Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Are Your Ancestors Missing in the Census?

I'm responding to a previous Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver rather than the one posted today, so if it seems that my calendar is a little off, that's why.

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

1.  Which of your ancestors or relatives have you NOT found in the census records and what have you done or are doing to try to find that person?  Can AI help?

2.  Identify one or more of your ancestors that are inexplicably missing from one or more census collections.  Why do you think they were not enumerated?

3.  Share your information about your ancestor or relative NOT in the census records 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 idea.

1940 was not a good census year for finding members of my father's family.  I have not found, and at this point do not expect to find, my father, his parents, his half-sisters, or his paternal grandmother in the census.

When the 1940 census was released, I of course excitedly began to look for all my relatives.  Yet even after the names were indexed and searchable on FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com, I couldn't find my father and those other family members.  And I knew all of their complete names and birth dates!  I tried with names, without names, partial names, with birth information, without birth information, with location and without, and various combinations of those.  I just couldn't find any of them.

At some point in his life (I suspect it was for a security clearance), my grandfather compiled a list of all the places at which he had lived.  He had three different cities for 1940 (and four for 1935!).  I checked all of them through Steve Morse's Unified Census ED Finder and then manually searched each of the enumeration districts.  I found absolutely nothing having to do with my family.  They apparently missed the census taker in all three cities due to their moves.

So that ruled out my father, grandparents, and aunts.  I then focused on my great-grandmother.  She was living in the same house that had been associated with her family since at least 1900, in which census I found her, her mother, and her granduncle and grandaunt.  I even have a photograph of the house.  I also have the street address, so I could narrow down my enumeration districts more finely than I had been able to for the searches for my father.

And when I searched the two enumeration districts that resulted from my use of Steve Morse's tools, I got . . . nothing again.  After going through the pages twice to make sure I hadn't missed her, I found that her specific address was not enumerated, neither in the first listing by the census taker nor in the second go-round.  It just isn't there.  I don't know why the census taker didn't list her address, but it does not appear in the census.

I admit that I have not used AI to try to solve this, and I don't plan to try.  I see no reason to think that AI can help or that it will magically make my family members appear out of nowhere.  I have used the logical available tools.  They simply were missed in the census, which happens to some people in every census enumeration.

I first searched for my father and his family in the 1940 census in 2012, soon after the census was released.  I repeated the searches for this post, and those family members are still not in the census.

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Describe One of Your Own, or an Ancestor's, Life Turning Point

An interesting topic from Randy Seaver for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

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

1.  Every historical person has major events, milestones, and "turning points" in his life, from birth through death and even beyond.  These events, milestones, and turning points can be the basis for family stories of the historical person.

2.  Please share one of those events in your own life or the life of one of your ancestors.

3.  Share your information about your major event, milestone, or turning point 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.

If you write about one of your ancestors without being able to talk to that person, you have to be the judge of what might have been a turning point in that person's life, which might be difficult sometimes.  It's easy to decide what a turning point was in the life of my paternal grandfather, though, even if he didn't call it that.

After an accident, my grandfather had a leg amputated at the age of 12 or 13.  That's an obvious turning point in someone's life, because it's going to affect a lot of things that happen to you afterward, especially when the event took place in 1916.

Something I have wondered about since having learned more details about the accident is how Grandpa was able to get hospital care and when he might have first been fitted with a prosthesis (and what would that have been like in the first quarter of the 20th century?).  His parents never had a lot of money, and this would have put a huge strain on the family.  I have begun to suspect that his paternal grandmother, Katherine "Kate" Moore, might have stepped in to pay for things.  I know when Grandpa's father, Elmer, died in 1918, she was the one who paid for the funeral.

Elmer's death would also have had an impact on the family's finances, as he was the breadwinner.  In the 1915 New Jersey state census, Grandpa's mother, Laura, was listed as a housewife, so she apparently was not employed outside the home at that time.  What did she do when Elmer died?  How did she support her family?  Did Kate help them?

Two years later, in 1920, Laura and her four children (including my grandfather) were enumerated in the census with her granduncle Amos and grandaunt Rebecca (notwithstanding the fact that the census taker listed her as their daughter and the four children as Amos and Rebecca's stepchildren).  Laura had no occupation; Amos was working as a farm laborer, but he did own his house free and clear.  Was Amos able to contribute to any expenses for Grandpa's care?  I think Kate was still alive then (I don't have documentation of her death, but many people list it as around 1922–1924 in their trees on Ancestry); was she helping?

And in 1923 Grandpa married his first wife, Elizabeth.  Did he have a prosthesis then?  I have found their marriage date in an index, but I don't yet have a copy of the marriage record.  What was his occupation?  How did he support his family?

I started looking around for information about prosthetics in this period.  Grandpa might have benefited from the innovations in this field that took place because of World War I.  With the large numbers of injured soldiers, changes were taking place in how prosthetics were designed and made.

The more I think about this, the more questions I have.  I need to do a lot more digging.

From a Bar to a Museum

Way back in October 2023, I wrote about the photo bonanza I had received from my sister, with thousands of scans of my father's photographs. At least I originally thought they were all my father's photos.

After my first round of labeling photos from one box, I had already discovered that some of the photographs couldn't have been taken by my father, such as the one where he is a months-old baby being held by my grandfather.  But I still had in mind that most of the photos were his.  Then I discovered this one:

This is a photograph of Flannery's bar and restaurant.  The photo has a date of Aug 1973 on it, which reflects when it was developed.

So I immediately wondered what in the world an airplane was doing on the roof of a restaurant.  A few Google searches led me to the knowledge that this was Jim Flannery's Restaurant in Penndel, Pennsylvania, and that is a Lockheed C-121C Constellation aircraft installed onto the roof!

A fairly detailed timeline for this airplane is available online.  The short version is that Jim Flannery, a former World War II pilot, bought the plane in August 1967 and made it into a cocktail lounge in his restaurant, which opened in August 1968.  After other lives as a restaurant, Amoco Corporation bought the property in August 1996 and then donated the plane to the Air Mobility Command Museum at Dover Air Force Base.  It has since been restored to its original configuration and can be viewed at the museum.

The July–September 2015 issue of Hangar Digest, published by the museum, has a two-page article (pages 6 and 7) about Flannery's purchase of the plane, the installation of the plane onto the roof, and bringing the plane to the museum.

A photo of the restaurant from the other side is in Ball State University's digital collection.  On the left is the "Flannery's Restaurant" sign.

After falling into the rabbit hole researching the restaurant and airplane, I then started wondering what my father would have been doing in Penndel, Pennsylvania in August 1973 (or thereabouts) to have taken the photo.  Our family had only returned to the United States from Australia in about March 1973 and was still getting settled in Niceville, Florida, doing things such as registering us children for school and my father finding employment.  So how could he have traveled to Pennsylvania at that time?  And I didn't remember him going on such a trip.

As I have gone through more of the photographs in the bonanza, I have determined that a significant number were actually taken by my grandfather, and I'm now pretty sure this one was.  The article in Hangar Digest included the information that Flannery found the plane in New Castle, Delaware, where some of our family members lived, and Grandpa used to travel up that way to visit relatives.  Rather than my father, it makes more sense that Grandpa probably went to see the restaurant on a family visit and took the photo then.

So what did I learn from all this?  Not only was my grandfather just as bad as my father about taking photos of anything that caught his eye, and not labeling them!, it's always good to be willing to look at your initial hypothesis about something and revise it if necessary.  Otherwise I would still be trying to figure out how Daddy snuck in a trip to Pennsylvania when our lives were in such disarray.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: An Ancestor's School Records

I need to find more of the records discussed in today's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun!

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

1.  Do you have any records of your ancestors' schooling, such as report cards, yearbooks, or photos?

2.  If so, please share one of them and what you learned about your ancestor(s) from the record.

3.  Share your information about your ancestors' schooling 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 Lisa S. Gorrell for this SNGF idea.

My files are still messed up from a computer crash a couple of years ago, but I scoured previous blog posts to find some images.

1.  Yes, I have some records of my parents' schooling.  I have not found anything for ancestors previous to them.

2.  I found two photographs of my father in the 1954 Seminole [Florida] High School yearbook, Salmagundi.

Glee Club, page 59

I learned the name of the high school my father attended in Florida and which clubs he apparently belonged to.  He may have belonged only to the Glee Club while at Seminole High School; the years listed for the other clubs are for when he was in New Jersey, I believe.

Projectionist Club and Camera Club make sense for what I already know of my father's interests.  I have found newspaper articles about musicals in which my father performed, and Glee Club fits with that area of interest.  But my father didn't particularly use Spanish, and never Portuguese, so I don't know what his participation in the Pan American Club in Moorestown was focused on.

I have a copy of my mother's one-semester transcript from Florida State University (which I don't have to hand to include in this post).  She was nominally an education major, aiming to be a teacher.  I have been told that for the short time she was at college, my mother was a bit of a party girl, and her grades would appear to support that statement.

For another example of school records, I have a copy of my ex's maternal grandmother's brother's exam from the medical school he attended in Scotland.  I think that's really cool.

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: An Unusual Newspaper Article about Your Ancestors

I love newspaper research, so I knew I would be able to find something suitable for tonight's 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.  Have you found an unusual, chilling, amazing, or fascinating newspaper article about your ancestors?

2.  If so, please share the article and what you learned about your ancestor(s) from the article.  Provide a source citation, too!

3.  Share your information about your newspaper article 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 Lisa S. Gorrell for this SNGF idea.

I guess this qualifies as chilling.  Two newspaper articles from 1916 detailed the accident that caused my paternal grandfather to have a leg amputated at the age of 12.  The event was reported in a New Jersey newspaper ("Two Boys Killed When Their Scout Cave Collapses", unknown newspaper name, Wrightstown, New Jersey, January 23, 1916, unknown page number; photocopy of original newspaper article).

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TWO BOYS KILLED WHEN THEIR SCOUT CAVE COLLAPSES

January 23, 1916

Two others probably fatally hurt in Mount Holly catastrophe.  Lads disregarded elders warning against playing in dangerous excavation.

FROM A STAFF CORRESPONDENT:

Mount Holly N.J. January 22 - Caught beneath a mass of rocks and sand when the walls and roof of the cave in which they were playing fell in today.  Howard Powell,jr. 12 years old, a son of Howard Powell of 112 Cherry Street, and Earnest Street, 12 years old, of 135 Risdon Street, were killed , and Russell Street, 10 years old, and Bertram Sellers, 11 years old of Broad Street and Risdon Street  were probably fatally injured.

The accident occurred on the side of the mount from which Mount Holly gets its name,at Rossell and Main Street.  The cave in which the children were playing was made by them several weeks ago.  Sellers who had visited the spot and noticed that a large rock standing on the roof of the cave was making the excavation a dangerous place, had warned the boys to keep out, but their warnings had no effect.

Just before the accident the four boys who were caught in the earth slide and Norman Woodington, 14 years old, of 302 Ridgeway Street, were playing in the vicinity of the cave.  Howard Powell then went into the cave and called the others in.  All entered but the Woodington boy, who started to walk away from the spot.  Hearing a noise he turned and was horrified to see that the whole side of the mount had fallen on the boys.

Running, screaming out into the street, he summoned aid and before many minutes had passed about a dozen men were busy with shovels digging towards the boys who were buried.  The men were spurred on in their work by the moans which from time to time they heard coming from the earth at their feet.  In about fifteen minutes the bodies of the buried boys were in view.

A hasty examination by physicians who had been called to the scene showed that Howard Powell and Earnest Street were beyond help.  After trying the
The physicians placed the other two boys in the automobile of Under Sheriff Joseph Fleetwood and made a hurried trip to the Burlington County Hospital.  After an exhaustive examination the physicians at the institution declared that there   nall possibility of either of the lads recovery.  The Sellers boy is suffering from a broken shoulder, a broken arm and compression of the lungs.  The Street boy, a brother of Earnest Street, is suffering several internal injuries.

MEMBERS OF SCOUT BAND

The four boys all attended the same school.  They had formed a small scout organization of their own and the cave was their headquarters.  Norman Woodington, who gave the alarm and Grace Budd and Eleanor Warwick who saw the accident, were ill, from the shock, last night.

Another member of the band, who probably owes his life to the fact that his duty in the organization is the placing of muskrat traps around the banks of the surrounding streams, is 15 year old Lawrence Powell, a brother of Howard Jr.  He left his brother and his friends this morning to place the traps and had not returned to join in their fun when the accident occurred.

The hill in which the boys had the cave was composed of sand and large stones, with practically nothing to hold the earth together except the small wooden supports erected by the youngsters on the inside of the dugout.  These proved to be entirely inadequate to withstand  the shock when the weight of the large boulder broke in the roof, the excavation was about twenty feet deep and about fifteen feet wide.

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A week later, on Friday, January 29, the Mount Holly Herald covered the story with some updates ("Mount Holly Boys Victims of Distressing Accident", Mount Holly [New Jersey] Herald, January 29, 1916, unknown page number; photocopy of original newspaper article).

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MOUNT HOLLY BOYS VICTIMS OF DISTRESSING ACCIDENT

The hand of fate dealt a cruel blow in Mount Holly on Saturday afternoon when Ernest Street, twelve years of age, son of Ella Street, of Risdon St., and Howard Powell, twelve years of age, son of Mr. and Mrs.Howard W. Powell, of Cherry St., were killed by the collapsing of the upper part of a cave in which they were playing on the Rossell St. side of the mount, and Russell Street, brother of Ernest, and Bertram Sellers, son of Mr. and Mrs. C. Elmer Sellers, of Clover St., boys about the same age as the others, narrowly escaped a similar horrible death.  It was a most distressing accident from which the people of the town, especially those on hand to assist in rescuing the little fellows have not yet recovered.

The boys had gone to the dug-out after dinner to have some real fun and in their innocent play they had no thought of the danger that confronted them.  The cave was a large and deep one, extending into the embankment about ten feet, and in the mass of earth over their heads was a rock that must have weighed close to two tons.  The four mentioned were inside the hole enjoying all there was in that kind of play and William Woodington, a member of the party, was on the outside.  Without warning to any of them, the tons of earth and stone came down upon them and all but Woodington were buried within an instant beneath the great load.  They were prisoners beyond the aid of Woodington, who became almost frantic but not so badly excited that he could no give an alarm.  Grace Budd and Eleanor Warrick were playing nearby and they and Woodington ran as fast as possible to summon assistance.  Men in the vicinity were quickly on the scene digging with all their might with shovels and hands in their efforts to get the imprisoned lads to the surface.  A general alarm sent out by those first informed of the sad affair brought many rescuers to the scene and in a remarkably short time everything possible was being done.  The rock materially interfered with the rescue work.  It was so heavy that planks and jacks had to be used to remove it.  Physicians had been sent for and Drs. Parsons, Barrington, and Whitehead rushed to the mount with all possible speed.  They were on hand before any of the boys had been uncovered.

The removal of the rock and earth presented a sight that those on the scene will never forget--four little boys huddled together, helpless prisoners under the great weight that had crushed them down and two of them companions in death as they had been in play.  Men among the rescuers who had rendered service in numerous emergency cases were noticeably affected by this heart-rending condition and some became almost white with fear that their efforts to save the lads would be in vain.  But they kept on working

The first to be uncovered were the two boys who are alive.  Fortunately they were nearer the entrance to the cave and their heads were nearer the surface.  After the earth and rock had been removed it was possible for them to breathe.  They were unconscious when taken out but the physicians quickly had them restored to a condition that enabled them to say the boys were alive.  Then there was hope that death had not overtaken the other two, but the later developments proved too sadly that all of this hope and the silent prayers that went with it were in vain.  The dead boys had been crushed by the rock and it is thought that death must have come to them almost instantly.  The physicians applied every means known to them to restore life, but their combined efforts failed to produce the desired results.

Russell Street and Bertram Sellers were carried to the residence of Norman W. Barker and there given the attention needed before it was ordered that they be removed to the hospital.  Both were suffering from being crushed and the Sellers boy had a double fracture of one leg near the ankle.  The Street boy gained strength steadily after he was over the shock of his harrowing experience and he was removed to the home of his mother on Tuesday but the Sellers boy has not been so fortunate.  On Sunday it was feared that amputation of his badly injured leg would be necessary, but an operation was performed, the bones were set and held in position with a silver plate and he now appears to be getting along nicely.  The Surgeons were particularly well pleased with the success of the operation.  The lad developed quite a high temperature on Monday and he had sinking spells on that day and Tuesday.  This caused some fear that undiscovered complications were overtaking him, but since then there has been a satisfactory change for the better.  It is to be hoped that there will be nothing more to add to this horrible affair.

The funeral of the Powell boy took place on Tuesday afternoon and that of the Street boy on Wednesday afternoon.

Even though the second article indicated that "the Sellers boy" (my grandfather) wouldn't need to have his leg amputated, something must have changed the prognosis, because Grandpa did lose his leg.  When my siblings and I were little, he used to take off his prosthesis and let us play with it.  But he never talked about how he lost the leg.  We didn't find out until after he died.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Extreme Weather or Natural Disaster Experiences

Yes, I'm late, but at least I finally have some time to write a post!  I'm trying to catch up on my Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenges from Randy Seaver and decided to start with weather and natural disasters, from less than a week ago.

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

1.  Did extreme weather or a natural disaster ever affect you or your ancestor(s)?  In what way(s)?  How did you find this out?  Describe one or more of the extreme weather experiences in your own life or in your ancestors' lives.

2.  Share your information about your or your ancestor's extreme weather or natural disaster experiences 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 idea.

I have previously posted about my family's experience with a hurricane, specifically Hurricane Eloise on September 23, 1975.  Eloise convinced me I much preferred earthquakes to hurricanes.

I had already been through one major earthquake at that point.  My family was living in Pomona, California during the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, which I blogged about for the 50th anniversary of the event.

I returned to California to live after graduating high school.  The third major quake I have experienced was Loma Prieta in 1989 (also known as the World Series earthquake), when I lived in Berkeley.  I wrote about that experiene, which I remembered much better than Sylmar, for the quake's 35th anniversary.

Between those two I was in another big earthquake:  the Whittier Narrows earthquake of October 1, 1987.  While it was "only" a 5.9 earthquake on the Richter scale, because it happened in the heavily built environment of the Los Angeles basin, damage costs were fairly high.  Fatalities were low in number.

I was actually at work already when the quake hit.  I used to go to work early so I could leave early for band practice (for The Greatest Marching Band in the History of the Universe, otherwise known as the USC Marching Band).  I remember that I felt the earthquake in the office (of the French and Italian Department) and had no question about what was happening.  I could tell that it was pretty strong from what I felt, so I figured it wasn't too far away.  I remember learning that the earthquake occurred on a previously unknown fault, so it came as a complete surprise at the time.

I don't recall any damage at the office or on campus, and we didn't have any damage at the house I was living in at the time.  So I wasn't affected much by it, but I have always remembered that a wall collapsed on the California State University at Los Angeles campus and killed someone.

So that's two natural disasters for my family as a whole and two for me as an individual.  I have not learned of such events for any of my ancestors prior to my parents.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

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!

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: An Ancestor Who Took a RIsk

Tonight's topic from Randy Seaver for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun applies to several of my ancestors.

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

1.  The life of every person has events and decisions that have risk factors that can significantly affect that life.

2.  Describe a risk that one of your ancestors made that affected that person's life.  How did it all turn out?

Share your information about an ancestor's risk 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.

Every ancestor (and collateral relative) on my mother's side of the family (my Jewish side) who made the momentous decision to immigrate to the United States took a risk when doing so, because none of them knew how it would turn out.  I'm sure they all heard stories about the wonderful opportunities available in the Goldene Medina, the "golden country", but they probably also heard stories about how the move didn't work out as well as expected for some.  Probably the ones who took the biggest risks were the first ones in each family to do so.

My great-grandfather Joyne Gorodetsky, who chose the name Joe Gordon after he immigrated, was the first member of my Gorodetsky family to cross the pond.  The chain migration of the family from the Russian Empire began after the death of my great-great-grandmother Esther Leah (Schneiderman) Gorodetsky on December 10, 1908; eventually all eight children and my great-great-grandfather came to North America.  Joyne arrived July 5, 1909 (right after Independence Day!) at Ellis Island, traveling to meet his uncle Shmuel Schneiderman (Sam Schneiderman here), his mother's brother.

Joe found work in the garment industry in New York City.  A few years after arriving, he was a boarder at the home of Mendel Hertz (Morris) and Ruchel Dvojre (Rose Dorothy) Brainin in Manhattan, which is where he met my great-grandmother, Sore Leibe (Sarah Libby) Brainin.  Soon they married and had three children:  my granduncles, Alexander and Sidney, and my grandmother, Esther Lillian (who later changed her name to Lillyan E.).

From everything I have been told, Joe was successful in the garment industry.  In 1930 the family was in Baltimore, Maryland, possibly having moved there for better opportunities after the Depression had hit.  But soon they moved back to New York, where Joe bought a house in Brooklyn.  The extended family, including many aunts, uncles, and cousins, got together (almost?) every Saturday to socialize, with Joe and Sarah's house the center of the activities.  My grandmother told me how her father loved to host these events.  My mother remembered how he used to bounce her and her cousin Harriet on his lap and sing "Buttons and Bows" to them.

For many years Joe did not become a U.S. citizen.  He finally did so after World War II began, naturalizing on August 3, 1943 in New York.

Joe died May 2, 1955 (yahrzeit 10 Iyar) in Brooklyn.  He is buried in Wellwood Cemetery, Pinelawn, Suffolk County, New York.

Overall, I'd say his taking a risk turned out well.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

 

A Photo of My Mother for Mother's Day

Myra (Meckler) Sellers, Janice Sellers?, Sam O'Connor

It's Mother's Day today, so I went scrolling through the great photo bonanza to find a new (to my blog) and interesting photo of my mother to post, and I came across this one.

As usual, with all the photos taken by my father (and I'm sure my father took it, particularly because it is black and white), it is unlabeled and unidentified.  But I recognize my mother on the left, and I'm now pretty sure it is Aunt Sam on the right.  I think the child looking goofy in the center is me.  My estimate for the year is about 1967.

This kitchen appears in several photographs from the bonanza.  I think it's in our house in La Puente.

The photo appears as though it could be torn on the left side.  As I do not yet have the originals (subtle hint to my sister), I can't verify that.  It's possible that the big white void could be a refrigerator or freezer.

There was probably no occasion or special event.  Sam happened to be visiting and my father simply liked taking photographs.

My mother has something in her hands, perhaps a small box.  Maybe it was some kind of pills, such as aspirin.  She's laughing, as though she thinks it's funny that my father is taking a photo of this scene.

Happy Mother's Day!

Alphabet Magnets, But Which Alphabet?

Modern alphabet of Gurmukhi script
Published under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. 

There really are national days for just about anything, if you hunt around long enough.  Such as today, which is National Alphabet Magnet Day.  No, really, just check the page here.

See, I told you.  I wouldn't make this up.

But the reason I'm writing about National Alphabet Magnet Day isn't to get you to look at the page for it.  It's to get you thinking about alphabets.  Because I'll bet when you read "National Alphabet Magnet Day", you automatically thought of the alphabet for the English language.

I'm right, aren't I?

But when you think about it, there are other alphabets out there.  So that means there could be alphabet magnets for those alphabets, right?

And there are!

My favorite alphabet magnets that I own are for Gurmukhi, the alphabet used to write the Punjabi language.

What?  You've never heard of Gurmukhi?

Well, I hadn't either.  But when your ex is half-Indian, and his father was Sikh and came from Punjab, somehow you end up learning about it.

And one day I ran across something online for Gurmukhi alphabet magnets.

Of course I had to buy a set.  And then bought a second set for my grandchildren.  They haven't shown any interest in it yet, but one day they might.

Then I started wondering about other alphabet magnets.

My mother's family is Jewish.  My mother never learned Hebrew and learned only a few words and phrases in Yiddish.  But my grandmother was fluent in Yiddish (it was her first language) and knew some Hebrew.  And Hebrew and Yiddish use the same letters (mostly).

So off I went in search of Hebrew alphabet magnets and found some.  You can find all sorts of interesting things on Amazon.  I found Swedish alphabet magnets, Cyrillic alphabet magnets, and more.

I have not yet learned to speak or write in Hebrew, Yiddish, or Punjabi.  But I'm working on it, and when I do, I'll be able to post phrases and sentences on the refrigerator with my handy-dandy alphabet magnets.

One of the suggestions on the National Day Calendar page for how to celebrate the day is to use the letters to teach children the alphabet.  Wouldn't that be a wonderful way to help children learn about their ancestry?

Go do it.  Now.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Automobiles Did Your Ancestors Own?

It's either "everything old is new again" or a flash of déjà vu this week for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, as another blogger contributes a topic that Randy Seaver has covered previously.

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

1.  What automobile models did your ancestors have?  Pick an ancestor and share something about his cars.

2.  Share your information about your ancestor's car(s) 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.

NOTE:  I can use ideas for different SNGF topics.  Please e-mail me (randy.seaver@gmail.com).

Thank you to Lisa Gorrell for this week's SNGF challenge topic.

Randy asked us about family cars on November 25, 2017, and I wrote a very detailed post about our cars then, with comments from my father about even more cars, including many of which I had no memory.  That post is here.

Since then I have not added any new vehicles, although I do keep thinking about finding another motorycle for myself.  Maybe this summer I'll do that.

I have followed up on one thing my father wrote:  He and my mother rode to Death Valley (who was taking care of my brother and me?) with the Norwalk Centaurs motorcycle club.  I discovered that they still exist and have a Facebook page!  I have contacted them and asked whether they have any photos of the 1963 or 1964 trip to Death Valley.

My father took photographs of cars everywhere he went.  My guess is that any car that looked interesting to him, he would take photos.  You can see some of those photos and read more about my father and cars by clicking here.

I really need to take a photo of my current car, the Toyota RAV4, for the family archive.  Since I haven't done that yet, I'll include a photo of my brother and sister sitting on the Indian that was in my 2017 car post.

Mark and Stacy Sellers, probably in La Puente, California, 1967