[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] a new dilemma

[Gary Warner]

Craig,

I do not know the particulars of your family, but I know from my own 
family that people with the same name often get confused, especially if 
they are related to each other.   For instance,

1.  I have an uncle Jonathan Jaeger who was born in 1893 in Volhynia.   
His first cousin was also Jonathan Jaeger, and also born in 1893 in 
Volhynia.   Neither of them had middle names.  They often traveled 
together in the USA and Canada, and once when they crossed into the USA 
from Canada, the border officer gave each of them the middle name 
initial of their father so that it did not look like a double entry in 
the border crossing log.

2.  My great-grandmother was Wilhelmine Grams.   She was baptized in 
Nowy Dwor in 1845.   A half hour before she was baptized, her cousin, 
also Wilhelmine Grams was also baptized.

Also, in the Master Pedigree Database, I recall one instance of a woman 
who married two men who had the same name.   One was the uncle of the other.

Perhaps instead of trying to make two people into one person, you should 
be looking harder at trying to figure out if there really were two 
people that were confused in the records you are looking at- and how 
they were related.

Gary Warner
SGGEE Databases Manager



On 3/19/2014 2:47 PM, Craig Schiller wrote:
> For a quick refresher on the situation that this question pertains to, one
> of my great-grandfather's brothers, Paul, was known to have emigrated to
> the United States in the 1910s, but then permanently lost contact with my
> great-grandfather around WWII -- with the result that those of us alive
> today had virtually *no* knowledge of him beyond the fact that he existed,
> and have had to start entirely from scratch just to find out anything about
> him at all. Our best lead was a border crossing document which had him
> entering the US at Noyes, MN in 1913, and listed a spouse named Bertha who
> lived in "Jeznewka, Volina". (From SGGEE research, further, I confirmed
> that "Jeznewka" is most likely Yasenivka, a village which *is* located in*
> exactly* the area where my other Schillers were living at that time.)
>
> That border document sent me hunting in Racine, WI, where I located two
> separate WWI draft cards, one which listed a wife named Bertha but had the
> wrong birthdate on it, and one which had the right birthdate and had the
> name Bertha listed and then crossed out before listing my great-grandfather
> (correct name and address) as a replacement next-of-kin. However, I've
> tried without success so far to clarify whether the two draft cards were
> for the same Paul or not, because of (a) the contradictions between the two
> cards (different birthdates, Bertha being listed on one but crossed out on
> the other, etc.) and (b) the rather odd notion that one person would even
> have two separate cards in the same draft round in the first place.
>
>  From there, I located two naturalization index cards in Racine, a failed
> application from 1923 and a successful one from circa 1940, which
> corresponded cleanly to the address and birthdate on the draft card that
> listed my great-grandfather as next of kin. So in turn I ordered the
> naturalization petitions and certificate from an archive in Wisconsin, and
> they arrived today. They *almost*, I say *almost*, seem to solve my
> problem: they both name him as the widower of a woman named Bertha; they
> both give an original US entry that corresponds correctly to the date and
> location on the border crossing document that sent me looking in Racine in
> the first place...and they both give a birthdate that corresponds correctly
> to the draft card that had my great-grandfather's name on it.
>
> Problem solved? Nope.
>
> They both list his birthplace *and* his last foreign residence as "Vicnov,
> Poland". No trace of Borowiec, Grodziec or Jeznewka...*Vicnov*. So now,
> after all of this, I suddenly have to figure out if despite all that
> circumstantial evidence, I've actually been barking up the wrong tree the
> whole time.
>
> So my question is: does the place name "Vicnov" mean anything plausible to
> anyone? Or should I just chalk this up to a bureaucratic error like my old
> "Gruec" problem, and accept that I've got the right guy?
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