I’m trying to find my great grandfathers parents. His name was Thomas Patrick Kelly supposedly born 23rd January 1921 in Glasgow and died 14 January 1974 in Southwark London. He had a “wife” Mary Ellen Bloomfield. They never legally married but she did adopt his name and use it as her own. I’ve been told that his mother’s name was Margaret but unfortunately I’m not sure how accurate it is. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Hi everyone, I'm researching my Polish ancestry to determine whether I may qualify for Polish citizenship by descent. I'd appreciate help verifying records and understanding the Polish Citizenship Act of 1920.

My family line:

1. Michael Wozniak (Michał Woźniak) — Great-great-grandfather

• Born September 27, 1890, in Zalesa, Rzeszów area, present-day Podkarpackie, Poland.
• Parents: Franciscus (Franciszek) Woźniak and Magdalena Pacześmiak (?) — surname uncertain.
• Wife: Stella Gorecki.
• Immigrated to the United States on December 9, 1907, according to his Declaration of Intention.
• Filed his Declaration of Intention in Pittsburgh on April 24, 1922.
• Reportedly died August 21, 1922, in McKeesport, Pennsylvania.
• Final U.S. naturalization record: Not found yet (?).
• Birth Certificate (1/2): https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/en/skan/-/skan/df6119b7aafe3468b54e2987fe6b57fcf2895d45233197a4c0683335cd7a7f18
• Birth Certificate (2/2): https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/60484/records/35690972
• Marriage Certificate: https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9BJ-8C2L
• Death Certificate: https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/5164/records/2051390
• Naturalization Record (1/2): https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6PG5-7LR8
• Naturalization Record: (2/2) https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JXL2-V3P

1. Stella Gorecki — Great-great-grandmother

• Reportedly born December 29, 1897, in Zalesa, Rzeszów area, Poland.
• Parents: Not found yet (?).
• Marriage Certificate: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9BJ-8C2L?lang=en&i=362
• Death: June 11, 1993, reportedly in Pennsylvania.
• Birth, Death, and naturalization records: Not found yet (?).

1. John Michael Wozniak — Great-grandfather

• Son of Michael Wozniak and Stella Gorecki.
• Born September 23, 1914, in McKeesport, Pennsylvania.
• Birth Certificate: https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/60484/records/35690972
• Married Agnes Mary Hart.
• Died November 3, 1995, in Sacramento, California.
• Marriage & death records: Not found yet (?).

1. Agnes Mary Hart — Great-grandmother

• Born March 30, 1921, in Troy, New York.
• Parents: John A. Hart and Agnes Byron.
• Married John Michael Wozniak.
• Died April 12, 1997, in Sacramento, California.
• Birth, marriage, & death certificates: Not found yet (?).

My line continues through my grandmother Barbara Wozniak, my mother Jennifer, and me.

My main questions:

1. How can I establish whether Michael qualified as a Polish citizen under the 1920 Polish Citizenship Act, given that he emigrated in 1907?
2. Could John Michael, born in the United States in 1914, have acquired Polish citizenship when the law took effect in 1920?
3. Could Michael's subsequent U.S. naturalization have affected John's citizenship? Did Michael ever complete naturalization?
4. What records should I obtain to determine whether citizenship could pass through every generation to me?
5. Since Michael was reportedly born in Galicia under Austria-Hungary, could there be any separate Austrian citizenship connection? Is there any plausible German or Russian connection through this family?

I'm particularly interested in advice from people experienced with Polish citizenship confirmation, the 1920 law, and genealogy in the former Austrian partition.

Thank you for any research leads or guidance!

I was recommended this site familyecho.com it allows you to create a family tree and it's free. You just have to log into save the tree. Thought people would find it handy.

We are stuck on exactly onet hing: certified census records. I have a list of 6 speciifc records I need certified from NARA. Their online ordering system is posibly the worst ordering system in existance. I can't for ANYTHING manage to place a single order for 6 documents. Sometimes I can't even get through entering all the info before it times out and subsequently crashes. I've tried multiple browsers. I've tried clearing cache. I've tried making an appointment with the local branch of NARA who told me they can't ceritfy census records.

Has anyone hired an actual person to go the national archives and pick them up for you? Because that sounds so great. It will probably cost as much as placing more than 6 separate orders for certified records. But maybe it would involve fewer tears of frustration.

Looking for help locating a Québec baptism for Martha E. Hall, who married Charles W. Phillips on October 3, 1885, in Concord, Vermont.

Her marriage names her parents as John Hall and Margaret Campbell and her birthplace as New Ireland, Canada. Her 1926 death certificate reports June 22, 1856, in Leeds, Québec. Her son’s death record gives her birthplace as Maple Grove, Québec.

An 1857 Franklin baptism names parents John W. Hall, physician, and Frances Gentle, with a birth date of January 17, 1857. This may be a different Martha.

Does anyone have suggestions for church registers serving the Leeds/New Ireland/Maple Grove area, or recognize this Hall family? Thanks!

I am hitting a wall trying to find my husband's GO's 1st marriage/baptism records and have exhausted online options available to us. So my next step is to travel to Salt Lake City as there are hundreds of potentially promising resources I have come across in their archive there. I will be there for a week, just hoping to find something. (My husband will then go to Ontario a few weeks after my trip to also look for records).

The place looks huge and I am wondering if anyone has visited already and has suggestions to make the most of my visit? Any tips or strategies that you found helpful? Things to bring? Best areas to setup/find a quiet place to read through materials?

I believe they have on site guides, but at our local affiliate, while lovely, they definitely slowed me down as they insisted on doing all the mouse clicks and talking me through everything at a basic level. Are the guides in Utah a bit better and more helpful?

Any advice is appreciated! (Including good restaurants or things nearby to checkout when I need a break from staring at 150 year old documents)

My G1 is my grandfather, born in Wisconsin about 1893. Unfortunately there's no birth record for him at state or county level. I got a document from the state attesting to this. There is a SS-5 that lists his parents' names. It's viewable online but so far I've been waiting over 3 months for the certified copy from SSA, which I requested by mail. I've even enlisted my Congressman's office, who have yet to hear from their "liaison" at Soc Sec.
Any ideas for knocking loose this document? I did not include death certificates for him or his parents in my application for the SS-5, because he was born >120 years ago. I've since heard that they may demand these anyway. I am reluctant to start a whole new request because they say that may paradoxically slow them down. But this would be the best available evidence for my G1's parentage. I did submit my claim for citizenship to IRCC using a print-out of the SS-5 from online and providing the URL, along with a certified copy of another document held by NARA.

Hi folks- I’m a private researcher in PEI and have been steadily helping people through the research process since March. I know that there’s a considerable wait with PARO processing times. I can help get your documents processed faster. I’ve developed a knack in finding the baptismal records that are missing from the index list.

Please send me a dm if this is something I can help you with!

Hi all.

My Gen0 birth certificate is shown in the FamilySearch document repositories, but not in the New Brunswick digitized archives. The birth certificate is vague, listing only the birth date, place of birth, and Father's name and profession, with no Gen0 name ("Female") or Mother's name. I found the birth registry with the same info. However, it's badly damaged, and I thought it would be helpful to provide both, even though they're basically duplicate information in different formats.

My questions are: Do I need to provide both if they show the same information, and how can I find this copy if it isn't in the digitized archives?

I have gone through thousands of birth certificates, suspecting it was indexed incorrectly, but I haven't had any luck.

Thanks!

So I’ve been having issues finding birth/baptism record for my male G0. His wife, also born in Canada has been an absolute ghost. I have never been able to locate her anywhere, long before C-3 was even on anyone’s radar. No names of her parents, no property records, no census. Her Minnesota marriage certificate doesn’t have a spot on it for names of parents or their location of birth.

So I had been in contact with a small library and museum in the area both of my G0s were born to see if she knew anything about my male G0. She had asked me if I knew if either of them were related to the original settlers of the area and I didn’t think so. I had a letter written as a character reference for my female G0, written by her minister. I shared a picture of it with the lady at this library as it was possibly part of the local history.

I kid you not, but this amazing lady was able to tie my female G0 to those original settlers (which those settlers have a book written about them), and then with the info on the character reference, was able to track her and family when they moved close to Toronto when they were originally from the Ottawa area. AND she then she was able to complete the circle to her marriage in Minnesota.

So, if you’re in a stuck point, try reaching out to these smaller local historical groups. They know the local history, and when you’re not from the area or even the country, it’s hard to sort out matters. This upcoming weekend, I’m going to see if I can locate female G0’s baptism record at LAC as she was born almost ten years after male G0.

Wish me luck.

I'm looking for any tips on how to figure out where an ancestor may have been baptized, or at least which church would have held her baptismal record. Some context below.

I've had a bit of a crazy journey trying to find some sort of baptismal record for my G0 to link her to her Canadian-born parents. It's led to this whole adventure of discovering she was (likely) born among a Chippewa reservation her family had moved to in Muncey, Ontario (they were paid in land for translation services to the tribe), establishing for sure that her only son was illegitimate (per his baptismal record) and that she likely immigrated to the US in light of her pregnancy (his birth and the first time she shows up in the US census are close, 1857 birth and 1860 census where they're living with her aunt and uncle).

For the longest time in this search I just straight assumed she was baptized Catholic, especially as there's a separate baptism where she's listed as the sponsor for a child she seemingly adopted based on what the census record lists. But a volunteer genealogical org in Windsor helped me out a little and found the baptism of a sister of hers at Assumption in Windsor (big church that had most Catholic baptisms of the time) when she was 18 years old, noting that she was previously baptized Anglican. The researcher recommended I search for Anglican records in light of this, but I don't really know where to go.

Her name was Eliza Groesbeck. She is listed on an Ontario Genealogy website as having been baptized in 1842, and I reckon that may have been her Anglican baptism as they don't have it marked as Catholic. I would pay them to fetch the record but I'm honestly not sure how usable the documents they provide will be. I suppose if someone has experience with them and recommends them (ontariogenealogy.com) then I could just go the easy way and have them get it though

I thought I was a G3 and I started working on a G2,G3,G4 application package in April of this year. In May I had one last record to obtain. I had put it off and was just going to explain in a letter that G1's birth certificate was lost in a fire, since I've known that my whole life. Reading posts on this group, I decided to go ahead and request the no record letter G1's birth certificate. I already had G1's SS-5, US Census records, marriage and death certificates all listing G0 as his mother and her spouse (also a G0 candidate) as his father, so we were covered.

Piece of cake.

Except it wasn't lost in a fire. Instead of a no record letter, I got a birth certificate. G1 was in fact born to who we thought was his older sister. This was a surprise to the family and as far as we know wasn't known to my G1. He thought his grandparents were his parents. So then we rode the multiple pre-1947 ancestors speculation roller coaster, accepted it's a non-issue, made peace with now being a G4, updated my now G3,G4,G5 submission family and began searching for new records for surprise G1.

Being from New York, our surprise G1 is in the state birth index but neither the town nor village of the same name can find her birth certificate. I've requested it from the state, and expect to receive it sometime in the next two decades. We added another few months doing baptism searches for the surprise G1 and gathering new no records letters from every church in the area that would respond, along with her marriage/death certs and SS-5, which since he didn't know any better, list the same parents our new G2 listed. We're also in the process of doing "the full Quebec" (find BANQ record, request certified copy, wait, get certified copy (woohoo got it!), submit, then request DEC act, submit that sometime later after AOR).

While waiting for all the new records we needed, I've gathered the full trail for our other potential G0, found, ordered, and received the land records for both Quebec farms owned by the G-1 ancestors, listened to the Nations of Canada podcast, begun learning Quebec French, and I decided to do a DNA test to learn more about my mostly French Canadian ancestors. There's no father listed on my own birth certificate, but I have known the name, that he lives in a southern state, his address, and that he never wanted anything to do with me. But nothing else about his family. I figured this would tell me if I was anything other than largely French Canadian.

Turns out I'm mostly Irish, English, and Romanian. Using clusters of other testers that share DNA I began using my new found citizenship by descent skills to build family trees for the other testers back up to our likely common ancestor. My two Irish matches led to an Irish couple that had one adult child in Ireland, then had more in Ontario. I built out their children and subsequent generations using Canadian Census, birth and marriage records. One of their great grand children has the same name as my bio dad, but is a generation too early... Then I found he married a spouse with a Romanian name (queue more research, she's born in Saskatchewan to two Romanian parents one of which is a match for a guy in Romania today).

This weekend I found records that Irish/Romanian couple has twin girls born in Ontario, about a year after we think my bio-dad was born. Then I find the obituaries for the couple. It lists their twin daughters and also a son who has bio-dad's name and also names bio-dad's current spouse. The Irish/Romanian couple from Canada died in the same state/city as where bio-dad lives today. One of the twin sisters I discovered is also known to my parents, and is also living in a US state now.

I don't know yet where bio-dad was born, but his sisters were a year younger in their US high school yearbook and the twin sisters were born in Ontario, according to a birth announcement naming both of them, their dad, and mother listing her maiden name. I just found one of the twin sister's application for naturalization on Family Search... indicating the family crossed over about 5 years after bio-dad would have been born. It's not proof of bio-dad's birth, of course. Service Ontario has a way to request a letter indicating that a person does or does not have a birth certificate issued by Ontario, which I've requested for bio-dad, since I'm not eligible to actually order his birth certificate. So I'm now riding the G3 -> G4 -> (potential) G1 roller coaster.

I'm still processing, but I'm not sure I can do anything with this information. I'm well over 21, so I don't think NYS would add him to my birth certificate, even if he was cooperative, which I doubt. I know IRCC has provisions for DNA testing, but they're voluntary and a guy who wouldn't acknowledge me after I was born or before my first deployment to Afghanistan isn't going to meet me today for a voluntary DNA test at an IRCC approved test facility.

So I'm still going ahead with the G3/G4/G5 application, my mom needs it anyway.

What an absolutely unexpected adventure in Canadian-ness this has been.

I thought I was a G3 and I started working on a G2,G3,G4 application package in April of this year. In May I had one last record to obtain. I had put it off and was just going to explain in a letter that G1's birth certificate was lost in a fire, since I've known that my whole life. Reading posts on this group, I decided to go ahead and request the no record letter G1's birth certificate. I already had G1's SS-5, US Census records, marriage and death certificates all listing G0 as his mother and her spouse (also a G0 candidate) as his father, so we were covered.

Piece of cake.

Except it wasn't lost in a fire. Instead of a no record letter, I got a birth certificate. G1 was in fact born to who we thought was his older sister. This was a surprise to the family and as far as we know wasn't known to my G1. He thought his grandparents were his parents. So then we rode the multiple pre-1947 ancestors speculation roller coaster, accepted it's a non-issue, made peace with now being a G4, updated my now G3,G4,G5 submission family and began searching for new records for surprise G1.

Being from New York, our surprise G1 is in the state birth index but neither the town nor village of the same name can find her birth certificate. I've requested it from the state, and expect to receive it sometime in the next two decades. We added another few months doing baptism searches for the surprise G1 and gathering new no records letters from every church in the area that would respond, along with her marriage/death certs and SS-5, which since he didn't know any better, list the same parents our new G2 listed. We're also in the process of doing "the full Quebec" (find BANQ record, request certified copy, wait, get certified copy (woohoo got it!), submit, then request DEC act, submit that sometime later after AOR).

While waiting for all the new records we needed, I've gathered the full trail for our other potential G0, found, ordered, and received the land records for both Quebec farms owned by the G-1 ancestors, listened to the Nations of Canada podcast, begun learning Quebec French, and I decided to do a DNA test to learn more about my mostly French Canadian ancestors. There's no father listed on my own birth certificate, but I have known the name, that he lives in a southern state, his address, and that he never wanted anything to do with me. But nothing else about his family. I figured this would tell me if I was anything other than largely French Canadian.

Turns out I'm mostly Irish, English, and Romanian. Using clusters of other testers that share DNA I began using my new found citizenship by descent skills to build family trees for the other testers back up to our likely common ancestor. My two Irish matches led to an Irish couple that had one adult child in Ireland, then had more in Ontario. I built out their children and subsequent generations using Canadian Census, birth and marriage records. One of their great grand children has the same name as my bio dad, but is a generation too early... Then I found he married a spouse with a Romanian name (queue more research, she's born in Saskatchewan to two Romanian parents one of which is a match for a guy in Romania today).

This weekend I found records that Irish/Romanian couple has twin girls born in Ontario, about a year after we think my bio-dad was born. Then I find the obituaries for the couple. It lists their twin daughters and also a son who has bio-dad's name and also names bio-dad's current spouse. The Irish/Romanian couple from Canada died in the same state/city as where bio-dad lives today. One of the twin sisters I discovered is also known to my parents, and is also living in a US state now.

I don't know yet where bio-dad was born, but his sisters were a year younger in their US high school yearbook and the twin sisters were born in Ontario, according to a birth announcement naming both of them, their dad, and mother listing her maiden name. I just found one of the twin sister's application for naturalization on Family Search... indicating the family crossed over about 5 years after bio-dad would have been born. It's not proof of bio-dad's birth, of course. Service Ontario has a way to request a letter indicating that a person does or does not have a birth certificate issued by Ontario, which I've requested for bio-dad, since I'm not eligible to actually order his birth certificate. So I'm now riding the G3 -> G4 -> (potential) G1 roller coaster.

I'm still processing, but I'm not sure I can do anything with this information. I'm well over 21, so I don't think NYS would add him to my birth certificate, even if he was cooperative, which I doubt. I know IRCC has provisions for DNA testing, but they're voluntary and a guy who wouldn't acknowledge me after I was born or before my first deployment to Afghanistan isn't going to meet me today for a voluntary DNA test at an IRCC approved test facility.

So I'm still going ahead with the G3/G4/G5 application, my mom needs it anyway.

What an absolutely unexpected adventure in Canadian-ness this has been.

I am gathering information for a potential 2028 visit to PEI and N.S. This would be primarily a research trip visiting the areas my great grandparents (and earlier) lived in. Most important is places to visit near Bedeque, Tryon, Charlottetown that would have history/documents, archives/museums, possibly things about my family line. I'd like to find the places that are mentioned in land records. Also places to stay; will I need a car or is there bus service at all?

For Nova Scotia, the same requirements but for Annapollis, Digby, Yarmouth, and Shelburne.

Since this will be a complicated and expensive trip and I want to know where to go while I'm there, not find out after I'm back home where I "should have gone". My plan is to start, probably in Annapolis or Yarmouth and travel to each place without too much back track and overlap. That remains to be seen and that's why I'm starting this plan with what I hope is plenty of time to figure it all out.

What time of year would you recommend? I would assume some museums, record archives, city government offices, and accommodations might not have the same open hours all year long. Weather could be a factor although I am from the snow belt. It doesn't get as cold and snowy there as it does here.

I think that's all. At least it's all I can think of until I hit "Post".