserveing the family stories!!!!! Sonda in Ks.

-- Sonda (sgbruce@birch.net), August 29, 2000.

My father (82) and I are doing a lot of research which is related to geneology. We are trying to establish my grandfather's birth parents. This is very difficult because he was born in 1900 but so far we have not found any record of his birth. He came out of an orphanage in 1908 and we know the man who raised him, George. He had always believed that George was his natural father but that George's wife was not his mother, particularly since they were not married until 1902. However, we cannot establish this for a fact so we are stuck with trying to solve this mystery before we can continue on the geneology path. So even though I can trace the roots of George Sisemore, I don't want to do that until I can establish that I am an actual descendent of his.

But a very interesting story came about because of our dilemma. I posted a note on one of the internet websites asking if there were any descendents of Walter Sisemore who lived in the Washington, DC area around the turn of the 20th century. (Walter was a brother to George. I thought if I could find a relative, they might know the true story of who my grandfather's parents were.) Guess what, I actually connected with a descendent and when my father came to visit me this spring, we met with our new found relative and his mother. It turns out that his mother and my father had met very briefly when she was about twelve and my father was in his early twenties. My father was able to fill in a lot of the history that they were looking for. They also provided some photographs to us which was really neat. Unfortunately, they were not able to give us any definite answers about who my grandfather's real parents were but they did tell us what they had heard the rumors to be so we are in the process of trying to track those down. This whole thing has been very interesting and challenging and I really enjoy doing it but I would really like to make the breakthrough and determine for sure who my grandfather was so that my father will know before he passes on. Meanwhile, I am writing down everything I can by talking to both of my parents. Since they are in their 80s, I want to be sure I record as much as I can for myself as well as my niece and nephew as they may want to know someday. I don't have children so it won't matter so much for me. But this whole thing is really very interesting.

-- Colleen (pyramidgreatdanes@erols.com), September 03, 2000.


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