Celebrating My Stepmother for Mother's Day

Today, May 12, is Mother's Day.  By coincidence, May 12 was also my stepmother's birthday, so I decided to write about her this year for Mother's Day.

Virginia Ann "Ginny" Daugherty (if I remember correctly, she pronounced it "dockerty") was born May 12, 1932 in Cuyahoga Falls, Cuyahoga County, Ohio.  Her parents were Clarence Elmer Daugherty and Clara Margaret Petro.

My father was her second husband; she was my father's third wife.  They were married December 4 (my father's birthday), 1980 in Niceville, Okaloosa County, Florida.  Their marriage lasted longer than my father's first two marriages combined.

She and my father lived in several different places — many cities in the Florida panhandle, Ohio, Texas — but their last residence was Mary Esther, Florida.  That's where they were living when my father passed away in 2019.

Ginny could not live by herself at that point, so after he died, my stepbrother Don took her to Texas to live with him and his wife.  She died a year and a half later, on December 18, 2020.

Ginny was a sweet, caring person who was a joy to be around.  We all miss her very much.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: A Genealogy Fun Day

There's nothing like an open-ended invitation to write about almost anything, which is what we have tonight from Randy Seaver for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

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

1.  When was the last time you had genealogy fun?  It could be research, conferences, a society meeting, or just talking with friends about your research, a favorite trip, etc.  Tell us about a recent genealogy fun day!

2.  Share your answers on your own blog or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

I have had lots of genealogy fun the past two days!

Recently the Ukraine Research Division of JewishGen (the self-proclaimed home of Jewish genealogy on the Web) announced that it had uploaded a bunch of records from several different locations, including (finally!) Kamenets-Podolsky (formerly in Russia; current name Kamianets-Podilskyi, Ukraine).  I was very excited, as that is where I have always been told my maternal grandmother's father's family was from, but I had no documents from there showing their names.  I actually had not been optimistic about ever finding any, due to a significant fire several years ago that affected the archive there.

So I searched using the form on the JewishGen home page, looking for Gorodetsky (my great-grandfather's original surname) in Ukraine.

And I found my great-great-grandparents' marriage record!!!

Record #109 (bottom)
Marriage record for Vigdor Gorodetsky and Esther Leya Schnayderman
August 17, 1888 (Julian calendar; August 29 on Gregorian calendar)
Kamenets-Podolsky, Podolia, Russian Empire
(image has been edited to crop out other records on the page)

Not only was this exciting because, hey, it's a new family record, but it actually corroborated several hypotheses I had made over the years.

• I had guessed my great-great-grandmother's maiden name to be Schneiderman, based on correlating a lot of information from multiple generations of relatives.  Correct!

• I had guessed that her father's name was Joine (pronounced yoy-ne) after looking at naming patterns in my family.  Correct!

• I had estimated the marriage to have taken place before 1891.  It was in 1888.  Correct!

• I had guessed that the marriage should have taken place in Kamenets-Podolsky.  Correct!

• I had estimated my great-great-grandfather's birth year to be between 1864 and 1868.  He was listed as 25 at the time of the marriage, putting his birth year about 1863–1864.  Damned close!

• And I had estimated my great-great-grandmother's birth year to be between 1868 and 1874.  She was listed as 21 at the time of the marriage, putting her birth year about 1867–1868.  Also damned close!

It is great to have my logic substantiated by the actual record.

And on top of that, I have also found two dozen additional records — births, marriages, divorces, deaths, revision lists (kind of like a census) — for my Schneiderman and related lines, including Kardish and Belder.  I have been staying up way too late for the past couple of days because I can't tear myself away from the computer.

Genealogy fun?  Absolutely!  I've been doing the genealogy happy dance for two days!

Thank you, Randy, for giving us a topic tonight that allowed me to write about my cool discovery!

Wordless Wednesday

 

Yom HaShoah: Remembering the Lost

Yom HaShoah falls on 27 Nisan of the Jewish calendar, which measures days from sunset to sunset.  This year on the Christian calendar it began at sunset today, May 5, and will end at sunset on May 6.  It is the annual day of remembrance to commemorate the fates of the approximately 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust during World War II.

The following are my family members I have been told died in the Holocaust.  All of them are from the Mekler/Nowicki branch of my family and lived in what was Grodna gubernia in the Russian Empire (now in Belarus).  May their memory be for a blessing.

Beile Dubiner
Eliezer Dubiner
Herschel Dubiner
Moishe Dubiner
Sore (Mekler) Dubiner
Aidel Goldsztern
Golda Goldsztern
Josef Goldsztern
Pearl (Gorfinkel) Goldsztern
Tzvi Goldsztern
Esther Golubchik
Fagel Golubchik
Lazar Golubchik
Peshe (Mekler) Golubchik
Pinchus Golubchik
Yechail Golubchik
Mirka (Nowicki) Krimelewicz
— Krimelewicz
Beile Szocherman
Chanania Szocherman
Mobsza Eli Szocherman
Perel Szocherman
Raizl (Perlmutter) Szocherman
Zlate Szocherman

Mirka Krimelewicz's name on the passenger list for my
great-great-grandparents Gershon and Dobra Nowicki, as
their nearest relative in the country they immigrated from in 1922.
She was their daughter and the sister of my great-grandmother.
This is the only documentation I have of her name and of her existence.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Make a Descendants List for Second-great-grandparents

This week's challenge from Randy Seaver for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun is almost something I can do from memory, at least for some of my family lines (okay, only on my mother's side).

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

1.  How complete is your family tree?  Do you have information about your cousins, both close and more distant?  Today's challenge is to take one set of your 2nd-great-grandparents and make a descendants list (using your genealogy management program, e.g., Family Tree Maker, RootsMagic, etc.).

2.  Tell us about your choice of 2nd-great-grandparents and tell us approximately how many descendants of them that you have in your family tree database.  Share your answers, and perhaps a chart, on your own blog or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

And here's mine:

My family line with the most people on it for this exercise was the Dunstans, which surprised me.  I expected it to be the Gauntts.  Both of these are on my father's side.

The format that Randy used is called an Outline Descendant Report in Family Tree Maker, which is the program that I primarily use.  For this report FTM automatically set the number of generations at 99, which I didn't change.  It turned out to be six generations anyway, the same number of generations that Randy used.

Starting with my 2nd-great-grandparents Frederick Cleworth Dunstan (1840–1873) and Martha Winn (1837–1884), the result was 12 pages with about 20 descendant names on each page, so roughly 240 descendants total.  This is the first page of that report:

On my mother's side, the family with the most descendants was the Gordons (originally Gorodetsky).  The report for those 2nd-great-grandparents, Victor Gordon (circa 1866–1924) and Esther Leah Schneiderman (circa 1871–1908), ran nine pages.  It had about 25 descendant names on each page, so roughly 225 descendants overall.

The shortest report was for my paternal grandfather's paternal line.  As I still have not determined who his biological father was, that line stops with my grandfather.  The report was only four pages.  I was surprised to see that when I did take it back two additional generations of Sellerses, the report only increased to six pages total.  I admit I am not doing research on the Sellers line anymore, so that may be why.