At the age of 17, my great-grandfather deserted the U.S. Army, packed his belongings into a rucksack and made his way by foot to Lockport, New York. He changed his name to John Gates during a stop in Ohio, married my great-grandmother in Buffalo and raised five children of his own. He didn't tell anyone--not [...]
I meet the most interesting people on planes. On one flight to Buffalo, a woman taught me about the seven chakras, explained why she believed her sister was possessed by a demon and provided me with her business card (and told me about the history of her reusable water bottle company, too). I met a [...]
With surnames like Marczynski, Zielinski, Gostomski and Kuznicki in my family tree, I'm undeniably Polish. My great-great-grandparents, MikoĊaj Kuznicki and Wiktorya Drag, left Galicia for Dunkirk, New York in their early twenties, and the Zielinski's, Gostomski's and Marczynski's all arrived at Ellis Island in 1900. Some of my ancestors started working in the coal mines [...]
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV Wendell Frank Applegate was born on January 10, 1924 in Lewis Co., Kentucky to Alfred Glenn and Opal (Latham) Applegate. He had three siblings--Rosetta Grace (b. 1918), Joseph Oran (b. 1921) and Alice Gertrude (b. 1926)--and the family rented a farm on Old District [...]
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV Every researcher is familiar with genealogical brick walls: those ancestors who just refuse to be found. Some relatives claimed that my great-grandfather, John Gates, was adopted and grew up in Kentucky; others, that he changed the family surname and grew up in New York. [...]
Applegate Genealogy 
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