#71: Side-By-Side Sunday | Elizabeth Bonar and Charles Soltis

Side-By-Side Sunday:

Charles Soltis and Elizabeth Bonar

For this week's post, I am introducing a new prompt: Side-by-Side Sunday. In family history, we often look for the threads that bind us together, but sometimes the most revealing stories are found in the spaces where we drifted apart. For this inaugural Side-by-Side Sunday, I am laying out the final records of my great-grandparents. By placing their death certificates and their shared headstone next to one another, we see a vivid picture of two people who shared a homeland and a family, yet ended their journeys in very different worlds.

At first glance, the records of Charles and Elizabeth Soltis show the symmetry you would expect from a husband and wife. Both were born in the late 19th century in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire—modern-day Slovakia—and both eventually found their way to the rugged mining communities of Pierce County, Washington. However, a closer look at these documents reveals the "Clean Break" that would come to define my grandfather's line.

While they are reunited today under a single stone in Calvary Cemetery, their paths to that final resting place couldn't have been more distinct: one characterized by the rugged life of a laborer in the community, and the other by nearly thirty years of quiet institutionalization.

Calvary Cemetery, Tacoma, Washington

Charles Soltis

(Click image to enlarge)

Subject	Record Detail
Name	Soltis, Charles
Date of Death	Feb. 2, 1948
Birthplace	Slavonia (Slovakia)
Date of Birth	Dec. 14, 1876
Residence	1211 So. 14th, Tacoma, WA
Place of Death	Pierce County Hospital
Primary Cause	Congestive Heart Failure

Elizabeth Soltis

(Click image to enlarge)

Subject	Record Detail
Name	Soltis, Elizabeth
Date of Death	Dec. 29, 1952
Birthplace	Hungary
Date of Birth	1885
Residence	4521 So. M. Street, Tacoma, WA
Place of Death	Western State Hospital
Primary Cause	Cancer of the Stomach and Generalized Arteriosclerosis

Genealogy Snapshot

Name: Charles Soltis
Parents: Joseph Soltis and Sophia Medlarsz
Name: Elizabeth Bednar/Bonar
Parents: Peter Bonar and Mary
Relationship to me: Great-Grandparents

1. Elizabeth Bednar/Bonar and Charles Soltis
2. Charles William Summers (Soltis) and Anna Marie Gillen
3. My Mother/Father
4. Me