HURLEY -- Thanksgiving is especially meaningful for Anton-Walsh House innkeeper Gene Cisewski.
Although modest about it, Cisewski can trace his family's roots to the Pilgrims who came ashore to Plymouth Rock, Mass., in the Mayflower in 1620.
Generations on his mother's side of the family were unaware of these early pre-Colonial ties. It wasn't until Cisewski was conducting genealogical research while employed in Washington, D.C., more than 20 years ago that he stumbled on the discovery that he was descended from Pilgrim stock, which, after settling Massachusetts, moved to New York and eventually took the Erie Canal to what was then the "west" to settle in Wisconsin.
"It brings history to life," Cisewski said.
His closest Mayflower descendants include:
--Cisewski's mother Arlene Amy Monty, born in Rhinelander in 1937 and a 1955 graduate of Marenisco's Roosevelt High School. She married Eugene Donald Cisewski at St. Mary's Church in Hurley in 1956 and now lives in the Twin Cities, Minn. area.
--His grandmother Doris Amy Nagley, born in 1906 in Ashland, Wis., and a 1925 graduate of Public High School in Hurley. She married White Pine miner Howard Gladwyn Monty at First Presbyterian Church in Ironwood in 1930. She died in Ontonagon in 1995.
--His great-grandmother Amy Gertrude Naylor, who was born in Waupaca, Wis., in 1876 and lived in Winchester, Wis., from 1905 to 1964. She died in 1967 in Milwaukee.
Cisewski remembers visiting his great-grandmother in her log cabin in the small town near Presque Isle as a boy. He recalls she didn't have electricity until the ice man quit coming in 1960, when she had to get electricity so she could buy a refrigerator and freezer.
Known throughout the area only a few miles from Iron County, Wis., Naylor delivered mail, cooked for the Works Project Administration and area schools and cut pine boughs to make a living.
Other descendants include Minnie Minerva Walsh, born in Lamartine, Wis., in 1858.
Cisewski has found that he is descended from Mayflower passengers Isaac Allterton, William Bradford, Francis Eaton, Degory Priest, John Tilley and Richard Warren.
His experience researching his roots has led him to believe that millions of people can trace their genealogy back to the Pilgrims and discover ancestral surprises for themselves.
With the aid of the Library of Congress, the National Archives and the archives at the Daughters of the American Revolution, Cisewski eventually found direct family ties to seven lines of Mayflower descendants.
He also used U.S. Census data, maps, diaries, church records and other documents he found throughout his years of research. Most of all, he stresses the importance of oral tradition.
"Start with your parents, grandparents and find out who your grandparents were," Cisewski said. "Spend time with them, find out maiden names and where they lived."
With today's advances online, he said those who want to trace their family trees can also be helped by researching Web sites. Cisewski also consulted the beta test Web site of the Mormon Church when he first started his research.
Along the way, he learned much about the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving. Although religious separatists made up a large number of the crew, there were passengers who were part of a corporation that was formed to develop trade with their native England, he said.
"We're a melting pot, but we're also mosaic," Cisewski said. "There is a mixture ... By global standards (the Pilgrims) were pretty homogenized.
"Many of the Pilgrims were still loyal to the crown ... they just didn't want to be near the enforcers of the crown."
According to Cisewski's research, the first Thanksgiving was a festive celebration in October with feasts and games that lasted for days. However, the Pilgrims did not celebrate the next year. In fact the holiday was not celebrated widely until President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation on Oct. 3, 1963 making a national day of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November.
During the Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Nov. 23, 1939 wished everyone a Thanksgiving a week early, while many Americans celebrated on Nov. 30, the last Thursday of the month. Succumbing to pressures from the business community, which wanted the extra days for Christmas shopping for Americans, on Dec. 26, 1941 Roosevelt finally made Thanksgiving an official holiday to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November.
