New to You: The Other John Biliunas

This past summer, I met with my aunt to scan more family photos that she inherited from my maternal grandmother (her mother).  Many of the photos were from the 1920s and 1930s for the Biliunas and Valek families.  There were several photos that introduced a new character:  “Uncle John” Biliunas.  My aunt had no idea who he was, so I was commissioned to get answers!  I figured he’d make perfect fodder for this week’s “New to You” theme.

Left photo is Uncle John in his Dodge. This car has popped up a few times! Author’s collection.

This John (who was NOT my great-grandfather) inspired so many questions:  Who exactly was he?  How is he related to my great-grandfather?  Were they brothers?  If so, why in the world would they have the same first name?  One thing I knew for sure:  there were at least two John Biliunases in Suffolk County, NY.  When I was searching for the naturalization paperwork for my great-grandfather, I encountered the other John in my search hits, but had ignored him at the time.  That’s where I’d start my search.

“Uncle John” Biliunas. Author’s collection.

I pulled the naturalization paperwork for the other John.  His full name was John George Biliunas, with his passenger name being “Joris Byluno”.  He was born in June 1889 and naturalized in 1936, about ten years after my John.  I got really lucky with the Declaration of Intention:  it included a photograph; John George was Uncle John!

John George Biliunas, from Declaration of Intention. Courtesy of FamilySearch/

I started with other searches on John George.  Like my great-grandfather John Peter, he married a widow named Anna in Brooklyn, NY.  They married on February 3, 1929, and the marriage certificate mentioned John George’s parents:  Jonas Bilunas and Barbara Vanekunas.  John Peter’s parents were Anton Biliunas and Mary Zrnsis.  So these guys were definitely not brothers, but I can’t ascertain their relationship at this time.  I strongly suspect that they might be cousins; maybe my grandmother and her siblings just called him “uncle”, since he was older?

Due to all the spelling variations of Biliunas (12 that I know of so far), I found it difficult to find John George easily in the US Census and impossible to find in NYS Historic Newspapers.  I don’t know what ultimately became of him, Anna, and their son Robert.  Based on my aunt’s lack of knowledge of him, I suspect that he was not as connected to my great-grandparents by the 1940s.

I do wonder about his original first name “Joris”.  I recently saw a spreadsheet on Facebook that listed a bunch of first names in Lithuanian and what they may be known as in English.  I knew that “John” was often “Jonas”, then I saw that “George” could originally be “Jurgis”.  Maybe he often went by a variation of his middle name, like many people do.

Speaking of Jurgis Biliunas, there were a couple of photos that were identified as my great-grandfather’s “brother Jurgis”…but are they really his brother, or are they actually John George?  Take a look!

Jurgis Biliunas. Author’s collection.

High and Low: Let’s Talk About Feelings

This week’s #52Ancestors theme is “High and Low”, and I’m sure lots of people are going to talk about searching high and low for records.  Instead I’m going to touch on the high points and low points of my genealogical research.  Even though I love genealogy in general, my feelings have been all over the place!

In the tradition of David Letterman’s “top ten” ranking in reverse order, I’ll name my top five low moments and top five high moments in my genealogical journey:

The Lows:

5. Missing the opportunity to ask more questions of my immediate ancestors, like my grandparents and my great-grandfather 

4. Having to lop off an entire branch off my family tree due to incorrect information (remember when I wrote about losing my castle?)

3. Finding sad information, like the suicide of my great-great uncle Charles Pleau

2. The continual frustration of my George W. Colomy brick wall

1. Entering my mom’s death information into my database last year (though the genealogist in me wouldn’t let me not do it)

Researching family history is like these mountains and valleys! Author’s collection.

The Highs:

5. Finding my great-grandfather George Pleau’s death certificate and finally finding out how he died

4. Visiting the graves of my Rochester Pleau’s at Holy Sepulchre and Mount Hope Cemeteries 

3. Breaking through my McMaster brick wall and all the discoveries that wrought

2. #genchat.  No matter what mood I’m in, the collaboration and energy of the #genchat community always lifts me up!

1. Connecting with cousins from all over the world via Twitter, Facebook, this blog and even FindaGrave

To be honest, I could name so many more high points, which is why I keep researching!

Exploration: Browse This Collection

Last week I mentioned that I’ve made great headway in my French-Canadian line.  This week’s #52Ancestors theme of “Exploration” is the perfect opportunity to talk about that.  The great variations in French-Canadian surname spellings, paired with hard-to-read handwriting, lends itself to avoiding a “search by name” process and make the most of browsing for records instead.

The first step was to start with what I knew, then gather the clues.  From the records I’ve already pulled from FamilySearch and Ancestry, I knew various ancestral names.  Some clues for further research came from online trees (I like to check the crowd-sourced trees like WikiTree and the FamilySearch tree); but many came from the Tanguay collection on Ancestry, whose Library Edition had been accessible from home through the end of last year.  Though not infallible, the Tanguay helped narrow down dates and places for many of my ancestors.

My next step was to check on these clues on the PRDH which would provide the name of the church involved in the baptism, marriage or burial.  Again, the PRDH is not an infallible collection, but most of the time I was able to find my people and sometimes a more correct year of an event.  Many times I’d discover new spelling variations as well!

FamilySearch screenshots to get to All Quebec Collections.

Armed with a city/town name, a church name and a year, I’d search the Quebec Catholic record database in FamilySearch.  From Search/Records, I’d scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the world map.  On the next page, I’d click on Canada on the map.  The list of provinces come up on the right.  Clicking on Quebec brings up the Quebec page. In the middle of the page, I’d click on “See all Quebec collections”, and on the next page I’d see “Canada, Quebec Catholic Parish Records, 1621-1979”.  After clicking on that,  I would click on “Browse This Collection” to get a list of cities/towns.  Clicking on the place in question would yield a list of churches in that city or town.  Often times there is just one church.  Once I clicked on the church, I would see groups of records, usually broken up by time period.  Sometimes there will be some overlap in time periods, so there may be a need to look in each one.  Once I clicked on the time period I wanted, and I was in browse-only mode.

FamilySearch screenshots to browse individual church collections.

This was the hard part.  Many records are organized chronologically, and so I’d have to poke around until I got to the date I wanted.  Many times I was able to find my ancestor on the date in question and downloaded the record and its source citation!  Of course the record may be difficult to read due to image and/or handwriting quality.  For me, the key to determining if this is the record I’m looking for is the person’s name in the margin.

Sometimes the way these church books are organized is a mystery to me.  One can get a general feel as to how it might be organized just by poking around in the record, but it can be really hard to tell.  At this point, I may go back to that online tree and see if there’s a link to the record I’m looking for.  Sometimes I get lucky!  

Using the above process, I’ve been able to find a bunch of the records I was looking for!

Free Space: My 2022 Goals/Accomplishments

This week’s #52Ancestors theme is “Free Space”, kind of like bingo!  So I figured I’d review the 2022 genealogy goals that I set for myself.

To be honest, 2021 was pretty much a dumpster fire with a number of family deaths and other personal issues that I really didn’t have a lot of genealogy goals. Nevertheless I think I got a lot done this year so far, considering!

My first goal was to continue hosting #genchat.  This involves baking the questions for each chat without a special guest, keeping the website up-to-date, and tabulating weekly stats.  It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a lot of work!  It continues to be a learning experience.

My other goal was to work through my to-do list that’s generated from my genealogy software (Legacy Family Tree).  Some tasks are easy look-ups, some are more in-depth.  And of course the list is always growing, since my tree is growing.  I’ve made a lot of headway with my French-Canadian line, thanks to the PRDH and FamilySearch.

A goal I added around the new year was taking part in the #52Ancestors blog challenge.  There was something in me that wanted to create, probably a reaction to last year.  And here I am, only having missed two weeks so far!  Next year, I may just do the monthly option though.

Of course when I find out about free record sets, I go into data mining mode.  This year, Newspapers dot com had a free weekend, which enabled me to learn even more about some of my ancestors and many of my living cousins.  

Finally, I’ve been doing a LOT of scanning!  I scanned three of my mom’s photo albums that I inherited and shared them with my family; one more to go.  I also made some time to visit with my aunt to scan many of her old pictures and hear her stories of my maternal side.  This visit was worth its weight in gold!  I have a lot of the genealogical facts of the family, but she had all the stories and the background that colored in the outlines.  And together we’ve formulated some new questions for my research.  I’m looking forward to my next visit!

I’ll leave you with one very precious photo that I happened to find in my aunt’s basement:  the wedding portrait of Anna (Valek) Urnezis and John Biliunas!  You may remember about how I found their marriage record this year.  This photo completes that story!

Anna & John Biliunas, November 23, 1913. Author’s collection.