Monday, November 26, 2018

June 25th 2018. Back to Tom's paternal grandmother's side to meet more relatives.

On the way back to where we were on the 23rd, we stopped by a church where they attend.

 On an outside wall, there is a memorial of those that served in WWII.

 Almost there...another picture to help tell our story.  This particular road was a main route between 2 nations at war.  Not a good place to be in the middle.

 These next 2 pictures, are next to each other.  This first one we visited on the 23rd, and came back today.

This home, although not the original one, is on Tom's great grandfather's property.


 Great Grampy was a blacksmith, and his anvil is still on the property.


This home in between is where Tom's grandmother's sister lived for her remaining days. 

 These last 2 pics are some of Tom's 1st cousins once removed.


On this day, we did go to another cemetery to see where many relatives lay, but it is also an opportunity to record some from-to dates in search of more ancestors.  After 3 days of hugs from many people, we were still sleep deprived.

After 3 days of meeting people, all set up by our wonderful geneaologist Daniel, it was time to take a break.  He drove us back to Krakow where we said farewell to him and thanked him for great planning.  For the next part of the trip, we would be on our own.  Wait.....he was out interpreter too!







June 24, 2018 - A visit with paternal relatives

After a much needed several hours of sleep...and a hot breakfast, we headed back to near where we were yesterday.  This time the other set of relatives on Tom's paternal grandparents (Michal's) side.  To no real great surprise, the 2 locations were about 7 miles from each other.  We often had wondered if Michal and Julia had known each other before they came to America.  Evidence suggests that they did.  Today's location was more outside of town.  Although we had been only 3 of 4 doors down from the place where we visited another dozen or more relatives, we did manage to see where Tom's Grampy Mike had lived.  We even had a friendly greeting.

 We found that the soil was not the best quality for farming.  The home was often near the road and the farm fields ran for many yards away from the road.
We had a wonderful visit with family, some who had traveled well over 300 km to see us.
Part of the day was spent visiting a cemetery to see where they were laid to rest. Being able to visit a cemetery would be an easier time for a geneaologist  because accurate dates of birth are the best source for identifying a relative.  What is also nice is that many tombstones have a picture of the deceased engraved on it.

 After a tour of Tom's grandfather's property, we went back to learn more about family. 

Of course it was easy to learn about their families as there were at least 2 of them that spoke very good English.  You can see that Chatty Kathy got them going as everyone was paying attention.


At the end of the day we had met another dozen or more people who were happy to see more people from America...although they had met Dan and Mary last year.  It was another great day meeting people...and although we had never met each other before this day,  we could feel they were family