Taking the First Kid to See Zadie (Grandpa)

I'm more than a little obsessive, so I like looking for all the documents I can find for my ancestors and collateral relatives also.  I'm always searching for everyone's names in databases.

Everyone on my mother's side of the family from the generation of my great-grandparents and some of their children immigrated to the United States during the early 20th century.  I have spent a lot of time searching for all of my immigrant relatives in passenger list databases.  This not only provides me with their original names prior to Americanization, but also tell me birth places and names of relatives who were still in Europe, listed as contacts in the old country.

One person I have continued to search for is my great-grandmother's sister, known as Jennie in this country.  After putting several puzzle pieces together, I have determined that her Jewish name was probably Zlate, although I have yet to find the passenger list for her first arrival in this country.

I know that Jennie married her cousin Louis Perlman (originally Leiser Perlmutter) June 30, 1908 in Brooklyn, so she had to have arrived before that date.  On May 22, 1906, my great-grandfather Moishe Meckler came into New York and provided the name of his sister-in-law — Zlate — as his relative here, so she was here before then.

Louis himself arrived at Ellis Island a few days earlier than Moishe, on May 19, 1906, and said the relative he was coming to was his cousin, so she was here before that date.  And Jennie's brother Sam arrived July 27, 1905 and listed her as his point of contact, so she was here by then.

But I still haven't found that passenger list for Jennie.  I have found her on a passenger list, but for several years later.

On the passenger list for the S.S. Zeeland, which departed Antwerp May 18, 1912 and arrived in New York May 29 (113 years ago today!), two of the passengers were Jennie Perlman and her son, Rubin Perlman.  They traveled in the second-class cabin, not in steerage, which was the normal method of travel for poor immigrant Jews coming from Eastern Europe.

Jennie and Rubin are the last two names in this image

Another unusual aspect of their travel is that they were apparently not held at Ellis Island.  Unlike the woman and her three children on lines 3 through 6, who are marked with X's, indicating they were detained; or the three minors on lines 14 through 16, just above Jennie, who have SI in front of each of their names, overstamped with ADMITTED, indicating they were held for Special Inquiry, Jennie and Rubin were apparently admitted with no delay.  Normally a woman of child-bearing age who was not accompanied by a man — particularly a woman with a child — was held until someone came to meet her, due to concerns that she would become a burden upon society, a "likely public charge" (abbreviated as LPC on pages listing detainees).  Maybe Louis met her at the ship.

Something not visually evident is that Jennie shouldn't have been listed on this page at all.  The title at the top of the page is very clear, in large capital letters:  LIST OR MANIFEST OF ALIEN PASSENGERS.  But Jennie was no longer an alien.  Her husband, Louis, became a naturalized citizen of the United States on January 23, 1912.  Under the laws of the time, she automatically became a citizen at the same time.  And Rubin was born here, so he was a citizen.  I don't know why Jennie and Rubin are on this page and not on a page for U.S. citizens.  On the other hand, I don't know when they departed the United States to travel to Europe, so it's possible that Louis had not completed his naturalization before they left.

When I first discovered this passenger list, I wondered why Jennie had taken the trip.  Then I noticed who she said was her nearest relative in the country whence she came:  her father, G. [Gershon] Nowitzky.  I think she went to visit her parents to introduce them to her first child.  Rubin wasn't Gershon's first grandchild — my great-grandmother Minnie, who was Jennie's older sister, had her first three children in Europe, and Gershon would have known them — but maybe Jennie was worried her parents wouldn't come to the United States (they didn't come until ten years after this) and wanted to make sure Rubin had an opportunity to meet them.

I'm glad I found this passenger list.  On th second page, in addition to saying that Jennie was born in Porozowo, Russia (now Porazava, Belarus), there is a notation that Jennie first came to the United States in 1904 and was in New York.  Maybe that will help me track down that first passenger list.

Wedding Wednesday

As I have been working my way through the scanned photo bonanza I received from my sister a year and a half ago (how time flies!), I have found some lovely family gems that I was not expecting.  Among them were these beautiful wedding photos for one of my cousins, with full identifications on the backs!

As documented in the informative notes on the backs of the photos (thank you to whichever incredibly intelligent person did this!), this is the wedding of Andrea Michelle Ellis (daughter of Daniel Ellis and Patti Montgomery) and Ronald J. Bean, which was celebrated on May 27, 1999 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Not all the relationships are stated in the notes.  Albert and Imogene Ellis are the parents of Daniel, Randy, and Michael.  Daniel and Patti are the parents of Bill and Andrea.  Patti's parents (Andrea's maternal grandparents) are Bill and Betty Montgomery.  Elise is Randy's wife.  And I have to admit I don't know where Elizabeth fits in.  Maybe she is on the Bean side.

The beautiful bride, Andrea Ellis, is my 2nd cousin 1x removed through the Ellises, to whom I am related on my paternal grandmother's side, the Gauntts.  Of all the people in the photos, I knew Albert and Imogene, and I think I may have met Michael once (I know I've talked to him on the phone).  But they're all my relatives, and I am happy to celebrate the 26th anniversary of Ronald and Andrea's wedding (which actually was yesterday, but only one day off when following a blog meme is pretty good).

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Did You Have Fun This Past Week?

Yay!  Randy Seaver gave me the perfect opening to talk about my great genealogy discoveries for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music) is:

1.  Did you have good genealogy fun this past week?  Did you add to your family tree?  Did you make a great discovery?  Did you try something new?  Did you make family history?

2.  Share your genealogy fun in this past week on your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, or BlueSky post.  Leave a link on this blog post to  help us find your post.

I was hoping that whatever topic Randy chose for tonight would be something I could work to my advantage, and it is!  Because I definitely had genealogy fun this past week.

Several months ago (August, in fact), Lara Diamond wrote on her Lara's Jewnealogy blog about Alien Registration forms (AR-2's) from 1940 having been transferred from USCIS to the National Archives.  These were forms that people who had not become citizens — whether they had filed only first papers or had filed no papers at all toward citizenship — had to fill out at the beginning of World War II.

The form asked for all names an alien had used, including maiden names, so you can find a still-unknown maiden name if a woman registered.  If you haven't found someone on a passenger list, that was information the person had to include.  If an individual had filed first papers but not followed through with the petition to finish the naturalization process, that was also requested on the form.

So I've known about these forms since August.  There's a great search form on the NARA site you can use to look for all those relatives of yours who might be in there.  I found my great-great-grandfather Gershon Novitsky (originally Nowicki), his niece (my first cousin 3x removed) Ethel Novitsky (also originally Nowicki, but immigrated under her married name of Perlmutter), my great-grandmother's baby brother Benjamin Brainin, and a cousin named Molly Nowick (originally, you guessed it, Nowicki).

This is the same search form I used when I looked for my sister's significant other's grandfather (boy, is that convoluted), which I wrote about in January.  Gary ordered his grandfather's AR-2, and it arrived only a day or two later, just as Lara described in her blog.  Hooray for NARA!

Well, I finally was able to send in my first AR-2 order.  I requested those for Gershon Novitsky and Ethel Novitsky.

NARA didn't fail me.  The next business day after I had sent my request, I had a response telling me how much it would cost and what to do.  I followed through, and the day after that I had my PDF's, sent electronically.  Hooray for NARA again!

I knew a lot of the information on Gershon's form, but two pieces of data confirmed stories that had not yet been documented.  One was something cousins had told me:  Yes, Gershon had originally immigrated to the United States in 1922, but a few years later he took a trip back to Europe and then returned.  And right there on his AR-2, he said that he had last come to this country in 1926 and provided a different ship name than the one on which he had arrived in 1922.  (I'm still looking for that second passenger list.  I'm wondering if my great-great-grandmother traveled with him and which relative they listed in Europe.)

The second item was something I noticed when I found Gershon in the 1930 census:  He had apparently filed his "first papers", or his Declaration of Intention.  After finding this, I had searched in the immigration database on Ancestry, but I had not found him.  But on the AR-2, he provided a spelling for his name I had not seen previously:  Gershen Navitzky.  And when I searched for that exact spelling, I found his Declaration, which he filed at the age of 72!

Other tidbits from the form were a complete birth date (which I am not taking as gospel, but it's the first time I have seen one for him), his birthplace of Porozowo (which I had hypothesized), and the fact that he signed in Hebrew but apparently could not sign in English.  He also stated that he had four children living in the United States, and I believe I have them all accounted for.

The second AR-2 I received was that for Gershon's niece, Ethel Novitsky.  I have avidly researched Ethel and her family, because there are multiple connections with my branch of the family, but I had never found her on a passenger list.  I had narrowed down the arrival to around 1921 and had determined three of her children whom I thought had traveled with her, but I just could not find them.

Guess what?  Ethel provided the ship name, date of arrival, and port — which was not New York!  Nope, she came into Boston.

Okay, jump onto the computer and start searching.  And yes, I found her this time, and the three children I had surmised should be with her.  She had the correct port and ship name and was only a couple of weeks off on the arrival date.  And now I have the Jewish names for all four of them.  Okay, most of them were easy guesses:  Etta for Ethel, Chane for Anna, and Feiga for Fannie.  But I never could have come up with Kadusz for Karl.  I also learned the name of Ethel's brother, about whom I had never heard even a whisper.  He was her nearest relative back in Europe.  I also know it's the right family because they were going to Ethel's son Louis, whom I have researched a lot.

Other helpful items from Ethel's form are a complete birth date, which I am again not taking as gospel, and her birthplace of Shereshevo, which I had correctly hypothesized.  She said she had six children living in the United States, all of whom I have found.  Ethel, unlike Gershon, was able to sign her name in English.

Comparing Gershon's form to Ethel's, I also kind of confirmed one more family story.  I was told many years ago that there was an old Jewish custom, when an older man was widowed, he would often "marry" his niece, who would become kind of his caretaker.  I was told that was the case with Gershon and Ethel.  (I don't know if it really is an old Jewish custom, but I have a second instance of this in my family.)  On their forms, they both said they were widowed, but when I looked at their addresses, they were both living at 1413 44th Street in Brooklyn.  But from what I've heard about Gershon, who was supposedly an energetic old man up until his death at the age of 92, I somehow don't think he actually needed a caretaker.

And I just ordered my next two AR-2's!  I can hardly wait to see what I learn about Benny and Molly.

Wordless Wednesday

Ginny in Black and White

Today is the birthday of my stepmother, Virginia "Ginny" Ann (Daugherty) Truby Sellers.  She and my father were married December 4, 1980.  She was my father's third wife; he was her second husband.  Their marriage lasted longer than both of his first two marriages put together.

I am sure my father took this photograph because it's in black and white.  He loved working in black and white.  The photo was in the bonanza that my sister sent me a year and a half ago (I'm still working my way through it!).  My best guess is that it was taken during the 2010's, but I can't narrow it down more than that.

I'm not sure what to make of the look on Ginny's face.  It's kind of like she's giving Daddy the evil eye for taking her photo.

Well, evil eye or not, Ginny, happy birthday.  We miss you.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Celebrate Mother's Day and Show Us Some Photos

Tomorrow is Mother's Day, so it was to be expected that Randy Seaver would have that as the focus for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post.  (Today's topic revisits the same one from 2018, with updated social media links.)

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music), is:

1.  Sunday, 11 May, is Mother's Day in the USA.  Let's celebrate it by showing some of our photos with our mothers.

2.  Extra credit:  What did you call your mother during her life?  What did your children call your mother?

3.  More extra credit:  Have you written a biography or tribute to your mother?  If so, please share a link if you have one.

4.  Share your photo(s) on your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, or BlueSky post.  Leave a link on this blog post to help us find your mom photos.

1.  I remember that the last time Randy challenged us to share photos of ourselves with our mothers, I could only find a couple.  Since having received the photo bonanza from my sister, however, I have many, many more!  Here's a small selection.

This is the earliest photograph I have found of myself.  The photo was developed in October 1962, and I was born in April, so the oldest I can be is 6 months.  The shadow on the skirt of my mother's dress has to be the head of my father, the person likely taking the photo.

I've estimated I'm about a year old in this photo, so it's probably from 1963.  I was told by my cousin Beth (who is in a different photo with me in the same location) that this is Disneyland.

I like the whimsical nature of this one, which had to have been taken by my father.  It's June 1964, and my mother seems to be pregnant, so the absolute latest the photo could have been taken is June 16, and then only if she gave birth to my sister Stacy later on the same day.  This photo might have been taken in La Puente; I'll ask my sister Laurie if she recognizes the house.

This photo was taken in June 1969, when my mother took all three of us kids to Florida for our cousin Gail's wedding.  From left to right we are my brother, Mark; our mother, Myra; me; and my sister, Stacy.  My brother looks miserable for some reason.  I look happy, though.

This photo was developed in June 1973 and was taken at the trailer park where my family lived in Niceville, Florida.  I believe, from left to right going into the trailer, it is me, Mark, Stacy, and our mother.  I'm pretty sure my father took this photo, but I can't imagine why.

This is me and my mother standing on the porch of my Aunt Dottie's house in Niceville.  I'm about 16, so it's roughly 1978.  We're obviously dressed up to go somewhere (I remember that dress!), but I don't remember this at all, so I don't know what the occasion is or why we were having our photo taken at my aunt's.  I'm going to be asking my brother, my sister, and my stepfather what they recall.  If my aunt were still alive, I'd ask her also.

I find it interesting that the three photos I'm pretty sure my father took are black and white.  That means he probably developed them himself at home.

2.  I called my mother Mommy her entire life.  My stepsons never met my mother, as she died young.

3.  I have written a tribute to my mother, as a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post in 2017.  I have also written about her many times for Mother's Day separately from SNGF posts.

Honoring the Nurse in My Family on National Nurses Day

I know of one registered nurse in my family to celebrate on National Nurses Day:  my grandaunt Florence Meckler.  Specifically, she was a pediatric RN.  She was one of my maternal grandfather's younger sisters.

Florence was born December 22, 1915 (coincidentally, the exact same date as my maternal grandmother's oldest brother) in Brooklyn, New York.  I don't know where she attended nursing school or when she graduated, but it must have been before 1939, because on January 1, 1939 there was a photo of her in the newspaper holding the first two children born in the new year at Beth El Hospital in Brooklyn.  I am lucky enough to have the newspaper clipping because my grandmother saved it and had it in her photo album.

Exactly two years after that brush with fame, Florence married Moshe Amine, on January 1, 1941, in Brooklyn.  Florence and Moshe had two children:  Yedida, who was born one year after my mother, also on Armistice Day (now called Veterans Day); and Beth, six years later.  Some years later Florence and Moshe divorced, and 20 years after that Florence married Max Stewart.

I don't know how long Florence worked as a nurse.  I really should ask my cousins about that, shouldn't I?

I never met Moshe, but I knew Florence and Max.  I visited them several times in Las Vegas, where they lived, when I went to conferences and trade shows there.  I continued to visit Florence after Max passed away.  We would usually go out to one of the big buffets in one of the casinos on the Strip.

Eventually, Florence moved to Scotts Valley, California, at the behest of her older daughter.  And then I visited her there, in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  I took her out for lunch and to go shopping.  I drove a cargo van at the time, and I remember she had trouble stepping up high enough to climb in (she was a tiny person), so I started bringing a step stool to make it easier for her.

During all that time, I don't think I knew that Florence had been a registered nurse.  But she definitely fussed over me about health stuff, trying to make sure I was taking care of myself.

And here's a photo of Florence holding me when I was about a year old, proving that we go back a long way.  The teenager next to her is her younger daughter, my cousin Beth, who recognized herself and told me that we were at Disneyland.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: How Many Autosomal DNA Matches Descend from Your Eight Pairs of 2nd-great-grandparents?

My participation in tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver is not going to be pretty.  Or fun.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  How many autosomal DNA matches do you have descended from your eight 2nd-great-grandparents (they would be your third cousins)?  Do you know how they are related to you?  Have you corresponded with them?  Why are your numbers high or low?

2.  Share the number of your autosomal DNA matches for each of your 2GGP and answer my questions above on your own blog, on Facebook or other social media, or in a comment on this blog.  Share the link to your post on this blog, so readers can respond.

Oh, this is going to be painful.

First, I need to mention a couple of clarifications.

I do not have eight 2nd-great-grandparents.  I have sixteen 2nd-great-grandparents, as does everyone else.  I have eight pairs of 2nd-great-grandparents, which I'm pretty sure is what Randy meant (and what I changed the title of mine to).

And not all of my autosomal matches who descend from any given pair of 2nd-great-grandparents are going to be my 3rd cousins.  I can have other relatives in addition to 3rd cousins who descend from one pair of ancestors.  If the question was intended to be "How many autosomal matches do I have who are identified as 3rd cousins?", that's significantly different from what Randy wrote, and he wouldn't have to ask, "Do you know how they are related to you?"  Maybe he started with one idea and it morphed into another.

Now that I've cleared the air on that (once an editor, always an editor), on to the disaster of my response for this challenge.

I have mentioned before (particularly when the question of DNA comes up) that my mother was Ashkenazi Jewish and that Ashkenazi Jews suffer from high degrees of endogamy due to lots of intermarriage.

Well, on Family Tree DNA, my current results show that I have 24,697 autosomal matches.

I'm sure that the vast majority of those are on my maternal side, and I have no idea (and probably never will) how they are specifically related to me, due to endogamy and the lovely obstacles that can exist for doing Jewish research in the former Russian Empire in general, particularly in the former Grodno guberniya, where three of my lines go back to.

For reasons unknown to me — I have not actually done much with my FTDNA matches in quite a while and have not kept up with all of the announcements — 1,525 of those matches are identified as paternal, 38 as maternal, and 710 as both.

I have very few matches on FTDNA where I have identified the specific relationship I have with them.  So I have no idea how FTDNA has come up with the numbers of matches that are paternal, maternal, or both.  I'm pretty sure I have not identified 38 relationship matches total, much less 38 on my maternal line alone.

And there is absolutely no crossover in a genealogically relevant period of time between the paternal and maternal sides of my family.  Absolutely none.  Period, end of report.

So I have no idea how FTDNA has identified 710 of my matches as being both paternal and maternal.  That is just flat-out wrong.  Unless there is another way to interpret "paternal and maternal" that I'm not coming up with on my own.

On top of all that, I don't even know one set of my 2nd-great-grandparents, because I as yet have not identified the biological father of my paternal grandfather.  If I don't know who that great-grandfather was, I don't know who his parents were.

As for the number of matches I have who are descended from my eight sets of 2nd-great-grandparents?

To quote Randy:

The number of autosomal DNA matches I have on FTDNA with a known common 2nd-great-grandparent is:

NONE.

The number of autosomal DNA matches I have on AncestryDNA with a known common 2nd-great-grandparent is:

Three total.

• James Gauntt (1831–1899) and Amelia Gibson (1831–1908):  2

• Mendel Hertz Brainin (c. 1860–1930) and Ruchel Dwojre Jaffe (c. 1866–1934):  1

Some days it's just not worth chewing through the straps.

I do have additional cousins who descend from various of my 2nd-great-grandparents and for whom I know the exact relationship who appear as autosomal matches in both databases.  I have corresponded with almost all of them.  Several of them I was able to determine the exact relationship only because I corresponded with them.  Some I recognized by name and knew the relationship immediately.

The huge numbers of matches on my maternal side I already discussed above.  I don't really know that I would characterize the numbers of matches on my paternal side as being particularly low.  It's more that I don't know the exact relationship for most of them.  That is due mostly to a lack of response when I have reached out, particularly with matches on AncestryDNA.  I attribute that to the fact that many, many people who test at Ancestry do it strictly for the cutesie-poo (and mostly useless) pie chart and don't care about anything else.