52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Ancestor # 1: Frank Puncochar

As announced by Amy Johnson Crow in No Story Too Small, there is a 2015 edition of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. I may not make 52 but I am going to post whenever time permits to share what I have learned with my family as suggested by Michael J. Leclerc in his blog. I am starting with my grandfather.

I never met my paternal grandfather as he died when my father was not quite 15 years old. But I have enjoyed learning about him over the last 25 years as I researched my family history.

Francis Paul PUNCOCHAR  was born on Oct 2, 1898 at Maple Lake, Wright, MN, and died on March 22, 1940 in Aberdeen, Brown, South Dakota at the age of 41.

He appeared on the census of Jun 20, 1900 in the household of John J. PUNCOCHAR and Anna PAVLIK at Maple Lake, Wright, MN. His father was born in Bohemia, came to America in 1883 and was a farmer. His mother, Anna Pavlik was born in Illinois to Bohemian parents, and died on November 14, 1903.

He appeared as Frank PUNCOCHAR on the census of Jun 5, 1905 in the household of John J. PUNCOCHAR and his second wife, Frances PIRAM, at Maple Lake, Wright, MN. 


He appeared on the census of May 5, 1910 in the household of John J. PUNCOCHAR and Frances PIRAM  at Maple Lake, Wright, MN. 

According to his obituary, he attended business college in Minneapolis. He was bookkeeper on Sep 10, 1918 at McLaughlin Gormley King Co, 1715 5th Street SE, Minneapolis, Hennepin, MN, when he filed for WWI draft. His draft registration shows that he was short, of slender build and had blue eyes and brown hair.

He was clerk at McLaughlin Gormley King Company in 1919 at Minneapolis, Hennepin, MN, where he lived at 1609 Stevens Avenue, Minneapolis, Hennepin, MN when he appeared in the Minneapolis directory. This address now appears to be where the Minneapolis Convention Center is now located.

He appeared on the census of Jan, 1920 at 1609 Stevens Avenue, Minneapolis, Hennepin, MN. His occupation was listed as drug salesman. McLaughlin Gormley King Company dealt with importing spices and herbs when it was first formed in the early 1900's. It now deals with pest control.


He was a manager in 1923 at J. I. Case Threshing Machine Co. in Aberdeen, Brown, SD, when he was listed in the Aberdeen Directory. 

He married Myrle Eva PIPER, daughter of George Edwin PIPER and Julia Alice RIGGS, on Jun 16, 1925 at Aberdeen, Brown, SD. 

He and Myrle Eva PIPER  moved to Watertown, Coddington, SD circa Mar, 1926 and lived  at Palace Apartments, 311 E. Kemp when he was listed in the Watertown directory.


He and Myrle Eva PIPER lived at 216 9th Ave SE, Aberdeen, Brown, SD when they appeared on the census of Apr 3, 1930 

He and Myrle Eva PIPER appeared on the South Dakota state census of 1935 at 715 S 4th Street, Aberdeen, Brown, SD. He and Myrle Eva PIPER lived in 1936 at 816 w. 22nd Street, Sioux Falls, Minnehaha, SD according to the directory listing.

Frank suffered from a long illness before he died. He was seen at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota for his illness but they were unable to determine a cure.

From the Obituary of Frank Puncochar: Long Illness Fatal to Frank Puncochar

Frank Paul Puncochar, 41, died Friday evening in his home at 1320 1st St. S., after an illiness of a year and a half duration.

Mr. Puncochar had been with the J. I. Case Co here for 20 years. He was a member of the Blue Lodge of the Masonic Order in Aberdeen.

Mr. Puncochar was born in Maple Lake, Minn, Oct 2, 1898, and graduated from high school there. He later attended business college in Minneapolis. 

Survivors besides the widow are two sons, Robert, 14, and Glenn Allan, 7, his father, John Puncochar of Maple Lake, three brothers, Ernest and Joseph of Maple Lake, and William in St, Paul; a sister, Mrs. Edwin Blizil of Buffalo, MN.

Services will be in Huebl Chapel at 4 p.m. Saturday with the Rev. Arthur Atack of the Methodist church officiating. The body will be taken to Maple Lake where another service will be conducted at 2 p.m. Monday and where burial will take place. 

My Professional Genealogy Goals

I expect to retire from my current profession within the next few years. Even though I don't anticipate taking fee-paying clients, I won't rule it out at this time. I do want to lend authenticity to my work, volunteer in a genealogy society, and teach genealogy; and so I would like to become a certified genealogist. ProGenStudy offers a 19-month study course with a mentor. I have signed up for the waiting list and am excited to study with others who have the same goal.

In the application process for the ProGenStudy group, I included the following genealogy goals:

– to attain one or more credentials in professional genealogy, lecturing and/or instructing.
– to complete eight professional quality family studies for my own family: one for each of my children's great-grandparents.
– to work and/or volunteer in one or more of our local historical societies: the Minnesota Historical Society, the Minnesota Genealogical Society and the Dakota County (MN) Historical Society are all nearby.
– to teach and/or lecture especially to those who are just beginning their family research, either through a local society or through community education classes.
– to continue to visit local, national and international libraries and research centers.

I will add one more:

- to build a genealogy reference library with print and ebooks to support my learning and research. 

I list them here because I have found that keeping my goals visible inspires me to work toward them.

The reference library has been difficult to research as there seems to be no single point of reference for high-quality genealogy reference books by topic or locality that I can find. So I have been using bibliographies, blog posts, and other finding aids to determine which books will be helpful to my research.

I'm not sure which certification I will work for, but I anticipate that the study group will help guide me in the right direction. I hope to use this blog to document my progress when I am accepted into the GenProStudy group.

Any comments guiding me toward a certification decision are certainly welcome!

Serendipity in Genealogy, Part II

In my previous article, Serendipity in Genealogy, Part I,  I gave the background information for the discovery of my mother-in-law's maternal family.

After discovering the Kline name in an excerpt of the Bill Holm book, "The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth," I made the very short journey to the Minnesota Historical Society, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

I admit it, I am lucky, the Minnesota Historical Society is less than 12 miles from my home. So I used the clues from the excerpt to find her death record and then, her obituary. Her obituary indicated she was survived by a sister in Robbinsdale, Anna Hughes, and then I knew I had found the family. I almost heard that brick wall fall. With the new information, I spent the rest of the afternoon, searching the state census records and church records and building the family tree forward.

The original excerpt had explained that as a young boy, Bill Holm accompanied his parents when they visited the town of Minneota on Saturday evenings. Sara Kline was always on the sidewalk near the spot they always parked their car.  There, before he was allowed to run off with friends, his parents instructed him to greet her by "...shaking her hand, greeting her courteously in Icelandic, and, worst of all, bending down to kiss her on the cheek." His mother had short conversations with her in Icelandic, also.

So my husband's maternal grandmother was Icelandic? Why didn't my husband know that? Why didn't my mother-in-law, Anna's daughter, know that? Anna Hughes, Sara Kline's sister, died in 1971 at the age of 88. My husband would have been almost 23 years old. Surely Anna must have spoken about her Icelandic heritage the same way my grandparents spoke of their Norwegian heritage.

But when I queried my mother-in-law on our Christmas visit her response indicated otherwise.

"Was your mother's family Icelandic?" I asked.

"Well, maybe a little," she replied, after some thought.

Hmmm, my research indicated that Anna Kline Hughes' parents and older siblings arrived from Iceland three years before she was born. For whatever reason, my mother-in-law never talked about her Icelandic heritage even after I explained that her mother was 100% Icelandic. She also couldn't remember if the women with whom her mother often visited were aunts, cousins or just friends.

Apparently her mother was raised by another family after her father died. The family that raised her, the Christiansen's, may have been related but I have not yet found that family link.

After buying Bill Holm's book, "The Heart Can be Filled Anywhere on Earth," and re-reading the entire chapter that mentioned Sara Kline, I felt I needed to write to him. He had written that Sara Kline had "no family to sit in the mourner's pew." I wanted him to know that she did have family, and now, 45 years later, to thank him for singing at her funeral.

However, I was a little intimidated to write the letter as I knew he was a college professor at Southwest State University in Marshall, Minnesota which is not far from Minneota. I wrote and re-wrote that letter until I thought it was acceptable to send to someone who teaches writing at the college level. It was a painful experience - I almost felt like I was going to get a grade at the end, which I almost did.

Bill Holm replied with a postcard greeting and did acknowledge my feeble attempts at writing.

The postcard reads:

Dear Lynn, You deserve a longer reply to that magnificently written letter on Sara Kline. Darren G. is trying to dig up some more facts for you, but I am only stunned with admiration for your detective work. Come to Minneota in spring. You honor Sara with your prose!

Best, Bill


I wish that I could say I took him up on his offer and went to visit him in Minneota. I sincerely regret that I didn't although I intended to. Life got in the way and I thought I might have more time after retirement. Sadly, Bill Holm passed away in February of 2009.

Serendipity In Genealogy, Part I

There are entire books written about serendipitous discoveries made in genealogical research.  I'm not sure if "serendipity" is the proper term, perhaps it is the gentle prodding of our ancestors that push us in the right direction. Nevertheless, here is my story. First the background information:

In the early 1990's, I became a college student, somewhat late-in-life, as I was already married with three children. I attended an English class at the local community college and one of our assignments was to read the book, "Coming Home Crazy", written by a Minnesota author named Bill Holm. I had never heard of Bill Holm although he had written several books by then.

"Coming Home Crazy" was a series of essays about Bill Holm's experiences while teaching in China.The book was interesting to me, as my husband and I had visited China in the mid-1980's. Perhaps because of my own China experience, or perhaps because our assignment included journaling while reading, the book left an impression on me.

At this time, genealogy was also beginning to take hold on me. One of my daughter's 7th grade classroom assignment, in 1990, included documenting a family tree. That's when I discovered that my husband's mother knew very little about either side of her family. Or perhaps she just didn't want to share. But either way, there was no information about any of her grandparents except for the name of her paternal grandfather, Samuel Hughes.

What my mother-in-law did know was that her mother's name was Anna Kline, born in Minnesota in 1883, married in 1916 to her father, Harry Hughes.

I graduated in December of 1994 and was then able to use my "spare" time to work on genealogy. My mother-in-law's maternal family was a total brick wall. I could find no record of Anna Kline anywhere. Of course, the records weren't quite as easy to search as they are now. I knew that her mother grew up in the area of Minneota, Minnesota but was unable to find anything else.

Now for the serendipitous story.

Sometime late in November or early December in the year 2000, I was reading the Minneapolis Star Tribune Sunday paper. As is my habit, I started on the front page of the first section, and went page by page through each section. On the front page of the Entertainment section there was an excerpt of Bill Holm's latest book, "The Heart Can be Filled Anywhere on Earth."

I normally wouldn't read such a long article, but it attracted my attention because Bill Holm was the author and I remembered my college class with his book. In his new book, he wrote about his hometown, Minneota, Minnesota. At some point, the name "Sara Kline" jumped out at me.  I read the article again, this time more closely, scrutinizing the details about Sara and her story.

It was not pretty.

The fifth chapter of the book, entitled "Glad Poverty," told the story of Sara Kline, whom Bill Holm called the "bag lady of Minneota." He described her as "small, shriveled, hunched over... stringy, greasy hair... stale smell of unwashed damp rags, sweat, urine-soaked underwear, rotting food in rotted teeth, old cigarettes, the fetor that rises off a mattress that should have been thrown out decades ago.."

This was not exactly the family I was looking for. However, I couldn't ignore the fact that she lived in Minneota and her last name was Kline. So I thought about it for a while. And then I wrote down every fact in the article that I might be able to find in records.

Stay tuned for Serendipity in Genealogy, Part II.

Useful Calendar Tools

I spend a lot of time looking a parish records in Norway from 1700-1900 AD. Many of the older records name the liturgical name for that particular Sunday instead of the calendar date. This requires some interpretation and the following is a description of what I have used in the past. I previously posted this to the Trondelag listserv at rootsweb.com and on Dick Eastman's member pages.

If you are struggling with date conversions as I have many times, try these bookmarks.

I keep these bookmarks handy when I am looking at the digitized parish records. They are very handy for figuring out dates. Sometimes I have to go back or forwards a few records to find a recognizable liturgical date, but then I can usually figure out which date I need. For example, I might find a baptism a few records back that occurred on Palm Sunday, and then be able to figure that the Sundays after refer to Easter, Misericordia Domini (1st Sunday after), Jubilate (2nd Sunday after), Cantate (3rd Sunday after), etc. It seems a good portion of the year is counted by the numbers of Sunday after Trinity so often you can count from there.

This bookmark lists the liturgical/ecclesiastical dates and their meanings:
http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~norway/ecclesiastical.html

This bookmark lists when the liturgical/ecclesiastical dates occur in any given year (Click on the Back to Ecclesiastical Calendar to get to the year entry form):
http://www.smart.net/~mmontes/ec-cal.html

And finally, this bookmark gives a one page calendar for any given year. It's very handy for counting those dates like 15th Sunday after Trinity. You simply choose a year and click Make Calendar (in the current webpage layout, it is the very top choice on the page). You get a printable one-page calendar in a new window.   http://www.calendarhome.com/tyc/ 

The link above is great for figuring out dates in other cases also, for example, when looking at news articles where you know the publish date and the article refers to next Tuesday as the day for a funeral service, it is easy to figure out what the actual date is the article is referring to.


Since I posted these links a few years ago, I have found an app, called RC Calendar which claims to be a liturgical calendar from 1970 to 2300 and beyond. I found that it seems to be equally good before 1970 even by a few hundred years. I haven't done a huge sampling to check the dates but I am satisfied so far with its calculations. This app works on iPhones and iPads and it looks like it is made for other mobile devices also.

I wish you good luck figuring out those dates!

Finding Treasures at AbeBooks.com

I love books of all kinds but I especially love books about family history. I have a few sites that I visit to find books but I love AbeBooks.com. I have found too many books there and I usually have to pull several out of my shopping cart before I check out.

AbeBooks.com describes themselves this way:
"Launched in 1996, AbeBooks is an online marketplace where you can buy new, used, rare and out-of-print books, as well as cheap textbooks. We connect you with thousands of professional booksellers around the world and millions of books are listed for sale. Shopping on AbeBooks is easy, safe and 100% secure - search for your book, purchase a copy via our secure checkout process and the bookseller ships it straight to you." 

A recent find for me was for a little town in Brookings County, South Dakota called Sinai. I was aware there was a history book. I even had copies of of some pages that related to my family in that area. But for some reason, I still wanted to see the book. I tried to find it in libraries and online but was not having luck. Then I checked back with AbeBooks.com and one day it was there. I quickly ordered it and was not disappointed.

Paging through the book I found a large photo of my grandfather. He was listed as the coach of a local young man's baseball team in the 1935.

If you have a lot of family in one specific location, a county or town history might give you a lot of information. They can be particularly good for finding women's maiden names, where families moved from or to, or other hard-to-find information. Like all "found" information, it needs to be verified. But these local history books certainly point you in the right direction.

The Sinai History Book is new enough that it is still under copyright and not available anywhere as a free digital download. But that is something to keep in mind when you are looking for books that you are interested in. And that is a topic for another day.

Unexpected Gems - Find A Grave

One of my go-to sites of late has been Find A Grave. This site, with the help of graveyard enthusiasts and garden-variety genealogists (like me), just keeps getting better and better.

I've had occasion to use it as a source for birth, death, marriage or other events several hundred times in my family file. What I love is when I find someone has posted a picture. Sometimes it is just a picture of the cemetery entrance, sometimes it is a picture of the headstone of the person I am looking for. But sometimes, it is a picture of the person, their family, or even their obituary.

The obituary can lead me to finding even more information about other family members and is a priceless find whenever it happens.

If there isn't a photograph of the headstone, you can put in a request for one. I recently joined the site as I feel I have used it so much I should give back. One way of giving back is to review photo requests that are in your area. If you enjoy tramping through cemeteries and finding the headstone you are searching for, this area of volunteerism may be for you, too.

The site has a fabulous list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and is worth going through. Here is an example on one question and answer, in an area that I continually try to improve on: providing sources for my data in my family file.

From the Find A Grave website FAQs:
How do I cite Find A Grave in a bibliography?
Please feel free to cite Find A Grave in your bibliographies, lists of references, etc. in whatever format you deem appropriate. Please note that, while Jim Tipton is the creator of Find A Grave, he is not the author of all of the content. If the information you are referencing includes a "bio by XXXXXXX" line, please cite that author as well. 
Sample citation: Bio Author. "Web Page Title". Find A Grave. Date of (your) access.
Sample citation: Bio Author. "John Doe". Find A Grave. 6-1-2008.

Making Time for Research

I have set myself a very lofty goal: I will create a book showing the genealogy for each of my children's great-grandparents. That amounts to eight books. I have almost finished one, complete with many photos, stories, newspaper articles and, of course, the documented genealogy. But that leaves seven to go.

There are many obstacles: only one of the eight families has more than just a couple of photos. Two of the great-grandfathers died young and so the stories they had are long forgotten. Travel for research is limited. But the greatest obstacle is T-I-M-E.

I normally don't spend a lot of time researching in the summer as I spend time golfing, fishing, reading and hanging out at the cabin. This past summer I started something a little different. I started spending my time at the breakfast table doing some genealogy as well.

I don't try to do any in-depth data entry or source work. But I might find a site or two online that has good information about one of my eight families. Then when I come back to spend a little more time, at night or on the weekend, I have a list of sites marked to go back and review.

So this blog is my "research log," if you will, of sites that I have found proven to be valuable to me in my research. Sometimes little treasures come in the most unexpected places at the most unexpected times.