Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Who Is Your Ancestor #50?

This week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver was an interesting exercise, even if I didn't come up with much concrete information.

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

1.  Who is Ancestor #50 in your Ahnentafel list?  What were his birth date and place, his parents, death date and place, spouse's name, and marriage date and place.  How many children did he have, and which of his children do you descend from?
(Note: if you don't know your #50, then choose #25 or #12, or some other number).

2.  Share your information about #50 (or other) 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 Lisa S. Gorrell for this week's SNGF challenge topic.

I don't routinely use Ahnentafel lists, so I had to look up how to figure out who #50 is on my list.  I used the reverse method #1 described on the Wikipedia page about Ahnentafels.  If I did it correctly, then #50 is my mother's father's father's mother's father, who is one of my 3rd-great-grandfathers.  It also means that the example using the method isn't accurate, because #1 is yourself.  But since Randy and other people who responded got 3rd-great-grandfather, I think I'm right.

So that means the person I should be writing about is:
mother Myra
grandfather Abraham
great-grandfather Moshe
great-great-grandmother Bela
3rd-great-grandfather UNKNOWN

I don't know Bela's maiden name or anything about her other than her given name.  I have her given name from my great-grandfather's death certificate.  I don't remember who the informant was for that, but it had to be one of his children, because his wife died 17 years before he did.  The older children may have known their grandparents, depending on when the grandparents died, because they were born in Kamenets Litovsk, where the family emigrated from.  So the name Bela might be correct.  My great-grandfather had a niece named Bela, so that lends some support to the name.

Even though I don't have any documented information about my 3rd-great-grandfather, I decided to write this about him to see what I could guess based on information I do have.

My great-grandparents Moshe and Mushe (Morris and Minnie in this country) named their first son Simcha, after Moshe's father.  I know that the second son, Herschel, was not named after Minnie's father, Gershon, or either of Minnie's grandfathers, Abraham or Ruven.  Maybe he was named after Moshe's grandfather, Bela's father.  I know that Moshe's sister Sore also named a son Herschel, so it's not an unreasonable hypothesis.  Moshe and Sore's grandfather was named Zvi, however, which is the Hebrew equivalent to Herschel, so their sons could have been named for him rather than their maternal grandfather.  But both men could have had the same name.  So now my 3rd-great-grandfather has a given name, even if it has a question mark after it.

I don't have a birth record for my granduncle Herschel, but the birth date he used in the United States is January 14, 1905.  So I can guess that my 3rd-great-grandfather had to have died before that date, because this part of my family followed the Ashkenazi Jewish minhag ("custom") of naming children after deceased ancestors.

To estimate 3rd-great-grandfather Herschel's birth year, I have to work from another hypothesized year.  I wrote recently about my great-great-grandfather Simcha Dovid Mekler, for whom I have no documented birth or death dates.  I estimated his birth year to be before about 1862 based on him being at least 21 when my great-grandfather Moshe was born.  Simcha Dovid was married to Bela, the daughter of 3rd-great-grandfather Herschel.  So if I say that Bela was two years younger than Simcha Dovid (just to pick a number), which would make her birth year before about 1864, and use the same logic that her father was at least 21 when she was born, that makes him born before about 1844.

I can estimate 3rd-great-grandfather Herschel's marriage to Bela's mother based on my estimate of Bela's birth year.  Since I made that before about 1864, the marriage year can be before about 1863.  As for whom Herschel married, the only other child I know of from Simcha Dovid and Bela's marriage was a daughter named Sore.  So maybe Bela's mother was named Sore.  I know that Simcha Dovid's mother's name was Esther, so Sore was not named after her.  On the other hand, Simcha Dovid had a sister and a niece named Sore, so the name was used in the Mekler family.

Because a common pattern seen in Ashkenazi Jewish families is that names skip one or two generations, it's possible that 3rd-great-grandfather Herschel's father was named Moshe.  Simcha Dovid's father was Zvi, as mentioned above, so my great-grandfather was not named after him.

Because the only location I have associated with my Mekler family is Kamenets Litovsk, Russia (now Kamyenyets, Belarus), my only guess for where 3rd-great-grandfather Herschel was born, married, and died is there.

I can put together the information from all of these hypotheses thusly:
Herschel (unknown family name), father possibly Moshe, mother unknown; born before about 1844 in Kamenets Litovsk, Russia; died before about January 14, 1905 in Kamenets Litovsk, Russia; married possibly Sore before about 1863 in Kamenets Litovsk, Russia.  I know of only one child, Bela, who is my great-great-grandmother.