Conversation with My Grandpa’s Cousin

After my last post, I wrote a letter to Naomi Zalud (her maiden name), who compiled the Kaiser and Zalud family histories I recently received. She responded with a phone call, and yesterday we spent an hour and a half on the phone. It was so wonderful to talk with her. She’s the 86-year-old first cousin of my grandpa, Acey Stephens. He was about the same age as her two older brothers, and she told me she often tagged along with them when they were kids. I never knew, but my grandpa spent time running the Ferris wheel at Annevar, the county fair in Ravenna, Nebraska. She said he would give her extra-long rides.

Naomi also knew my grandpa’s parents, Clayton Hayward Stephens and Frances “Fannie” Zalud Stephens. Naomi told me “Uncle Clayt” and “Aunt Fannie” were both tall — “she was tall for a woman and he was a few inches taller” — and “pleasingly plump.” Naomi said she thinks they were a very close family. She said Fannie — the daughter of immigrants — was very proud of Clayton’s Revolutionary War ancestry.

I asked Naomi what my grandpa was talking about when he told me I “come from Bohemian royalty.” Beyond the wealthy and aristocratic background of the early Zaluds in Czechoslovakia, apparently one young, unmarried Zalud woman had an affair with the Austrian Duke of Graz. They conceived a son, and she later married and had more children. I’m not directly descended from any of them. That’s it! Hmmm. Well, as Naomi said, “I knew your grandpa and he would enlarge on the facts.” Yes, he was quite the storyteller. I can’t fathom, though, why he would tell me the English and Scottish were “rapists and murderers” or neglect to tell me about his family’s long history in the United States and Revolutionary War ancestors. Now I know his parents knew about them and he had to know, too.

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Here’s a book I spent some time looking at earlier today: “Stevens genealogy: Some descendants of the Fitz Stephen family in England and New England.” It’s a beautifully written history, published in 1905, of the Stephens/Stevens family from the time of William the Conqueror to the 1800s in the United States. Although it contains numerous Stephens in the Connecticut area in the 1700s, where my ancestors reportedly were, I don’t recognize any of the names.

“The Fitz Stephen family came over with William the Conqueror, and were feudal barons in Gloucestershire from the reign of King Henry II, first of the Plantagenets.”

It also describes the family coat of arms and mottos. I love this:

“The motto, as is allowable, has been varied and has included the following: “Je vis en espoir” [I live in hope], ” Vigilans et audax ” [vigilance and audacity], ” Concilio et armis” [possibly conciliation and arms], ” Fides Stephani” [faith Stephens?], and ” Byde Tyme”, the latter being old English for “Abide time,” meaning patience or endurance with unflinching purpose.”

Many Oaks From An Acorn Grew

“Many Oaks From An Acorn Grew” is the partial title of an amazing gift I received in the mail recently — a family history book on my Kaiser and Zalud ancestors compiled by my first cousin twice-removed, Naomi Zalud, and sent to me by my second cousin, Shirley.

Zalud, it turns out, means “acorn” in Czech.

My father’s father’s mother was Frances “Fanny” Zalud. Her father was Joseph Zalud and her mother was Barbara Kaiser. Joseph and Barbara were both from small towns in Bohemia (near what is now Prague, Czechoslovakia) and married shortly after they both immigrated to the United States in 1877.

The genealogy book that Naomi so lovingly compiled in the 1970s and ’80s extends what I knew about my great-great-grandparents Joseph and Barbara back many, many generations, to my earliest known Zalud ancestor, Benes Zalud, born sometime before 1600, and his son, Jan Zalud, born in 1625. I spent much of yesterday entering names, dates and details of these Kaiser and Zalud ancestors into my Reunion genealogy software, but I can’t begin to re-create the thoroughness of Naomi’s work. And she did it all without the Internet! She tracked down information the old-fashioned way — with correspondence, interviews and several trips to Czechoslovakia. I am so grateful for her work, and the work of all the genealogists who came before me.

While entering data yesterday, I began to feel overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of ancestors I’ve become aware of. I now have 701 relatives entered in my software, including 95 direct ancestors. (Pretty amazing, considering when I started doing genealogy research in 1999, I only knew the names of about eight.) I’m not sure why this feels so overwhelming. Maybe it’s the crushing sense of how finite our lives are or the burden of trying to live a life that honors my ancestors. Maybe it’s just the tedium of getting all these names and dates and details organized and entered into the computer, then shared with others.

Anyway, what really interests me are the stories. Genealogy is just names, dates and places, but family history is the stories — the big events, like war or crossing an ocean, and the little ones, like the fact that my great-great-grandmother Barbara Kaiser Zalud grew her own poppy seed for baking breads and rolls.

Who Am I?

“Over 99.9 percent of the human genome (which means the complete set of genetic material in a person) is exactly the same across the species and around the world. All human variation, from height to hair color to freckles, comes down to just the 0.1 percent of our genetic makeup that differs. It’s a small world after all.” — Buzzy Jackson in “Shaking the Family Tree”

I’ve been doing genealogy research on and off (mostly off) since about 1999, when I first got online at home. Before that, I knew very little about my heritage. I basically knew my grandparents’ names and the names of two great-grandparents. My heritage was a big, yawning gap. I had an urge to learn more, to try to understand where I came from — what made me who I am.

When I was a kid, I tried a couple of times to ask my paternal grandparents, Acey and Winnie Stephens, where our family came from. I remember one time when I was trying to collect information for a homework assignment. My dainty little Grandma started to answer, “Well, honey, on my side we’re English and Irish and ….” My Grandpa, a blustery old cowboy, interrupted. “Those people were rapists and murderers! Don’t you tell people about them. You tell people you come from Bohemian royalty!”

I was mystified. I didn’t figure out what Bohemians were until I was in my twenties. (Mostly Czechoslovakian.) I still don’t know why my Grandpa thought the Brits were rapists and murderers. But through genealogy, I’ve learned that my Grandpa’s mother’s maiden name was Frances Zalud, which is probably where any royalty is hiding. I’ve also learned that he had a grandmother (Anna Martha Thoresen) who immigrated from Norway to Nebraska around 1864, a great-grandfather (William Harrison Stephens Sr.) who died in the San Francisco Gold Rush in 1850, a Dutch great-great-grandmother (Sarah “Sally” Smith Randall) whose ancestors settled Manhattan (AKA New Amsterdam), and a sixth great-grandfather (John Randall) who came from England to the colony of Rhode Island around 1666 — more than a hundred years before the Declaration of Independence was signed.

These are just a few of the threads that tie my Grandpa and me to the past. They give me context, pride, a feeling of belonging. Not that my heritage is any better than anyone else’s. Royalty or not, I believe we all have a heritage to be proud of — ancestors who lived and struggled and raised children and crossed continents and sometimes oceans. And if you go back far enough, we’re all related.

I’ve been reading “Shaking the Family Tree: Blue Bloods, Black Sheep, and Other Obsessions of an Accidental Genealogist” by Buzzy Jackson. Part memoir, part how-to, it’s a fun and fascinating romp through her family history journey.

“Those clever geneticists have been able to trace the origins of human beings back to two genetically specific human beings who lived tens of thousands of years ago [in eastern Africa]. Allow me to introduce your ancient ancestors: Y-Chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve … the oldest known ancestors of everyone on earth.”

It makes you wonder: Can’t we all just get along?