Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: How Long Ago Was Your Last "Genealogy Happy Dance"?

Here's tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver:

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  One of the goals of every genealogy researcher is to solve difficult name and relationship problems — and traditionally we do a "genealogy happy dance" when we succeed.

2.  When was the last time you did a "genealogy happy dance" after solving one of your difficult problems?

3.  Share your story on your own blog or in a Facebook post.  Please share a link in Comments on this post if you write your own post.

Well, my last big "genealogy happy dance" has already been celebrated in my blog, and for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun no less.  That was when I posted two weeks ago about finding the marriage record for my great-great-grandparents Vigdor Gorodetsky and Esther Leya Shnayderman.  This was exciting not only because of the record itself but because it corroborated six hypotheses I had made during my research.

But I mentioned in that blog post that I had found several other records for my family and related lines in the same batch of records.  And I did genealogy happy dances for many of those also.

One in particular I am still excited about is the birth record for my cousin's great-great-grandfather.  Again, very cool just to find the record and have an exact birth date, but it provided his mother's name, which we did not have previously.  We learned that we had the wrong town for his birthplace.  And it is the oldest record I have from the Russian Empire for anyone in my family.

Record #20
Birth record for Aizik [Isaak] Belder
March 5, 1848 (Julian calendar; March 17 on Gregorian calendar)
Father Shimshon, mother Rivka
Proskurov, Proskurovsky Uyezd, Podolia, Russian Empire

So, yeah, I did the happy dance for this record too.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: A Genealogy Fun Day

There's nothing like an open-ended invitation to write about almost anything, which is what we have tonight from Randy Seaver for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  When was the last time you had genealogy fun?  It could be research, conferences, a society meeting, or just talking with friends about your research, a favorite trip, etc.  Tell us about a recent genealogy fun day!

2.  Share your answers on your own blog or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

I have had lots of genealogy fun the past two days!

Recently the Ukraine Research Division of JewishGen (the self-proclaimed home of Jewish genealogy on the Web) announced that it had uploaded a bunch of records from several different locations, including (finally!) Kamenets-Podolsky (formerly in Russia; current name Kamianets-Podilskyi, Ukraine).  I was very excited, as that is where I have always been told my maternal grandmother's father's family was from, but I had no documents from there showing their names.  I actually had not been optimistic about ever finding any, due to a significant fire several years ago that affected the archive there.

So I searched using the form on the JewishGen home page, looking for Gorodetsky (my great-grandfather's original surname) in Ukraine.

And I found my great-great-grandparents' marriage record!!!

Record #109 (bottom)
Marriage record for Vigdor Gorodetsky and Esther Leya Shnayderman
August 17, 1888 (Julian calendar; August 29 on Gregorian calendar)
Kamenets-Podolsky, Podolia, Russian Empire
(image has been edited to crop out other records on the page)

Not only was this exciting because, hey, it's a new family record, but it actually corroborated several hypotheses I had made over the years.

• I had guessed my great-great-grandmother's maiden name to be Schneiderman, based on correlating a lot of information from multiple generations of relatives.  Correct!

• I had guessed that her father's name was Joine (pronounced yoy-ne) after looking at naming patterns in my family.  Correct!

• I had estimated the marriage to have taken place before 1891.  It was in 1888.  Correct!

• I had guessed that the marriage should have taken place in Kamenets-Podolsky.  Correct!

• I had estimated my great-great-grandfather's birth year to be between 1864 and 1868.  He was listed as 25 at the time of the marriage, putting his birth year about 1863–1864.  Damned close!

• And I had estimated my great-great-grandmother's birth year to be between 1868 and 1874.  She was listed as 21 at the time of the marriage, putting her birth year about 1867–1868.  Also damned close!

It is great to have my logic substantiated by the actual record.

And on top of that, I have also found two dozen additional records — births, marriages, divorces, deaths, revision lists (kind of like a census) — for my Schneiderman and related lines, including Kardish and Belder.  I have been staying up way too late for the past couple of days because I can't tear myself away from the computer.

Genealogy fun?  Absolutely!  I've been doing the genealogy happy dance for two days!

Thank you, Randy, for giving us a topic tonight that allowed me to write about my cool discovery!

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