Research Goals – Who needs them?

I do!

I research my husband’s side of the family on and off over the years. I had his DNA results on Ancestry.com, FTDNA and 23andMe. I have a tree that is attached to his AncestryDNA results. One of his matches asked if I have picture of my husband’s paternal grandparents. Since I knew, I didn’t, I went to a family group on Facebook that my husband’s oldest sister started and decided to post a query there. The response was wonderful and within hours I had a picture of his grandfather in his elder years and another one as a young man with his wife and their first two children.

That little query, sparked an interest in my husband’s first cousins (brothers). The one brother had his DNA tested and sent out a message to me and I informed him that my husband’s tree is public, however if he didn’t have an Ancestry paid account, I could send him an invite. The other brother, asked to be invited to the tree and I posted a quick instructions on how to create a guest account.

With all this new interest, I decided I need to review the paperwork and docs that I have on this branch of the family. I realized that I have death certificates, however I never scanned them and they were not readily available on my sync drive that is stored in the cloud. I decided to look at his paternal grandmother’s parents. I started scanning documents and went to Ancestry to make sure I have saved records that I found there, in my sync drive. I also verified everything was sourced and entered in my genealogy program that I Sync with the Ancestry tree.

So my husband’s great grandparents had 10 children. I wanted to make sure I had complete information on this level, with complete birth and death dates, spouse’s names, marriage dates, and if possible even grandchildren. I know with DNA, it will be easier for me to see how his matches fit into the family if I expand his tree.

The first child, I struck gold. There was an obituary for this person on-line. His obituary as you can see has a wealth of information. I finally found out all the girls, married names. I see when he died, he had six living siblings. According to the 1900 US Census, his mother had 10 children and only 7 were still living. Therefore, this obituary gave me all those living children from the 1900 US Census.

Taking the first sister’s new found married name, (Mary Revolinski), I decided to search Ancestry for any records. All I found was two census records, one for 1930 and another for 1940.  Mary is listed as Marie and in the 1930 Census she is living with three adult children. In 1940, one of these children is still living with her, however now two grandsons are also living with her.

I click on the grandchildren and one of the hints is for the 1930 Census where the two brothers are living with their father, mother and 9 year old sister. I am guessing at this point that the mother (Rose) is probably Mary’s daughter. So I have possibly four children’s names and two grandchildren and one son-in-law’s name. I need to find more, however my searches are coming up zero.

 I decided to check all my husband’s matches with that Revolinski surname and one match came up. This matches’ tree ended with the sister and possibly her husband. Even though the matches’ tree has the husband’s name as Paul, my Ancestry search found a death index for John P. who is a little bit older than Marie, however, his burial & residence place is the same place that Mary’s brother’s obituary listed as where she is from. I am thinking this is looking promising.

I did a new search on Ancestry with John Paul Revolinski, his birth year and place from the death index along with Marie’s name, and the four children names I have found previously. I wasn’t finding any new census records. Therefore I decided to go directly to the 1920 US Census for the same location as found on the 1930 and 1940 census. I was lucky, there was only one enumeration district that contained 31 images. On image, 27, John, Mary and 6 children where two of the children name’s match the 1930 census and a third child matches the correct age, however is using a nickname in 1920.

John and Mary’s name is spelled Rewolinski and thus I modify my previous search with this new spelling and find the 1900 US census. The 1900 US Census gives lots of little clues, if you know where to look. It tells me that John and Mary just go married, 0 years married. Thus the 5 children listed, are most likely her step-children, since Mary is only 21 and John is 35.

I still can’t find a 1910 census, so I go back to my previous trick and go directly into the 1910 US census for the same location as before. There are still 31 images and I scroll through the pages. This time the last name is spelled Radvylenski. The first three children are the three youngest from 1910 and then there are four more children. I found Rose (her oldest) along with Walter, her youngest who was the oldest adult child from the 1930 US Census. I am feeling more comfortable that I perhaps have found the correct family.

Finally step, I need to go back to the DNA match and see what child of Paul and Mary is in her tree,  does it match what I have found as John P and Mary’s children. BINGO, her tree has the child Mary, the same age as my 4 year old Mary on the 1910 US Census and then 14 year old on the 1920 US Census.

My research goal was to find out information about the children of my husband’s paternal grandmother’s parents. Even though I only made it through 3 of their 10 children. This is a great start towards that research goal. Now I need to go back and actually save, enter and source what I have found.