2 thoughts on “This was a rough term. Still have a winter term course to publish before midnight but time for a break.”

1. Hi, Dennis!
   Kudos to you for an edgy website that is a potpourri of stimulating vignettes. At a recent Jerz reunion in suburban Chicago, your name surfaced with quizzical looks from several cousins who inquired, “Who is this fellow?” As an older journalist with a plethora of degrees and bylines, I was chosen to connect with you and discover if we are related. My deceased mother was a Jerz; one of 3 siblings (Agnes, Walter and John) born to Regina and George Jerz in Westfield, Mass who re-located to Chicago. Your ancestral background intrigued us because our family, too, was raised in a similar Chicago neighborhood, in the early 1900s, where they owned a grocery store. We wondered if you would be willing to furnish us with more details about your background? If so, we would enjoy sharing stories.
   Thank you for your time.
   Sincerely, Phyllis (Rood) Varjian.

   Reply

   • My father, George Jerz, just passed away last December at 90. Here is the eulogy I delivered at his funeral. https://jerz.setonhill.edu/blog/2023/12/27/we-celebrate-the-good-life-of-my-father-george-joseph-jerz/

     His father was Joseph Jerz, who worked as a pattern-maker for Ford and was the eldest of eight or ten siblings.

     I happen to be visiting my mother today and, when I mentioned your note, she just handed me a 2-inch stack of genealogy info that my late father compiled over the past few decades.

     I remember my father telling me he found a passenger record of the ship Jan (Americanized to John) and his younger brother Joseph booked from Poland, around 1905. I believe their names were listed as “Jez.”

     I’m holding copy of a 1908 marriage record of a Jan Jez and a Rose Trzaska, who emigrated in 1906 (and, according to a family story I just read for the first time in my father’s notes, was met in Ellis Island by a charming young man who offered to help carry her luggage — and stole all of it).

     My father also acquired a copy of the 1910 census form that lists the head of the family as Jan, married to Rose Trzaska, and the surname as variously Jesek or Jeseh and Jesch. Also living in the house were Jan’s brother Joseph aged 19, and a cousin Joseph aged 28, all listed as “Austria/Polish”.

     The 1920 census lists Jan, Rose, and the growing number of children, but the family surname is now “Jazz.” When I asked my grandfather whether “Jerz” was short for something, he told me about “Jez” but didn’t mention our family’s “Jazz” era.

     By the time my father was born in 1933, the family surname was “Jerz.”

     Also in that stack of papers is a copy of a note my father wrote to me, apparently in response to somebody contacting me probably 20 years ago to ask about the name Walter Jerz, and that this Walter was not his uncle Walter.

     I remember my father talking about uncle Walter, a professional boxer. I actually have a photo of Walter as a boy, on this page, which also has some more personal history. https://jerz.setonhill.edu/personal/index.html

     I’m sorry I don’t recall the names of my father’s uncles, but I do not believe there was a George among them.

     I just paged through all my father’s hand-written notes, and I didn’t see a reference to George and Regina Jerz, or to an Agnes Jerz, or to any Jerz branch in Mass., though there were several references to Walters and Johns, not to mention the three different Josephs living under the same roof with the same last name in the 1910 census.

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