Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Did Any of Your Ancestors Suffer the Loss of a Parent at a Young Age?

I have a feeling it would be difficult to find someone who did not fall into the category of 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.  Do you have ancestors who suffered the loss of one or both parents early in their lives?  Did the surviving parent remarry soon after one parent died?  Was a guardian appointed for your ancestor to protect physical or legal interests?

2.  Tell us about one or two of your "orphaned" ancestors and how this affected their lives.

3.  Share a link to your blog post, or your Facebook Status post, on this post.

I can immediately think of a few ancestors who had a parent die when they were young.  My great-grandmother Jane Dunstan was just shy of 2 1/2 years old when her father died (she was the youngest child).  My great-grandfather Joyne Gorodetsky was about 16 when his mother died (he was the oldest child).  And my paternal grandfather, Bertram Lynn Sellers, was only 15 when his father died.

I think I'll focus on my grandfather, because some parts of that story are particularly interesting.

Let's start at the beginning.  My great-grandmother Laura May Armstrong gave birth to my grandfather on April 6, 1903 without the benefit of a husband.  Even if she had been inclined to name the father (and I suspect she wouldn't have), the registration form actually had instructions that if the birth was out of wedlock, that was what was supposed to be indicated on the line asking for the father's name.  So the socially disapproving "OW" is all that appears there.

Notwithstanding that she brought a 7-month-old son to the relationship, Laura was able to find a husband, and she and Cornelius Elmer Sellers were married on November 7, 1903.  I showed with Y-DNA testing that Elmer was not the biological father of my grandfather, but he was the only father Grandpa ever knew.

On January 22, 1916, a little shy of being 13 years old, my grandfather and three other boys were playing in a dirt mound in town.  They had dug out a cave in the mound and, of course, had not reinforced it, because they didn't know better.  On that January day, the cave collapsed on them.  Two of the boys did not survive.  My grandfather did but severely broke his right ankle, which soon after necessitated the amputation of his leg at the knee.

The family had already had its share of sadness.  Elmer and Laura had nine children together, three of whom are confirmed to have died young.  Cornelius Howard Sellers was born about October 1904 and died September 3, 1906.  Harry J. Sellers was born January 9, 1913 and died June 6, 1913.  Birdsall Sellers was born April 16, 1916 and died May 26, 1916, right after my grandfather's accident.  For three more children — Amelia, born after 1904; Elmer F., born January 2, 1912; and Herman J., born June 2, 1915 — I have not found death dates, but I haven't yet found them living after 1915.

And on September 14, 1918, Elmer died of endocarditis.  The family had never had much money (in fact, Elmer's mother was the person who paid his funeral expenses), so this must have put a horrible financial strain on everyone.  There was no estate that needed to be guarded for the children's sakes.

In 1920, Laura and her four surviving children, which included my grandfather, were enumerated in the census as living with her granduncle and grandaunt, Amos and Rebecca Lippincott.  Neither Laura nor any of the children had an occupation listed, and Amos was working as a laborer.  They could not have been doing well financially.

Laura did not remarry at that time.  She did, however, give birth to another child.  Yes, less than three years after her husband had died, on March 6, 1921, my great-grandmother had a daughter, Bertolet Grace Sellers.  And did not state the name of the father for the birth certificate (thanks, Laura!).  We'll probably never know who Bertolet's father was, because she died January 11, 1927, and Laura did not provide the father's name for the death certificate either.

Laura eventually did remarry.  On August 31, 1929, she and John Stephen Ireland were married, and he is enumerated with her in the 1930 census.  The story I heard is that someone told Laura that she really should find a husband to support her, and that's why she married John.  The rest of the story was that soon after having married him she figured out that he wasn't worth the effort and got rid of him.  Apparently they didn't divorce, because when John died in 1949, she was listed as his widow in the obituary.  On the other hand, I don't know who write the obituary.

Before Laura's second marriage, however, my grandfather had moved out.  He married Elizabeth Leatherberry Sundermier on December 18, 1923.  They had three children, but after the Great Depression began, Grandpa had moved back in with his mother, and the four family members (the first child died as an infant) were enumerated in four different places in the 1930 census.

I don't know how his father dying so young affected my grandfather, as he never talked about it.  I learned a little about his life during the Depression because I interviewed him for a high school civics class, but he didn't volunteer other information.  I didn't learn details about Elmer until after my grandfather had died.

I do know that losing a leg at age 12 didn't slow Grandpa down.  He fathered five children with three different women, only two of whom he was married to (he and my grandmother were never married), and he was married to his third wife before I was born.  He drove a stick shift and worked through the Civil Service for the Army and Air Force as a mechanical and civil engineer.  He worked hard his entire life.

My grandfather was certainly an interesting character.  I suspect he got that from his mother.

Nanny Ireland and her adult children
Back row:  George Moore (Dickie) Sellers, Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr.
Front row:  Catherine Marie Sellers, Laura May (Armstrong) Sellers Ireland, Nellie Elizabeth (Betty) Sellers

Wordless Wednesday

 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Did You Or Your Children Know Their Great-Grandparents?

I'm going to broaden the scope of this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun question from Randy Seaver so I can have a more interesting post.

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

(1) Did you or your children know their great-grandparents?  

(2) Tell us in your own blog post, in comments to this post, or in comments on Facebook.  As always, please leave a link to your work in Comments.

As I've mentioned before, I have no biological children of my own, so if I restricted this question to exactly as asked, it would be a really short post.  Therefore I'm going to expand it a little.

First, neither I nor my siblings knew any of our great-grandparents.  The closest any of us came is the story that I was told not only by my mother but also by my father, that my mother flew with me to Florida when I was but a babe in arms so that her grandmother — my great-grandmother, Sarah Libby (Brainin) Gordon — could see me.  Unfortunately, there is no proof of this visit that I have yet found, even though my grandfather routinely took all sorts of family photos.  How he missed the opportunity to get four generatiosn of women together in one photo is beyond me.  One of these days (soon, obviously) I need to ask some of my cousins on that side of the family, who still live in the Miami area, if they remember this momentous visit.  Anyway, as it stands, it's a story with no documentation.

The only other great-grandparent who survived to when my two siblings and I were alive was my father's paternal grandmother, Laura May (Armstrong) Sellers Ireland, known later in life as Nanny Ireland.  After I began doing family history research, I discovered that Nanny Ireland had lived to 1970.  That was before my family moved to Australia.  We had made some trips back east to visit family, but it was always my mother's family.  My father was not close to his family, so we never visited them.  And that meant we did not meet his grandmother.  When I learned that we had missed that opportunity, I was a little annoyed, but it was way too late to do anything about it at that point.

Keeping this in my generation, I'm not sure if any of my sister's children met a great-grandparent.  The only one who could have would have been her son Garry, who was born in 1983.  My paternal grandfather died in 1985.  Stacy might have brought Garry with her on a trip to Florida, and he might have met Grampa.

But if we take it one additional generation, we have a definite positive.  Stacy's granddaughter, Natalie, absolutely met her great-grandfather — my father.  So by manipulating this challenge just a little (okay, quite a bit), I finally have one positive result!

This photo, from the family reunion/birthday party I coordinated in 2015, includes my father and my grandniece.  My brain seems to be mush at the moment, because I have blanked on how to draw circles around each of them using Photoshop.  My father is on the far left wearing the blue and white shirt.  My stepmother is to his right in the photo, wearing a yellow blouse.  My grandniece is behind her with her back to the camera.  So I have documentation of my story!

Twelve Mothers

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Which Ancestors Would You Like to Talk to?

This week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun is almost too easy in some ways.

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

(1) We sometimes find we have questions we would love to discuss with our ancestors:  the who, what, when, why, and how questions that might help with our genealogy research.

(2) Which ancestors would you like to talk to?  What questions would you ask?  

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

So the easy answer here is, "Every one!"  I have questions I would like to ask of every single one of my ancestors (and collateral relatives, too).  The most obvious question is parents for those end-of-line ancestors, but I'd love to know about birth dates, marriage dates, siblings, grandparents, details of their lives, and so much more.  I can't think of a single ancestor for whom I know everything, which means there's always something more to learn.

Oh, we're supposed to come up with something concrete?

Well, feh.

In that case, the first person who comes to mind of whom to ask questions is my paternal great-grandmother, Laura May (Armstrong) Sellers Ireland.  And the first question to ask of her would be, "Who was the biological father of my grandfather, Bertram Lynn Sellers?"  I have to hope she would actually know the answer, of course.

The second question I would ask is, "Who was the father of your daughter Bertolet Grace Sellers?"  (Who was born three years after her husband, Cornelius Elmer Sellers, had died.)  I think it's a safer bet that she would know the answer to that one.

And for a possible third question, I might ask, "Did Elmer know that my grandfather wasn't his biological son?"  I'm pretty sure Elmer knew, but it would be nice to confirm that.

Gee, after that, nothing else seems quite so compelling.

I do have two questions about photographs that I would like to ask of ancestors, though.

I have a photo of my great-grandmother Sore Leibe Brainin and her mother, Ruchel Dwojre (Jaffe) Brainin, with another woman and two girls.  I want to know who those other three people are.  I think they are Ruchel Dwojre's sister, Yetta Rashe (Jaffe) Michelson, and possibly her two daughters.  But I don't know for sure, and no one I know can verify or refute my hypothesis.

I also have a photograph of a photograph of a man.  It looks as though it was colorized.  The man resembles the male Gorodetsky members of my family.  My hypothesis is that he is Gersh Wolf Gorodetsky, my third-great-grandfather.  I think asking my great-grandfather Joe Gordon (originally Joyne Gorodetsky) or his father, Victor Gordon (originally Avigdor Gorodetsky), would be good options to get that answer.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Where Were Your Ancestral Families in the 1950 U.S. Census?

Randy Seaver is getting the jump on things, because the 1950 census won't be available for more than two years, but this week in Saturday Night Genealogy Fun we can think ahead.

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) The 1950 United States census release to the public is just over two years away (on 1 April 2022).  

(2) Who in your ancestral families will be in the 1950 census?  Where will they be residing?  What occupations will they have?  The official date was 1 April 1950.

(3) Share your conjectures with us in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a Facebook message.  Please leave a comment on this blog noting where your conjectures are located.

Okay, since Randy said "ancestral families", I"m going to stick to my direct lines.  Collateral lines are not "indirect ancestors", they're not ancestors at all.

My father should be living with his parents, who in 1950 were still together.  According to the list of his residences that my grandfather wrote up, from 1946 to 1952 he was living on Union Mills Road in Mount Holly, New Jersey, so that's where I will expect to find my grandfather, grandmother, and father.  My father would have been 14 when the census taker came around, so I don't think he was working yet.  My grandfather might have been working for the Army at Fort Dix.  I have no idea whether my grandmother was working, but if I had to guess I would say no.

• B. L. Sellers, Sr., age 47, born New Jersey
• Anna Sellers, age 57, born New Jersey
• Lynn Sellers, age 14, born New Jersey
• Mildred Sellers, age 21, born New Jersey (maybe in the household)

My paternal grandfather's mother should also be in Mount Holly, probably on Broad Street at the same house in which she was living in 1940 but wasn't enumerated (that address is missing from the 1940 census).  She might have retired by then.

• Laura Ireland, age 68, born New Jersey

My paternal grandmother's parents were both alive in 1950.  They were probably in Mount Holly; I don't have an address.  Considering their ages, I hope they were retired.

• Thomas K. Gauntt, age 79, born New Jersey
• Jane Gauntt, age 78, born England

My mother should be with her parents, but I don't know if they will be in Miami, Florida or in Brooklyn, New York.  I think by that time they had moved to Miami.  My mother was 9 when the census taker visited, so she won't be working.  My grandfather might be a taxi driver, and my grandmother might be working in real estate or else a housewife.

• Abe Meckler, age 37, born New York
• Lily Meckler, age 31, born New York
• Myra Meckler, age 9, born New York
• Martin Meckler, age 6, born New York

My maternal grandfather's mother had already passed away, but his father was still alive in 1950.  He should be in Brooklyn, although I don't know an address.  In 1953 he was living at 591 Sneider Avenue, so maybe he was there in 1950.  I don't know if he will be working.  Hey, there were rumors that he remarried after my great-grandmother died; if that was true, maybe I'll find the second wife with him in the 1950 census!

• Morris Mackler, age about 68, born Russia

My maternal grandmother's parents were both alive in 1950.  They should also be in Brooklyn, I think on Livonia.  My great-grandfather was probably still working in the clothing industry.  My great-grandmother was a housewife and never worked outside the home that I know of.

• Joe Gordon, age about 58, born Russia
• Sarah Gordon, age about 59, born Russia

And I think that's it.  I've accounted for all my known great-grandparents, and my last great-great-grandparents died in 1948.

Significant Anniversaries of 2020

Genealogists collect dates and facts about our relatives, but instead of just filing them away and forgetting about them, it's good to think about them and remember them, tell the stories of what happened.  So as I did last year, I searched through my family tree program to see what milestones from my family's history will occur this year.  Unlike last year, there's a good balance between events from my father's and my mother's sides of the family, which is good, so people don't think I'm researching only one side.

150 Years Ago

My paternal great-grandfather Thomas Kirkland Gauntt, son of James Gaunt and Amelia Gibson, was born May 23, 1870 in Fairview, Medford Township, Burlington County, New Jersey.  He was the father of my paternal grandmother.  I've written about him a few times before on my blog:  I celebrated when I found his birth registration on microfilm at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City; I have found him in eleven censuses (but no 1890); and I created a timeline based on all the records I have found for him.  I'm also fortunate to have a few photographs of him.  I did not know him, because he died before I was born, but my father remembered him well.

My great-great-grandparents Cornelius Godschalk Sellers (son of Franklin Peter Sellers and Rachel Godshalk) and Catherine Fox Owen (daughter of William Owen and Sarah Fox) were married in January 1870, most likely in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  I don't write about the Sellerses as much as I used to, after determining that my grandfather became a Sellers by informal adoption.  But neither Grampa nor any of his siblings knew that, and Grampa did know his grandmother Kate, so I thought it fitting to commemorate the 150th anniversary of her first wedding.

100 Years Ago

In the 100-year category I managed to hit the trifecta, with a birth, a marriage, and a death.

Morton Eli Perlman was born August 18, 1920 in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York.  He was the son of Louis Perlman and Jennie Novitsky and was my first cousin twice removed through the Novitskys (and my grandfather's first cousin).  Jennie was the sister of my maternal great-grandmother Minne Zelda (Novitsky) Meckler and filled the role of mother-in-law for my maternal grandmother, as Minnie died before my grandparents married.

I met Mort once, when I went to Florida to see my grandmother.  She had his address and thought it would be nice to visit him.  He had done some genealogy research and shared what he had collected on the Novitskys and Perlmutters, which has been invaluable in my research now, as he was the only one who had saved that information.  I was very fortunate to have met him when I did, as he died suddenly a few months later.

On January 18, 1920, Benjamin Brainin (son of Morris Brainin and Rose Dorothy Jaffe) and Yetta Braunstein (daughter of Max Braunstein and Betsy Schwartz) were married in The Bronx, Bronx County, New York.  Benny was my great-granduncle, the youngest brother of my maternal great-grandmother Sarah Libby (Brainin) Gordon.  Benny worked with automobiles in some form or another for most of his life.  I never met Benny or Yetta, but I know their granddaughter Janis (Brainin) Monat.  Along with (kind of) sharing the same given name with me, she also is interested in family history, and is one of the few relatives I've met who had done some family history research.

Benny was born in the Russian Empire, probably in some part of what is now Latvia.  There is a family story that he was shot by a Cossack when he was 3 or 4 years old, while walking in a cemetery.  I don't know if I'll find a way to prove or disprove that, but it's an interesting story!

Eight days after Benny was married in the Bronx, his brother William Brainin died, on January 26, 1920, in Manhattan, New York County, New York.  He was probably about 31.  While Benny was the baby of the family, Willie was two children before him.  He died of complications of the influenza virus, which he probably caught while he served in the U.S. Army at the end of World War I.  My grandmother used to tell a story of how when he was sent home he infected his sister (my great-grandmother) while she was pregnant (with my grandmother), but I don't know how much of the story is true.

There was at least one photograph of Willie that we had in the family.  When I was sorting through photos with my grandmother, she pointed one out and said, "That's my Uncle Willie in his Army uniform."  But the photo has mysteriously disappeared.

75 Years Ago

Raymond Lawrence Sellers was born September 23, 1945 to Dorothy Mae "Dottie" Sellers and (probably) Clarence Newcomb "Zeke" Lore, in Bridgeton, Cumberland County, New Jersey.  I've been looking for Raymond for a little more than four years now, which I realize isn't very long.  Dottie is my paternal aunt, and she asked me to help her find Raymond, the son she gave up for adoption.  I write about him a few times every year in my blog.  Because New Jersey adoption records are very, very closed, we don't know anything about what happened to him after Dottie surrendered him.

If Raymond is still alive, he will be turning 75 this September.  I realize, however, that he might not be alive.  I don't know what his name was changed to, if he ever married, if he had children, or anything that happened to him.  All I know is that I want to find out before my aunt, who is currently 94 years old, passes away.

50 Years Ago

My great-grandmother and my father's paternal grandmother, Laura May (Armstrong) Sellers Ireland, died October 23, 1970 at the age of 88 in Niceville (yes, that's really the name), Okaloosa County, Florida.  I never got to meet her, even though she lived until I was 8 years old.

Nanny Ireland, as she was called throughout most of her adult life from what I can gather, was definitely an interesting woman.  She bore my grandfather as an illegitimate child and declined to state the name of the father on the birth certificate.  She married Elmer Sellers seven months later, and he raised my grandfather as his own son, with neither my grandfather nor his siblings ever knowing anything different.  She and Elmer had eight children together (notwithstanding rumors that not all of those were Elmer's), three of whom survived to adulthood.

Elmer died young, but that didn't stop Laura (because she wasn't Nanny Ireland yet at that time).  Three years after Elmer had passed away, Laura had another child, and again declined to name the father on the birth record.  Sadly, little Bertolet (yup, that was really her name) died before reaching the age of 6.  And would you believe that even on her death certificate, Laura did not name the father?

In 1929, Laura married a man named John Ireland.  I was told by one of my cousins that she did so because someone had convinced her that she needed a man to help her take care of her children and her affairs.  I was also told that soon after marrying John, she decided that was a load of crap and got rid of him (one hopes by divorce).  But the name Ireland stuck, and she became known as Nanny Ireland.

I'm really sorry I didn't get to meet Nanny Ireland.  She would have had some fascinating stories to tell, if she had been so inclined.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Was the Biggest Surprise You Found about an Ancestor?

For this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, Randy Seaver borrowed a provocative question from another blog.

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

(1) The Family History Hound listed 20 Questions about Your Ancestor, and I'm going to use some of them in the next few months.  

(2) Please answer the question - "What was the biggest surprise you found about an ancestor?" 

(3) Write your own blog post, make a comment on this post, or post  your answer on Facebook or Google+.  Please leave a link to your answer in comments on this post.

I considered whether I should choose learning that my grandfather's biological father was not the man his mother married, but that really wasn't a surprise.  By the time I had my cousin's DNA tested, I pretty much expected my cousin and my father not to match.

What was a surprise, however, was learning that my great-grandmother Nanny Ireland gave birth to a daughter three years after her husband, Elmer, had died.  It was also surprising that my grand-aunt did not try to hide the information.

Several years ago, I acquired a list of the children buried in the same cemetery plot as my great-grandfather.  One of the names was Bertolet Grace Sellers.  She was said to have been born about 1921 and died in 1927.

I had never heard of Bertolet Grace and had no idea who she was.  I had been told that one of my grandfather's sisters had had a daughter who was born about 1922 and died in 1927.  This little girl was very close in years, although that other child was not said to have been named Bertolet.  I wondered if perhaps there had been some confusion about the name in the records.

I called my grand-aunt and told her about my discovery.  I asked if Bertolet Grace could be Catherine's daughter, and someone had gotten the name very wrong.  Aunt Betty responded in a totally unexpected manner:  "Oh, so you've found our little secret, have you?"

She proceeded to tell me that no, Bertolet was not Catherine's daughter.  She was in fact a much younger sister [technically half-sister] born in 1921, three years after Elmer had died.  Aunt Betty did not know who Bertolet's father might have been.  She remembered her little sister very well, though.

Some additional research turned up another surprise:  a memorial printed in the newspaper on the one-year anniversary of Bertolet's death.  The memorial was stated as being from Bertolet's mother (Nanny Ireland) and all of Bertolet's siblings.  It was a very sweet poem saying how much the family missed the small light in their lives.  So not only did my great-grandmother have an illegitimate child out of wedlock three years after her husband died, she placed a memorial in the newspaper a year after the child had died.  Definitely not trying to cover up the information?

The last surprise related to Bertolet, at least so far, came when my sister obtained copies of Bertolet's birth and death certificates.  Nanny Ireland declined to list Bertolet's father on either document.

Overall, I think I'm safe in saying that Nanny Ireland was a surprising woman for her time.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Day Night Genealogy Fun: Your Best Genealogy Day Ever

I've noticed recently that several of the Saturday Night Genealogy Fun topics appear to be annual themes.  Last year's request for "best genealogy day" was in October, however, not November.  But on to this week's request from Randy Seaver's:

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

1) What was your very "Best Genealogy Day Ever?"  It might be the day you solved a thorny research problem, the day you spent at a repository and came away with more records than you could imagine, or the day you met a cousin or visited an ancestral home.

2)  Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook or Google+ post.  Be sure to drop a comment to this post if you write your own blog post and link to it.

I've already written about two really great genealogy days (figuring out my great-great-grandmother's actual maiden name and meeting a lot of cousins from one family line), so I had to think about another good one.  I have settled on the day on which serendipity played a part.

At some point I learned that my paternal grandfather's mother, Laura May (Armstrong) Sellers Ireland, had been living with him when she died, and I ordered her death certificate from the state of Florida.  The certificate told me that she was buried in the Valparaiso Cemetery, Valparaiso being essentially a "twin city" to Niceville, where I used to live.  Valparaiso also is not far from where my father has been living for several years now.  So I told my father that the next time I came to visit, we were going to find his grandmother's grave.

I think it was the summer of 1995 when I flew out.  My stepfather had agreed we would scatter my mother's ashes when my brother and I were both there, and my brother was going to be in the area for his high school 15-year reunion, so I made plans to be there also.  I reminded my father ahead of time we were going to the cemetery.

The day we went to look for the cemetery, my father decided we didn't need a map, because Valparaiso was so small it wasn't going to take us long to find it (ha!).  My stepmother came with us.  After driving around for an hour or so and finding absolutely nothing, my father finally listened to my suggestion to ask at the police department.  As I had suspected, they knew exactly where it was, and off we went again.

When we finally found the cemetery, it was a small, square, fenced-in plot.  A caretaker's building was off to the side, but no one was there.  The entrance gate was in the middle of one of the sides.  We had no idea where my great-grandmother's stone would be, so the three of us walked in and headed in three different directions.  My father went to one side, my stepmother to the other side, and I went straight ahead to the rear fence to start from there.

Just as I arrived at the far side, my father called out that we should probably be looking for a flat stone, because as we all knew, my grandfather was pretty tight with money and wouldn't have spent enough for a standing stone.  After we all laughed, I turned and looked down at the ground where I had stopped —and there she was!  And it was a flat stone, just as my father had predicted!

I thought it was nice that even though I never had the opportunity to meet my great-grandmother in life, I was able to find her tombstone and make a connection to her that way.

Wordless Wednesday