Better Off Born a Smith?
By Julie Ann Monzi
I recently jumped on the ancestry bandwagon and decided to research my family tree.
I quickly found out that I had a job and didn’t need another one where I had to pay for the privilege of getting irritated.
A good friend who is having a wonderful time finding his long lost relations updates me on his latest findings.
A month ago he found records for one part of his family as far back as the 1400s.
During his most recent search, he informed me that he has traced his roots back to 400 – 600 B.C.
Yes, I wrote B.C. I asked him whether those records were carved on tree bark or stones.
Bolstered by my friend’s success, I joined one of those websites that assists you in your search.
There is a catch: you do need some basic information.
Like the name of your grandmother’s father. My mother has no idea.
Her mother never talked about her family.
I found my grandmother’s mother. And her second husband.
Not her first. Not my grandmother’s father. No maiden names listed. No birth records either.
So the next logical step would be to find my grandmother’s birth certificate. Easier said than done.
Since no one seems to have it, I thought I’d check where she’d be born. Ohio. What town?
It took my parents a few days to come up with it. Back to the computer. There is no record
of my grandmother being born in Ohio. The town is close to the Pennsylvania border.
Maybe my great-grandmother went to a hospital across the border. Another genealogically-gifted
friend suggested a road trip. Yep, I’ve got time for that. Travel to Ohio (or somewhere near the border)
to sift through dusty records to maybe find my grandmother’s birth certificate. Do I really want to know that badly?
Then there’s my father’s father. He was born in Slovenia. Which used to be part of Yugoslavia.
Before that, it was part of Austria. The Austro-Hungarian Empire to be exact. How do you find those
records when the borders change as often as the beach at high tide?
I decided to start with Ellis Island and work backwards. I know his birth date and approximately
when he immigrated. But the tricky part is his name. Anthony Bavetz. Which used to be Anthony Bavec.
In census records it is listed as Anton, Anthon, Antoine, Tony; Bavetz, Bavitz, Bavits, etc., etc., etc.
I tried every single spelling combination with absolutely no luck. My friend gets to the
dinosaur age, and I can’t get past 1905.
In my musings, I thought maybe it would have been better to have been born a “Smith”.
Smith is an easy name. You can’t misspell it unless of course it has the fancy spelling of “Smyth”.
But Smith is simple to research, I thought. Think again. Do you know how many Smiths are in the
ancestral databases? 54,885,407 to be exact. Guess I was wrong on that one, too.
My sister has another perspective on the search. She feels the past should be left there.
Gone. Buried. “Who wants to find an ax murderer in the family?” She has a point. Which now is
moot since my subscription to the ancestry database expires this month. I am not renewing. I’ve got
enough headaches with living relatives let alone getting frustrated with dead ones.
Maybe I should do what my husband’s aunt did – invent some ancestors. Aunt Pat visited an
antique store in North Carolina and came upon an old black and white photo of an Italian-looking man in a suit and tie.
She bought the picture, popped it into a fancy frame, and has it sitting prominently on a shelf in her kitchen. She gave him a name:
Uncle Reginaldo. She even gave him a background which I actually believed as she told me the story with a twinkle in her eye.
It took my husband to burst out laughing before I realized the joke was on me.
But who knows? The joke may be on Aunt Pat. Maybe “Uncle Reginaldo” really is an ax murderer.
Julie Ann Monzi grew up in the Pittsburgh area and now lives in Gettysburg with her husband,
three almost-grown children, and five cats. She enjoys reading, hiking the Gettysburg Battlefield,
and watching British mysteries. Looking to explore your spiritual side? Check out her blog at
www.5minutereflections.blogspot.com. Julie can be reached at julieannmonzi@gmail.com.
