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The Thumb's Christmas

  Our daughter, Anne, was a prolific artist when she was young. Our refrigerator door was full of her drawings, paintings, and school artwork. She liked to create little books, too, as she was also a natural storyteller. One Christmas when she was about eight years old, Anne wrote and illustrated a Christmas story for her little brother, James. If memory serves, she drew her inspiration from a book she had recently gotten from the library by illustrator Ed Emberley. He wrote and illustrated The Great Thumbprint Drawing Book . In it, Emberley showed how to make a variety of animals and people using a thumbprint as a starting point. The creations are simple and charming. It's amazing what you can do with a blog of ink and a few black lines. It's art that's accessible to anyone. Anne's story is called "The Thumb's Christmas," and is based on our family. There is a thumb with glasses (Anne), a thumb with little hair (toddler James), a thumb with a mustache (Ji...
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Lately, I have begun to display old family portraits. They are such beautiful photographs, and luckily, have withstood time. They had lain in closeted boxes for too long. Now I enjoy looking at them regularly, and feel I am getting to know each family member better.


John Simonik family, taken early 1920s. Back row: Mary and Anna. Front row: Our grandmother Margaret Katherine, Anna Tatar Simonik, Josephine, John Simonik and Steve.) 1.

One such photograph is a portrait of my great grandparents' family, which I'm guessing was taken about 1919.  Most everyone is posed straight and tall, with a stoic face. But I recently noticed a small detail which struck me, and seems somewhat out of place in the photo's formality: My great grandmother Anna has her hand placed warmly over her youngest daughter's hand. The child's hand covers her father's hand on his knee. The placement of the hands feels not posed, but natural and instinctual, gentle and kind.

I find this tenderness makes all the more sense when I discovered the many children Anna and her husband John had lost.

In the 1910 U.S. census, the family is shown living in East Huntington, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, where John worked as a coke drawer. The entry lists John and Anna's two oldest daughters (my grandmother's sisters Mary and Anna), but also states that Anna had five children, of which only these two were yet living.

John Simonik family, reported in the 1910 U.S. Census, in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. (Note: Misspellings of foreign names were common, often spelled phonetically. I found this entry based on the family's address in a 1909 death certificate for one of the infants, John's occupation, and the ages of the daughters.) 2.

We grew up "knowing" Grandma had four siblings. But the Pennsylvania birth and death records tell a very different story: a total of eleven children, six who did not live past infancy. Poignantly, three different boys were named John after their father, but did not survive. 

This beautiful family portrait speaks eloquently of how proud Anna and John were of their family. The hands in the photograph tell me just how precious they were too.

Today, I'm remembering the lost children of John and Anna Simonik:

John Simonik - b. and d. 4 May 1906 in Morewood, Westmoreland, Pennsylvania.
Infant Son Simonik - b. and d. 25 Sept 1907 in Morewood, Westmoreland, Pennsylvania.
Thekla Simonik -  b. and d. 15 Jan 1909 in Morewood, Westmoreland, Pennsylvania. 
Hungarian spelling of the name; from the ancient Greek name Theokleia, which means "glory of God." 
It appears that this daughter was named after John's grandmother Theckla Hajosztek.
John Simonik - b. 21 Dec 1920, d. 29 Dec 1920, in Dunbar, Fayette, Pennsylvania.
John Simonik -  b. and d. 29 June 1922 in Dunbar, Fayette, Pennsylvania.
Infant Daughter Simonik - b. and d. 4 April 1925, in Dunbar, Fayette, Pennsylvania.



1. John and Anna Simonik family photograph, ca. 1919; digital image 2018, privately held by Nancy Casey, [address for private use], Corinth, Texas, 2018. Photograph was in John and Anna's daughter Margaret Simonik Kozlina's possession upon her death, and passed on to her daughter Ann Kozlina Gilbride. In turn, photo was in possession of Ann Gilbride upon her death and passed to the author.

2. 1910 United States Census, East Huntington Township, Westmoreland County, population schedule, East Huntington, dwelling 379, family 499, John Semallek family; image: Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 11 March 2018), Pennsylvania > Westmoreland > East Huntington > District 0118; citing Roll: T624_1429; Page: 29A; Enumeration District: 0118; FHL microfilm: 1375442.



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