finding your roots

Who were they?

Jill Baty April 10, 2012

Each of us have 8 great grandparents. I have enough information about six of them- some research, photos, other relatives The remaining two though are a mystery. They would be my Mom’s Mom’s parents. My Grandmother was a cheerful person but brushed off our questions about her parents. Her sister did the same thing. We aren’t sure where they were born, we don’t know when they immigrated or why or whether they arrived together or separately, or with their parents. We don’t know whether they left family behind. My great grandmother was killed at a young age in a mysterious automobile accident, and my great grandfather became or had been an alcoholic, so the younger daughter was taken to an orphanage at 13 and my grandmother at 16 was given room and board to a family in exchange for housekeeping. I suspect Nacas wasn’t the original surname for my great grandfather, and we have seen numerous spellings for Mary Matuschewski my great grandmother. Boundaries in Europe were constantly changing and some later documents show different countries of origin: Russia, Hungary, Poland and we know they spoke Slovak which narrows the region a bit further. Some day we hope to learn more about this young couple!

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About the Series

The basic drive to discover who we are and where we come from is at the core of the new 10-part PBS series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the 12th series from Professor Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. Filmed on location across the United States, the series premieres nationally Sundays, March 25 – May 20 at 8 pm ET on PBS (check local listings).

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