Family Search Indexing New Project Ohio Naturalizations — #Genealogy, #Ohio, #Naturalization

I am a frequent genealogy volunteer. Today, on Twitter, Family Search Indexing (@FamilySearchInd) announced a new project for Ohio Naturalizations. Since this jester has family from Cleveland (Elijasz and affiliated families i.e. Hajek) and also from Toledo (Eliasz, Sobieszczanski/Sobb, Mylek, etc.) I thought I’d pitch in some in hopes that I or some other volunteer would help by indexing my ancestor’s data.

The images for this collection are very helpful for index cards. They have a lot of info (more than we indexers are allowed to collect by the application). So look for this collection to be posted in the near future. I seemed to have had a batch of 20 mostly Italian-Americans (one German, one Brit). All last names began with ‘Pic*’. So if you have Italian ancestors from Cleveland, Cuyahoga, OH who were naturalized there and their names start with PIC, then you are about to be very happy.

 

–Stanczyk

 

1940 US Census Indexing Is Complete — #Genealogy, #Census, #1940

OK, Ancestry.com completed their indexing of the 1940 US Census and fast on their heels, FamilySearch.org also completed theirs — Stanczyk is not aware of the status of other 1940 Census providers’ status.

Prior To The Index

Prior to the indexes, I used Dr Stephen Morse’s One-Step website to figure out which Enumerated District (ED) I need to search sequentially, image-by-image. With most ED’s being between 35-50 images, this was not overly taxing and it yielded excellent results — after a week I had most of the people I most wanted to find.

State indexes rolled out, a few at a time. I found other high value targets in my index searches. Now that indexing is complete, I had thought to find the last few stragglers. I found some indexes as their was supposed to be in places that I had not suspected and hence the ED search did not yield them to me. A few had names that were slightly off in their transcription but none-the-less were easily findable. Some I had to get creative on imaging misspelling or mis-transcribing and I found a handful more.

I hope others did as I did in blazing my trail. When I found a badly indexed name, I used Ancestry.com’s View/Add Alternative Info. So when I finally found my Aunt Kitty (Catherine Eliasz, now married and a Perinoff), who was born as Casimiera Elijasz, but always used Catherine Eliasz in my lifetime. I entered the mis-transcribed name correctly so that other genealogists after me would be able to find my aunt Kitty more easily (and as a bonus they would also find me too).

Where’s Aunt Alice?

So, where is my Aunt Alice? I had correctly anticipated that both my aunt Alice (the eldest) and Catherine (2nd eldest) would be married and I knew the husband’s name. As you see I found my aunt Kitty. But my best efforts at locating my Aunt Alice have failed. I tried using only her first name or only the last name. I tried by other data points I knew (Detroit, MI, USA — I kept broadening the search, even though I “knew” she was in Detroit). I tried locating a woman living in Detroit born in 1910 +/- 1 year (then 2 and 5 years) who was born in Poland (and Russia, just in case they still referenced Russian-Poland partition in that way). No luck !!! I tried searching for her fist husband — not found either ??  So I tried locating her second husband — no luck, he was still single living at home with his parents. No Alice and no first husband — could they have been missed?

The Missing

So here is my list of most sought after ancestors: Aunt Alice (nee Eliasz), could be listed as some corrupted version of EPPERLY (although I tried a combination of this I could think of). My mother’s sister Helen McLean. My dad’s cousins: Emil Leszczynski, Stephen/Matthew/Stanley Sobieszczanski. I thought I would find Emil. I was prepared to find him living away at college (law school) — no luck. As for the Sobieszczanski boys I was surprised, that outside of their brother Henry, I could find none. Perhaps the three are in the US military — after all I had another uncle that served in the US Navy 1935-1938.

How about you? Do you have any AWOL ancestors from the 1940 Census too? Drop me a line (comment or email).

President Obama’s Ancestor Was 1st African Enslaved For Life — #Genealogy, #History, #Presidents

For Stanczyk, Ancestry.com keeps getting better and better. Ancestry discovered that President Obama is related to John Punch. John Punch was one of President Obama’s 11th great-grandfathers.

According to the Ancestry press release, this discovery happened as Ancestry researched his maternal lineage. As you may recall, President Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, is Caucasian (i.e. white) with a lineage that was recently traced back through Ireland (by Megan Smolenyak).

Lesser known is the President’s German 6th great-grandfather, Johann Conrad Wolflin (aka Wolfley) who immigrated to Pennsylvania. This research was also done by Ancestry.com.

Now this John Punch is a topic I’d like to see done on Dr. Henry Louis Gates‘ PBS show!

 

What Is Your Social IQ ?

Blogger
Facebook
Flickr
Flipboard
FourSquare
Google+
iReddit
Klout
LinkedIn
Meetup
Pinterest
Skype
Stumble Upon
Tumblr
Twitter
Wordpress

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Match the App icon (on the left) to the App Name on  right.
2. Which 3 Apps are for writing blogs (micro-blogging does not count)?
3. How many Apps from the list have you ever used?

—

Answers:

1. 1 pt for each correct Apps matched with its name (answer page 7/28/2012)

2. Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress [2 pts for each one you got]

3.  1-4  = 1 pt;   5-8 = 2 pts;    9-12 = 3 pts;   12+ = 4 pts

—

Perfect Score: 26:  You must be a social genius

17-25:  Highly Evolved

10-16: Socially Adept

5-9: Need to do some Googling

1-4: Internet Marooned

0: Luddite

Genealogy and Social Media — #Genealogy, #Facebook

There are 901 Million active Facebook users as of March 2012, according to HowManyAreThere.org  (http://www.howmanyarethere.org/how-many-facebook-users-are-there-2012/). Facebook is estimated to break one Billion users before 2012 ends (Mashable source:  http://mashable.com/2012/01/12/facebook-1-billion-users/). According to Gregory Lyons, a senior analyst at iCrossing, Facebook will reach the milestone in August [2012].

Do I have your attention genealogists? One seventh of the world’s population is on Facebook – perhaps your 2^nd and 3^rd cousins are there waiting for you to engage them in some family history. Skype has nearly 107 Million “Real Users” and recently hit 41.5 Million concurrent users !

So being social can help you reach more people who may have a piece to your family history. I have searched Facebook with modest success for the ‘ELIASZ’ or ‘ELIJASZ’ family name. Not everyone will friend you anymore.  I have had success in SKYPE finding an ‘ELIJASZ’ family member in my grandfather’s ancestral village of Pacanow in Poland. I once had a very lucky success with a social network in Poland, named nasza-klasa.pl (now more easily found at http://nk.pl/ ). Now this jester is minimally conversant in Polish and my “cousin” in Poland was zero conversant in English. But, I was able to use Google’s Translator (English to Polish and vice versa) with success although it did generate some laughter at times. The final result was a letter from Poland with a copy of my grandparents’ marriage record from the actual church book in Biechow, Poland! Nasza-Klasa also yielded two 2^nd cousins who were born in Poland (one since moved to the US) and we keep in touch via Facebook.

How else can you use social media to aid your genealogy? Write a genealogy blog (like this blog for example). I went to a recent Polish/Slavic genealogy seminar this year and spoke to a fellow blogger, Donna Pointkouski, who writes the genealogy blog, “What’s Past Is Prologue”. Donna called genealogy blogs, “2^nd Cousin Bait” . She said by writing about your genealogy searches, successes and family members, your blog can lure these more distant family tree members to you. It works because search engines like Google or Bing find your blog posts and index key words (tags/categories) and proper nouns in their databases and out they pop when 2^nd/3^rd cousins are trying to Google their family trees. Stanczyk has personally located two 2^nd cousins and one 3rd cousin via the blog. One 2^nd cousin even gave me a picture of a previously unknown grand-aunt from before 1910  — jackpot! I was then able to locate that grand-aunt in microfilm from the LDS Family History Library for her children’s birth records in Poland.

A couple more blog tips –  Sprinkle your blog posts with the lingua franca of your ethnic lineage to lure readers from your ancestral home. Finally on your blog software (WordPress,  Blogger,  Tumblr, etc.) – get the widget(s) to share your blog posts on your other social media accounts: Facebook,  Twitter,  LinkedIn,  Google+, etc.  Make sure you get the widest exposure possible to lure your family from all over. Ask family and friends to add your blog/tweets to their Flipboard and possibly ‘star’ the better posts for you to up your Klout.

Lastly, you may want to put your family tree online. Some of my greatest finds have come from collaborating with other genealogists on Ancestry.com. It is the largest collection of genealogists and paid genealogy subscribers — serious genealogists. These people found me and my family who as it turned out were a part of their family tree too. I cannot count the number of family members I have met from Ancestry.com. Let me tell you that my greatest finds were from a woman whose family I and my father thought were only friends from the “old country” whose families renewed their friendship here in the US. From this woman (Kim), who I helped out by reading her grandparents’ marriage record from a Polish church in Detroit. What do the two of us discover, but her great-grandmother was an ELIJASZ from Pacanow. As it turned out, her great-grandmother was my great-grandfather’s sister and that the two of us shared a great-great-grandfather — we were 3rd cousins! So we were blood relatives not just family friends as our parents had thought. I found out my father was her father’s best man — neither of us knew that beforehand. Her grandmother (Rose Wlecialowski) was a best friend of my grandmother. I thought I had never met this third cousin … wrong!  She had photos of me in her family pictures. We were so young neither had memories of the other. She had pictures of me as a 3 year old child that I did not have, with my young father on her grandmother’s farm. She had a picture of my young grandmother from the 1930′s with her grandmother!  This was a B-O-N-A-N-Z-A!

I found her great-grandparents’ marriage record from Pacanow and had it copied from the church book. I translated it from Russian for her (and for my records too). It confirmed that we were indeed 3rd cousins and shared great-great-grandparents (Martin Elijasz & Anna Zasucha). I also eventually found the birth record from the first child that my paternal grandparents had together over in Poland and little Wladyslaw Jozef Elijasz had Rose Wlecialowski for his god-mother. Her grandmother was a god-mother to one of my “uncles”. Poor little Wladyslaw died in infancy and never made the trip to America with my grandparents and my aunt Alice. My father and the rest of my aunts and uncles were born here in the US.

So you see, your family is out there. You just don’t know it yet. Use the social networks, USA and overseas versions. Write a blog to lure your cousins. By all means join Ancestry.com too and upload your family tree to Ancestry.com. These will grow your family tree more completely than you could if you eschewed not to use the Internet. Make your family tree mobile — load it to your iPhone and start collaborating in the Cloud. You will thank me later!

–Stanczyk

BigData means Backup … Security … Disaster Recovery … #RootsTech, #Backup

OK you have a laptop and / or a smartphone and / or a tablet and you also have data, perhaps a LOT of data. It creeps up on this hoarding of data / space. You need to be proactive to keep from losing your data. Primarily we speak of genealogy (or family / history) research and of course family photos and scans of documents, but perhaps you are a knowledge worker and use your computer equipment to produce works in your professional career too. I’ll speak of genealogical research / data and you can extend it to any other valuable data / files you may have.

Today’s blog came about from a cousin (alright second cousin, once removed), Robin. She was frustrated by losing files. So her family and friends had a nice debate over what she needs to do. Of course it is a very complex issue and needs to be customized to each person.

Let me state that designing a backup strategy that is free or low cost is almost impossible — unless you only have a small number of files (# and/or sizes) and can get by with the free: DropBox, GoogleDrive, Apple iCloud, etc.

You could conceivably cobble together a solution with enough “Cloud Services” and one account each for Robin and her husband on each service in order to build up a free usable amount of storage for backup on the Internet. OK, lets say that gets you “enough” space to do your backups. First off, you better hope the number/size of files do NOT increase — but industry studies says otherwise, that data more than doubles each and every year. You will therefore run out of “free” space. Also, you will now have to invent a bookkeeping system to keep track of which files are backed up on which service in which account. Is it getting complicated yet?

How much data do you have to backup? This is the first question you need to answer. If you have an Internet service that limits data transfers or subjects you to overcharge fees then you really need to think about using the cloud. Keep in mind that you need to backup and at some point  to recover a lost file(s) — now that recovery will double those overage fees. Most people can quickly generate 30-60GB of “data” from their music, videos, books, apps, and their pictures and when you throw in their work products (which actually are the smallest part of the critical space) 30-6oGB goes quickly. My wife’s tablet is almost full and we do not use much music or video.

How do you lose files? Inadvertent deletes/drops? Hardware failures? Accidental overwrites with something else? How about malware/viruses etc. ? All of the above probably. Then you need a backup solution to cover all of those eventualities. How about if you live in Florida (Hurricanes), New Orleans (Hurricanes/Floods), Oklahoma/Nebraska/Kansas (Twisters), California (Earthquakes/Mudslides), etc. or in an area where terrorism can cause catastrophic failures (NYC, DC, Seattle’s Space Needle)?

But Stanczyk, what about my sensitive or private data (financials, non-disclosure documents, personal identity, etc.)? Where do you back that up to? Is the cloud safe? Do they lose data in the cloud? Can the cloud data be stolen/hacked? What happens when the cloud crashes and is unavailable? More worries.

By now I hope you get an idea that backup is:

1. Complex
2. Involves Some Costs
3. Requires Planning
4. Custom to Each Individual / Company
5. Recovery Needs to be Accounted for
6. You Need Access to Backups
7. Disaster Recovery (offsite)
8. Need Security

You could be tempted to just rationalize that December 2012 is coming up and either the Mayan Calendar and /or the World will end and why tax your brain to do backups anyway.

Solutions

Ideally, we want the following features in a solution:

1. 3 or 4 copies (counting the original copy)
2. 1 remote copy for disaster recovery (fire, hurricane, flood, theft/loss etc.)
3. Easy / Fast  recovery from the first backup (ergo 1st backup copy must be local)
4. Backups allow you to recover from accidental delete (assuming delete happens after the first backup)
5. If we backup data with privacy concerns then we WILL use encrypt / decrypt software before or as we make a copy
6. The Cloud can be used as the remote copy

Complexity. Just keep it simple, remember the acronym  KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Trying to do backups without spending money will add complexity. So complexity / time / money are your trade-offs. In my career, we used to say, “Good | Fast | Cheap;  Pick 2″. If you want a fast and cheap backup solution it will not be any good. If you want good and fast then it will not be cheap.

Lets say you have as your work product, family trees (gedcoms), scans of documents / pictures and notes / timelines (spreadsheets) / plans – lists. This is over and above your Apps, Pics, Music, Video, etc. How much space do these files all add up to? Is it 7ooMB, 1,400MB, 2,100MB then you can probably get away with burning CDs (or DVDs). CDs hold about 702MB. Make two (or better yet three copies). You need at least three copies (original plus 2 more).

Put one CD in your bank safety deposit box (if it fits). Send a second CD to one of your family members (preferably another genealogist who lives at least 90 miles away from you). The remote CDs provide for a disaster recovery in case of something catastrophic happens at your residence. You can always retrieve the CD from the bank or your family member who may be outside the area affected by the disaster. Obviously, the further away your other copies are, the longer it will be before you can gain access to them to begin recovery — but the securer the disaster copy will be. This is fairly cheap. The flaw is … you keep getting more data / files or the files keep growing. Your family tree changes repeatedly (additions and subtractions). Sometimes you can rewrite the CD (if there is still space) and sometimes you cannot rewrite because the CD does not allow for rewriting or the space is insufficient to handle the larger file. Also if you have 30 GB that needs to be backed up or more then CDs are not viable because you need too many CDs. It is also hard to keep track of multiple versions in case you need to recover from a version that is not the last backup version. I do not recommend CDs but it is fairly simple and fairly cheap.

You can also  substitute DVDs, USB drives (also called thumb drives) for CDs which provide greater space.

Monday - Backing-Up via backup software, external drives, and the Internet/Cloud.

In Prose … The Good Wife — #Love, #LiteratureLost, #WomanOfValor

Stanczyk first put pen to parchment and opined during the reigns of Alexander (1492-1506), Sigismund the Old (1467-1548) and Sigismund Augustus (1520-1572), all kings of the Jagiellonian Dynasty). But of all the kings of Poland, I wish I could have been the jester for Jan III Sobieski (1629-1696) is the monarch I most lament not serving. King Jan III was one of those larger than life individuals about whom history wraps itself around and conforms tightly to.

I’ll leave his deeds of valor to historians and to generals to study. But today, I wish to pay homage to good King Jan III and by extension to my beloved good wife, Tereza.

By extension to my wife? How so? Well you see my gentle readers, Jan Sobieski (no III – the man, not the king) was lesser known for his good wife and the literate love letters they wrote to each other. Usually, the jester informs the king by his position to speak to truth to power. But this jester wishes he could have learned at this king’s knees as King Jan III posted love letters to his wife, the beloved Queen consort, Marysieńka.

Here’s my letter to my good wife …

All the rivers run into the sea

Yet the sea is not full

Unto the place from whence the rivers come

Thither they shall return again

                                    –Ecclesiastes 1:7

 

I quote Ecclesiastes here my love because I love you in this way. The verse speaks a metaphor of infiniteness and my love for you is truly infinite. The verse speaks of water which as all men know is really about women’s emotions. Yet no matter how much love I have for you I cannot fill up the sea. Only God loves more and only He was able to fill the sea. But at least I will love you again and again ad infinitum.

Undoubtedly my good Jewish wife would rather I quote Proverbs 31:10-31 (also know as the Woman of Valor). She is truly deserving of that epithet. Perhaps she’d want me to quote:

A good wife, who can find?

She is far more precious than jewels.

                                                –Proverbs 31:10

I would however go deeper into the woman of valor for my quote …

Many women have done excellently,

But you surpass them all.

                                                –Proverbs 31:29

 

I feel that God’s own angels would further lavish upon her …

Give her the fruits of her hands,

And let her works praise her inside the gates

                                                –Proverbs 31:31

Love is infinite my wife. No matter how much I love you, I will have more to give you. No matter how much I love you, I will have more to give our children. So my love is like Ecclesiastes 1:7 and yet so much more.

iGoogle is Going Bye-Bye — #RootsTech

Stanczyk is sad. Google is planning on phasing out a service that allows millions of people to personalize its home page with applications such as weather updates and stock quotes. The customization service, known as iGoogle, will be turned off in November 2013. So we have about 16 months to find a similar replacement for these capabilities …

Unless you mainly use iGoogle-mobile which will be retired sooner. The mobile version will be retired at the end of this month, on July 31, 2012. More details/suggestions are here on Google’s site.

If you have been on your iGoogle page you should have seen the following on your page:

Now the reason this jester is sad is that I used this web tool as a search engine and a kind of genealogy aggregator of news/announcements from sources that are very helpful to my personal research or to keeping me informed in general on genealogical matters. It also was a landing page (portal)  for some web widgets that performed useful tricks (date calculators, language translation, etc.).

Long time readers will recall that I recommended they use this tool. So if you use iGoogle let me know. Also please let me know what you intend to do for a work-around. Google won’t you please reconsider keeping the iGoogle tool and if you need a few ideas for making it a hit web app — email me. I have a few ideas.

–Stanczyk

US Presidents in the US Census — #US, #Census, #Genealogy, #History

 This year the 1940 Census came out. By law the census is released after 72 years. So anyone you may want to find in the US Census must be at least 72 years old this year.

Do you have the urge to peer at the Presidents in the census? Well then you are in luck! The National Archives has developed a web page on the US Presidents recorded in the US Census. George Walker Bush (#43) has only just turned 66 this month so he is not there. President Bill Clinton will turn 66 next month, ergo he too has not yet appeared in the US Census. So President George H. W. Bush (#41) is the last President to appear in the census. Here is the 1930 Census (CT, Fairfield, Greenwich, ED: 1-134, SHT 4A) in which the president is five years old. Now that is Ancestry.com so you need a membership to view the image.

NARA – Presidents in the Census  (click on the link to go to their website)

I had fun looking at Thomas Jefferson. Many of the Presidents are recorded in more than one census. The links open to a page of census images and even a picture of the President. This might be a novel add-on for K-12 History Curriculum. Also a nice way to work the genealogy subject  into history (or vice-versa). All in all, this genealogical slant on history may spur new ideas for research.

My thanks to the NARA librarians/researchers who provided such a valuable resource!

I also want to thank @NYPLMilstein (twitter) who posted this tidbit on twitter.

Much More Ado About Mitt … Its All True — #Bain, #Romney, #Presidential, #Politics

Today’s research is from SEC / EDGAR website …

Today a whole lot of comments about whether Mitt Romney was involved or not with Bain after February 1999 or not. I do not want to cover that ground but I recommend the following articles that cover the issues:

Boston Globe – “Mitt Romney stayed at Bain 3 years longer than he stated“

Yahoo News – “Report: Romney at Bain Three Years Longer Than He Claimed“

There were many other sources as well.

My motivation was the Romney campaign denying these reports and calling the President and his team misleading. This is another lie/inaccurate statement by the Romney Campaign team and Romney to deny the President and his campaign team and the Boston Globe report.

This jester went to the SEC website and looked at the EDGAR webpages listing the Bain SEC filings from 1999 through 2002. I have compiled a spreadsheet with links for any journalists or media types to follow or for you my blog followers/readers to follow.

The facts are as the Boston Globe and President Obama stated. The Bain companies’ SEC filings indicate that Mitt Romney had substantial involvement with Bain well beyond February 1999.

Romney had involvements with Bain as the various fillings state as:

• Has Mitt Romney signature as a preparer/submitter of the filing
• Title: CEO,   Principal Occupation: Managing Director Bain Capital Inc.
• Share voting and dispositive powers
• Mr W. Mitt Romney is the sole shareholder, sole director, Chief Executive Officer and President of Bain Capital and thus is the controlling person of Bain Capital.

The above are lines directly from copied from the SEC filing text (see spreadsheet below). In many of the filings Mitt Romney’s name was listed many times in many capacities. But clearly he was involved for longer than he has stated. Maybe as much as three years into 2002. Definitely, my spreadsheet showed some level of involvement through at least May of 2001. I could not find any involvement as of  February 8th, 2002 and going forward (as indicated by SEC filings).

My Methodlogy was to only look at Bain Capital, Brookside or BCIP filings, but there were many more where Bain was involved with other companies that I did not examine. There were a total of 131 filings and I only examined 20 filings and document sixteen filings below in the spreadsheet table.

Mr Romney you need to apologize to the President and indeed to all of America. You definitely had involvement as documented by the legal filings with the SEC. Beyond apologies, I think Mitt Romney owes all Americans complete transparency to get beyond this controversy. Mitt Romney I call on you to be open and transparent on this controversy and any SEC investigation. The first step is to release all TAX RETURNS from 1999 through 2008 inclusive. This covers the period of concern in the Boston Globe investigative article, which said you did not finalize your severance until 2002 and then made it a ten year severance pact, retroactively starting from February 1999. Hence we need 1999 through 2008 TAX YEARS to examine your involvement and to clear up whether these “mistatements” on your or your campaign’s part were meant to deceive MA voters and/or the USA voters in this Presidential campaign (as well as 2008′s campaign too).

Now before I stop writing and paste my research, let me state that I am still a registered Republican. I even sent money to Mitt Romney for his 2008 campaign and still receive his mailings up to the present.

But I vote for Democrats since TEA Party, Grover Norquist pledgers seems to be dedicated to ruining this country by doing NOTHING in DC and by sowing the seeds of anarchy with their ignorant, made up facts and puerile focus on women’s health rights, gay marriages, suppressing voter rights, etc.  These are not intellectual Republicans. They are not small government/low tax Republicans — because they work on limiting civil rights instead of lowering taxes and creating jobs and solving the economic woes of our nation. You cannot be a small government/low tax government if you keep trying to get the Federal government involved in social issues of every American. Real Republicans do not want to enforce social mores by Big Brother-Big Government, they are merely fiscal conservatives and prize securing the blessings of America by utilizing the military in only just ways and to ensure our defense and protection of our liberties from all enemies foreign and domestic.

Here is the spreadsheet data(evidence) that will stop the Republican/Romney lies … [If you do not believe me, then click on every link and look at each document as I did.]

Filing Date	Link to SEC Filing	ROMNEY Involved	SEC File to Read	NOTES
4/13/1999	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1033683/0000950131-99-002266.txt	Yes	0000950131-99-002266.txt	has his signature
9/27/1999	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/830134/0000927016-99-003307.txt	Yes	0000927016-99-003307.txt
2/14/2000	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1027584/0000950131-00-001153.txt	Yes	0000950131-00-001153.txt	has his signature
2/14/2000	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1033683/0000950131-00-001151.txt	Yes	0000950131-00-001151.txt
7/6/2000	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1033683/000092701600002402/0000927016-00-002402.txt	Yes	0000927016-00-002402.txt
7/14/2000	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065042/000092701600002483/0000927016-00-002483-index.htm	Yes	0000927016-00-002483.txt
7/26/2000	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/6885/000092701600002587/0000927016-00-002587.txt	Yes	0000927016-00-002587.txt	Mr W. Mitt Romney is the sole shareholder, sole director, Chief Executive Officer and President of Bain Capital and thus is the controlling person of Bain Capital.
11/6/2000	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1033683/000092701600003722/0000927016-00-003722-index.htm	Yes	0000927016-00-003722.txt	share voting and dispositive power
2/13/2001	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/874689/000092701601000754/0000927016-01-000754.txt	Yes	0000927016-01-000754.txt	has his signature
2/13/2001	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065042/000092701601000764/0000927016-01-000764.txt	Yes	0000927016-01-000764.txt
2/14/2001	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065042/000089843001000644/0000898430-01-000644.txt	Yes	0000898430-01-000644.txt	has his signature
2/20/2001	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1054290/000092701601001009/0000927016-01-001009.txt	Yes	0000927016-01-001009.txt	Title: CEO,   Principal Occupation: Managing Director Bain Capital Inc.
2/22/2001	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065042/000089843001000745/0000898430-01-000745.txt	Yes	0000898430-01-000745.txt	has his signature
5/14/2001	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1033683/000092701601501004/0000927016-01-501004.txt	Yes	0000927016-01-501004.txt	share voting and dispositive power
5/14/2001	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1033683/000092701601500679/0000927016-01-500679.txt	Yes	0000927016-01-500679.txt	share voting and dispositive power
2/8/2002	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/874689/000104596902000154/0001045969-02-000154.txt	No	0001045969-02-000154.txt	After this no indication of Romney involvement in SEC filings
The above are for Bain Capital, BCIP, and Brookside. There were a total of 131 filings 1999-2002 that involved Bain entities. The remainder were listed under differing company names and were not examined

Celsius 233* — A Bradbury Tale — #Humor, #Science, #Religion, #FreeSpeech

Dear Readers this neo-post-compassionate-conservative-apocalyptic-dystopian history is from the days of the year 2019. Contrary to the comical Internet Mayan conspiracy kooks, the world did not end in 2012 despite Mitt Romney being elected President of the USA and then re-elected leader of the entire English Speaking Free World in 2016 — an election that everyone now knows he purchased with his considerable undocumented wealth. We should have listened to  Vanity Fair back in 2012 — but there were just too few readers back then. Oh the misery we have endured since …

It has been a hard seven years under President Romney.  Because, of the influence of the Tea Party Evangelicals and Romney’s considerable undocumented wealth he became President.

Back on 4th July 2012, the World Science community discovered the Higgs Boson quantum particle  – the God Particle. This so enraged Romney, that the first thing that President Romney did was have Vain Capitalist LLC buy all the newspapers (especially the Murdoch Press & Hacking Software company) and leverage the hell out of them — supposedly to enhance his own considerable undocumented wealth. But that was just the ostensible reason.

They ended up bankrupting all of the press and media outlets — not hard to do in those days of the Great Recession and barely anybody reading at all and almost none at all in the South. So the newspapers and other media  went out of business and now there were only the bloggers and the Internet to keep data and information alive.

Then in 2017 when President Romney was re-elected in a very suspect election. He immediately moved to control the Internet and to ban blogging software. This precipitated World War III , which he financed with his considerable undocumented wealth while the European leaders were still so busy talking about their imaginary currency (I believe it was called, the Euro) the USA conquered the UK and then most of the European continent (except for Greece, Spain and Italy — which were non-profitable countries), Canada, New Zealand and Australia. That is why he is President of the English Speaking Free World. He is now trying to eradicate blogs and by so doing eliminate the “dangerous” bloggers too. Oddly that is how the USA finally got its first metric standard (Celsius) which it used to confuse the issue of Global Warming.

It has been historic this anti science and publication administration. First they denied the age of the Earth and its fossils, then they denied Evolution, then they denied Global Warming — even when half the US was baking like HELL back in 2012??? The last straw was the Higgs Boson, ironically the God Particle caused these religionists to pursue the pogrom against science and information.

There has been a long history of this anti knowledge movement. First the Catholics tried to censor scientists like Copernicus (who took his knowledge to the grave) and then Gallileo. By the time  Darwin had appeared, Prostestants had joined in too. So by 2012, America had a breed of religionists called “Evangelicals” who were people who Evangelized against science and reading and such things calling them the Devil’s playground. They used to rewrite biblical stories to say that the Bible’s prophets were all about the profit and were against charity. I know this sounds incredible and even unbelievable to you future historians, but I swear it is all true. If you can find any Internet documents or archived newspapers (a physical piece of pages of paper with printed texts that contained information — completely devoid of any digital means) you may be able to read it for yourself — if anyone still does that in the future.

So for the sake of the future. I am asking my blog readers to memorize my blog posts. Just pick your favorites and commit them to memory. Maybe you can write them down on paper if your family has a history of dementia. At any rate, pass them down in your family. Read them at holidays.

All remaining bloggers that have not yet been silenced are calling for their readers to do this for their blogs too. We must be able to preserve knowledge through these information Dark Ages that we are entering.

God (or Nature as the scientists are wont to say) save our immortal souls!!!

–*a terrible homage to Ray Bradbury‘s Farenheit 451

Higgs Boson, #CERN, #Science, and #Comic Sans

 Today, CERN, announced that with a certainty of 5 sigmas they had detected a particle, akin to the Higgs Boson (via the energy, 126.5GeV, it emits as it decays). This VERY closely matched the predicted Standard Model of a Higgs Boson.

My only disappointment was that I was expecting the 1812 Overture as they made their announcement but all I got was the Comic Sans font  of the fabulous scientist, Fabiola Gianotti (member of CERN’s ATLAS team).

What was trending this early AM?   #Higgs, #CERN, #ATLAS, #LHC, #Fabiola Gianotti, and #Comic Sans .  Huh? What was a casual computer font like, Comic Sans,  doing trending?

You see Fabiola Gianotti is the Italian particle physicist in charge of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. In her presentation, she rather humorously chose to use Comic Sans, for her presentation’s font. Well apparently that insignificant detail of this momentous occasion was enough to set the entire blogerrati all a-twitter.

Five Sigmas?

What the heck is five sigmas and why did they write that as 99.9999 (six nines), just shy of 100? Sigma (σ) is known as the standard deviation. The variance from the norm either positive or negative variance from the expected value. So what the scientists were looking for was a confidence level in the data so significant, that there could not be any other conclusion. They usually accept 5 sigmas (99.9999) as their hurdle for acceptance. The only people who routinely deny five sigmas are TEA Party politicians and their followers.

Motorola in the 1970’s was searching for a level of excellence and stability and repeatability in their processes called Six Sigma. To give you an idea of Six Sigma and its impact on business, especially in the IT world from which Stanczyk did some of his best works. We would often discuss achieving six sigmas of “UP TIME” for our massive databases (Data Marts, Data Warehouses). In one year’s time there are 525,600 minutes. So to achieve six sigmas, we would need to make our databases available the entire year, except for less than 40 minutes of unavailability. The uptime would have to be more than 525,560 minutes out of 525,600. Quality/Certainty at this level comes at a very high price – so in the business world we would usually accept something less than Six Sigma.

In statistics 2 sigmas of deviation on either side of the bell curve (you remember the bell curve don’t you),  would mean you have 95% of the area under the curve, 3 sigmas would account for about 99.7%, so 5 sigmas accounts for 99.9999% of the area under the curve, leaving almost no room for error. That is a LOT of confidence.

The error function for five sigmas gives you:

0.999999426697 (so five sigmas is more accurately written as 99.9999426697 – when you multiply by 100 to get a percentage). The possibility of error is 1 minus the 5 sigmas or: 0.000000001973 . All zeroes until  the 9^th decimal place. So that is pretty close to no chance for error.

 

Higgs Boson

 

Oh, today’s hullabaloo was really all about a quantum particle called the Higgs Boson (prosaically called by media types, the “God Particle”, which of course the godless, atheists (the majority) of scientists refuse to use   J  ) .  The Higgs Boson was named after Peter Higgs. Who was one of six people who came up with the theoretical model predicting the Higgs Boson. Higgs was annoyed that the particle became nicknamed the “God Particle” by the media. Higgs thought it might offend religious types. But in actuality it really just offends those who do not believe in any religion or who want to credit everything in the universe to “randomness”.

 

This boson is the one whose appearance quickly after the Big Bang is what gave mass to all other particles in the universe. Today, science has said they are 99.9999426697% (five sigmas) certain that the decay and energy release their experimental data that they have recorded show that the LHC created a Higgs Boson predicted by Dr Peter Higgs’ theoretical model.

 

Happy 4^th of JULY!   Cue the 1812 Overture and the Fireworks (our big bang in the USA).

History Stolen – More than 4,000 Documents Stolen; Conviction In Thefts !

Perhaps long time blog readers will remember Stanczyk’s earlier post about historical documents that may have been stolen. Well it seems a conviction has been had in the theft of more than 4,000 rare historical documents.

On June 27th, 2012, Barry Landau  was convicted for his role in stealing more than 4,000 rare historical documents. Landau, 63, admitted in a plea agreement to having stolen from museums in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut and having sold some of those documents for profit.

His accomplice, Jason Savedoff, who along with Landau was arrested in July 2011 after workers at the Maryland Historical Society spotted them trying to steal documents. Savedoff has already pled guilty and is awaiting sentencing for his role.

Landau has acknowledged stealing documents from at least five institutions in addition to the Maryland Historical Society. They are the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Connecticut Historical Society, the University of Vermont, the New York Historical Society and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential library in Hyde Park, N.Y.

Many of the angry historians who had been tricked by Landau came to see his sentencing. Locally from Philadelphia the sentiment was …

“What they did is really terrible. It our national patrimony that they took,” Lee Arnold of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP) said. “A thief and a liar,” Ashley Harper also of the HSP said. The HSP had to conduct an inventory of documents after several visits by Landau and Savedoff (See: http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2011/07/25/historical-society-of-pennsylvania-conducting-inventory-after-visits-by-accused-document-thieves/). Kim Sajet said Landau and Savedoff visited the HSP’s historical collections a total of 17 times !

Other Sources

Bloomberg BW (excellent reporting):

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-06-28/ny-man-gets-7-years-prison-for-rare-document-theft

CBS:

http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2012/06/27/man-to-be-sentenced-for-rare-document-thefts/

CNN:

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-06-27/justice/justice_presidential-historian-sentenced_1_barry-h-landau-jason-savedoff-documents?_s=PM:JUSTICE

RootsTech – Saturday/Sunday Software – #Genealogy, #Meme

Stanczyk has been noticing some new software lately. This week Google had their Google I/O Conference and they released some new software there of note. For those with Apple’s iOS devices, we finally have the Google Chrome browser available to use on our iPhone/iPad. This jester quick downloaded the app as I had been waiting for it.

At RootsTech 2012, Google announced that they were going to create a microcode widget (still not here yet). But about that time, I noticed they had a new widget (see yellow highlight at the left) next to their Bookmark-This-Page star widget  in the Chrome browser, when you go to the Ancestry.com and visit your family tree. This widget was/is not available in Apple’s Safari browser. This little widget will do a look-up at FamilySearch.org on the person in your tree you are presently at. Sometimes I use this to see if there is any new database available that has something on my ancestor.

Sadly, the Chrome browser app on iPhone did not have the widget. The browser did work fast. Depending on how your brain works, you may prefer Chrome over Safari (or vice-versa). I found both functionally about the same. Here are Chrome and Safari  side-by-side (iPhone screen shots) …

 

Also new on the iOS device scene is a new app, named Heredis. It is an attractive app, but I was not willing to hand enter all my family tree again (and I have been mocked that my 1070+ person tree is SMALL). I could not find a way to import my GEDCOM from any device. I tried hooking the iPhone up to a laptop and I also tried having them on the same WiFi network — no luck. The HELP functionality was absolutely no help. My recommendation is you do not bother unless you are just starting out and do not mind entering your data by hand on your iOS device.

Heredis (in red circle)

As you can see from the screen shot I am trying to go mobile with my genealogy. There is MyHeritage, Ancestry, Mocavo, Indexing, and Heredis. There is also a RootsTech app — which EVERY technical conference should embrace for their attendees.

The Indexing App is so that you too can pitch in and help FamilySearch.org index images so we all get more databases to browse/search online.

How many do you use?

2012 – Year of the Census — #Genealogy, #Census, #State, #Territory

NY State Censuses: Colonial | State

2012 has certainly been a very good genealogical year for this jester. Recently, Ancestry.com completed the 1940 index for NY and I was thrilled to find my grand-uncle Frank Leszczynski ! Grand-Uncle Frank (aka Franciszek was 75 in 1940, and was the god-father at my aunt Catherine’s birth in 1914 and was from my great-grandfather Tomasz’s first wife, Julianna). He is a Naturalized citizen on/before 1940, after having filed in 1931 (Declaration of Intent). Why he is living with a family of Pawelczak as a lodger is a question. After all, he has two half-siblings living nearby, including my grand-uncle Michael whom he was living with when he filed the Declaration of Intent in 1931. So why live at 819 Oliver Street in North Tonawanda (Niagara County, NY) with the Pawelczaks — which he & the Pawelczaks did since 1935 according to the census data?

I still need to find Frank’s death certificate and death notice (if possible) and his Naturalization papers (Erie County or more likely Niagara County).

Ancestry on 5th-June-2012 also released indexes and images of the NY State Census for 1892, 1915, 1925 (previously they had done 1905, partially?).

NY Censuses & 1940 US Census both making my research in NY state a little more complete.

State Censuses

Family Tree Magazine had a nice “Cut & Save” chart on State Censuses (not the US Federal Census). Here is my Cut/Saved images of the States and their Colonial or Territorial or State Censuses that are available … somewhere.

Alabama .. Minnesota

Mississippi .. Wyoming

Big Data – Every Minute Of Every Day …

     Every minute of Every day,  you and I and the rest of the Internati produce data, big data in some kind of Internet colony. We email or blog or even a Facebook post or a 140 character tweet. Being genealogists we search databases and post trees with their connections and images like the 1940 US Census pages that hold our family members. And every day we post more data to the Internet. That is what the picture shows.

The pace of Big Data is increasing too.

Who backs up the Internet? Who archives the web? The “Wayback Machine” seems to record our civilization’s record so this work may last as long as Babylon’s cuneiform or Egypts hieroglyphs. Or will it? I know the Library of Congress is wrestling with Archival Issues of Digital works.

What is the disaster recovery plan of a sun spot interference or another magnetic burst? Books will survive and be immediately available but what about digital works? How do we backup all of this data exlposion?

Almost Wordless Wednesday — #Polish, #Genealogy, 1880 Baptismal Certificate

1880 Krzeszow/Tarnow Birth Extract (Latin/Galicia)

This baptismal certificate was extracted and delivered to a parish in Russian-Poland some time after May 1880. No doubt so Jan Vitus Martino[w] could marry some woman in her parish. It was the oddity of finding such a document amongst the church records written in Cyrillic/Russian for a Russian-Poland partition that I was shocked at the unexpected find.

I also used to collect European postage stamps (mostly Poland, Hungary and the Germanic states) of this era so to see the stamps used as a kind of fee/tax always interests me.

48 kr (kroner?) Austro-Hungarian Empire stamps

Jan Vitus  son of Adalbert Martino[w] son of Mikolaj & Agata Malek  and Victoria daughter of  Michael Michalek & Anna Siwiec born 15th June 1856. Godparents Michael Ligus & Maryanna widow of  Gaspar Flasinicki.

Post Office Department – Stanczyk’s Mailbag — #Polish, #Genealogy, Kuc, Kucz, Swiniary

From the Post Office Department

From Stanczyk’s Mail Bag …

Email From:   Barbara

I have been trying to do research in Pacanow but have not been very successful.  My Grandmother — Maryanna Kuc(z) is from Oblekon.  I wrote to the parish there — Parafia p.w. Najswietszej Maryi Panny Krolowej Swiata but never received a reply.  Perhaps they just couldn’t find any information.

My Grandmother:      Maryanna Kuc(z)

Born:                        March 15, 1886

Baptized                   March  25, 1887

Immigrated to USA:    September 1912

Father:                      Benedict Ku(z)

Mother’s first name:    Marianna

She had a sister Eva (born 1895)

 & a brother Jozef  (born 1893) both came to America.

I think she had other siblings but have not been able to find any records from Poland at all i.e. Marriage of parents, birth or baptisms or death of her parents.  I know her father was alive in 1912 when she came to America.

If you can help or shed any light on how I could obtain the information I am seeking, I would be extremely grateful.

Keep up the excellent work on your blog.

Thank you for any information in can provide and Thank you for your blog,  I learn a lot from it.

Barbara

I had told Barbara that I would search the Swiniary indexes that I have pictures of to see if I could find anything for her. When I searched my indexes, I found that her family name is spelled most as she had it: Kucz, but I did find one example where the priest wrote Kuć. There was also another family Kuzon, but I do NOT feel like they are the same family as her Kucz/ Kuć. Since this was from the era 1829-1852 the records were in Polish. I found one marriage index in the Swiniary parish:

1836 Franciszek Kuć marries Maryanna Duponką   [this is not your great-grandparents, but probably related]. 1836 was the only year that I had a marriage index picture.

1830-1840 no Kucz/ Kuć births in the indexes.

1841 Jozef Kucz birth record #23

1842 Maciej Kucz birth record #21

1843-1845 no Kucz/ Kuć births in the indexes.

1846-1849 I had no indexes (or pictures thereof)

1850 no Kucz/ Kuć births in the indexes.

1851 I had no indexes (or pictures thereof)

1852 Stanislaw Kucz birth record #28

I think I have seen Kuc in the surrounding parishes (Biechow & Pacanow).

First off, I checked the LDS website (FamilySearch.org). I wanted to see what microfilm they had. Your birthdates: 1886, 1893, 1895 are rather late (most LDS microfilm stop around 1884). Here is their inventory for Swiniary (you want “Akta urodzeń“, for births):

Family History Library Catalog (Place Search): Swiniary

Akta urodzeń 1686-1811 — małżeństw 1668-1863 — zgonów 1686-1811 -  INTL Film [ 939952 ]
Akta urodzeń 1797-1811, 1826-1865 -  INTL Film [ 939951 ]
Akta urodzeń, małżeństw, zgonów 1812-1816, 1818-1825 -  INTL Film [ 939949 ]
Akta urodzeń, małżeństw, zgonów 1878-1884 -  INTL Film [ 1808854 Items 9-15 ]

Akta zgonów 1797-1839 -  INTL Film [ 939950 ]

–

That is all the LDS (aka Mormons) have in their Family History Library that you can rent microfilm from. Next I checked the Polish National Archives via PRADZIAD . They did have books/microfilm for the date range you are seeking. Here is the contact info for the archive that has the data you seek. You would need to write them in Polish and they will write you back with their findings and instructions for wiring their bank the money they require (all in Polish).

PRADZIAD:

http://baza.archiwa.gov.pl/sezam/pradziad.php?l=en&mode=showopis&id=14781&miejscowosc=swiniary

Archive:

Archiwum Państwowe w Kielcach Oddział w Pińczowie – akta przeniesione do AP w Kielcach
28-400 Pińczów, ul. Batalionów Chłopskich 32
tel: (41) 357-20-02
fax: 357-20-02
email: pinczow@kielce.ap.gov.pl

I hope this helps you out!

–Stanczyk