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.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Photographs through the Generations

This week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun exercise from Randy Seaver is a fun one!

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

(1) How many generations do you have photographs or portraits of your ancestors and descendants?  It can be any line—it just can't be broken!

(2) Tell us the line, or better yet, show us the unbroken line.  Provide birth and death years, and the approximate date that the photograph or portrait was made.

(3) Share your generation photograph line in a blog post of your own, in a Facebook post, or in a comment to this post.

I thought I wouldn't be able to compete with Randy on this, but I found one of my Jewish(!) family lines with eight generations of photographs.  It doesn't include me, because I don't have any descendants, but has my sister instead.

1.  3rd-great-grandfather Gersh Wolf Gorodetsky, unknown birth and death dates, probably from Podolia gubernia, Russian Empire (now in Ukraine), maybe from Kamenets Podolsky or Orinin, no idea when photograph was taken.  (At least I'm pretty sure this is Gersh Wolf Gorodetsky.)

2.  Great-great-grandfather Victor Gordon (originally Avigdor Gorodetsky, Hebrew name Isaac), ~1866–1925, from Kamenets Podolsky, Podolia gubernia, Russian Empire, photograph from about 1890 (on the left in the photo).

3.  Great-grandfather Joe Gordon (originally Joine Gorodetsky), ~1892–1955, from Kamenets Podolsky, Podolia gubernia, Russian Empire, photograph from about 1914 (on the right in the photo).

4.  Grandmother Lillyan E. (Gordon) Meckler, 1919–2006, originally from Manhattan, New York, photograph from 1937.

5.  Mother Myra Roslyn (Meckler) Sellers Preuss, 1940–1985, originally from Brooklyn, New York, photograph from about 1972.

6.  Sister Stacy Ann (Sellers) Doerner Fowler, living, originally from La Puente, Califorina, photograph from 2019.

7 and 8.  Nephew Garry Travis Doerner, 1982–2012, from San Antonio, Texas; and grandniece Natalie Desiree Doerner, living; unknown date for photograph.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Three Degrees of Separation

I looked at the title of this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, and I thought it looked familiar.  I was right!  Last year about this time Randy Seaver did "Two Degrees of Separation."  This year he has extended it a generation:

For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), I want you to:

1)  Using your ancestral lines, how far back in time can you go with three degrees of separation?  That means "you knew an ancestor, who knew another ancestor, who knew another ancestor."  When was that third ancestor born?

2)  Tell us in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a status line on Facebook or a stream post on Google+.

Well, this is frustrating already!  Two of the three examples I used last year for this challenge can't go back another generation:

• My great-grandmother Rose Dorothy (Ruchel Dvorje) (Jaffe) Brainin probably knew at least one of her grandparents, but I have no idea who any of their parents were.

• My grandmother Anna (Gauntt) Stradling almost definitely knew her grandmother Amelia (Gibson) Gauntt, but I don't know who Amelia's parents were.  Her paternal grandfather, James Gauntt, died four years before she was born.  And she never knew her maternal grandparents, because her mother was from England and they never came to the United States (or vice versa).

1.  I guess I'm lucky that I can still work backward from my paternal grandfather, Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr.  Here's the information from last year:

"Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr., born in 1903, the son of Laura May Armstrong and Cornelius Elmer Sellers (if my grandfather was actually a Sellers, but that's still research in process).  He may have known his maternal grandfather, Joel Armstrong, who was born about 1849 and seems to have died about 1921 or so in Burlington County.  Grampa also probably knew his paternal grandmother, Catharine Fox (Owen) Sellers Moore, who was also born in 1849 and died in 1923."

Since that post, which was made in January 2016, I proved through DNA testing that Grandpa was informally adopted by Cornelius Elmer Sellers, so his paternal grandmother was through the adoptive line.  But Grandpa's maternal grandfather, Joel Armstrong, knew his paternal grandfather, also Joel Armstrong, because he lived in the latter's household when he was young.  Joel the elder was born about 1798 and died in 1854.

2.  I can go through a different line to get another three degrees, even though that line stays in the 19th century.  I knew my maternal grandfather, Abe Meckler (1912–1989), who knew his maternal grandfather, Gershon Itzhak Nowicki (~1858–1948).  Gershon most likely knew his father, Abraham Jacob Nowicki.  I don't know when Abraham Nowicki was born, but it pretty much had to be 1837 at the latest (and was probably earlier), because Gershon had an older brother.  I know Abraham died before about 1896, because his granddaughter named a son after him that year.

So Randy can go back to 1711, and I'm stuck at 1798, a difference of 87 years.  I feel . . . stunted.

This is simply as far as I can go on my biological lines.  If Randy does make next year's challenge four degrees, I'll be SOL, because I don't know the names of Abraham Nowicki's or Joel the elder's parents!  Apparently I need to find time to take a trip to New Jersey and do some serious archival research, so I can at least go farther back on the Armstrongs.

Wordless Wednesday