Fraternity-Testvériség, 1992 (70. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
1992-04-01 / 2. szám
Page 16 TESTVÉRISÉG TREASURES of the NATIONAL ARCHIVES Researching my ancestors has been a most rewarding endeavor. Undertaking such a task proved to require an infinite amount of patience. First, from our parents and relatives, as much information as possible must be gained about our ancestors. Most important is Port of Arrival. Next would be names, year of birth, city or village of birth, and if possible when they arrived in the United States. On fde in the National Archives are so very many precious memories of people’s lives. There are the Passenger Lists, the Ship’s Manifest which include village or city of birth, occupation, next of kin, and Census Rolls including the just recently opened 1920 Census. All this is filed according to the Soundex Coding System which is a coded surname index based on the way a surname sounds rather than the way it is spelled. This enables one to find a certain name even though it may have been recorded under different spellings. My work on this began when we came to Washington in 1991 for the Spring Meeting. It was a very rewarding venture. While my husband and the other members of the Board of Directors held their daily sessions, I spent a good portion of each day researching at the Archives. Fortunately my mother knew the exact date she arrived at Ellis Island. It was August 1, 1921 on the S/S “Minnekada”. This enabled me to locate in the Passenger Index File the names of my grandparents, my two uncles and my mother. After locating their particular cards, the information I was hoping to find was right before me on the Soundex Cards. The first column was age, next was line number, next was page number and the last number was the volume of microfilm in which all this information about my family could be located. Finding all this proved to be very gratifying for me. One little very humorous bit of information contained in this discovery was that there were four stowaways on board the ship my family arrived on. My grandfather had brought my two aunts to America in 1913 but we didn’t know when. This also I was able to locate. They sailed out of Bremen, Germany, on December 3, 1913 and arrived on December 16, 1913 on the S/S “Main”. On this ship’s manifest my grandfather stated that he was in the United States on two previous occasions which we were not aware of. During the week of the Spring Meeting in Washington in 1992, it was my great fortune to discover that he arrived in this great country of ours on April 27, 1907 also on the S/S “Main” out of Bremen, Germany. Their city of origin was Timar, Szabolcs Megye, Hungary. Margaret Pauli’s grandparents, Miklós and Maria Fekete, of Timar, Hungary Seeing our family names on these magnificent mementoes of history have meant a great deal to me. I hope this interest will be passed down to our children and all our grandchildren. They already have a good start with a Genealogy Workbook which I purchased for each one of our grandchildren at the National Archives. I hope this short introduction on researching our ancestors will generate a desire in others as well to trace their origins and hopefully gain as much pleasure as I did. Margaret Pauli Branch Manager St. George District & 250.
