After spending nearly half a year on this project, I could have given up, telling myself that I really gave this a try with the “doing the genealogy” skills I had.  But, I couldn’t let it go.  It was time to get some help.  

It was in January 2024 that I hired a genealogist coach, Keri. I chose being coached by a genealogist because I didn’t want to miss out on the fun of a research challenge like this. I was going to “do the genealogy” with some advanced genealogy assistance.

Shortly before I contacted Keri, a conversation I had with another cousin led us both to questioning a Social Security Application Index listing found on MyHeritage for who appeared to be Henry. It revealed his parents’ names, but without having access to the actual document, there was no way we would know if this was our Henry or not. I shared this with Keri as well as everything else I knew about Henry to this point.

Keri told me about an SS-5 form that I could fill out and submit through the Social Security Administration website.  It would cost money to get a copy of the application Henry filled out and would take maybe a month to be processed.  Little did she know that there was an option to have the application copy delivered digitally. 

Within a week I had access to the application copy. It revealed that it was our North Dakota Henry. What confirmed it was his signature. It was identical to the signatures on other types of documents I collected. The birth date, residence and occupation matched as well. It gave the names of his parents, Fred Thom and Mary Haen, and indicated that his birth place was Marclulick, Poland.

I pursued research on the couple listed as his parents and shared this information with an Ancestry tree owner who was related to Henry’s wife Julia’s family. She shared that Julia’s parents’ families were from Moczulki (Marclulick, Poland), intermarrying with another family with some living a while in Neche, North Dakota. This to me indicated that Julia and Henry met while living in the same community.