In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare asks what's in a name. Juliet tells Romeo that she loves a man who happens to be named Montegue. Blah, blah. Star crossed lovers aside, names are fairly important when you are searching for your ancestors.
It seems in our family tree, folks weren't always original with names. It was common to find male children with the same name as their fathers, and even a few females named after mothers. These duplicate names can be confusing if only the first name is used. Hopefully you have a middle initial that is different, or dates that help clear up who is who before you commit to writing stuff in ink. In the Ulrich branch, we have Peter with a son Peter, John with a son John, and in the Mast branch a mother and daughter both named Letitia. We have learned to rely a lot on other clues, including birth and death certificates, and census information.
As tricky as that can be, we have stumbled for years on a different name problem. Most of our family branches have been in the US since the mid-1700s. However, one segment with 2 branches immigrated in the early 1900s. These are the folks giving us the most difficulty.
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Maggie (back right) and some of Francus Family
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One of our immigrant ancestors was Magdelene, commonly called Maggie. Oral family history tells us that her sister was supposed to come to the US. The family decided to send Maggie (alone and only 14 years old) instead, but passage had been bought under her sister's name. So, Maggie traveled to America using the name Sofia - or Zofia, or Sofie - no one seems to be sure. The story continues that Maggie was to travel to Greensburg, PA to meet with her older brother, no name given. Easy, right?
Uh, no. Magdelene's name appears in several documents, but each one uses a different version of her name. We have her as Magdelene Gustowska, Gustkowski, Gotowska and Gosich. She married Ignatz Francus (another name nightmare), and also appears in documents as Magdelene Francus or Francis, Maggie Francus, Maggie Francis, and Margaret Francus. We also have to vet documents with the name Sofia or Sofie Gustowska. We have yet to definitely determine when and where she arrived in the US. One document says she arrived in 1906, another says 1909.
We have tried to find her using country of origin. The Francus children and grandchildren were told they were Polish, but we have documents where she is reported to be from Austria, Austria-Poland, Poland, and Galicia. We are searching old maps of Poland, but without a town we aren't getting far. When searching passenger lists, we have our work cut out for us. We are unsure of what port she left from, the name of the ship, or even the entry point into the US. So many unanswered questions! This segment of our history continues to pique our interest and frustrate us at the same time. If you have any leads, we'd love for you to share them!
What we have:
Magdelene (Maggie) Gustowska (Gotowska, Gosich, Gustowski) b. 25 Dec 1884 d. 26 Oct 1959
m. 7 Feb 1910
Ignatz (Ignatius, Ignacy) Francus b. July 1889 d. 16 APR 1953
Children:
- Stanley
- Agnes
- David
- Charles
- Frank
- Mary (our direct ancestor)
- Helen
I started to think about how I could use that. We know so little about one of our lines - the Janus / Francus side, that we could only go back to our grands with any confidence. I chose to go for the Shappell / Ulrich lines since we can go a few greats back and see how those charts would look.
