I’m now officially in Chicago and I start grad school this week at DePaul University.

None of my family is from Chicago, but I thought I’d take a look at some interesting “Chicago connections” I’ve found in my genealogical research. I’ll look for these families, and perhaps other links, when I visit the Chicago Public Library soon to browse through their genealogy collection. I’ll be posting the results of that trip in this blog.

So far…here’s the links I know of between my family history and Chicago:

1. My great-grandfather Wallace KANALLEY spent some time as a watchman in Chicago as a teenager. He arrived there in 1920 per immigrant records and supposedly stayed there for some time before returning to his native Canada. He later moved to Buffalo, N.Y.
2. My 2nd-great-grandfather Edward HILBURGER had a twin brother named George, born 1880, who moved to Chicago from Buffalo.
3. My 3rd-great-grandparents Jacob WEBER and Catharina GRAEBEL lived in Waukegan, Illinois – about 35 miles north of Chicago – from 1864 to 1866, not long after immigrating from Bavaria, Germany. They then relocated to Buffalo, N.Y.
4. Two siblings of my 3rd-great-grandfather John McQUAID – William McQUAID and Catherine (McQUAID) GARRITY – moved to Chicago from Canada in the late 1800’s.
5. And finally, the fact I’m 25% Polish probably means I have distant relatives in Chicago, which has a sizeable ethnic Polish population. I don’t know of any yet, but there are a few IGLINSKIs that settled in Chicago…that’s my great-grandmother’s maiden name and it’s a very uncommon surname, so they’re likely related.

Again, I’ll be going to the Chicago library soon and I’ll post anything interesting I find from that trip.