If you want to get technical about it, I'm not actually related to the Niedbalski family of Dunkirk, New York. Aunt Rita is my great-grandmother's sister's husband's sister (say that one five times fast!), but she's always been a part of the Kuznicki clan. And because she never had any children of her own, she [...]
I've never been to a family reunion, but a few weeks ago, I found a copy of a newspaper article about a Father's Day family reunion held in 1945. It's a story from the almost-but-not-quite-related side of my family tree; my great-grandmother's sister's husband's sister never had any children, but she helped to raise my [...]
I'm not sure what compelled me to research my 5th great-grandfather, Silas Ephraim Nelson, last weekend, but here we are--and I'm very glad I did. It's strange, now that I think about it: I'm always ricocheting back-and-forth between the Hawkins family's schoolhouse, the Kuznicki family's bar and the Merrill family's military service, and the Nelson [...]
When I asked my grandfather how his parents met, he told me it was at a barn dance--but he couldn't remember where or when or how or why. I've always kept that barn dance in the back of my mind; I know my parents met at my dad's twenty-first birthday party, my dad's parents were [...]
Manley John Merrill was born on September 7, 1920 in Fredonia, New York to Jenness Nelson Merrill and Lola Mary Mau, and he had five siblings: Jenness (b. 1916), Laura (b. 1919), Leon (b. 1922), Eleanor (b. 1924) and Auleen (b. 1925). He married Nellie Martha Kniese--the daughter of Cornelius Jacobus Kniese and Cornelia Jane [...]
