{"id":4200,"date":"2011-09-15T06:00:45","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T14:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jessicagreen.com\/wordpress\/?p=4200"},"modified":"2011-08-13T12:41:24","modified_gmt":"2011-08-13T20:41:24","slug":"treasure-chest-thursday-whats-in-a-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jessicagreen.com\/wordpress\/2011\/09\/15\/treasure-chest-thursday-whats-in-a-birthday\/","title":{"rendered":"Treasure Chest Thursday – What’s in a Birthday?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Request<\/a>

Request for Birth Date from Helen Stroik<\/p><\/div>\n

This letter is another family treasure.\u00c2\u00a0 On February 8, 1968 my great-grandmother Helena Frances (Goretski) Stroik<\/strong> received this response from the Social Security Administration Office.\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently she had written to them asking for the birth date they had on file.\u00c2\u00a0 Their response was very clear: “Our records show your date of birth as December 5, 1891.”<\/p>\n

Helen didn’t like that response.\u00c2\u00a0 On all the family documents we have prior to 1968 and afterwards, she continually stated her birthday was December 5, 1900.<\/p>\n

Nine years difference.\u00c2\u00a0 Was it such a big deal?\u00c2\u00a0 To Helen, it was.<\/p>\n

First all, Helen’s father Adam Goretski died in 1893.\u00c2\u00a0 If she was his child, there is no way she was born in 1900.<\/p>\n

\"Marriage<\/a>

Marriage License Announcement<\/p><\/div>\n

Another clue is that she was married to her husband Andrew Anton Stroik<\/strong> in September 1906.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve heard of underage marriage, but at five years old?\u00c2\u00a0 Sorry Helen, I don’t think so.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s even a bit shocking that you were only 14 years 9 months old on your wedding day.<\/p>\n

Next there is the whole problem about her having a child when she was eight years old.\u00c2\u00a0 Her first son Frank Stroik was born on October 2, 1908.\u00c2\u00a0 If Helen was born in December 1891 as the Social Security Administration believed, she would have been sixteen years old when she gave birth to her first child. This makes much more sense than if she were eight.<\/p>\n

\"Grave<\/a>

Grave of Helen F. Stroik<\/p><\/div>\n

I’ll never understand why she continued to insist that she was born in 1900.<\/p>\n

Helen Stroik died in Saginaw, Michigan on May 1, 1982 at the age of 90.\u00c2\u00a0 Thirty years later, her grave sits in Sacred Heart Cemetery in Merrill, Michigan as a monument to her unknown age.\u00c2\u00a0 While the birth year of 1891 stands correctly, her death year still has not been engraved.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe this is one final, great testament to her unwillingness to share her true age with the public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This letter is another family treasure.\u00c2\u00a0 On February 8, 1968 my great-grandmother Helena Frances (Goretski) Stroik received this response from the Social Security Administration Office.\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently she had written to them asking for the birth date they had on file.\u00c2\u00a0 Their response was very clear: “Our records show your date of birth as December 5, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genealogy","category-treasure-chest-thursday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jessicagreen.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jessicagreen.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jessicagreen.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jessicagreen.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jessicagreen.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4200"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jessicagreen.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4204,"href":"https:\/\/jessicagreen.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4200\/revisions\/4204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jessicagreen.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jessicagreen.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jessicagreen.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}