Interview #2: Judy Barron - Genealogy Isn't Just About Names and Dates

Rick Barron (00:01.731)

We all come from somewhere. Our families have come from such places as Europe, the Far East, and South America. While we have some knowledge of our past, how well do we know it? It's human nature wanting to know where we come from and who we come from. 

Family history research is a passing phase for some, but for others, it's a recreational pursuit filled with excitement and a passionate intensity that goes beyond idle curiosity or short-term interest. 

Tracing your background to understand your cultural heritage, traditions, and customs provides the prism of knowing where your ancestors came from and their journeys. 

My guest today jumped into becoming an amateur genealogist resulting from news received one day from their home country, Poland.

This individual has worked tirelessly investigating old photos, letters, searching the internet and more to build their family's history. I'm Rick Barron, your host and welcome to my podcast. That's life. I swear. Please join me today as I welcome my guest, Judy Barron, for this conversation. Judy, welcome to the show.

Judy Barron (01:21.851)

Thank you for having me.

Rick Barron (01:23.851)

So, I want to provide full transparency here to the audience. As I did my introduction, you may have noticed that my guest has the same last name as I do. Well, you see, this guest is someone very special to me. Turns out that Judy is my wife. 

So, Judy, you started going into genealogy back in October of 2021, I believe. Could you start the conversation by sharing with the audience today how that journey began. What was the impetus to get all this started?

Judy Barron (01:58.862)

Well first, thank you for the kind introduction. I unfortunately sadly received news from relatives that my aunt had died in Poland and she was the last remaining sibling of my father. And so I'd reached out to my cousin, which is her son, to pass my condolences on. And we had a good email conversation going back and forth. And during that time, he had requested if I could work on the family tree for North America, as he had actually built out a lot of the family tree for our family members in Poland. 

And I was lucky enough that my sister-in-law also has spent a lot of time building it out the family tree earlier on. So, my journey, I fortunately started with a lot of background that was available, but it wasn't current. And so, I knew I needed to reach out to my father's brother who had passed away and to find out what my cousins were doing. And so, I could get in touch with them. And lucky enough, the internet is great. So, I spent time Googling to find out where my cousins were. And I came across addresses and unfortunately also discovered that their mother had actually passed away a couple years earlier so I decided to send deepest sympathy cards to them and introduce myself and give my contact information and let them know that I was going to be going on this genealogy or family tree journey and that kinda started it off for me.

Rick Barron (03:29.415)

Well, so when you contacted your cousins in Canada, I guess that must have been a huge surprise for them.

Judy Barron (03:36.638)

Yeah, I mean, we hadn't connected for over 55 years. And one of my cousins now lives in New York, and the other one is in Toronto. So yes, it was a nice, it was, I think they were pleasantly surprised as I was too, that we could all get together and get connected.

Rick Barron (03:41.055)

Oh my gosh.

Rick Barron (03:54.495)

Wow, that's great. So being that this is like the first time you dove into genealogy, where did you begin? I mean, I've heard from people who have started this, that it could be very overwhelming and being organized and, you know, keeping track of what you're finding. So what was your process? Where did you begin?

Judy Barron (04:15.362)

Well, fortunately, I'm a big PowerPoint and Microsoft Word user. I guess my days in high tech prepared me to help chronicling this information. For me, it was easier to put content into a PowerPoint or a Word file and not necessarily using the tools that are available like Ancestry or MyHeritage because I'd have to worry about training myself on them. So, it really was, you know, PowerPoint plus and just building up family tree and building charts and everything like that. And I used the Word more so for organizing information that I had found. So, I could have some historical reference of my discoveries as I went along, such as making sure that I had the accurate information on dates and names and building that information out. But I went to the step also of not only just getting the textual information, so we have a photographic family tree representation as well as dates and birth dates and names and a context for all the siblings of my father from Poland.

Rick Barron (05:30.339)

Well, I know I can back up what you're saying, because I know when you first started, you were taking copious notes on everything that you were discovering and watching you draw out family trees and listing the names and the birth dates and all. So I know there were many nights where you were up very late trying to gather all this information. And it seems like all of a sudden you just kind of dove into it and you...

Seems like when you found one avenue of information, it's like, I don't want to put it down. Everything is going too well. I've got to keep going. And sometimes you wouldn't come to bed until like 1 o'clock in the morning. So you were putting a lot of effort into this. So during the journey as you were gathering all this information, were there any unusual discoveries, even surprises that maybe you could share with the audience as you were going through this process of building your family history?

Judy Barron (06:28.794)

Yeah, I mean the interesting thing was you were right. You find one thing and then you...after continued keep diving in researching on the content but that there's two things that were of interest to me uh... when i had to reach out to the Canadian government to obtain immigration documents from my parents and my older brother and interesting thing that i saw there is that my father uh... came into Canada with uh... twenty one dollars uh... when you immigrate into Canada and that he could actually speak English which was interesting uh... coming from Poland.

My uncle had actually sponsored their immigration to Canada, so that was an interesting piece of discovery for me. And then the second was that my younger brother had several letters that my parents had received from relatives in Poland, and I was able to get them translated by a wonderful lady in Krakow who helped me piece together information that was, you know, equated to my mother's side of the family tree is a big mystery so it was nice to kind of get some details on that but I found out that my grandfather, her father, one point in time was in Austria and they potentially was with the French army or the French Foreign Legion, we're still trying to figure that one out. 

He did go to Indochina during the wartime and that he had been injured and then transported back to Paris and eventually made his way to Venezuela and at that point in time the that they hadn't heard back from him up until I think it was 1947 or 48. So we kind of lost contact as to my mother's side of it, but it was just really interesting to see that piece of it. And plus we had several pictures of him as well that we're still trying to figure out what's the type of uniform that he's wearing and what are his possible journey during World War II.

Rick Barron (08:35.867)

Right. Just to share a little tidbit of information for the audience too, sadly, you know, both of my wife's parents have passed away and her father passed away after her mother did. And we flew up to Canada to get together with Judy's brother and other relatives to, you know, collectively gather photos that we were going to set up at the funeral so that people could take a look and see a little bit of history of Judy's father. And I was going through this shoe box of photos and as I was sitting through the photos, I came across this one photo that showed Judy's father in uniform with another Polish soldier and they were talking to this American officer and when I looked at the photo closely, I was absolutely stunned.

Her brother called out to me as to what was wrong. And I said, no, there's nothing wrong. He said, but have you seen this photo? And I showed it to him. I said, oh yeah, I've seen it. I said, do you know who this American officer is that your father is talking to? I said, I have no idea. And I said, my friend, that is Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces during World War II. And plus, he was our 35th president of the United States. 

So, you never know what you're going to find as you go through this research of your family past. So, just something to bear in mind if you've never done this, you might want to give it some thought and take into consideration some of the surprises you're going to come across, like I did and my wife did as well.

Rick Barron (10:25.407)

In looking back at what your parents did, I have to wonder, did they ever share with you that coming over here to Canada from their home country, Poland, how was that for them? What was the transition like to come to a different country and literally start all over again?

Judy Barron (10:46.674)

Well, it's an interesting thing. I think a lot of the siblings who had parents that went through World War II have very little information about what that was like. It was just something that they just didn't want to talk about. And so the stories that we have between my two brothers and my sisters are like a little patchwork of information because what they may have heard was different than what I heard. And I think we've had this conversation, it's kind of like that phone game. The one thing that one person doesn't necessarily translate to the next one to the next one. 

And so, we're trying to piece together what life might have been like. And I've been fortunate enough with my father. He did maintain pieces of his military documentation. So we've been able to figure out what platoon was he in, where did he serve potentially, when did he first join, and when did he exit, and what was he being paid by the British because he was part of the Allied forces. And so, you get to piece together that from what you're finding either on the internet or when you do go to a government resource and ask to have documentation provided to you. It gives you a bit more information, but unfortunately, we don't have those types of stories. 

We're trying to build that through the photographs that we have that show that my father was in Amsterdam, had been in Breda, pictures of them in Quakenburg in Germany. So, you start to kind of figure out how did they get together when did they get married how did they get married. And so you know the story that we build may not be the true story but it kind of gives us insight as to what where they were at points in time and luckily we have photographs a few photographs that have dates and locations.

Rick Barron (12:46.219)

Oh absolutely. Now I know you came across a photo that I think might be of interest to your audience and that was a picture of your father where he was standing in front of this statue commemorating World War I and he was standing with a few other people but I don't want to say too much. I'll let you tell that story.

Judy Barron (13:07.354)

Yeah, it is a photograph of my father in Brussels, along with another soldier and a couple of ladies. And we fortunately had the opportunity to travel just this September to Paris, and then we went on to Brussels to go to that same war memorial and to be able to stand in front of it and have photographs taken. And it was kind of, it was moving because you think 70 plus years ago my father was standing there a memorable moment that we could then show the photograph of, you know, before and then after. You know, that the family had connected somehow.

Rick Barron (13:47.927)

sure that reenactment of the photo that we did while we were there a couple weeks ago. I know when I was standing there I felt chills coming through my body because I thought my gosh you know when you think about your father having been there over 70 plus years ago. You have to wonder what was the landscape of Europe like at that time. I mean here they were they the war was over and the transition to.

Judy Barron (13:50.392)

Yeah.

Rick Barron (14:15.619)

getting people back together again must have been quite enormous and I can only imagine what he must have seen during the war and even after the war. So I'm sure that was very interesting. Now I know that when you were going through the photos and letters, I took note of you one day where you were looking at the letters you were then kind of writing off

Judy Barron (14:25.443)

Right.

Rick Barron (14:42.299)

letters by themselves on another piece of paper and I asked you what you were doing. You said, well, I'm kind of trying to create this alphabet. And I found that quite interesting. Could you tell that story to the audience and what that entailed?

Judy Barron (14:54.878)

Right, so I do not speak Polish or do I read Polish. And so it was really literally trying to use Google Translator along with trying to find a Polish alphabet online, which was done in cursive so you could actually see how it was written. And I would be holding my phone over this letter and trying to translate it at the back of a photograph and literally taking snapshots. And then finally it got to the point realizing when I did get a couple of letters from my younger brother, I said this isn't going to work. So, I was fortunate to find a resource online and found this wonderful lady in Krakow who I was able to send all the stuff through and she was able to translate it far much better than I could and far faster than I could as well too. 

But that's the types of trials and tribulations you go through. You try to figure out how do you solve for it yourself before you then end up going to experts. I had some great friends who have just recently traveled to Norway and Denmark, and they chose to find a private genealogist to help them go through their journey, to figure out where their ancestors came from and to visit the area that they lived in and things like that. I think that word of advice is its fun doing it yourself., but it comes a point that you have to have the experts help you.

Rick Barron (16:28.379)

Well, not only the experts, but you know, it's more than a one person show. It's, you know, participation and I guess along those lines, as you were discovering all this information about your family's past, I know you were sharing it with your relatives in Canada and your cousins in New York. What was their reaction to what you were discovering over that time period?

Judy Barron (16:33.887)

Mm-hmm.

Judy Barron (16:57.074)

I think it was a form of excitement to be, you know, not having been in touch with my cousins, my father's brother, sons, it was nice to reconnect. So, they were getting interested in the genealogy as well too. We were trying to deliver, so I was in a little bit of a time crunch because I was helping my cousin in New York. His wife was trying to pull together a book to celebrate my cousin's birthday that was soon to happen in the summer months.

And so I was trying to expedite my gathering of information and getting it to her so she could use it for publication into a family book. So that was one thing that was driving me to be quick on what I was doing.

Rick Barron (17:42.619)

That's right. So, with gathering all this information, I'm sure there's that issue of privacy. Did you encounter any particular problems along those lines? I mean, what did you have to consider? Like guys, do I put all this on Ancestry or some other piece of software that I can then share it with the world per se? I mean, did you share any of those considerations with your relatives or your cousins in New York?

Judy Barron (18:02.044)

Mm-hmm.

Judy Barron (18:12.887)

Yeah, I did. So, um...

Understandably, Ancestry and MyHeritage and other websites can allow you just to publish your information to a private group so it doesn't go beyond. Now, publishing it and letting my relatives have access to it then becomes their responsibility of managing it, but since I'm the one that's putting it in, I'm assuming I have control of that group's efforts. I did have, my cousins were concerned about the photographs and some didn't want to necessarily have the photograph per se in the initial release but asked not to have it done broader. It's understandable. People don't want to necessarily have that content made available. 

So, I've been very, I guess balanced in my approach as to how much do I actually put in documentation that I share with the family. So right now, all of my family members, right from my siblings down to their children, all have the documentation and I'm hoping that my efforts, I'll continue to keep it posted as long as I can, but hopefully there's another genealogist in the family that's going to continue the journey with the years when we're not here.

Rick Barron (19:34.743)

Well, that'll be great. I mean, at least you'll be giving them a head start to want to add to that. And I think, you know, someone or maybe many of them will probably want to participate in continuing this because it's such a rich history that you want to hold on to and not lose. Now, you mentioned you worked with a lady who helped you decipher some of the writings on these letters.

Rick Barron (20:05.551)

When they came back to you with the, what the letters were conveying, did that open up other doors for you to say, oh, now that I know what this letter is saying, I cannot go in this direction to get some new information?

Judy Barron (20:21.31)

Well, it does, but at the same time, too, it raises a lot of other questions to us.

Judy Barron (20:26.886)

You know, why were, why did this happen? Who were they? And it's interesting, go back to that phone game. When I passed the letters on to my siblings, they started also doing their investigation. And as you and I were with traveling with my younger brother and his wife, we were then having conversations. So, well, why did they, why did we get letters that were posted from a school? What kind of uniform was my grandfather wearing? Who is this Peter person?

Rick Barron (20:55.853)

Right.

Judy Barron (20:56.76)

You just start to think, oh, maybe that's maybe my grandfather's brother. And so we don't know. And so you start, it's not a game, but you start thinking about, okay, what does this really represent? And how do you then decipher through it? 

And I think, as I said earlier, I'm very fortunate that my cousin in Poland and my sister-in-law, who's married to my younger brother, did a lot of work prior to the genealogy, there was some foundation. What I was able to do was then bring in another piece which was my father's brother, which is my two cousins in Toronto and New York and their family. And then we also brought in my aunt who had passed away, which started this whole journey, her side of the family. So, we have a full family tree of the siblings under our family's maiden name or surname.

Rick Barron (21:37.614)

Mm-hmm.

Judy Barron (21:56.24)

also identify as not only did that come out of my journey, but it made me do a lot of research. You know, I wanted to understand when my father joined the Army, you know, what was his journey? And so it got me into doing much more investigation into World War II, what was Poland's involvement, and what was the truth, the truth that my father was associated with, you know, what was their journey. And when my father joined in August, I believe, of 1944 before the army, where did he train? 

Well, he trained in Scotland. Oh, that was interesting. Why was he in Scotland? Oh, then he was training with Canadian troops. Oh, now that's how he learned English. So, he understood when he came over from immigrating to Canada, he could speak English already because he was being taught by these Canadian soldiers. And it's odd that he ended up in Canada.

Rick Barron (22:51.779)

Right. I think with the accent, I remember you told me a story about, I think with your sister, she was in school and she was asked to, I don't know, identify something, but I'll let you tell the story.

Judy Barron (23:01.239)

Yeah. Yes, well, you know,

Translation of words, you know, resonate well from when you're Polish to English not very well. And so my sister can recall a story where they were talking about tools that people used. And I guess they had shown a picture of a screwdriver. And my sister at the time, you know, raised her hand, you know, very excitingly to say she knew what that item was and proceeded to call it a screwdriver. And, you know, the teacher, unfortunately, you know, understand why she had said that. And it was because that's how that word screw driver, when I guess translated in with Polish, it actually did have that type of analogy, the screwdriver driver, you know, to drive screws. And so, we joke about it. My father also could not say the word, like change, he was a mechanic.

Rick Barron (23:55.127)

Right.

Judy Barron (24:03.358)

So, he would say, it's time to change the oily. Change the oil, he would say, it's time to change the oily. We'd have conversations around that as well too. But it was, it's just the translation of it, so.

Rick Barron (24:15.079)

You know, what I think is so interesting too, when you were sharing with me parts of what you were discovering, I think about your parents and as I said earlier, coming to this kind to Canada, excuse me, and starting all over. I mean, you have to think about all the other people who followed that same journey, not maybe just going to Canada, but maybe come to the United States, wherever, and then having very little in their pocket and just having to start their lives all over again. I mean, what a strong will that generation had to have to endure that and make it happen.

Judy Barron (24:53.034)

Yeah, part of it was, though, too. You know, my parents didn't come over as part of the immigration that happened with the after the war soldiers left and came. They came a little later, so they didn't necessarily become as that first wave. They were sponsored through my uncle who had already lived in Canada. And so having a sponsorship made it probably a little bit easier. They were someone that they knew that when they landed here. So, they had the ability to blend into society and when they did immigrate it was to northern Ontario and Canada so it was very French Canadian so you can imagine how much that made it much more difficult.

People weren't necessarily speaking English, they were speaking French, you're English, you're trying to integrate into a community and like everybody there is biases around you know you're not necessarily Scottish or Irish or English.

Coming from Poland or other Eastern Bloc countries. So, there is some, I wouldn't say discrimination, there's a matter of racial differences. And so those become the challenges as well too. 

But realizing my father fought in the war and so the opportunity to go back to Poland because he wasn't part of the Polish army per se, but he was the alliance, made that possibly we looked upon as being traitor and not necessarily being in support of what was happening there. 

And my mother, I guess, just felt that it was better to try to go somewhere else and start a new life. And so, I'm just trying to say that there wasn't a lot of options. They could have stayed in Europe. They could have stayed in Europe. My older brother was born in Utrecht, so they could have stayed in Holland. But they choose to take the journey to Canada.

Rick Barron (26:56.795)

Well, that was very brave. I mean, again, sometimes you look at what your options are and it's like, well, I guess we're going to go in this direction and let the chips fall where they may. And fortunately, it worked out for them. Now, going back to what you did as you were going through your research, I know you contacted someone to help you decipher the ladies or the letters, excuse me. But did you interact with someone whose background was dealing and searching family history, someone who was sort of an expert at this. Did you ever contact with someone like that or any...

Judy Barron (27:32.81)

Yeah, I had the opportunity to, I believe a lot of virtual training, and so he's able to find a virtual genealogy class that was online and the gentleman was from Australia and it was a very good virtual class because he was open to having a lot of Q&A questions and so I said, hmm, maybe this is the opportunity to try and figure it out on my mom's side, give it to a genealogist and see what he can do. 

So I started with, you know, posting a question in the online and you know, asking, saying where my mother was from in Poland and I was looking to try and find birth certificates and how could I find that information. He was saying you know a lot of times there isn't a lot of documentation because of you know parishes or churches were destroyed. You know people weren't born in hospitals back then. There was you know they were born at home with midwives or no midwives. 

There were camps or involved somehow with the Germans documenting you for whatever reason so you could find that information. So, he was kind enough for about three months he took the opportunity to try and find information and he got back to me eventually so that he could not find anything. And that maybe could be a challenge because he was in Australia, my parents being in Poland,

Rick Barron (29:16.804)

Sure.

Judy Barron (29:19.652)

The town that my mother was actually born in was Polish at the time, it's now in Ukraine. And so, we have a war that's going on there that makes it more difficult. So, I think he was challenged in many ways, but I mean I was very grateful that he took the opportunity to try to do some investigation. But that's not stopping me though. I still need to go figure out, you know, how the family on that side existed and what does that lineage look like.

Rick Barron (29:48.587)

Oh, absolutely. Well, you know, we've covered a lot of ground here, but if you had to pick like maybe one or two items to share with the audience in terms of, to walk away from this conversation, what would you share with them in terms of wanting to jump into learning about their family history? What tips, suggestions, if you will?

Judy Barron (30:16.938)

Yeah, you know, be patient. You're going to want to boil the ocean and you really have to start off with like a specific goal what are you wanting to solve for because you can go in circles and it can take you down many rat holes and it'll be interesting to find the information but you're not sure as to what that's going to bear fruit for it you're going to be overwhelmed.  

Honestly, I mean I am still with the stuff that I find and can't find because this is really trying to figure out what your life is about, you know, where you came from. And you and I are both avid watchers of Finding Your Roots and, you know, all these types of genealogy shows to say, oh my God. 

And as I said, we've got some wonderful friends who are so involved with their genealogy that they've traveled back to the countries that they're great grandparents have been from more uh... you know they're connecting with people that are distance cousins uh... because they eat they just can't uh... you know another friend of mine i had lunch with her and she'd indicated her family also done genealogy with the twenty three me which resulted in someone reaching out to them that was then a first cousin and oddly enough that first cousin lived in San Jose where this person also you know, five years, eight years later, they are still in touch with each other. They go and have lunch and dinners together and they've been able to see their children growing up. And so, it's been, and so those are the things that you, the blessings that we get out of finding about family and relatives that we haven't seen. And as I said, my cousins in New York and in Toronto, I have a cousin's call every two every month with them, my sister, and we talk about, you know, the things that, what do they remember and what we don't remember, and we go off on different investigation activities, so.

Rick Barron (32:23.255)

Well, that's great. I mean, to have all that unfold through all of this work that you put into this. Well, this has been a very interesting conversation and I hope the audience got some very good tips and suggestions if they want to dive into the world of their family history. And I want to thank you for being part of this interview and

I got to say on a biased opinion, I'm very proud of my wife of what she has done, because I'm telling you, she has put in the effort to pull all this information together and I can tell and she has like these two huge white binders and I mean, they are full of information and it's all very chronologically laid out. So she's done her homework. So that said, well, there you go my friends. That's life. I swear.

For further information regarding the material covered in this episode, I invite you to visit my website, which you can find on either Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts, for show notes, calling out key pieces of content mentioned, and the episode transcript. As always, I thank you for listening and your interest. Be sure to subscribe here or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss an episode. See you soon!