Kankula, Drogowski, Ristow, Pelyak, Olsakovsky Family Tree

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Website Effective: 12-Mar-2022

As the Internet ages, more & more historical records are being made available for on-line viewing. Unfortunately, a lot of this information is worthless, because it's incomplete or can't be related to a family line. Trying to organize all this found info has proved to be very-very mind boggling...

( Taken in 1989 )

For lack of something better to do with a new computer that I had built, we started researching and compiling our Family Tree on 01-Jan-1989 -- when we lived in Michigan. Unfortunately, this research should have started 20 years earlier, when all our "Old Folks" were still alive! However, we have done our very best to compile our Family Tree, with what was available to us at the time - we know that there are probably errors. What started off as a simple project, has turned out to be a 18" pile of printed documentation! Now it's time to try and make all this information available on-line.

As we started our research work, it was obvious to me that the brave emigrants who helped make our nation great, were being forgotten with the passing of time... Sunken grave markers were being covered with grass, to be hidden forever... Cemetery and church records were deteriorating to the point where they could no longer be safely handled... Birth Certificates were turning to dust in old shoe boxes... The younger generation, normally has no idea who their great grandparents were... Sad isn't it?

Out of love for our past family members, we refused to let their short presence on this earth be forgotten. we plan to document the story of their lives and pass it on to our future ascendants, by means of the Church of Latter-day Saints, RootsWeb & Ancestry Archives. Will this information actually be of any value to someone? We'll never know for sure.

Emigrants could not normally read, write or speak English. Surnames were often spelled as they sounded (Prszybyslawski became Price for example). If a US Immigration or Steam Ship Official couldn't understand what was being said to them, emigrants normally got "stuck" with whatever came to their mind at the time. Then the emigrant's country of origin could be listed as Prussia, Germany, Russia, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary or Czechoslovakia and actually represent the same geographical location - depending upon the time period. One relative reports that their parents were born in Austria, lived in Poland, were killed in Germany and buried in the Soviet Union - without ever leaving their farm...

The destruction of vital records during the centuries of Europe's wars, were on an immense scale! During World Wars I & II, church records were often buried in cemeteries for safety. Unfortunately, German Nazi tank commanders took great joy in blowing apart churches and destroying grave markers when conquering defenseless villages. For this reason, doing any genealogical research in Europe is complicated and in many instances impossible.

Many people consider genealogy research to be too time consuming. Most regret that they didn't start it before a love one died... A few people consider it to be an invasion of their privacy, but our nation's Freedom of Information Act and the First Amendment helps eliminate that. Others don't want their descendents to forget them. Whatever the case, if you don't tell your heritage story now, who will tell your story "accurately" after you have died?

Paul - (NN8NN) = [email protected] Nancy = [email protected]

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