PolishOrigins(TM) Forum

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

surneb — Thu Jan 16, 2020 10:47 am

Author: surneb

Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 10:47 am

Cath,

I have so many family members from Czarny Dunajec. I will definitely reach out to you when I carry my research to that point. Thank you so much for your offer!!!!

Larry

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

surneb — Thu Jan 16, 2020 10:45 am

Author: surneb

Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 10:45 am

Thank you all so very much for all of the leads!!! I have concluded that Magdalena DEFINITELY died outside her home county of Menominee, MI. I found her husband and 3 daughters in the death index but not her in 1926 or any other surrounding years. I have some great leads already now with the immigration records for Joseph's brother and family and many questions have been answered for me with Stefania (Stella) and her husband John Maj!

I so appreciate all of the great input I have received!!!!

Thank you!
Larry

Magdalena Dręgacz Szaflarski

cath — Tue Jan 14, 2020 8:20 am

Author: cath

Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2020 8:20 am

Hi. I can not help with Magdalena's death certificate but I can help you with Czarny Dunajec records for Dręgacz and Szaflarski if you have specific questions. cath

Magdalena Dręgacz Szaflarski

cath — Tue Jan 14, 2020 8:14 am

Author: cath

Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2020 8:14 am

Hi. I can not help with Magdalena's death certificate but I can help you with Czarny Dunajec records for Dręgacz and Szaflarski if you have specific questions. cath

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

looking for clues — Tue Jan 14, 2020 1:15 am

Author: looking for clues

Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2020 1:15 am

Cynthia, I never thought of Stella- good find!

Larry, in Josef Szaflarski’s immigration record, his residence is indexed as Czarnydnnajec. Magdalena’s record shows Czarny dunajec. Using Steve Morse’s Ellis Island search tool https://stevemorse.org/ellis2/ellisgold.html plugging in last name starting with Szaf, town name starting with Cza, found lots of potential Szaflarski immigration records from what may be the same town. https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/EIDB/engine/gold.php?uid=15788766077671578876624135&referrer=httpsstevemorse.orgellis2ellisgold.html&mode=running&time=1578976240796&arrivalPort=ellisgold&email=&firstkind=close&FNM=&kind=close&LNM=szaf&companionkind=close&CNM=&townkind=close&town=Cza&SHP=&prtkind=close&PRT=&SYR=&EYR=&MONTH=&DAY=&SAGE=&EAGE=&offset=1&MRTL=&BSYR=&BEYR=&pagesize=50&CGD=&FLD=name&FLD=yoa&FLD=age&FLD=passrec&FLD=town&FLD=smanifest&FLD=image&FLD=yob&FLD=annotations&SRT=name&DIRECTION=asc&username=&password=

Doing the same for with the Steve Morse tool https://stevemorse.org/ellis2/ellisgold.html for Magdalena’s maiden name I played around with last name starting with Dreg and Dreng, town name starting with Cza – there are hits too!
Larry, have you tracked the family back to Poland yet? If you conclude that Czarny Dunajec is the right location, there is a very informative site for Czarny Dunajec area translated into English http://www.czarny-dunajec.pl/_pliki/folder-gmina-czarny-dunajec-2016-29112016-preview,644b0.pdf

Interesting that Stella’s marriage record shows Hungary. That appears to be consistent in the 1930 census for John and Stephanie Maj. Maybe Joseph Szaflarski was on the move, trying to find a location to relocate to?

Diane

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

mcdonald0517 — Mon Jan 13, 2020 9:17 pm

Author: mcdonald0517

Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 9:17 pm

Hi Larry,

Not sure if you looked through these films from Family Search. I did and couldn’t find Magdalena, but it never hurts to have another set of eyes check it out....

https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/173247?availability=Family%20History%20Library

Cynthia

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

surneb — Mon Jan 13, 2020 6:29 pm

Author: surneb

Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 6:29 pm

Oh wow!!! This is starting to come together! I have Stella Maj in my tree. Didn't put two and two together with Stefania!! Yes! Stella lived in Detroit. I may be scoping my death records search to narrowly. You ladies are awesome!!!! I definitely have more leads to run down!!!!

Thank you all so much!!!!

Larry

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

mcdonald0517 — Mon Jan 13, 2020 6:08 pm

Author: mcdonald0517

Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 6:08 pm

Hi Larry,

To follow on to Dianes excellent sleuthing, attached is a marriage records for Stefania (Stella) if you don’t have it.

Best,
Cynthia

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

surneb — Mon Jan 13, 2020 3:25 pm

Author: surneb

Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 3:25 pm

Diane,

Thank you so very much for this additional information!! I did not have Jozef's immigration record! I have the one for Magdalena but I'm holding it in my 'uncertain' category. I have a record for Anna but I would have placed her closer to 13 in 1905. Stefania is a complete enigma for me so I need to do more research. Everything else lines up with going to Mt. Pleasant Pennsylvania first. It's a stone's throw from the towns where many other family members landed. I can now also research Joseph's brother Karol too. Not having a 1910 census really makes life difficult sometimes!!! I'm also interested in the Menominee County Research Guides. I notice that the death records have a 'hole' in them with nothing shown for 1922-1925. Magdalena passed in 1926 and that seems to be there so maybe the RG reference number will help me. I still think my biggest problem is not knowing for sure that she passed away in MI.

Thank you again for your help and guidance! You have been wonderful!!!

Regards,
Larry

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

looking for clues — Sun Jan 12, 2020 8:38 pm

Author: looking for clues

Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2020 8:38 pm

Larry, you are welcome.

I had also come across a couple of immigration records that I am guessing you already have -

This records looks like it is a match for Magdalena Szaflarska
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JF3J-Y4D
Magdalena Szaflarska 29, with daughters Anna 8, and Stefania 4 - March 30, 1905
going to her husband Jozef Szaflarski in Oliver, PA. Destination shows Uniontown, PA. Note: Uniontown, Oliver and Shamrock (Blanche's birth per death certificate) are all close.

Here is an immigration record for a Jozef Szaflarski - March 17, 1905
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JF3Q-DQM

If the deaths were recorded first on the county level, it could maybe be helpful if you ever have the opportunity to physically inspect those records around her date of death to see if something was interpreted totally wrong. Here are a couple links to Menominee County records
https://www.menomineecounty.com/departments/?department=7826988477ba
https://seekingmichigan.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Menominee-guide-2018.pdf

Diane

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

surneb — Sun Jan 12, 2020 12:21 pm

Author: surneb

Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2020 12:21 pm

Hi, Diane!

Thank you for the data you provided. Yes, that Joseph in the obit was Magdalena's husband and I have gotten to know the current owner of what is now the Allo-Coolman Funeral Home in Escanaba. He provided burial records for several family members... unfortunately not Magdalena! Also, it was indeed me who updated Magdalena's death date on FamilySearch. I have been chatting via email with Jenn (Jennifer1124) who owns the tree that Magdalena is listed in. She is making some other updates too.

Thank you for your help!!! I truly appreciate you taking the time to offer hints and suggestions!!!!!!

Regards,
Larry

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

looking for clues — Sun Jan 12, 2020 3:14 am

Author: looking for clues

Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2020 3:14 am

Larry, don't know if you already have these or not -
Here is an obit for a Joseph Szaflarski (possible husband of Magdalena?) - death in 1935 with residence and funeral home mentioned
https://www.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=21760277&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjgxOTQwNzkyLCJpYXQiOjE1Nzg4MTEwNjUsImV4cCI6MTU3ODg5NzQ2NX0.hXlX8M3enzS2NTQeK_XS8QIsdsKKii5btG66eqyCQfI

Here is a tree for Magdalena Dreugacz, just updated, has death date. Don't know if you or somebody in your branch posted it
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/pedigree/landscape/LRND-Q9D
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/sources/LRND-Q9D

Good luck.

Diane

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

surneb — Fri Jan 10, 2020 7:34 pm

Author: surneb

Posted: Fri Jan 10, 2020 7:34 pm

Hi, Dave! Thank you for all of the great background information. I did know of the church consolidations between St. Michael's in Perronville and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Bark River. I had already made connections with the Pastor and the church secretary a few years ago and they sent me some copies of the church burial records for MANY of my relatives... but not Magdalena. When we were in the Upper Peninsula this summer we stopped and met Pastor Pepin at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. We were there for a few hours with him and he was awesome. He literally opened up the vault for us to look at their records (literally a big vault in his office). I was able to find the burial record for Magdalena in their ledgers. Got her date of death and burial and other family information that I already knew. The only missing piece was her cause of death. It was amazing however... I even found the records of my mom's first communion and confirmation!! A very fruitful trip as I gather many other pieces of key family information but I came away without a death and or burial certificate for Magdalena. I truly appreciate all of the information! I will read and re-read tomorrow as I'm on my way out right now but wanted to drop you a reply. Thank you all so much for helping with with theses suggestions!!

Regards,
Larry

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

dnowicki — Fri Jan 10, 2020 6:19 pm

Author: dnowicki

Posted: Fri Jan 10, 2020 6:19 pm

surneb wrote:

Great suggestions, Cynthia. I would suspect that any county's death records would come up in a search if Magdalena passed away in Michigan but I don't know for sure that that's where she died. As I mentioned above to Sophia, I wrote to the Michigan Department of Heath and Human Services today to see if they accumulate death records for individuals who were buried in Michigan that didn't necessarily die in Michigan. I appreciate your suggestions and will spend some time probing other former institutions. I do have one more funeral home to try that the family used one time that I know of. I'm not super hopeful but who knows! I might get lucky!!! Thank you so much for your help and suggestions!
Larry

Hi Larry, Sophia, & Cynthia,

What Cynthia wrote about RC parish sacramental records sometimes being housed in the archives of the diocese to which the parish belonged is sometimes true—usually in the case of parishes which have been closed. In the USA the more common reality for active parishes and/or the records of parishes which have been merged/consolidated to form a new parish is that the registers are usually kept in the active parish or the new merged/consolidated parish. Most Catholic parishes in the Midwest are not all that old that it would be usual to send the parish registers to the diocesan archives. Books of active parishes, including merged/consolidated parishes, are kept in the parish in order to make the records easy to access by those individuals who belonged to the parish. Although these days church records are not really necessary for civil purposes, they are needed for religious purposes—like a Catholic would need proof of baptism to make First Communion or Confirmation or to marry in the Catholic Church. The decision of how to handle the books is up to the bishop of the place (in formal terms: the ordinarius loci). The decision of whether or not to grant permission for the books to be filmed also was up to the local bishop. Films of church books which are now available online at Family Search have a rather interesting history. Those which I used for most of my personal research on this side of the pond were from the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Diocese of Gary. A lady whom I know who was involved in the process explained that the books were transported from the individual parishes to the chancery of the diocese where they were filmed. Family Search sweetened the pot by giving a copy of the microfilm to the individual parish and another copy to the diocesan archives. In the Archdiocese of Chicago the physical registers are housed in the parish (or for recently closed parishes, in a nearby active parish) and what is housed in the archdiocesan archives is the microfilm copy of the records of all the parishes—a really good idea from the perspective of record preservation.

St. Michael parish in Perronville was consolidated with two other parishes to form the parish of St. Elizabeth Ann Seaton in Bark River. Here is a link to the parish info: https://dioceseofmarquette.org/stelizabethbarkriver According to a list in Going Home by Jonathan Shea St. Michael in Perronville was a Polish parish. It was consolidated into the new parish of St. Elizabeth Ann Seaton in Bark River in 1995. My recommendation would be to contact that parish for info found in the parish death and burial register. BTW Strictly speaking, the parish death and burial register is not a sacramental register. Sacraments are only for the living and the parish register is more accurately described as a register of Christian burials. The keeping of a register of Christian burials was not mandated until the early 1600s, well after the mandate of the Council of Trent in 1575 which required the keeping of parish baptismal and marriage registers. However, the mandates for the keeping of parish registers and their contents is a topic for another time. The info you may find in the parish burial register may or may not be detailed. It all depends on how detail oriented the priest was.

Regarding civil death records...The record you seek may not appear on databases simply because the info was not correctly transcribed. A typo on a record or by an indexer can make the record difficult to find.

Wishing you success,

Dave

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

surneb — Thu Jan 09, 2020 5:38 pm

Author: surneb

Posted: Thu Jan 09, 2020 5:38 pm

Great suggestions, Cynthia. I would suspect that any county's death records would come up in a search if Magdalena passed away in Michigan but I don't know for sure that that's where she died. As I mentioned above to Sophia, I wrote to the Michigan Department of Heath and Human Services today to see if they accumulate death records for individuals who were buried in Michigan that didn't necessarily die in Michigan. I appreciate your suggestions and will spend some time probing other former institutions. I do have one more funeral home to try that the family used one time that I know of. I'm not super hopeful but who knows! I might get lucky!!! Thank you so much for your help and suggestions!
Larry

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

surneb — Thu Jan 09, 2020 5:32 pm

Author: surneb

Posted: Thu Jan 09, 2020 5:32 pm

Thanks for the additional clarification, Sophia. I have tried a gazillion variations on szaflarski over the past 5 years trying to find her. I pinged the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services today to see if they keep death records for individuals buried in the state that didn't die in the state. If I only knew where she died I could focus a better. Thank you so much for your thoughts!! I truly appreciate your help!!!

Larry

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

Sophia — Thu Jan 09, 2020 5:12 pm

Author: Sophia

Posted: Thu Jan 09, 2020 5:12 pm

surneb wrote:

Hi, Sophia. Thank you for looking but that's a different person. The husband and location in MI don't match up. This photo I attached was a picture of Magdalena's headstone in the cemetery in Perronville, MI. I truly appreciate your suggestion!!

Hi,
Just to clarify what my thought process was...
I went to Ancestry and used the search criteria of First Name Magdalena, birth year 1874, death year 1926. That is, I specifically did not enter anything for the last name. It is a strategy to try to pull out records where an indexer has done a poor job of spelling a surname, or where a surname is indexed as "unknown" or "illegible" or simply left blank. Since I don't have a subscription to Ancestry, I was not able to see the results of my search fully, only that there was a Magdalena Szymanski and it seemed worthwhile asking you to look at it. Anyway, you may try some variations of the same strategy with other birth or death years, for example.
Best of luck in finding her,
Sophia

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

mcdonald0517 — Thu Jan 09, 2020 3:52 pm

Author: mcdonald0517

Posted: Thu Jan 09, 2020 3:52 pm

Hi,

I looked at the Family Search death index name by name for Menominee County, MI for 1924-1938. I found Joseph and Hattie, but not Magdalena. You have already done a great deal of searching, so you may have already considered these options, but here is where I suggest you look next if you haven't yet done so:

1. You mention that there is only a ledger entry in the local parish book for burial. If St. Michael's is Roman Catholic, have you considered contacting the diocese? Often, the sacramental records were kept in the archives at the Diocese level, and the sacramental record may have more information than the ledger entry at the local church.

2. You mention that 1 or 2 of her children died of TB at the Powers Sanitorium. One of them died in 1929 - only 3 years after Magdalena died. Have you tried researching the possibility that Magdalena died at a TB Sanitorium in another county? When I scanned some google books about TB sanitoriums in Michigan circa 1920, they had more people in need of beds than they had sanitoriums available. It is possible that the local sanitorium did not have an available bed for Magdalena and that she was transported to a sanitorium in another county. If that is the case, her death record would be located in the county of her death, i.e., the county of the sanitorium. Again, just a theory, but it has some basis in logic and may be worth running down. Perhaps you should check death records in counties adjacent to Menominee, MI.

3. When I look at Wikipedia entries for Menominee County MI, it says "Menominee is part of the Marinette, WI–MI Micropolitan Statistical Area." I don't know what implications this may have for your research. Are the death records in Marinette County Wisconsin? Have you tried looking for her death record in Marinette County, WI?

Again, I know you have done a great deal of searching already. I just thought I would add these possibilities to your thinking. I know how these mysteries can grab hold of you over the years - I had my own mystery with my grandfather that took years to unravel...

Wishing you good luck in your research,
Cynthia

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

surneb — Thu Jan 09, 2020 12:11 pm

Author: surneb

Posted: Thu Jan 09, 2020 12:11 pm

Hi, Sophia. Thank you for looking but that's a different person. The husband and location in MI don't match up. This photo I attached was a picture of Magdalena's headstone in the cemetery in Perronville, MI. I truly appreciate your suggestion!!

Re: Seeking Death Record for Magdalena Szaflarski

Sophia — Wed Jan 08, 2020 8:03 pm

Author: Sophia

Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2020 8:03 pm

surneb wrote:

My great aunt Magdalena Szaflarski is buried in the Old St. Michael's Cemetery in Perronville, Michigan. She was born in Poland in 1874 and died in 1926. Her maiden name was Drengacz and she was related to a one time Pastor of St. Michael's church in Perronville, Father Thomas Drengacz. Her husband's name was Joseph Szaflarski and together they had at least 3 daughters... Jadwiga, Blanche, and Mary. Jadwiga (in 1929) and Blanche (in 1938) both succumbed to tuberculosis in the Pinecrest Sanitorium in Powers MI. Mary passed away post childbirth with her only child in 1935. I have no record of Magdalena's death other than her headstone in the cemetery and a ledger entry in the St. Michael's Cemetery burial records. I'm trying to find a death certificate and burial record but I don't know where she passed away or how. Countrywide searches for the death certificate have come up empty (I focused on MI, PA, IL where family was located and where she lived). I've been in contact with funeral homes in the Upper Peninsula and found records for all of her family members but not her. Magdalena is an enigma for me and I'm dying to solve the mystery. I was even in the UP this summer and tracked down her 85 year old grandson (Edward) and spent hours talking with him and his wife but they did not know Magdalena as she passed before Edward (1935) was born (Mary above who passed away in childbirth was his mother). If anyone has any knowledge of Magdalena Drengacz Szaflarski I would appreciate anything you can share.

Hi,
I'm not able to see the image, but maybe you can. Ancestry lists a "Magdalena Szymanski" born 1874, died 1926, in Michigan death records. Szymanski could be a mis-spelling or an indexer's interpretation of bad handwriting. Can you take a look?
Sophia