(McHalsky) Michalski, Johann & Anna (3x Great Grands)


As promised, I will make every effort to keep living family members from appearing on this blog without their explicit consent.  I have also removed the other side of the family off this graphic, for the sake of trying to keep it simple.

 Michalski, Johann & Anna (3x Great Grandparents)

 This is where the trail runs cold for the McHalsky surname.  Ancestry.com has potential parents for Johann, but I'm not confident enough with the information to make an absolute connection at this point. Johann never left Prussia, so it becomes infinitely more challenging for me to a) find documents and b) read documents if they are found. Often, Ancestry will provide you the key bits of information that they used to suggest a person is related to your ancestor, but they don't have a copy of the document scanned into their database for you to view. Even if they did, it would be challenging, since it would be in German, but it would be better than just taking random bits of information that Ancestry has pulled out of a document.  

 Anna did come to the U.S. in 1882 with her two youngest children a couple of years after Johann died. The older children were already here, I suppose getting jobs and settling in so that Anna and the younger kids had somewhere to go. (By younger, I mean 18 and 21.) They traveled in Steerage (lower deck, lowest cost and lowest class of travel). The manifest doesn't say much else...just that they are headed for the U.S. from Prussia.  Anna is 63 years old when she makes this voyage. I have written down that the trip took 2 1/2 months, but I don't know where that information came from. I don't know if that makes sense/is reasonable? If it would have taken that much time in those days? That had to have been a long, perhaps challenging trip.
   
According to a document from my grandmother, Johann was married before ~ Anna was his second wife. It's with this document that I am able to make the connection between Andrew, John and Johann, because I've found little else to determine Johann's relationship to Andrew and John. It's a beautiful little typed up document with the children listed (from both wives) and the names of their spouses and children. 

 Absolutely talk to your oldest living relatives. You might be surprised by the amazing bits of information and documentation they have tucked away! 

 Documents: copy of manifest from ship Nederland, census record, oral history provided by grandmother's written document.

 Interesting records: I found a photo of her headstone on Ancestry and the person who posted it ~ at some point, I want to reach out to that person to see if there is other information she can share about Johann and Anna.  

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