I've started a blog on non-paternal events. You can find it at http://non-paternity.blogspot.com/
I got interested in the topic when I found several cases in my own family history where a child's social and biological father's were not the same.

I've heard nothing back yet from the Social Security Administration or the Maryland Archives on my queries regarding John NOVAK, so I tried some other angles on my wife's lines. The site that allows one-step searches of the Ellis Island database (http://home.pacbell.net/spmorse/ellis/ellis.html) ate up an hour or so of time last night with futile searches for variants of STEPHANOVIC and IVOSEVIC. The former is the name of her grandmother's first husband and the latter is the name of the grandmother's sister's husband. The idea is to locate the grandmother's birthplace. I know from obituaries and census records when these folks arrived in the USA (1901 and 1905, respectively) but they don't come up in Ellis Island searches. Other families coming from the same part of the world (then Austria-Hungary, now Italy, Slovenia and Croatia) do appear, so it must be some quirk of spelling that is muddling the search. I wonder why the Ellis Island site does not build in a soundex code for each surname?

I received Ida NOVAK's death certificate yesterday from the funeral home that handled her burial. They could not supply her husband John's death certificate because of a technicality with the Maryland state archives rules. I will have to send off for that separately. Ida's death certificate confirms information I had from other sources, but provides nothing new. The informant was listed as May WIDNER, whose address is near Dundalk, where Ida lived. No listing for a WIDNER in the on-line phone books, though. I'm still waiting for the Social Security application for John NOVAK.

I was down at the Newberry Library in Chicago yesterday. I went mainly to check on some German villages in Meyer's Orts Lexikon. Wickersheim showed up in Alsace, as I expected. Now I need to get the microfilms of the Lutheran baptisms there to see if Johann Georg Martin WEISS shows up when he should. This would also give me a starting point to look for his wife Anna HORNUNG, although they may have met in this country. While I was there, I also looked through the Germans to America series for Christian MUELLER's arrival in 1880. I found a couple of candidates, but I would have to look at the ship's manifests to know for sure.

I got a copy of John NOVAK's obituary today from the Pratt Library periodicals department. The only relative listed is his wife Ida. It looks like they had no children -- a pity, since it rules out any possible living relative on that end of things. No church connection, either. Perhaps there will be something on the NOVAKs' death certificates that I requested from the funeral home. On the off chance it might tell me something about where John and Ida met, I sent off for his Social Security card application.

Now my best hope may be the 1930 census. I'll see if I can set up a time to look through it at the Chicago branch of the National Archives. My guess is that they'll be swamped for a while, since it was just released April 1st.

I got a reply back from the funeral home that handled Ida NOVAK's burial that just provided an extract of their records with information that I already had. They did, however, offer to get a copy of her death certificate for just $6.00. I think I'll ask for that and for her husband John's death certificate as well. I also sent a note off to the Pratt to see if they could locate John's 1962 obituary in the Baltimore Sun. Perhaps it will have a little more detail on the NOVAK family.

I spent some time this week regretting missed opportunities -- Ida, it turns out, didn't die until 1980 and was still living in Dundalk the summer I was working in Havre de Grace. Driving down to my parents' place near Seven Corners, VA, I was probably within a mile or two of her house.

I've been obsessing on Elizabeth WARREN's maiden name the last week or two. I decided to try getting more detail on her eldest son Jacob WARREN's family. His only child that I know survived to adulthood was his daughter Ida. I had uncovered her social security application a while ago and found her in the social security death index, so I knew her date & place of death. A helpful soul on the Baltimore list at RootsWeb told me about the obituary service that the periodical department at the Pratt Library offers. I sent off her name and date of death and got back her obit from the Sun -- this gave me her husband's first name (John), where she was buried and the undertaker's name. I wrote to the cemetery to get a copy of the plot card and got back not only that but the order she had submitted for a joint headstone when her husband had died in 1962. Very helpful folks at Gardens of Faith cemetery.

Now I have a couple of different ways of going forward: I should be able to get death certificates for Ida and her husband John NOVAK. This might give me an idea of whether they had kids (who might know something of the family history). The undertaker's records might also help on that score. I also will try looking at the Mannington, WV schedules when the 1930 census is released this spring and see if I can pinpoint Jacob's death a little better. I know he died before 1935 from land records his wife Harriet is listed on, but narrowing it down to a five year slot would be helpful. Hope he died in WV and not of state somewhere.

A note on the MONVAL mailing list this morning reminded me of another loose end: my great-great-grandmother's maiden name. I've located two death certificates for Elizabeth WARREN's daughters that show her maiden name. Unfortunately, they are different. Her daughter Kate STEIN's record shows it as SOLANGER, while her dauther Elizabeth ROSS' record shows ZUELENBERGER. The two names sound at least a little alike. My grandfather filled out the death certificates for his father Alonzo and his uncle John and since he did not know his grandmother's maiden name, those are no help. The records of Dixmont Hospital, where she died in 1873, have no information on her maiden name. I should try again to determine her oldest son Jacob's date of death in West Virginia and see what his death certificate says.