Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: An Unexpected Record Find

I'm sure everyone has something that would qualify 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 unexpected record recently (or at any time) in your genealogy and family history research?  A document, a book, an article, a letter, etc.

2.  This week, please tell us about that unexpected record find and how it helped your research.

3.  Share your unexpected record find and how it helped your research with us in your own blog post, by writing 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.

Many years ago, I was searching for my great-great-grandfather's name in Google.  Many of the hits for Morris Brainin (searching in quotation marks) were on Ancestry, but one was more unusual.  It was on Google Books in a printed book.  I remember wondering why my immigrant great-great-grandfather's name was in a book.

The book is The Jewish Community Register of New York City, 1917–1918 (second edition), published and copyrighted by the Jewish Community of New York City in 1918.  The printer was Lipshitz Press of New York City.

I discovered that Morris Brainin was the president of the Abraham Lincoln Lodge No. 297, which met at 62 E. 6th Street on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of the month.  Morris was living at 1575 Madison Avenue, an address with which I am familiar because my grandmother was born there, at her grandparents' house.  The Secretary of the lodge was Henry Harrison of 367 So. Boulevard, a person and an address which I have been unable to identify yet.

The Abraham Lincoln Lodge was listed as being part of I.O.B.S., something else which I still have not identified.  I have been guessing that IO stands for International Order, but I can't find an organization with the initials.  B might be for Brother or Brotherhood.  But what is the S?

Whatever it is or was, Morris had been president of this lodge since 1914.  The short description included a birth year of 1859 in Russia and an arrival year of 1906 to the United States.  I have found the passenger list for his arrival, which was in 1906, and the birth year helped narrow down the range of years I had for his birth, which had previously been 1860 to 1863.  Now I lean more to him being a little older, born about 1859–1860.  He may or may not have known his actual birth date, and I haven't found it yet in Russian records.

The statement that he received a "general Jewish education" is interesting, because he was enumerated in at least one U.S. federal census as being a rabbi.  Apparently his education was not specifically that to become a rabbi, but he declared himself one here anyway.