Genealogy

[eques]

I'll be damned... I have no idea if those are long-dead ancestors or relations, but all four towns in Germany are from the very western border of Germany and, except for Rhede, are all relatively close together near the border of Belgium.

My great-grandparents through my paternal grandfather have their passports originating in Galicia, which appears to be a former political region encompassing southern Poland and the surrounding area.  It was conquered a lot. 

Their marriage was performed in a Ukrainian Orthodox church, and on their certificate (written in Ukrainian Cyrillic transliterated into English) is "Pyrcz."  This is pronounced, "Pyrich," of course, and doesn't belie uniquely Slavic origins...

According to that website, Maria Pyrich was born in Lukow, Galizia, which is located in present-day Poland.  I originally thought that was my great-grandmother, but now I'm not so sure as she married a Stefan Szpak in 1905, in Lehigh, PA.  My great-grandparents immigrated somewhat later than that.

Lois Pyrich was my paternal grandmother.
Harry Pyrich was my great uncle.
Suzanne Pyrich was Harry's wife, I'm pretty sure.

I don't know who Anne, Nicholas, and Nancy were, however, but they lived somewhere in Pennsylvania when they died.

There's a family of Pyrcz's out in Chicago, and I was contacted by a woman who had married a Pyrich not too long ago (I own the domain name pyrich.com ).

Where did you get that Michael Pyrich residence in 1943?  That would have been my grandfather when he was 19.  I believe he went into the army right after high school.

[KBCraig]

I'll be damned... I have no idea if those are long-dead ancestors or relations, but all four towns in Germany are from the very western border of Germany and, except for Rhede, are all relatively close together near the border of Belgium.

Remember, the borders in Europe are barely 60 years old in most cases (and some date from the Clinton presidency). Regionalism has stronger roots than imaginary lines on the ground. Even before the EU, Tyrolians paid little attention to whether they were in Italy or Austria.

As for the flood of family info you just received: ain't the innerwebnet-thingy wunnerful? I never knew any of my father's people, because he was an only child. His father had a brother who never had children. Any paternal cousins were distant, and we never knew them.

In 1996 I decided to trace the lineage. I knew the paternal names back through my great-grandfather. I joined a "Craig Family" listserv, and posted an introduction listing my line back through my GGfather.

Within 5 minutes I had a reply shouting "Hello, Cousin!" A descendant of my GGGfather's brother had been seriously into genealogy for decades. We swapped emails, and within 30 minutes of my initial post, I had a GEDCOM file that showed my paternal ancestry back to 1729 in northern Ireland (where they briefly landed after being kicked out of Scotland; they were in American before 1750). Sidelines have been established to 12th Century Germany.

I learned all that with a simple introduction. 

The ease of internet genealogy comes with a caveat: never rely on any source you haven't verified, either personally or through a trusted party. Lots of pedigrees have turned into mutts upon closer examination.

Kevin

[eques]

I'll be damned... I have no idea if those are long-dead ancestors or relations, but all four towns in Germany are from the very western border of Germany and, except for Rhede, are all relatively close together near the border of Belgium.

Remember, the borders in Europe are barely 60 years old in most cases (and some date from the Clinton presidency). Regionalism has stronger roots than imaginary lines on the ground. Even before the EU, Tyrolians paid little attention to whether they were in Italy or Austria.

Yeah... what needs to be reconciled is the location of the Pyriches in the very western part of Prussia with the Pyriches and Pyrczs in the very eastern part of Prussia.

I'm actually somewhat more interested in my paternal grandmother's family, which I know very little about.  I don't even know her maiden name. 

[Lloyd Danforth]

Here is another piece of useful knowledge, particularly when you're dealing with different spelling of the same sounding name.  This code was used mainly for indexing some US censuses, but, I see the Soundex option on databases.

http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/census/soundex.html


Hope this helps
Sincerely
L300  R163  D516

[eques]

J520 A425 P620

[Lloyd Danforth]

G630 J100, J520

[eques]

I used SOUNDEX indexing for a rudimentary spell-checker at one of my former jobs... such a scheme provided a large number of alternate spelling suggestions.  Granted, most spelling errors probably didn't involve substitution of letters in the SOUNDEX scheme, so we had a few other indexes which we used to search for possible matches when a word wasn't found in the dictionary.

[Lloyd Danforth]

C400!

[eques]

I believe that one of the other indexes we used respected the difference between 'C' and 'CH'... in which case, Pyrich and Pyrcz would turn up different index numbers unless 'CZ' was indexed with the same symbol as 'CH'... which, to the best of my knowledge, is appropriate.