Well its been almost a year since my last post; wasn't through a lack of information, stories or finds but I think from a lack of creativity. So i thought I'd share finding a great great uncle.
I had always known that my grandmother had an uncle that had emigrated to America in the early 20th century. When speaking to my father or mother they had always mentioned that she had two uncles Elias Rashid who lived in Derdghaya and Peter who had emigrated to America married and raised a family there. My father remembered meeting him when he returned to Lebanon in the 1950's.
Now through a little bit of digging through immigration records I found that my grandmother had more than the two uncles. Her grandfather Rashid Zarka had five boys Salim, Sleiman, Elias, Peter, Boulos and my great grandmother Mariam (He possibly had another daughter Malakeh). After explaining who Salim was my father knew him but had either forgotten who he was or had never knew as its possible that he had passed away when my father was young.
I never really had any information on Sleiman or Boulos which always bothered me but I thought they must have died as young men as back in the early years it was common for people to succumb to things like influenza outbreaks. Boulos is still a mystery but this week I found Sleiman (Solomon) in Michigan by accident.
I had been searching through some new records that had become available to the public when I came across a death certificate for Solomon Zarka Rashid, this twigged my interest as a brick wall I had may have come tumbling down. I spent the next couple of days digging and scratching through records on line and I made a little bit of headway. I found where he had lived in Lansing, where he had worked over the years and most of all I had discovered his wife's name Zakia Farhat and the name of a son.
So now the challenge is to expand on this family and make contact with some living relatives and add to my posse of cousins.
