Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Farthest-flung Ancestor

I guessed the correct person in my family for Randy Seaver's question this week for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun!

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

1.  Our family trees contain historical persons who came from places all over the world.  Each of our ancestral lines came from somewhere.

2.  Can you identify your Farthest-flung Ancestor (FFA)?  Who in your ancestral tree came from the most geographically distant place from where you live now?  What brought that person (or his descendants) to where your family ended up?

3.  Share your information about your Farthest-flung Ancestor in your own blog post, write a comment on this blog post, or put it in a Substack post, Facebook Note, or some other social media system.  Please leave a comment on this post so others can find it.

Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for this idea.

Based on what I currently know about my ancestry, ancestors on my father's side came from the British Isles and on my mother's side from eastern Europe, in the former Russian Empire, so I focused on my mother's side.

I believe my great-grandfather Joyne Gorodetsky (who changed his name to Joe Gordon after he immigrated to the United States) was born in what is now known as Kamianets-Podilskyi, Ukraine.  It is 5,667.56 miles in a straight line from Gresham, Oregon, USA, where I currently live.

I also checked the distance to Krustpils, Latvia, where my great-grandmother Sore Leibe Brainin (known as Sarah Libby here) is supposed to have been born.  It is 5,152.8 miles from Gresham.

My great-great-grandfather Gershon Nowicki (who changed only the spelling of his last name, which became Novitsky, when he came here) was from Porazava, Belarus, which is 5,357.92 miles from Gresham.

And my great-grandfather Moshe Meckler (Morris Mackler here) was from Kamyanyets, Belarus, which is 5,382.88 from Gresham.

So the winner appears to be Joe Gordon.  He was the first person in that branch of my family to leave Europe for the Goldene Medine for better opportunities than were available to Jews in the Russian Empire.  He arrived at New York City in 1909, going to his uncle Sam Schneiderman.  The family's decision to leave appears to coincide with the death of my great-great-grandmother in November 1908, but I don't know if that was the deciding factor.

Joe's departure started the chain migration of his immediate family, most of whom came to the United States:  brother David in 1910; sister Sarah in 1911; father Victor and brothers Hyman and Morris in 1914; and sisters Anna and Rose in 1921.  The oldest sister, Etta, who was already married and had children, went with her family to Ottawa, Canada, where her husband's family (he had eleven siblings!) had immigrated.

I don't know if my great-great-grandfather Victor (or his father Gersh Wolf) was born in Kamianets-Podilskyi or in nearby Orynyn, but it is only 5,658.4 miles from Gresham.  So Kamianets-Podilskyi is the clear winner for distance.

I used Distance Calculator US to determine the straight-line distances between locations.

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: A Name That Runs in the Family

I didn't realize I had missed so many Saturday Night Genealogy Fun posts of late.  I'm happy to be able to post for this week's challenge from Randy Seaver!

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

1.  We all have many names (given, middle, surname, nickname) in our ancestry, whether we know all of them or not.

2.  Do you have a name that runs in your family?  Is there a first name — or nickname — that keeps repeating generation after generation in your tree?  Share the name, the pattern, and your best guess as to why it stuck.

3.  Share your information about your repeating name in your >own blog post, in a a comment on this blog post, or in a Substack post, Facebook Note, or some other social media system.  Please leave a comment on this post so others can find it.

Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for this idea.

I have not found any major patterns of repeating names in my family on either side.  My fifth(?)-great-grandfather Hananiah Gaunt had a son named Hananiah Selah Gaunt, and if I remember correctly he had a son named Hananiah, for three generations of that name.  My fifth-great-great-grandfather's grandfather was also a Hananiah.  That makes four generations with one skipped.

My adoptive great-great-grandfather, Cornelius Godschalk Sellers, named his son Cornelius Elmer (who went by Elmer).  Elmer named his first son Cornelius Howard; the child died at the age of 2, and no one else has been named Cornelius since that I know of.  Cornelius Godschalk had an uncle named Cornelius, but that man didn't name any of his sons Cornelius.  So one collateral plus three generations.

My mother's family was Ashkenazi Jewish, and they have a tradition of not naming after a living relative, so while family members were still practicing Jews I have found no consecutive generations with the same name.  What you will often find, however, is that a name skips a generation.  So my great-great-grandmother was Esther Leah (Schneiderman) Gorodetsky, and four of her children named their first daughter Esther Leah.  There would have been a fifth Esther Leah, but when it came down to finalizing the name, Morris' wife said she didn't want her daughter to be yet another Esther Leah, so she was Esther Malka, with the Malke being for a deceased ancestor on the wife's side of the family.  But I don't know of any Esther Leahs in succeeding generations.

An interesting lack of a continued name is that of my 3rd-great-grandfather Gersh Wolf Gorodetsky.  I know of no descendants named after him.  I don't know if that was because he was still alive when grandchildren were being born, so they wouldn't have used his name because of the tradition, or if he maybe wasn't such a nice person and not well loved by family members.

On the other hand, in my ex's Irish family, I have found the multigenerational name of Edmund.  I have documented four of five generations where the first son was named Edmund (and in one generation, when that first son died as an infant, the next son was also named Edmund).  (I consider it likely that the generation where I haven't found an Edmund is simply that I haven't found him yet.)  My ex was the second son, and his older brother was indeed named Edmund.  No one in my ex's generation named a son Edmund, though.  I have heard rumors as to why that didn't occur, but as all of the relevant parties are still alive, it is not for me to say why that situation exists.

Wordless Wednesday

Eleventh Anniversary

Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Artifacts Did You Find in an Ancestor's Closet/Attic/Garage?

Coming to the party a little late, but better late than never, right?  I have received treasures I can write about for the recent Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

1.  Were you lucky enough to receive or find artifacts from your relatives (parents, grandparents, others) as you pursued your genealogy research?

2.  Describe one or more of the artifacts you found or received and where you obtained them.

3.  Share your information about your ancestral artifacts in your own blog post, write a comment on this blog post, or put it in a Substack post, Facebook Note, or some other social media system.  Please leave a comment on this post so others can find it.

Thank you to Marian B. Wood for this SNGF suggestion.

I have received two such artifact bounties and, to some degree, found a third.

After my paternal grandfather passed away in 1995, his widow moved to live with her nephew.  A couple of years after she died, her nephew contacted my aunt and asked whether she was interested in my grandfather's old papers and photographs.  I am still thrilled that she said yes and accepted them.  She kept them for some time and then gave them to my father, who dreamed of scanning everything.  He eventually gave up on that and asked me if I wanted them, and of course I said yes.  The photographs eventually helped me find my aunt (my father's youngest half-sister), and the papers follow his career through the civil service.

When my father passed away in 2019, I told my siblings the only physical items I was interested in were his photographs and his racing trophies.  They were all taken by my stepbrother from Florida to Texas when he closed out the property and moved his mother (my stepmother) to his home, and eventually found their way to my sister, also in Texas.  I still don't have the trophies or the original photos, but my sister's niece scanned the photos (I hope all of them), which my sister sent me on a flash drive (my photo bonanza).  I am still working on identifying many of the photos, and I have posted several here on my blog.

When my material grandmother suffered a stroke in 2005, it was immediately apparent that she would be unable to live on her own anymore.  I was able to arrange to work remotely, so I flew out to Florida to pack up everything from her apartment.  I brought home three large boxes of photographs stored in her closet, most of which were identified because I had visited my grandmother a year before that and had convinced her to let me label them.  I have made copies of and scanned several photos and shared them with my many cousins.

What Happened in June 1964?

These are three photographs that were developed in June 1964.  The date on photos indicated when they were developed, not when they were taken.  I believe they were taken in front of my family's home in La Puente, California.  The first two are of me, while the third is of me, my mother, and my sister Stacy.

What's that, you say?  You don't see my sister in the third photo?  Ah, but she is there.

If you'll note, my mother looks rather pregnant in the photograph.  And even if these photos were taken in, say, April or May and then developed later in June, that means Stacy is there, because she was born on June 16, 1964 in La Puente.

So this may be the earliest photo of Stacy that my father ever took.  Happy birthday, Stacy!