The Matriarch

Sometimes things just fall into your lap.

One of the features of my genealogy software (Family Tree Maker) is to automatically search in proprietary databases and on the Web to look for likely matches to names in my tree. It was through one of these computer-generated hints that I struck paydirt. I had some information for Stephan Michael Duch (1861-1937), and I had several first name variations for his wife -- Susanna, Susa, Susan, Suzana -- but no last name and no death date for her. It so happens that a granddaughter of Anna Duch/Duke is researching her own family, the Bacchis, and had posted her own tree. It was this tree that Family Tree Maker found a match. The granddaughter lists Steve's wife as Suzana Baniak with a death date of June 18, 1930 at Continental #2, one of the mining settlements near Uniontown.

Corresponding with the author of the tree, she told me

My Grandma was Anna Duch Swinchock, her daughter, Marie is my mom. I know my mom had cousins with the name of Donald & John Duke. Some of the information I got from my grandma before she passed away. She is the one who told me her mom's maiden name. She gave me all her brothers & sisters names, birth dates, their spouses and children names. The other piece of info I have on our great-grandparents is where they are buried, which is in St. Mary Cemetery in Uniontown, PA. I have been collecting information off and on for over 20 years.

In some cases she was able to give me more specific dates than I had. In her tree, she has one more child from the union of Stefan and Suzana than I was able to locate -- Andrew, who died as an infant in 1885.

This is great information to have. It fills in some gaps for an important ancestor and will be vital if I can ever leap the Atlantic and begin to gather more information from Central Europe. For right now, I have very little information about Suzana Baniak -- mostly what I can glean from a few census surveys and the memories of family members. Even what I have varies in its details. I will explicate more of it later, but for the time being, if anyone has anything to contribute about the matriarch of the Dukes in America, I would love to have it.

Rousing Casimir

I had to set this blog aside for many, many months while recuperating, but recently picked up the tools again and started researching. It has take a fair amount of time to re-orient myself to what I was doing when I stopped working, and the software was updated so I had to learn new tricks. I also migrated to this new URL, so there was a lot of fiddling to get things back on track.

I have several postings half-written, which I will start to publish soon. You can look forward to learning about the matriarch of the Dukes, a detailed comparison of three decades of census data from her household, and explicating the relationship to the tree of one of the founders of Providence and Rhode Island. There are lots more things waiting in the wings, once I get time.

I don't want to be selfish about this, however. I'm making the tree and most of the documentation available to family members through ancestry.com. You will be able to see family relationships, charts, photos, official documents, and whatever else I have that I am using to construct this narrative. Of course, this doesn't come free. You have to agree to share your own photos, documents, stories. It's not that tough, and can even be fun.

Trees on ancestry.com are normally closed if you are not a subscriber. I can give you access to my tree, however, if you ask. There are three levels of access:

• Editor: File editing and viewing rights
• Contributor: Viewing rights only; can add comments, photos and stories
• Guest: Viewing rights only; can add comments

Let me know what level of access you would like. I can always change it later. Once you receive an invitation from me via e-mail, you will need to create an Ancestry account. Don't worry, it's free. After you do this, the tree will appear in your list of Trees in the Family Tree section of your account and under the Trees Shared with Me tab when you click on Family Trees.

Although this will give you lots of access, the system still needs some work. If I make a change in my own local file, for example, it is not reflected in the online version at ancestry.com, and vice versa. For right now, I'm considering periodically reloading my database to keep things in sync. Eventually, this should be corrected. The software will send me notices if you change something online, so I hope to be able to keep up with things that way too.

If you really want to take full advantage of the system and would like to do more in depth research and get access to all the Ancestry databases, you will need a paid subscription. Although not horribly expensive, it does require a measure of commitment. Don't think you have to do this, however. Many genealogy workers get by working with just family and public documents.

I don't want to overload you with information and frequent changes, so I am breaking the databases up into several parts. If you come from the Duke/Wolinski line, I have everything already loaded. I will load other branches as people express interest. Regardless whether you want to contribute or just look, I hope you have some fun and learn something about our families.

Brown Soup

This murky photograph, of undetermined location, is of Kathryn (Smetanovsky) Duke. The child is probably her daughter Connie, which would date the picture from about 1928. The two males on the back porch are not identifiable.

Connie remembers her mother's recipe for "brown soup," said to cure all manner of sicknesses.

Brown Soup

Make zapraska (roux) until dark brown color --
1/2 butter
1/2 flour
Add chicken stock or broth
Add caraway seeds (any amount)
Add salt and /or pepper
Cook for about 20 minutes and put through strainer