Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Ancestors Who Migrated a Long Way

This challenge makes me think of a song:  "I'm a travelin' man, I've made a lot of stops all over the world . . . ."

This week for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Randy Seaver asked about our most well traveled ancestors:

1) Many of our ancestors migrated to a distant place.  Which one of your ancestors migrated the furthest?  Or the furthest in North America?  It could be in one big move, or in several smaller moves over their lifetime.  How far did they travel?  Do you know the route they took?

2)  Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook or Google+ post.

My immigrant ancestors came from either western Europe (including the British Isles) or eastern Europe, so whichever ancestor traveled the furthest had to be one from eastern Europe.  After looking at distances for Krustpils, Latvia; Porazava, Belarus; Kamyanyets Litovsk, Belarus; and Chisinau, Moldova from Ellis Island, the winner is Kamyanets Podilskyy, Ukraine.  (I used Google to determine all my distances.)

I know my great-great-grandfather Avigdor Gorodetsky (later Victor Gordon) was in Kamenets Podolsky.  I have a photograph of him taken there.

From Kamenets Podolsky, Avigdor moved his family to Kishinev, Russia (now Chisinau, Moldova), a distance of 224 miles.

From Kishinev, he traveled to to Rotterdam, The Netherlands, to take a ship to the Goldene Medina, the United States, 1,374 miles.

The ship's journey from Rotterdam to Ellis Island was 3,637 miles.

After arriving at Ellis Island, Victor lived in Brooklyn, a mere 12 miles further, until his death.

Adding all of that up brings a total of 5,247 miles that my great-great-grandfather traveled from the first place I know he was to where he died.

My great-grandfather Joyne Gorodetsky (Joe Gordon) followed the same path to the United States, including departing Europe from Rotterdam, so his total was also 5,247 miles.

There is a possibility that Avigdor began his life in Orinin, Russia (now Orynyn, Ukraine).  Every Kishinev record I have found that mentions him indicates he was "from" Orinin.  That means his family was registered there officially, but not necessarily that he actually lived there.  If he did, I can add 10 more miles to his travels, the distance between Orinin and Kamenets Podolsky.

A very well traveled person in my database is my cousin's mother.  Just the basic information I know is that she was born in Fremantle, Western Australia; immigrated to the U.S. at some point and married in Reno, Nevada; moved to Key West, Florida, where she had two children; came back west to San Jose, California, where she had another child; and died in Redding, California.  That comes to 15,230 miles, almost three times as far as my great-grandfather traveled.

I worked out my rough mileage also.  I was born in Los Angeles, California, and moved with my family to Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.  When we returned to the U.S. we went to Niceville, Florida.  I moved back to Los Angeles to go to college and then moved to Oakland, where I now live.  The total for that is 20,434 miles but covers only the places I've lived, not my other travels.

My mother beat me by a few thousand.  She was born in Brooklyn, New York; moved to Miami, Florida; married and crossed the country to Los Angeles; moved to Australia and then to Niceville; and then moved to San Antonio, Texas and back to Florida.  That leaves out a few minor regional moves and still comes to 23,484 miles.  Her nickname of "the wandering Jew" was well earned.

I think my father is the champ, however.  He was born in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.  I know I've forgotten a few moves to New York and back to Jersey, but at some point the family moved to Mount Holly, New Jersey.  From there my father and his mother moved to Sanford, Florida (where he graduated high school) and then on to Miami.  Following that came the cross-country trek to Los Angeles, moving to Australia, and returning to the U.S.  From Florida he and his third wife moved to Ohio (Cleveland, I think), then San Antonio, and then back to the Niceville area.  I'm missing several regional moves, and his total is still 25,161.

I feel tired just adding it all up.

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Update:

Randy Seaver used this theme again for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun on September 18, 2021.  I found the list my grandfather created of everywhere he had lived and added the miles for the years my father lived with him to my father's tavels, so he now totals 26,184 (25,161 + 1,023) and is definitely still in the lead in my family for most traveled.  I'm still not accounting for short local moves.  (Maybe I'll add them if Randy uses this theme a third time.)  Those additional locations were:

Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Babylon, New York
Great Bend, New York
Sackets Harbor, New York
Watertown, New York
Bordentown, New Jersey
Columbus, New Jersey
Browns Mills, New Jersey
Mount Holly, New Jersey

Wordless Wednesday

This Is the Face of Genealogy

My great-great-grandparents Avigdor (Hebrew name Isaac) and Esther Leah (née Schneiderman) Gorodetsky with daughter Etta.  Photo taken in Kamenets Podolsky, Russia (now Kamyanets Podilskyy, Ukraine) c. 1890.

Who Looks Like Whom

Every family plays this game.  When a baby is born, the comparisons begin.  "He has his father's chin."  "She has her mother's eyes."  Everyone tries to recognize features and connect the child to the family.  As children get older, sometimes the original comparisons don't hold as true, but there's usually someone in the family they still resemble.  And sometimes what someone sees in you depends on which family members they knew best.

I have been told many times that when I was a baby I resembled my paternal grandmother.  As I got older, I didn't hear that so much; I looked a lot like my father, who looks just like his father.  In my 30's, when I put on weight, I could see a strong resemblance to my mother.  But when I met a cousin, he thought I looked like my grandmother, which I hadn't heard in years.  Then I found out that he was essentially raised by my grandmother -- so those were the features he was most familiar with and the ones he recognized in me.

My brother and my maternal uncle look so much alike they could be brothers, but nobody in the family believed me.  I realized most family members had only seen one or the other recently, so I took a photo when the two of them were in the same spot.  Once I showed everyone the photo, they could see what I was talking about.

A friend was telling me recently that her youngest sister and her oldest sister (19 years age difference between them) looked so much alike in one photo, they actually oriented their faces toward the camera the same way and had similar facial expressions.  These were half-sisters from the same mother, not full siblings.

Recognizing common features can help when you have unidentified family photos.  On a trip to visit my grandmother in Florida she gave me a photo because she didn't recognize the people in it.  It was a photo of a man, a woman, and a small child (the photograph I posted yesterday for Wordless Wednesday).  The photographer's information indicated the photo had been taken in Kamenets Podolskiy, Russia (now Kamyanets Podilskyy, Ukraine), where my maternal great-grandfather was said to have been born, so I thought it must have something to do with my family.  Later I was showing several family photographs to a cousin from my father's side of the family, and when we got to this photograph she said, "We've seen her before."  We went back through the photos and found the photo she was talking about.  That photo my grandmother had identified as her father's sister Sarah.  When we compared the two photos, the two women looked almost exactly alike.  Based on the woman's clothing in the photograh from Kamenets Podolskiy, I had estimated the date to be in the early 1890's.  After a few more photo comparisons, I came to the conclusion that the photo from Kamenets Podolskiy was of my great-great-grandparents and their first child; apparently Sarah looked uncannily like her mother.  This was quite a find, because my great-great-grandmother died in Kishinev in 1908; my great-great-grandfather and all eight children left Europe.  No one else in the family had a photo of my great-great-grandmother.  I had copies made and distributed it to all the cousins I knew.

So who do you look like?

Wordless Wednesday