Surname: ANDRUSZKOW

To the best of my knowledge, my surname is Ukrainian.

• My father's name was Richard.
  
• He is the son of John ANDRUSZKOW and Helen LATA.
• John had a brother named William. They were both killed during World War II.
• They were the sons of Timothy ANDRUSZKOW and Anna KUBLOWSKI.

My father was born in Zyrawa, POLAND. His father was born in Stryj. Both are now part of the UKRAINE. I do not know anything about Timothy, Anna, or William.

From what I understand, getting information from the UKRAINE is difficult at best. I don't even know where to start.

My grandfather was killed by a sniper bullet. His body was never returned to my grandmother for burial and they wouldn't allow her to claim his body or see it. She was never given any sort of compensation by the Army or anyone. So she was left a young widow with 2 small boys to raise. Her youngest child a girl, Diane, died just a couple of months before John was killed.

After losing her husband, a few months later she lost her home to the German Army. They decided they wanted to use the house and told her and my great-grandparents they had to leave. To this day, we do not know what ever happened to the house. It is something I would love to try and find out one day.

Meanings

I posted a query yesterday to the Polish Forums regarding the meanings of the surnames I am actively researching. Here's the response:

ŁATA: patch
PESTA: multiple possible sources: pesta (agumentative for fruit pit or stone; normal form pestka); pest or pęst (archaic term for a flower bud); peste (Italian for plague); Pest (one of the two cities forming Budapest)
PODHAJSKI: Ukrainian influenced pronunciation of Podgajski (someone living at the edge of the grove); Podchajski is a misspelling
ANDRUSZKOW: probably of Russian origin derived from Andrei (Andrew); Ukrainian would be Андрушків (Andruszkiw). In Poland both the Andruszków and Andruszkow spelling is used.

I must say that I find it unusual that it states Podchajski as a misspelling. Not what I was expecting. Nor was I expecting it to be potentially of Russian origin, though with the location of where my relatives came from being near the Russian border it does make some sense. The same with Pesta, I was not expecting it to be connected to Hungary. One look up I did a few years ago indicated it had Bohemian roots. Or is that one and the same?

Branches of Life

As I said, I’ve been searching my family tree for about 10 years now, well just over that. I started on webtv back in the day, and that wasn’t easy. In 1999, I got my first computer and really started my hunting there.

I am searching my maternal family tree surnames include PESTA, PODHAJSKI, PODCHAJSKI, JABLONSKI. (more to be added as they are discovered) From what is known so far, the PESTAs came from Mlawa, Poland. I will venture to guess right now that the JABLONSKIs come from the same area. The PODHAJSKIs come from Suwalki, Poland, in the Augustow region.

On my paternal side, I’m researching: ANDRUSZKOW, LATA, KOZAK, WOLNIK, WOJCIK, BLAHA, KUBLOWSKI. These will probably be a little trickier at times to trace. The ANDRUSZKOWs come from Stryj. It is on the border of Poland and Ukrainia. Due to the shifting of the borders it’s location varied, at this time it is in the Ukraine. My father was born in Zyrawa which I believe is now also part of the Ukraine. The papers I have for my LATAs show Austria as place of birth, but again the changing borders will take a bit of digging to determine that and where that location is now.

My notes are a mess and quite mixed up. I will need a few days to sort them out and separate into 2 binders again, one for each side. Then hopefully I can start digging through websites again.

Welcome to my blog

Hello and Welcome!

I was going to try this with WordPress...but the site is TOO confusing. I'm way more familiar with Blogger, and I'm more comfortable here so...Here I am.

I'd contemplated for a while whether or not to make a blog about my genealogy. Did I really want to go public with it or keep it private to just my immediate family? But as I thought about it, I realized that I was probably going to limit myself to other family connections or advice from other genealogists.

I've been researching my family trees for about 10 years now. I originally started dabbling when all I had was Webtv back in the late 90s. I did a little research but I was mostly looking up adoptions. I, like most do at some point, thought maybe I was adopted, but the truth is I have a sister out there that was given up at birth. Hey it happens, ya know. It was the 60s and the stigma I guess of being a single parent was not welcome. Times have changed though...in some ways. I did eventually find my sister and we've corresponded on and off for several years. Well she found me, but that's another story.

It wasn't until I got my first computer in 1999 that I really started to expand my searching for my roots. In May 2000, my searching took off and it's been an up and down ride ever since. I've had some successes and probably as many if not more failures, dead ends, etc. I had to put my hunting on hold for a while a couple of times, one due to my Grandmother getting ill and then another out of frustration for constantly hitting those brick walls.

I've been able to tag team with my Aunt in New York tracing down information on various websites. She's been able to share with me copies of records she had. Like my Grandfather's Naturalization Certificate, which I was looking at the other day and just realized he became a citizen a month and a half after my mother was born.

Anyway, my hope for this blog will be to share my successes as failures as I retrace sites I've already been to, review information I already have, and try to make connections. I'll be recontacting hopefully some of the people I have corresponded with in the past and make new contacts as well.

My next post will be the lines I am researching and focusing on.