I am currently on a quest to find out where my mother-in-law’s paternal grandparents were born. I have written about my search so far in My Wall Is Made Of Concrete.
I was surprised to receive two obituaries and a marriage license in the mail this past week. My genealogy juju must be on the good side these days to receive such a fast response.
The first item was the marriage license for Louis Radvanyi and Mary Nagy. The first two pages were the written application by each person and the last page was the actual license. I found out that Louis’ parents were Steve Radvanyi and Julia Unknown. They are both listed as being born in Hungary and both are deceased. I am not too sure how much to trust these names. I believe they might be “americanized.” The application does confirm the same date of birth I had for Louis.
The marriage application for Mary lists her parents as John Nagy and Lizzie Unknown. This is good news. I created a list of possible families in the 1900 and 1910 census that Mary could belong to. I can confirm that I have found the correct family for her. A new piece of information on the application is Mary’s exact date of birth.
The first obituary that I received was for William Radvany. This is Louis and Mary’s first son. The obituary states that he committed suicide on 12 August 1958. I will tell you more of this story in another blogpost. The best part of the obituary is the names of survivors. I know have the married names of my mother-in-law’s aunts and their husbands first names. The obituary also states that William was a WWII veteran.
The other obituary that came in the mail was for Mary (Nagy) Radvanyi. Again it listed the names of all her children. I was happy to also find the names of her surviving sister and two brothers. The cemetery is listed and also the name of her church.
Where to go from here? It looks like I need to focus on Mary’s family for now.
My list of research items includes:
- Find John and Elizabeth Nagy in as many census enumerations as possible
- Get my husband’s cousin to visit Elmwood Cemetery for me. The Radvanyi’s are not listed on www.Findagrave.com. I did find a listing for Andrew Nagy (one of the brother’s listed in the obituary). There is a good possiblity that both sides of the family are located in this cemetery.
- Find as many census enumerations as possible for my mother-in-law’s aunts. It would be good to find her cousins to ask what family information they have.
- Do the same thing for Mary’s siblings – find them in the census and identify any decendants to contact.
- Check to see if the church Mary belonged to has records about her.
- Order military records for William.
- Wait for the death certificates to arrive for Louis and Mary. I doubt that they will have a specific place they were born but there might be other clues.
I have taken a couple of small pieces out of my concrete wall. I still have a lot to demolish before it will fall. I will let you know more when the death certificates arrive.
