Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Who Is #42 on Your Ahnentafel?

Well, I'm a little confused by parts of this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver, but I shall press on and attempt to do it anyway!

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) Have you identified #42 on your ahnentafel list?  If not, how about #21, the mother of #42?  If not, how about #10 on your ahnentafel list?  Do you even have an ahnentafel list?

(2) Anyway, tell us about your #42 ancestor (or #21, or #10, etc.):  full name, parents, spouse, children, birth, baptism, death, marriage, burial, 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.

So, I'm confused because I thought ahnentafels increased the numbers as they went backward in time.  If that is the case, then #21 wouldn't be the mother of #42, she would be the daughter of #42 (which is what my ahnentafel indicates).  So maybe Randy just mixed that part up?

As it so happens, I know next to nothing about my #42 ahnentafel ancestor, and not much more about #21.

Mr. #42 on my ahnentafel is my 3rd-great-grandfather John Gibson.  I have no birth or death information for him, merely his name.  His wife, my 3rd-great-grandmother (#43 on the list), was said to have been named Mary, and that's all the information I have on her.  I'm pretty sure they were born and died in New Jersey, but that's an educated guess.  I have looked for more information about them online, but with no success.

Their names were gleaned from the death certificate of my 2nd-great-grandmother Amelia Gibson (#21), who married James Gauntt.  Amelia's death certificate states that she died June 19, 1908.  Her birth, which I have as June 1831, was found in the 1900 census.

Obviously, I don't have much information on the Gibson branch of my family.  Yet another reason I need to find a lot of time to spend conducting on-site research in New Jersey.

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.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Ahnentafel Roulette

This week's challenge for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun gives, unfortunately, a predictable result at the beginning for almost everyone, but improves after that.

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

(1) What year was one of your great-grandparents born?  Divide this number by 100 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette number."

(2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ancestral name list (some people call it an "ahnentafel").  Your software will create this; use the "Ahnentafel List" option, or similar. Who is that person, and what is his/her vital information?

(3) Tell us three facts about the person in your ancestral name list with the "roulette number."

(4) Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook status or a Google Stream post, or as a comment on this blog post.

(5) NOTE:  If you do not have a person's name for your "roulette number" then "spin" the wheel again.  Pick someone else — a grandfather, a parent, a favorite aunt or cousin, yourself, or even one of your children!

1.  I think most people's great-grandparents will have been born in the 19th century; some will have great-grandparents born in the 20th century.  So that means the roulette number is limited to 18, 19, 20, or 21.  I suspsect most participants will end up with 19 as their result, and 20 will be second.

No matter which of my great-grandparents (whose birth years I know) I choose, the birth year is in the late 1800's (ranging from 1870 to 1892), which means dividing by 100 equals something between 18.7 to 18.92, which rounds up to 19.

2.  Number 19 produces the same result for me that it did for Randy, my paternal great-great-grandmother.  For me, that person is Sarah "Sally" Anne [Deacon] Lippincott.

• Sarah was born August 23, 1860 in Burlington County, New Jersey (probably in Moorestown or Springfield) to Abel A. Lippincott and Rachel R. Stackhouse.
• She married Joel Armstrong on October 5, 1878 in Burlington, Burlingotn County, New Jersey.
• I don't have a confirmed date of death for Sarah, but she died after 1904, because I have found her in the 1905 New Jersey state census.  Some family trees list her death about May 13, 1928, but with no documentation.

3.  Three facts about Sarah Anne (Lippincott) Armstrong:

• Sarah had three known children:  Rachel Anna, who married three times and had seven children; Stacy Biddie (a boy), who married a widow and fathered six children; and Laura May, my great-grandmother, who married at least twice, had about eight children with her first husband, and bore two children out of wedlock (including my grandfather).

• Sarah and Joel appear to have divorced prior to 1900.  Each of them was enumerated in the 1900 census and listed as widowed.

• I have a photograph purported to be of Sarah and Joel, but I'm not sure it's actually them.