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New Developments in the Elliot/Darragh/Dillane Project

The 14 Day Research Like a Pro Challenge may be over, but the work goes on. There have been several developments since I finished up my project to discover if Joanna Elliot was the mother of Dorah Darragh, a third great-grandmother.    New Developments   I connected with a Dillane descendant on Ancestry via their messaging system. My theory is that Dorah Darragh's mother was Joanna Elliot, and that Joanna was a Dillane, accounting for the close connection between their families. I contacted my new friend after noticing that he had the Elliots, Darraghs, and Dillanes in his Ancestry family tree. He is a descendant of John Dillane, Charles Dillane's brother. My new collaborator held many of the same theories and conclusions that I had come to regarding these families.    He also corrected one relationship that I got wrong: The Esther Dillane living with Edward and "Georgina" Elliot  in 1861 was not Charles and Mary Dillane's daughter, but the daughter of ano...
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Hands

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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