All Dressed Up with Somewhere to Go: Genealogy Students at NCC Honor their Ancestors

CAPTION: Stamford residents and Lifetime Learners Arlene Clanny, Lisa D’Alton, Pat Marro-Ormsby and Dan Williams participated in an unusual Halloween event on Monday at NCC. (Photo credit: Bernie Williams Photography)

Lifetime Learners Institute students enrolled in one of three levels of "Genealogy & Computers" classes at Norwalk Community College are completing eight-week courses this week. Earlier this term, in an NCC classroom decorated with maps, globes, quilts and vintage newspapers, students took turns teaching, sharing what they’d learned with each other. Many of the students paid homage to a family member and/or their countries of origin, inspiring their classmates to dig deeper into their own family histories.

Former LLI Genealogy student and Stamford resident, Dan Williams, who made the most of a trip to Mississippi last spring, was a featured speaker at the day of student-led lessons. At the time Williams returned to Mississippi, he was a newcomer to Genealogy, having attended the first seven of eight weeks of Genealogy and Computers at NCC. Those classes prepared him to interview cousins and record their answers for posterity. He reported his most surprising find, “I learned that my grandfather’s siblings had changed their surnames to Wells, in order to distinguish themselves from their former slave owner, whose name was Williams."

Pat Marro-Ormsby of Stamford has a copy of the telegram that notified her grandfather Joseph Duqemin’s mother that her son had survived the tragic sinking. Duqemin, who was 19-years-old when he jumped off the Titanic and swam to a lifeboat, lost a friend who hesitated to jump with him. Ms. Marro-Ormsby showed the standing-room-only classroom the newspaper items she found online about a mini-reunion of Titanic survivors in Albion, New York, a reunion that occurred a year after the tragedy. The students also heard about the advanced search strategies she employed to find her grandfather in 1912 newspaper lists of Titanic survivors: It wasn’t easy, as the family name was misspelled over and over again as "Dugemin" in various historical newspapers, including The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. Similar search techniques helped Ms. Marro-Ormsby find her elusive Picciano Italian ancestors. Their records were hidden because an enumerator in Stamford dropped a “c” as he recorded their surname in 1920.

Stamford resident Lisa D’Alton, who was introduced to three free online newspaper sites in her fourth week of Genealogy classes, describes the search as addictive. Almost as soon as she searched for "Samuel Haviland," she found a history of her Haviland ancestors that covers 450 years, tracing their movement from Rhode Island to Rye, and evidence that a family member was present for the reading of the Declaration of Independence. Her most interesting find may have been her great-great-grandmother’s entry to a contest sponsored by Joseph Pulitzer’s The World, with a prize of a $100 gold piece to the woman with the most living children. Her great-grandmother’s entry appeared in the paper with all the names and significant dates related to her, her husband, and their 12 living children. It also acknowledged the three who were no longer living, and explained the gravestones Ms. D’Alton had found at the family plot that were marked with only the word, “Child.”

Greenwich resident, Janeen Bjork, who is in her second year teaching “Genealogy & Computers“ as a Lifetime Learners facilitator urged her students “Don’t wait to find and meet your long-lost relatives!”

Ms. Bjork located and contacted Glenn Bjork, the keeper of “The Bjork Museum” in 2012. Glenn was the grandson of the uncle who took Janeen’s orphaned grandfather in back in 1908 in a mining community in Upper Peninsula Michigan. In 2013, Janeen traveled to Michigan where she scanned the early 20^th century photos Glenn had inherited from his grandfather, the first of four generations of Bjorks who worked in Michigan mines. With his daughter Linda behind the wheel, Glenn gave his newfound East Coast relation a VIP tour of all places with ancestral significance. In September 2014, a little more than a year later, Ms. Bjork revisited the U.P. to attend Glenn Bjork’s funeral.

A sampler of "Genealogy and Computers," will be offered during the Lifetime Learners’ winter term. "Genealogy & Computers" courses, as well as 40 other one-day two-hour; daytime courses that meet up to 8 weeks, will resume for students 50 and over in the spring. For information or to receive a free detailed course catalog phone 203-857-3330 or see www.lifetimelearners.org.

CAPTION: Lifetime Learners in a courtyard at NCC on Halloween.

Left to right: Front row, Arlene Clanny of Stamford, Carolyn Wakeman and Karen Iaco of Norwalk, and Mary Ann West of Westport.

Second row: Donna Gauthier of Darien, Lisa D’Alton of Stamford, class assistant Sara Zagrodzky of Darien and Katy Rahe of Darien.

Third row: Rita Phillips of Norwalk, Jackie Barchilon of Westport, Pat Marro-Ormsby of Stamford and Carol Wilder Tamme of Darien.

Back row, Janeen Bjork of Greenwich, Pamela Strohm of Norwalk, Michael Schary of Trumbull, Jack Murray of New Canaan, Doug Sutton of Norwalk and Norm Glover of Bridgeport. (Photo credit: Bernie Williams Photography)