Looking back...

Well, I sat down this week and joined Ancestry.com, and began to put the pieces of my family tree together, bit by bit. Ancestry.com is pretty cool...you can search for all kinds of information and see original documents and everything. Some cool things I found out, mostly family-related, a couple things related to my bungalow's "genealogy," which is something I'd like to look up (i.e., who owned it, what did they do, etc.) because I think it'd be neat to see.

1. I found out from the 1930 census a couple things. First, my house was owned by a Romanian family named Stoffer. The father was a bricklayer, and they had two kids at that time, a 17-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son. They came to America sometime between 1913 and 1921 (between the births of their kids). So it's interesting to note that. There's a lot more I hope to find about the house...that's just a start.

2. I was able to dig up a whole bunch of data on my family ancestors and where they were living during the 1920 and 1930 censuses (sp?). Big shock: Both my mom and dad's families were living on the Southwest Side, pretty much within a mile or two of where I grew up and my parents still live.

3. I found a digital copy of the ship manifest for my great-grandpa's (my mom's maternal grandpa) immigration to the U.S. Had all his information (where he was from, where he was going, age, etc.). Really cool to see that...EllisIsland.org, which is free, actually has a picture of the ship too -- also neat to see.

4. Found out that my great uncle (one of my dad's paternal uncles) worked for a meat company in the Union Stock Yards. He was a beef casing measurer. I'm not sure what that does, but you can bet your ass I'll be looking into it at work Monday. :) This wasn't a total shock to me...I kind of had a feeling that one of my ancestors somewhere along the line must have worked for a meat company back in the Stock Yards' heyday. This confirms that.

5. Also found out that same great uncle lived in a house on the block I grew up before my grandpa owned our house. Some other family was living there at the time of the census (I believe this was the 1930 census, again, but I could be wrong).

6. As "morbid" as it might seem, I've been able to confirm dates of birth and death of several relatives -- that's part of the point of doing a family tree as well, I guess.

So now I need to get in touch with my various relatives and find out who knows what, where, how and why, and get those things recorded and into this tree somehow. All in all, it's very interesting, and I'll probably head down to the Harold Washington Library sometime over our holiday break to do more research on my house and family.