My Wallace Family Research and History

My maternal grandpa Arthur John Wallace or Art, as my grandma and a pet parakeet called him, was born January 1901 to Christopher Jerome Wallace and Antonette GEBAUER Wallace, in Schenectady New York, he had 7 living siblings, there was an older brother, John who was born in 1899 and died in 1900, I am guessing that Art's middle name was to honor that brother.

I have to say that researching this family has been pretty straight forward once I learned the names of grandpa's parents. That discovery was one of my first genealogical successes in the mid 1990s.  I had read that you could send for a photocopy of a persons original social security application, I had just gotten my grandpa's death certificate which had his SS# so I sent away for a copy of the application. I believe it was my first Genealogy Happy Dance when I received the application, there was my grandpa's signature, one I would recognize anywhere, but the best part was his mother's name, I had never even heard of her, but there she was, Antionette Gebauer and from there an amazing journey into a family I had never heard any stories about but one, and all that consisted of was how my grandpa and his siblings all got their baths once a week in the same bath water and this was only because my grandma insisted on daily baths for me and more if needed and he felt that wasn't healthy he survived with a once a week bath. So when I was able see his family that vision was part of what I saw as I added names to that bath water.

But his mother's name started opening doors back in the early days of internet genealogy. I had purchased a new program to use, Family Tree Maker, it came with CDs that had family trees that others had submitted, I remember putting her name in the search window and the first tree that came up had my grandpa's name right in the middle of those 8 children, along with a way to contact the person who had submitted the tree, I nervously wrote this person and a few days later had a reply, turns out he grew up with my mom and her brother, the families where close and he shared stories of Antonette. At that point one of granpa's sisters was still living and he shared with her what blanks I could fill in of granpa's family in California.  So now 20+ years later I am putting this information here on the internet hoping to maybe connect with others looking for this branch of the family.