3 Rings in the Tree

It has been about 3 years since I last posted.  While I did have the very best of intentions and grandest hopes when starting this blog, well... life simply got in the way.  Nothing dramatic, just life:  family, the kids, the dogs, the day job (and the night job), renovating a house...  my Genealogy research just took a back seat.

Alas, I have not given up, so here I am once again.  In my mind, there is dramatic background music.

Within this time, I have gotten in touch with a distant cousin on my dad's side (Oeberdick), and he is quite certain that the Oeberdick side of the family is from Germany.  What few paperwork I can find on them lists "Prussia" as their country of origin (in addition to Yugoslavia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia depending on which document you're looking at) which is about an vague as you can get for the mid-late 1800's.  But, Germany?  Nowhere in my on family's drunken stories were we ever German.  In fact, I grew up in a predominantly Pennsylvania Dutch area of eastern PA, and always stuck out like a sore thumb because I was so not German.

Initially, in my first post here, I made a joke about at the very least not finding any Nazis in my family tree...  sigh.

My Misinformation

As I enthusiastically embark on this journey of heritage exploration (as only a true Obsessive Compulsive can do), I want to make note of the "facts" that I think that I already know about my family.

From what I've gathered from decades of family lore and semi-drunken stories told at picnics:

• The Butlers (my father's family & my namesake) came over from Ireland, and they are very closely related (read: possibly creepily inter-married) to the Donnelly & McQue families of Irwin, PA, USA.
  
• The Oeberdicks (my father's mother's family) was Slovak, according to my Grandmother.  I do know that my Grandmother (Audrey Oeberdick) was the oldest of 8 or 10 children, and she was a large, intimidating, and fabulous woman who could throw a mean left hook and was an amazing baker.  That's the extent of what I know about her and her family.
• The Likers & the Goslaks (my mother's families) were first generation immigrants from Czechoslovakia.  They all worked in the mines around Pittsburgh, PA from the time that they arrived at the turn of the 20th century.  Story has it that the Goslaks also went by "Gosiliak" and/or "Gosliak" depending on which relative you were talking about (they all spelled it differently, which I'm sure will make my research all the more difficult).
• Both of my parents' families are immigrant families from either Czechoslovakia and/or Ireland who have lived only (stateside) in Western Pennsylvania until my parents' generation moved away to eastern PA and either VIrginia opr North Carolina.
  
• Both sides of my family, prior to leaving their native lands, were very poor and starving farmers

Ferris Bueller Made me Wear This Dress.......

I began my search on Ancestry.com after being inspired to do so by watching that “Who Do You Think You Are?” TV show. Okay…. I am a child of the 80’s and one of that show’s early episodes did feature Matthew Broderick, so you have to give me some slack…. (hello?!? Who wouldn’t do exactly what Ferris Bueller does? Who among us Gen-X-ers didn’t dream of making a boombox/mannequin/analog answering machine contraption that would get us out of school for a day??)

You understand, I’m sure, why I have to listen to anything that Mr. Broderick suggests to me.

Okay…… I can’t blame this obsession completely on poor Matthew “he who previously portrayed Ferris Bueller” Broderick. This is very likely going to be the most fascinating aspect of my journey to find my roots though, so you can’t blame me for milking it a bit……..

[Matthew Broderick exits Stage Right]

In the Beginning.... there was Ancestry.Com (and Light)

Growing up, I have to admit, I always felt a bit superior with my “knowledge” that my mother’s side of the family (Likers & Goslaks) were all from Czechoslovakia, and my father’s side (Butlers & Oberdicks) were Irish. While so many of my neighbors and friends were true American “mutts” with more countries in their family histories than they could recount, I felt special knowing that I was only 50/50; My friends would be saying “I’m Irish, and Scottish, and Pennsylvania Dutch, and Polish, and Austrian, and a little bit Russian…” I always sat there internally smug with the knowledge that *I* was more “pure” than they were, since I was only half Slovak and half Irish.
Honestly, I can’t tell you where that sense of self-important “ethnic purity” came from. Don’t get me wrong…. I was never judging the other kids based on their ethnic histories. I couldn’t have cared less where their blood originated, so long as they didn’t act like an asshole at the bus stop in the morning.
I just always felt that I was less of a “mutt” than they were.
I, quite possibly, may have been horribly horribly mistaken. We shall see……

I have always identified very strongly with my Irish heritage especially; it has become a strong basis for my own personal sense of Self. Although clearly American (and I did find that the more I traveled abroad, the more I felt distinctly American), I always considered myself a Guinness & whiskey-drinking, step-dancing, lover-of-their-land, The Chieftains-loving, magic-believing Irish gal!

I have always been intrigued by my family lineage and history. Back in 6th grade, I had to do a school project that required me to draw a family tree on one side of my family and write an essay about our “Story.” I remember asking my grandmother and my great-aunt about their family and where they came from, and one of them telling me rather emphatically that their parents came over from Czechoslovakia to Pittsburgh on the train at the turn of the century. Have you ever tried to track down passenger manifest records from trains entering the US at Ellis Island??? Trust me…. It is a Sisyphean task, to say the least.

Since then, I have been intrigued and curious about my family history. Well, to be perfectly honest, I was Half-Assed Intrigued. (meaning: I found it all very interesting so long as *I* wasn’t the one who had to actually do any of the research. I just wanted to know the fascinating stories!)
Today, I am 32 and very comfortable and secure in who I am and in what my “family” means to me. For some reason, I am also suddenly obsessively driven to really find out where I came from. I want names and places and dates, but more importantly, I want to know WHY they came here and WHO they were.

For the record, I went to college for Theatre; I am painfully unqualified to undertake the task of in-depth historical and genealogical research.
Still….. Here I go. [Cue Overly Dramatic Drum Roll]

As I begin this investigative process, I hope to discover:

• Why my ancestors immigrated to America
  
• Where exactly they came from
  
• At least one or two fascinating stories about distant relatives
  
• Proof of some gutsy and intriguing women in my lineage
  
• A king or queen or two in my family line wouldn't hurt. I'm just sayin'...

To be perfectly honest and fair, I also have to admit to the fact that I am hoping that I don’t find that:

• My ancestors are nothing more than boring, insensitive, pathetic drunks
  
• My relatives were Nazis
  
• I’m not who I always thought I was.

…And so we begin this journey. As I said before, I WAS a theatre major, so you’ll have to forgive me if I occasionally favor the artistic revisionist history to the dull truth or put a bit too much emphasis on a brilliantly dramatic entrance or exit……………………

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