Saturday, January 12, 2013

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Semi-Random Research


It's Saturday Night - 
time for more Genealogy Fun! 




Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to:


1)  We're going to do a little bit of Semi-Random Research tonight...

2)  Go to your family tree database of choice (you know, like RootsMagic, Reunion, Ancestry Member Tree), and determine who the very last person on your list of names is.

3)  What do you know about this person based on your research?  It's OK to do more if you need to - in fact, it's encouraged!

4)  How are you related to this person, and why is s/he in your family tree?

5)  Tell us about it in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blogp ost, or in a Facebook Status post or Google+ Stream post.

Here's mine:

2)  The last person in the index of my 41,552 person family tree in RootsMagic is:  John J. Zusinas.

3)  John J. Zusinas was born 15 August 1910 to Joseph and Anna Zusinas, probably in Pittsburgh, Allegheny, Pennsylvania.  He married Gertrude M. (Remley) Hoyland at some time in an unknown place.  John J. Zusinas died 10 December 1984 in Hollywood, Broward, Florida.  The dates are from the Florida State Death Index on Ancestry.com.  The parents are from the 1920 U.S. census. There are several Ancestry Member Trees with John J. Zusinas as an entry.

4)  The relationship is complicated.  John Zusinas is the second husband of Gertrude M. Remley (1902-1977), who is an aunt of James Howard Remley (1912-2007, son of Frederick Lloyd Remley, 1887-1957), who was the husband of Geraldine Seaver (1917-2007), who is my aunt (the youngest sister of my father).  I built a Remley database about 15 years ago for Jim and his children, and included it in my family tree database several years ago.  

5)  I just did!

I had no information about John Zusinas before I started this post...and found quite a bit of information on Ancestry.com.  I added a birth date/place and death date/place for John, and a death date/place for Gertrude, with sources, in minutes!

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-semi_12.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

16 comments:

Andrew Hatchett said...

Randy, fortunately my last person is still living, as are her parents, husband, and In-Laws.

All I can say is that she is a wife of a first cousin 3x removed of a husband of a 3rd cousin of one of my great grandfather's wives

M said...

Unfortunately like the above post, my person is still alive too. He is a second cousin, I don't have much on him though, that portion of the family hasn't been very involved with our family and since many are still living, I'm unable to get the info online.

Unknown said...

Hi, Randy,

The last person in my Legacy Family Tree database is #10681. She is not related to me, but is my son’s paternal great-aunt. There is a chance she is still living.

Denise

Joe Lowry said...

My last person is the wife of a second cousin once removed, still living and younger than I; 24 I think. My second last person is my own mother, and that's not fun. The third last person is my 6th great grandfather, born in Germany around 1744. I have no sources for him; He was taken a cousin's tree. I'll have to look around tonight and see if I can come up with anything.

Dr. Bill (William L.) Smith said...

Last entry was a new-born baby cousin a few days ago from Facebook. Think I got it all. Thanks! ;-)

Marshall said...

The last person in my tree is still living as well.
He is my 3rd cousin, once removed, and is the same age as my daughter.

Celia Lewis said...

Well Randy - my last person was a ZINN, married to my 5th cousin once removed... so I blogged about it on http://twigsandtrees.blogspot.ca/
Cheers

Emily Garber said...

I had to move back on my list about three people before finding one who was not living. And, as luck would have it the person selected related by marriage and, therefore, was not one I'd researched previously. So, I had some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun!

http://extrayad.blogspot.com/2013/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-morris.html

Liz said...

Randy, here's mine:

http://gatapleytree.blogspot.com/2013/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-semi.html

This was fun! Thanks for forcing me to research someone new! LOL

Liz

Unknown said...

Thanks Randy, this was fun and I found some new info. :)
http://footstepspast.blogspot.ca/2013/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-semi.html

Diane Gould Hall said...

Randy. What a fun idea. I had to go up the list 8 people to find someone not living. He's the father of my brother ( well, he is really my half brother, but we don't think of each other that way as he's my best friend). His name is John Joseph Zimmerman 10 Mar 1908 - 3 Dec 1984. He married Ruth Berdeen Davis. The new thing I found out about him tonight was that he traveled to Italy in 1927. I found his passenger record on Ancestry.
I'll post this on my blog tomorrow at michiganfamilytrails.com
Thanks for suggesting this little exercise. If I wasn't so tired I'd have tried to learn more.

Shelley Bishop said...

Thanks, Randy, this was a good mission! You can read about my last person at:

http://www.asenseoffamily.com/2013/01/lewis-zirkle-saturday-night-genealogy.html

Wendy said...

This is perfect -- if my person is alive, he just turned 95 this week. My post is here: http://jollettetc.blogspot.com/2013/01/saturday-night-fun-meet-robert-zimmerman.html

Lisa S. Gorrell said...

Here's mine. Luckily he's not living:
The last person on my list of 5863 is Leonard Zupancic.
I had no information about him other than who he married. On Ancestry.com I found several city directory entries, 1930 & 1940 census, and Social Security Death Index. He was born 16 Nov 1923 and died 25 Dec 1990. According to the US Dept of Veterans Affairs, he served in the US Army between 7 Apr 1943 and 25 Dec 1945.
He was married to Genevieve Bowlan, who is my third cousin once removed. She was the daughter of Julian Bowlan and Clara Genevieve Sievert. My great-grandmother was a Sievert.

Anonymous said...

For what it's worth (about nothing), it looks like so far I get the prize for the name last in our combined lists!

I know pretty much nothing about William Zweig. As Family Tree Maker tells me, he was the father-in-law of my first cousin once removed. Specifically, his daughter Mildred married the son of my great-aunt. This line isn't a high priority for my research, so it may be a while before I know more than this.

I did repeat this "project" and linked to this blog on my own blog, "Genealogical Gleanings," which can be found at genblog.skingcoservices.com. I don't update it often -- I'm much better with my tax blog -- but I hope to do better.

Dave L

Unknown said...

This seems to have stirred a lot of interest as everyone is taking the challenge. My last person is my 3X Gt-Grandfather Joseph Wynn (or Winn). He was born 8 May 1829 in Greenwich, Kent, England. I have 3 candidates in the death indexes for England between 1863 and 1864. He married Sarah Martin of Reading, Berkshire, England who thanks to this challenge now has a father, Richard. They had at least 6 children of whom Eliza, their oldest daughter is my ancestor.