Steve’s Genealogy Blog

My grandmother, Helena Chmielewska, was born on a farm in Likiszki, Russia (now Lithuania), a tiny village with only five houses. Growing up on the farm, Helena’s closest companion was her sister Anna, two years her junior.

As my sisters and I grew older and more independent, my mother began to consider working outside the home. She attended classes to become a keypunch operator and was the first person in our family to work with computers.

As a bookkeeper, my mother excelled. She had an extraordinary sense of detail and precision, a sense that extended to her housekeeping.

When the United States entered World War II, all three of my maternal uncles joined the war effort: my mother’s older brother Ray entered the US Coast Guard, her younger brother Fred entered the US Naval Armed Guard, and her youngest brother Henry entered the US Army. All three survived the war.
My grandfather obtained a position as a mechanic […]

Today is my mother’s birthday. She was born on 06 October 1922 at home at 194 Prescott Street in Worcester, Massachusetts. She died on 16 April 1980 in St. Peter’s Hospital, Albany, New York at age 57. She would have been 85 years old today.

Jane Niedzialkowski at Sky Farm
Back row on the far left: Henry […]

Because the Biography of Katarzyna Dańko may be of interest to my relatives and readers in Poland, I am providing the story here, in Polish. I previously posted an English version and a photo of some of the people mentioned in this biography. Kasia Tropiło provided both the biography in Polish and the English translation. Dziękuję Kasiu!
Urodziła się w […]

Kasia Tropiło sent me the following biography of her great great grandmother, Katarzyna Dańko. We think that Katarzyna Dańko may be my first cousin, three times removed.
Katarzyna Dańko was born on the 10th of March 1879 in Nienadowa, Galicia (now Poland) in house number 215. The midwife was Marianna Klimczyk. She was baptized on the following day, March […]

I’m flying back to New York today to attend the funeral of Gladys Graig.
I met Gladys about 17 years ago, shortly before my sister Barbara married Gladys’ son Jeffrey.
Gladys was born in 1930 in Brooklyn, Kings Co., New York, the daughter of Norwegian immigrants Telef Henricksen and Gerda Sofie Larsen, both from Aust-Adger, Norway.  She […]

I knew my grandmother for 14 years before her death in 1969, and even though I remember her well, I honestly can’t say that I knew her well.  The problem was that my grandmother never learned to speak English.
My grandmother, Marianna Dańko, was born on August 14, 1881 in Sielnica, Galicia, the Austrian Partition of Poland.  […]

With all the research I’ve conducted on the family of Jan Savitt over the past 12 days, I thought I’d put it all together to write a bit of a biography of the family.  In addition to the information I’ve published on this Blog, I’ve read some biographical information published in books and reference materials and […]