I am a Geneaholic

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Comment by Kelley DeLosh on July 15, 2009 at 8:02am

Hello!
I, too, am a Geneaholic. I began when my grandfather gave me copies of the research he had into his family tree, the Sullivans in Wisconsin, about 25 years ago. Since then, I have researched my family lines off and on. One that I continue to have problems with is my Grandfather, John Alan Starcevich.

I have little information about him. He died in a car accident in the early 80's, long before I really got serious about genealogy. Here is what I know...

He was born February 12, 1916 ~ although the Social Security Death Index lists his DOB as 1-12-1916. But, my grandmother says it was 2-16-1916. Anyhow, she says that he was born in Marble, MN.

That's it. The story goes that when he was young, his father was killed in a mining accident, and his mother was either also dead or was ill and could not take care of the family, so he went in to an orphanage where he was adopted/went to live with a family who he ran away from. I know that his marriage to my grandmother was his second, and his first ended because his wife cheated on him and got pregnant. Because of the divorce, he was ex-communicated from the church. He had a sister, Mary, who may have been his twin.

I have found nothing in the census records that matches this, nor have I found any information on fatal mining accidents in that area which list a Starcevich as a casualty. Don't know where to go from here...

Any help or ideas on where to research next would be appreciated!
Thanks!

Comment by Sandy Jacques on July 15, 2009 at 7:11am

My husband, who is kind enough to accompany me on genealogy excursions, once said: "I never thought that when I grew up I'd be spending hours in cemeteries and enjoying it." Actually, I didn't either.

Comment by Dorrliss E. Hale Ware on July 14, 2009 at 11:13pm

I am addicted. I am still searching for myself. in this family tree with all the twisted branches.

Comment by Terri O'Connell on July 14, 2009 at 9:11am

Nancy,

What a great story. I definitely understand how you felt when you had the phone number in hand. I found some living connections this past year and they were kind enough to write back. The female actually called and we spoke for a bit. I hope to get to meet her some time soon. This is one of the few connections to my O'Connell line. The other connection does not want to talk. Ughhh!

Comment by Nancy Hickman on July 14, 2009 at 4:05am

You know when you begin to wonder who your relatives really are and you sit down to search and four years later you get up and wonder what have I been doing...you know you are a GENEAHOLIC!

My addiction began some fifty years after my Grandmother's passed and I wanted to leave my grandson's a family history. I sat down to scribble a few notes about what I knew about my family, I came to my Grandmother's name and it was the first time that I realized I didn't even know her maiden name. So begins:
"The Tale of a Texas "Lone" Horn.
I am hoping this latest breakthrough in looking for my Grandmother’s Horne relatives is finally coming to an end. My Grandmother passed on March 20, 1964, the obituary was all I had found that even began to link Grandmother Steve to her immediate Horne family. I had never known her maiden name and it gave me my first clue, her brother and sister’s names…Jim Horne of Mountain Park, Oklahoma and Mary Grooms of Groesbeck, Texas. I tried off and on for the past four years to find some information on them, but it wasn’t until this year (2009) that I began a real earnest search to see if I might find the branch that held more of “Our Family’s Scattered Leaves.”
Just on a whim, I began a search for my cousin Darla, whom I had not seen or spoken to in over 55 years; guess I should be lucky we both are still alive…lol It was not because we didn’t want to stay in touch; our family, which was made up of my Dad and her Mother who lived on the far ends of Texas, made it impossible and when one’s father and mother divorce, that makes it even harder…ok, back to the story.
I finally found her through the wonders of the internet. I did a search on ancestry.com under her maiden name and came up with the birth information for one of her children, which gave me the name of her husband. Lo and behold, People Search gave me their address and phone number...I was a wreck wondering how the reunion would go over the phone...yet as we spoke, it was as if we had last spoken only the week before. As luck would have it, neither one of us knew much of anything about our Grandmother. My Cousin Darla's mother had recently passed and my father's memory was gone. In fact, my father had told his other family that all of us were dead. Don't we all wish we had dead living relatives that could answer our questions? Guess that is the closest I will ever get to that wish. Anyway, after talking to my Cousin Darla and calling her back, I realized I had been so excited to talk to her that I had forgotten to ask any really revealing questions about what she could remember. After hanging up the phone, she remembered going through her Mother's personal papers and seeing her Baby Book.
She went and found her Baby Book again, inside was the name of our Great Grandfather and Grandmother, Sam and Ellie Horne. I was so excited about her calling to tell me this that I forgot to ask her how Ellie was spelled or was it Nellie? To make a long story short, this wonderful information didn't get me anywhere in my search for our roots. After going through pages upon pages of census, newspapers and anything I could think of to find them...I looked at a map of Oklahoma. The town of Mountain Park seemed awfully small. Surely someone there would know something about my Great Uncle Jim Horne. So I looked up Mountain Park Oklahoma on the internet and it said: Mountain Park has a population of 390 with 210 housing units; I could tell the "luck of my Irish ancestors" must have been smiling down on me.
Couldn't go wrong with this many...or I should say so few...people; even the dog couldn't bark without someone knowing who owned it. I searched the website looking for someone or someplace to call. As if it had been placed just for me...there was the phone number to the Mountain Park Senior Citizen Center (not that I was looking for a center for me...my joke).
It was almost 5 o'clock; I figured it wouldn't be worth my while to call, but "oh heck," why not. The phone rang several times and I was getting ready to hang up, when a lady answered the phone. I identified myself and told her that I was working on a Family Tree and the only clue I had to possible relatives was the obituary of my Grandmother that identified her brother, Jim Horne who was living in her community. Of course he wouldn't be living now, but maybe she might know of someone who knew about him and his family. She indicated that I had really been lucky; she had already gone out the door and was locking up when the phone rang...and that her parents belonged to a genealogy group and had been working on data from the cemeteries in her area. She assured me she would ask them to look for any Hornes and, she might just know of someone who was related to my Great Uncle. I gave her my phone number and thanked her profusely for her time. It wasn't more than a week and the phone rang; it was Katie, the lady I had spoken with at the Mountain Park Senior Citizen Center. She had some information for me. It seems that she had found Eleanor Horne, the daughter of Jim Horne.
Ok, can you feel the swell of excitement rushing through my veins? Yep…that’s it! She gave me her phone number; I repeated it back to her very carefully…these 10 little numbers were “pure gold” to me and I didn’t want to foul this up now. I thanked her for all her time and told her I would let her know how my search went.
There I sat, holding the numbers, the possibility of that brick wall I had been banging my head against finally crumbling…I picked up the phone and dialed…Eleanor answered. I gave her the “two cent version” of doing the family research and how I had come to have her number. She was very cordial, but drawing a total blank on any family history. She was in the same spot I had been when I started this journey…who would have ever thought that anything we or our relatives did would be of value someday??? or now! She gave me what information she could and I thanked her as I asked, “Would it be alright if I were to call back if any other questions came up?” As soon as I hung up, a flood of questions I should have asked stampeded through my brain! So I waited a few days and called her back. When she answered the phone, she laughed and said, “You know, when you called, I could not think of a single thing, yet after we hung up, I went to the Family Bible and I can now give you all the information that I have.
Eleanor's information has opened the door to locating those long lost and unknown ancestors. I am eternally grateful to her. Thank goodness she was there for surely I would still be banging my head against that proverbial brick wall. One name that she gave me, a sister to my Grandmother's father, was the link to finding other branches of the tree and now I am off to beat my head against another wall...just a different one this time. Oh, I forgot to tell you the name, I call her “the traveling gal”, it’s “CORDIE”, the name that Eleanor gave me. Seems that Cordelia Horne Whitby Ring was always traveling between Mountain Park, OK and Austin, TX to visit family, and this was the information I needed to continue my search. I thought I had already gone over the information in the Austin area with a fine toothed comb, so I started searching again and I can say now, “A traveling gal” got me to where I needed to go...her travels gave validation that I had been searching in the right places all the time. I just didn’t have her, Eleanor, and Katie’s help to speed me along on this journey into the past. I hate to end on a sad note, but I learned on June 30, 2009, my dear friend and cousin Eleanor Horne Lance had passed, I know she is still rooting me on, she now knows what I continue to seek. You will be truly missed, my cousin, my friend.
Footnote:
Eleanor was instrumental in getting her brother Jackie Ray Horne (age 75) to do a DNA test for our Horne branch to be a part of a Horn/Horne DNA project at Family Tree DNA. Currently we have traced our Ancestors back to Elijah James Horn born about 1740, died 21 Feb 1815 in Cokey Swamp, Edgecombe County, North Carolina and we know this for a fact because of Eleanor and Jackie Ray Horne. Their contributions will allow us to continue the search for distant ancestors with the DNA markers that are now a part of today’s history.

Comment by Nils Schnelle on July 14, 2009 at 3:38am

Hey folks, in case you did not know yet: you can take a guess on how many persons the largest family tree on dynastree includes and win a free premium subscription! There's still time until tomorrow, around 10:00 a.m. EST
Check it out: http://tiny.cc/HjhVr

Comment by Eliane Heseltine on July 13, 2009 at 2:19am

Thanks for inviting me.
I first starte researching my own tree because I wanted to know what happened to my family during WWII. My father never speaks of his experiences and my grandmother had died by then. After I started getting further back another question popped up: where did the family came from originally. As they were Jewish, they would have originated elsewhere. However, I found that they already were in the Netherlands as early as the early 1600's. And, you have guessed it, getting back from generation to generation got me hooked. I wanted to know more and more. So I also started on my mother's side (got me back to Charlemagne). Then I met my husband and I had a new tree to research, this time in England and the US.
Two great stories from my research:
I tried to find out what my family name (Mok) meant. One explanation turned out to be a jiddish word for a short fat person. Great excuse!
The other one: my husband told me his grandfather had disappeared, assumed drowned, when his grandmother was expecting his mother. I have not yet been able to find where his grandparents were married (possibly Rhode Island, or Massachussets) so that side of the tree is still blocked by a massive brick wall. Suddenly I found a burial for grandfather, and found he died in 1953. Then I found him again on the 1920 and 1930 census. He had not died at all, but ran away and married again even before his first wife had died.
I am still very busy, working, setting up my own consultancy, and being a fulltime carer for my husband, so sometimes I can't spend as much time on my research as I would like, but it is one of the first things I pick up when I have the chance.
Eliane

Comment by JMK Genealogy Gifts on July 13, 2009 at 12:56am

Thanks for the invite! I am a proud member of Geneaholics Anonymous

For those of you who dont know me, I run a genealogy gifts store to help pay my way!

Comment by Gary White on July 12, 2009 at 11:05am

I am a Genneaholic, There I said it lololol Thanks for the invite

Comment by Gene Dixon on July 12, 2009 at 10:58am

Debbie,
Thanks for inviting me. Genealogy is something I can't stay away from.

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