Wordless Wednesday

 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Tell Us about One of Your Elusive Ancestors

We have a fairly open-ended exercise for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver.

Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along; cue the Mission:  Impossible! music!):

(1) We all have "elusive ancestors" whom we cannot find a name for, or one that absolutely eludes us, but we know some details about the person's spouse and/or children.

(2) Tell us about one of them.  How are you related?  What do you know about him? Where did she live?  Etc.

(3) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status post.  Please leave a link in a comment to this post.

For this post I didn't want to talk about my ever popular great-grandfather Mr. X (especially since I haven't done any more work on him), so I poked around my tree for a likely candidate.  It didn't take too long to find someone else who is pretty elusive.

An ancestor about whom I still know almost nothing is my 3rd-great-grandmother.  I don't have any idea what her name was.  She was (presumably) married to Franklin Armstrong (about 1825–after July 11, 1870).  My 2nd-great-grandfather Joel Armstrong was born about March 1849, so she was born about 1828 or earlier, almost definitely in New Jersey, probably in Burlington County.  She does not appear in the census enumeration of 1850; Franklin is shown as living with his parents and with his son, Joel, who was a year old.  That is the only child I know of for Franklin, and he does not appear to have remarried based on my research.  I have also found him in the 1860 and 1870 censuses.

My first hypothesis is that she died before the census, as divorce was not common at that time.  I haven't yet confirmed Joel Armstrong's death date, so I don't know if his death record includes his mother's name.  I have found some onoline family trees that state Joel died in 1921, but no documentation was included, and since I know that at least three Joel Armstrongs of about the same age are in the right area of Burlington County, I don't know if the one who died in 1921 is mine.

I found a Joel Armstrong in 1910 who was on his second marriage according to the census.  My 2nd-great-grandfather Joel and my 2nd-great-grandmother divorced, so he was a possibility.  I obtained the marriage record.  It did not include Joel's mother's name.  I was not happy.

I admit I have not worked on this particular puzzle in a while.  If Joel's birth record exists, it probably would include his mother's name, but I haven't found it yet.  I have looked for a marriage record for Franklin but have not discovered it yet either.  That would probably be the best record to solve this.

I am sure I found the record of Joel's marriage to my 2nd-great-grandmother, but I can't figure out where it is at the moment.  It also should list parents.  I may have to search for it again.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Maternal Grandfather's Matrilneal Line

When I saw the subject for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, I knew I was not going to get as far as Randy Seaver did.

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

(1) What was your mother's father's full name?

(2) What is your mother's father's matrilineal line?  That is, his mother's mother's mother's . . . back to the most distant female ancestor in that line.  Provide her Ahnentafel number (relative to you) and her birth and death years and places.

(3) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please put a link to your post in the comments here.

See, my mother's side of the family is the Jewish one, and once you get past the most recent generations I don't always have a lot of information.  But I discovered that for this line it wasn't as bad as I expected.  I actually have a few generations AND surnames.

1.  My mother's father's full name was either #6 Abraham Meckler or Abe Meckler (1912–1989); I've been told both.  There is an Abraham Machler listed in Ancestry's New York, New York Birth Index, who appears to have a birth date of July 23, 1912.  If I could get a copy of that birth certificate from New York City (ha!), I might be able to verify that's him, but I'm pretty sure it is.  I called him Zadie ("grandfather" in Yiddish).

2.  Zadie's mother was #13 Mushe Zelda Nowicki, called Minnie in the United States (about 1880–1936), who married Moshe Meckler, Morris or Max here (about 1882–1953).  Mushe was born in the Russian Empire, probably in Porozowo, Grodno gubernia; married in the Russian Empire, probably in Porozowo or in Kamenets Litovsk, Grodno gubernia; and died in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York at approximately age 56.

• Mushe's mother was #27 Dube Yelsky, Dora in the United States (about 1858–1936), who married Gershon Itzhak Nowicki (about 1858–1948).  Dube was born in the Russian Empire, probably in Porozowo; married in the Russian Empire, also probably in Porozowo; and died in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York at approximately age 78.

• Dube's mother was #55 Frieda Bloom, which was probably not really Bloom, but it's the only name I have (about 1838–about 1898), who married Ruven Yelsky (about 1838–about 1898).  Frieda was born, married, and died in the Russian Empire, likely in Porozowo and almost definitely in Grodno gubernia.  Based on the scant information I have, she lived to be about 60.

And that's it.  I have no idea who Frieda'a parents were, and I'll probably never know, since Grodno gubernia is the black hole for Jewish records.

Unlike Randy's line, all these women probably started in the same place, Porozowo.  The two who immigrated to the United States both died in Brooklyn, which is likely the only place they ever went after their arrival at Ellis Island.