Introduction:

As I was growing up, my part of the family thought that there were only a few Adaskins in the New World.   In 1977, Harry Adaskin published his memoirs in two volumes,  A Fiddler's World and A Fiddler's Choice.    The first chapter of the first book contains a story of our ancestry that Harry learned from his father.  This greatly increased my knowledge of the family history but didn't identify any other people still living that bore the name.

Twenty years later, that all changed!  (Gee, this is starting to sound like a Michener novel!)

In April, 1997 I received an e-mail out of the blue from one Andrew Schwartz asking if I knew  a person named Harry Adaskin.  He explained that he was an amateur genealogist and was exploring the lineage of his Mother-in-Law's maiden name (Adaskin).  I replied that Harry was my father's uncle and gave him some of the information from Harry's first book.

Since then Andy has done an incredible job of tracking down the family tree.   With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the explosion of the internet he has been able to make contact with Adaskins in Russia and Belarus, something that, as a boy, I thought would never be possible.   A great deal of the information presented here is available to me due to Andy's persistance and ingenuity.

The Adaskin family tree:

(link to Andy's web site)

Here is an outline of the family tree starting with Laibe Adaskin (born ca. 1750).  The format of this is a little unwieldy now.   Hopefully, I will soon learn how to create collapsable lists on a web page that will simplify this diagram immensely.  This file is the output of a genealogy database program called "The Master Genealogist" developed by Wholly Genes, Inc.   Both Andy and I use this program to keep track of our respective genealogies.

Chapter 1 of A Fiddler's World by Harry Adaskin

Pictures from Joan Adaskin's 75th Birthday party

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