Sweet home, Chicago
After initially planning to go to Washington, DC this month for a short family vacation, we decided instead to go back home to Chicago. We haven't been back in about 5 years and my dad is missing the food something fierce. And the last time we went, I could only stay a couple of days, so I didn't get to really do much. This time we'll be there 6 nights, which will be nice. We still plan to go to DC in the future, but probably more like spring, when the cherry blossoms are in bloom and it's not so hot. Plus, that will give us lots more time to plan, which we were finding made the last-minute trip a problem. There are some things you need to get advance tickets for from your Congressperson, so the more time, the better.
Going back to Chicago didn't really require much planning since we're already familiar with it and don't need to do most of the touristy things. I grew up in one of the suburbs, so it's more like going home than going on vacation. Dad's all excited and planning all the restaurants he wants to visit, while Mom and I are working out when and where to do genealogy research. Had I mentioned before that I've gotten really into that lately? If not, then I'll say it now: I've really gotten into genealogy lately. :D
My mom's father was into genealogy himself, so most of her side of our family tree has already been researched. I did some more, since his was from before all the computer stuff was in place, and now it's easier to find some things online. It helps that most of her family tree goes back pretty far in this country. More than one branch can be traced back to before the Mayflower (one ancestor even helped found a city in Massachusetts). Another branch has been traced all the way back to Charlemagne, through a whole line of kings, which I found fascinating. I'm royalty! ;)
My dad's side, however, is much more tricky. Most of his grandparents were born in either Bohemia or Germany, and immigrated in the late 1800s to either Chicago or Columbus, Ohio, respectively. (Czechs to Chicago, Germans to Ohio) Because of that, I can't really follow them back much farther. Between the language barrier and the fact that both countries have seen quite a bit of unrest and governmental shifting over the years (Germany splitting then reunifying, Bohemia being absorbed into Czechoslovakia and then later split again), records aren't easy to find. Even the records after they got the the US are tough, because their last names tended to get butchered. Czech surnames are beasts to spell and pronounce, and a lot of them were Americanized when they came over. Still, I'm managing to find out a lot, and it's fun.
For instance, I didn't know this until a few years ago, but my grandfather (Dad's father) was adopted. His mother divorced his birth father not long after he was born (family story is that he beat her and she nearly lost the baby), and he was later adopted by her second husband, his stepfather, and took his last name. So my great grandfather isn't any blood relation to me. If he hadn't come along, my last name would have been Smejkal (pronounced like Michael with an S at the beginning). So I started my research by looking for the mysterious Mr. Smejkal, found that his name was Robert (my grandfather's and father's middle names - Dad is a junior), and found Robert's parents and even some grandparents on his mother's side. Very interesting stuff, though Robert is still a little mysterious. I have yet to learn if he ever had another family after the divorce. I could have cousins I don't know about. That's one of the things I plan on researching when we get to Chicago.
Another Czech branch of the family are the Koteks, my great grandmother's family. I came upon another little mystery while searching them, after finding two censuses with a child none of us had ever heard of. In 1910 and 1920, there was a daughter named Georgiana listed with them, but she never appeared again. Normally I would have said she just got married and had a different last name, but that family was pretty close, and it was strange that neither my father or aunt had ever heard of her. Even stranger, the obituary we had for my great great grandmother, Anna Kotek, only mentioned her having three children. She died in 1947, when her children all should have still been alive, so why wasn't Georgiana mentioned with her husband like her other daughter? What's more, there was no record of her death, and even if she had died, most obits mention "the late" whoever if a person had a previously-deceased spouse or child. The mystery deepened. I'd just about given up on her when, while searching the Chicago Tribune archives one day, I found another obituary for Anna. Apparently the one we had was from a local paper. The Tribune's obit had something the other didn't: Georgiana. Right there in black and white: "fond mother of Anton Jr. and John Kotek, Sylvia Jirsa and the late Georgiana Baumruk."
I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I actually let out a loud whoop when I read that. :D
Now I had a last name, and a general time frame: she had to have died between 1920 - the last census - and 1947, when Anna died. So I went off to the 1916-1950 Illinois State Death Index and put in her name and voila: Georgiana Kotek Baumruk (they had Kotek as her middle name) died February 17, 1929. She was only 20 years old. But the plot thickened. Since I'd only searched the last name, I got all the Baumruks that died in that time period, and there were two more than died the same day as her: Joseph and Joseph M Jr.) Coincidence? Didn't seem like it. I couldn't find an obit for her, but I did find one for one of the Josephs that merely said "Joseph M. Baumruk Jr, suddenly, Feb 17 1929, beloved son of Joseph Baumruk Sr." Funeral details followed, with burial in Resurrection Cemetery (aside: that's a famously haunted cemetery in Chicago, where "Resurrection Mary" is sometimes seen on the side of the road, or is picked up as a hitchhiker and vanishes at the cemetery gates). No mention of Georgiana again. If she was Joseph's wife or mother, wouldn't she be in the obit? If they all died togehter in some sort of accident, why not mention her? Who was this woman???
This sparked something with my dad, though, and he started to remember old family stories; vague rumors about some relative of his grandmother (Sylvia) having killed their family and then themselves. It was connected with the family having left the Catholic Church, and that the murder-suicide had meant the person couldn't be buried in a Catholic cemetery. Since I had this obit for Joseph in Resurrection Cemetery (a Catholic one), we started wondering if maybe Georgiana hadn't been the killer. Either that or Joseph Jr. was her son. She was only 20, so her child had to be very young. Post-partum depression? It all made sense, but I couldn't find any news articles about it. It turned out that Feb. 17 was three days after the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, so Chicago papers had bigger stories to tell. We told my aunt about it and she started to remember the stories, too, except her memories were different. She remembered something about a man confessing to a priest that he was going to go home and kill his family, and that the priest said nothing (back then they didn't have to if it was part of a confession). That was why the family left the church: they blamed the priest for not doing anything to stop the crime.
We did have another source, though. My dad has two cousins still living, the daughters of Anton Kotek Jr., Sylvia's (and Georgiana's) brother. One is 82 and the other is 70, so we looked up the younger cousin online and gave her a call. She remembered more, and later her sister confirmed it. The real story:
Joseph and Georgiana were either divorced or separated, and living apart. They had a 2-year-old son. Georgiana and the son lived in same house as her older brother and his family (Anton Jr and his oldest daughter, Doris, who told us the story), in an apartment above them. Doris was only 10 months old, but her father later told her what happened. She said that Joseph was "a very jealous man," and wasn't taking the divorce well. His cousin was a priest, and he confessed to him one day that he was going to kill them. The priest couldn't tell anyone because back then confessions were kept in the strictest of confidence, no matter what was confessed. That night, Joseph went over to her house, shot her and their son, and then shot himself. Tony (that's what everyone called Anton Jr) heard the shots, told his wife to stay inside with Doris, and went up to investigate. He found them all dead. Apparently, he and Georgiana were very close, so it took him a long time to deal with it all and even be able to tell his daughters about it. The family never really talked about it after that, which was why I had such a hard time finding out about her, and why my parents had never heard of her.
To make things even more interesting, I'd been trying to identify an old wedding photo I'd found in a box of Sylvia's pictures. It had a "return to" address written on the back by Anton Kotek, so I had thought it was his and Anna's wedding. The sepia tone and old clothing looked like it, and I'd traced the photographer back to that time frame. But the women looked like they were from the 1920s and not the 1890s, which threw me. It turns out it was the wedding party from Joseph and Georgiana's wedding.
I still don't know who the other people are, but it's nice to have names for the bride and groom. Even more so when it turned out to be the mysterious Georgiana.
We're planning to visit Doris while we're in Chicago, and maybe see some more photos she has. I'm hoping she can tell me more stories as well. Between this and the ancestor who survived the Civil War only to die in a distillery explosion, Dad's side of the family is turning out to be pretty interesting!
Going back to Chicago didn't really require much planning since we're already familiar with it and don't need to do most of the touristy things. I grew up in one of the suburbs, so it's more like going home than going on vacation. Dad's all excited and planning all the restaurants he wants to visit, while Mom and I are working out when and where to do genealogy research. Had I mentioned before that I've gotten really into that lately? If not, then I'll say it now: I've really gotten into genealogy lately. :D
My mom's father was into genealogy himself, so most of her side of our family tree has already been researched. I did some more, since his was from before all the computer stuff was in place, and now it's easier to find some things online. It helps that most of her family tree goes back pretty far in this country. More than one branch can be traced back to before the Mayflower (one ancestor even helped found a city in Massachusetts). Another branch has been traced all the way back to Charlemagne, through a whole line of kings, which I found fascinating. I'm royalty! ;)
My dad's side, however, is much more tricky. Most of his grandparents were born in either Bohemia or Germany, and immigrated in the late 1800s to either Chicago or Columbus, Ohio, respectively. (Czechs to Chicago, Germans to Ohio) Because of that, I can't really follow them back much farther. Between the language barrier and the fact that both countries have seen quite a bit of unrest and governmental shifting over the years (Germany splitting then reunifying, Bohemia being absorbed into Czechoslovakia and then later split again), records aren't easy to find. Even the records after they got the the US are tough, because their last names tended to get butchered. Czech surnames are beasts to spell and pronounce, and a lot of them were Americanized when they came over. Still, I'm managing to find out a lot, and it's fun.
For instance, I didn't know this until a few years ago, but my grandfather (Dad's father) was adopted. His mother divorced his birth father not long after he was born (family story is that he beat her and she nearly lost the baby), and he was later adopted by her second husband, his stepfather, and took his last name. So my great grandfather isn't any blood relation to me. If he hadn't come along, my last name would have been Smejkal (pronounced like Michael with an S at the beginning). So I started my research by looking for the mysterious Mr. Smejkal, found that his name was Robert (my grandfather's and father's middle names - Dad is a junior), and found Robert's parents and even some grandparents on his mother's side. Very interesting stuff, though Robert is still a little mysterious. I have yet to learn if he ever had another family after the divorce. I could have cousins I don't know about. That's one of the things I plan on researching when we get to Chicago.
Another Czech branch of the family are the Koteks, my great grandmother's family. I came upon another little mystery while searching them, after finding two censuses with a child none of us had ever heard of. In 1910 and 1920, there was a daughter named Georgiana listed with them, but she never appeared again. Normally I would have said she just got married and had a different last name, but that family was pretty close, and it was strange that neither my father or aunt had ever heard of her. Even stranger, the obituary we had for my great great grandmother, Anna Kotek, only mentioned her having three children. She died in 1947, when her children all should have still been alive, so why wasn't Georgiana mentioned with her husband like her other daughter? What's more, there was no record of her death, and even if she had died, most obits mention "the late" whoever if a person had a previously-deceased spouse or child. The mystery deepened. I'd just about given up on her when, while searching the Chicago Tribune archives one day, I found another obituary for Anna. Apparently the one we had was from a local paper. The Tribune's obit had something the other didn't: Georgiana. Right there in black and white: "fond mother of Anton Jr. and John Kotek, Sylvia Jirsa and the late Georgiana Baumruk."
I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I actually let out a loud whoop when I read that. :D
Now I had a last name, and a general time frame: she had to have died between 1920 - the last census - and 1947, when Anna died. So I went off to the 1916-1950 Illinois State Death Index and put in her name and voila: Georgiana Kotek Baumruk (they had Kotek as her middle name) died February 17, 1929. She was only 20 years old. But the plot thickened. Since I'd only searched the last name, I got all the Baumruks that died in that time period, and there were two more than died the same day as her: Joseph and Joseph M Jr.) Coincidence? Didn't seem like it. I couldn't find an obit for her, but I did find one for one of the Josephs that merely said "Joseph M. Baumruk Jr, suddenly, Feb 17 1929, beloved son of Joseph Baumruk Sr." Funeral details followed, with burial in Resurrection Cemetery (aside: that's a famously haunted cemetery in Chicago, where "Resurrection Mary" is sometimes seen on the side of the road, or is picked up as a hitchhiker and vanishes at the cemetery gates). No mention of Georgiana again. If she was Joseph's wife or mother, wouldn't she be in the obit? If they all died togehter in some sort of accident, why not mention her? Who was this woman???
This sparked something with my dad, though, and he started to remember old family stories; vague rumors about some relative of his grandmother (Sylvia) having killed their family and then themselves. It was connected with the family having left the Catholic Church, and that the murder-suicide had meant the person couldn't be buried in a Catholic cemetery. Since I had this obit for Joseph in Resurrection Cemetery (a Catholic one), we started wondering if maybe Georgiana hadn't been the killer. Either that or Joseph Jr. was her son. She was only 20, so her child had to be very young. Post-partum depression? It all made sense, but I couldn't find any news articles about it. It turned out that Feb. 17 was three days after the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, so Chicago papers had bigger stories to tell. We told my aunt about it and she started to remember the stories, too, except her memories were different. She remembered something about a man confessing to a priest that he was going to go home and kill his family, and that the priest said nothing (back then they didn't have to if it was part of a confession). That was why the family left the church: they blamed the priest for not doing anything to stop the crime.
We did have another source, though. My dad has two cousins still living, the daughters of Anton Kotek Jr., Sylvia's (and Georgiana's) brother. One is 82 and the other is 70, so we looked up the younger cousin online and gave her a call. She remembered more, and later her sister confirmed it. The real story:
Joseph and Georgiana were either divorced or separated, and living apart. They had a 2-year-old son. Georgiana and the son lived in same house as her older brother and his family (Anton Jr and his oldest daughter, Doris, who told us the story), in an apartment above them. Doris was only 10 months old, but her father later told her what happened. She said that Joseph was "a very jealous man," and wasn't taking the divorce well. His cousin was a priest, and he confessed to him one day that he was going to kill them. The priest couldn't tell anyone because back then confessions were kept in the strictest of confidence, no matter what was confessed. That night, Joseph went over to her house, shot her and their son, and then shot himself. Tony (that's what everyone called Anton Jr) heard the shots, told his wife to stay inside with Doris, and went up to investigate. He found them all dead. Apparently, he and Georgiana were very close, so it took him a long time to deal with it all and even be able to tell his daughters about it. The family never really talked about it after that, which was why I had such a hard time finding out about her, and why my parents had never heard of her.
To make things even more interesting, I'd been trying to identify an old wedding photo I'd found in a box of Sylvia's pictures. It had a "return to" address written on the back by Anton Kotek, so I had thought it was his and Anna's wedding. The sepia tone and old clothing looked like it, and I'd traced the photographer back to that time frame. But the women looked like they were from the 1920s and not the 1890s, which threw me. It turns out it was the wedding party from Joseph and Georgiana's wedding.
I still don't know who the other people are, but it's nice to have names for the bride and groom. Even more so when it turned out to be the mysterious Georgiana.
We're planning to visit Doris while we're in Chicago, and maybe see some more photos she has. I'm hoping she can tell me more stories as well. Between this and the ancestor who survived the Civil War only to die in a distillery explosion, Dad's side of the family is turning out to be pretty interesting!