Hello and welcome back! I just made what I think may be a breakthrough in identifying Mary Novak's town of origin in Poland. If you haven't read the previous 2 posts in the series, I would recommend starting there for the background. I finally found the ship's manifest listing Bruno Novak and his wife and children, and with extensive FAN Club (friends, associates and neighbors) research was able to confirm that it is, in fact, the correct family. On that ship's manifest it says the town of most recent residence prior to immigration was . . . wait for it . . . sort of illegible. 😂 But, with some help from the Meyers Gazetteer and creative asterisk wild card searching, plus analyzing the other examples of handwriting by the same recorder on that page, I am fairly confident that the town name was: Siedlec, in Posen, Prussian Poland. Ship's Manifest for the Noordam (sp?), sailing from Rotterdam to New York City in April 1905. You may remember that the only other docum
Read Along as I Share What I Learn about My Family and the Research Process