Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Most Recent No-Name Ancestor

I'm not going to write about the ancestor most people might expect for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

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

1.  Sometimes an ancestor or relative has no name at all — not even a given name (for males, we usually can surmise a surname, but . . .).  We all have millions of them.

2.  Tell us about one (or more) of your ancestors that have no given name and no birth surname who has perhaps married an ancestor with a given name and surname from whom you are descended.  (Don't worry, we'll do unknown parents some time soon.)

3.  When was the last time you looked for this no-name ancestor?

4.  Share information about your no-name ancestor(s) in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook comment.

Okay, here's mine.

I'm sure many people would expect me to write about my paternal grandfather's father, whom I usually discuss when it comes to recent ancestors I haven't identified.  But in June I posted that I have decided his last name must be Mundy (or a spelling variant thereof), and I was already pretty sure his given name included "bert" in it.  So he really isn't a no-name ancestor anymore.

I'm going further afield.

The first person who next came to my mind is the father of my great-great-grandmother Beila, who married Simcha Dovid Mekler, possibly in Kamenets Litovsk (now Kamyanyets, Belarus).  I wrote about her in August for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, "Five Questions for an Ancestor."  I know her given name, and I have estimated her year of death to be before 1924.  That's all I know about her.

So it stands to reason that I don't know anything about her father, who I am calling my "no-name ancestor" for the purpose of this post.

I admit I have never looked for him.  To be honest, I have barely looked for Beila.  I'm pretty sure both were born in the Russian Empire.  I think Beila was probably born in what was Grodno gubernia and is now part of Belarus.  Her father might have been born there, or possibly in what is now Lithuania.

If I could find a marriage record for Beila, it might include her father's name on it.  But because of the dearth of records for Jews in the former Grodno gubernia (most having been deliberately destroyed during World War II, to eradicate the history of the Jews in the area), it is unlikely I will ever find that marriage record.

If I could find a tombstone for Beila, it might have her father's name on it in Hebrew.  But the Jewish cemeteries in that area were also pretty thoroughly destroyed during World War II, and it is unlikely I will find that tombstone.

If I could find the family in a Russian revision list, perhaps the 1897 list, it would probably list her father's name and maybe even a maiden name.  Even a Russified version would be helpful.  I actually have tried searching for her, Simcha Dovid Mekler, and the two children I know of in the revision lists as transcribed on JewishGen.org, but I have not found them.  I know that many of the revision lists did not survive.  Perhaps one day a page with my family on it will be found in an attic or tucked inside the wall of a house.