Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: How Many of Your Ancestors Are in the Social Security Death Index?

Randy Seaver is back with a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge that has you searching for your ancestors in a database:

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

(1) Michael John Neill wrote a blog post this week listing his ancestors who have entries in the Social Security Death Index (SSDI).  He had seven ancestors in the SSDI.

(2) This week, review your files and determine which of your ancestors has an entry in the Social Security Death Index (free on FamilySearch.org; see https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1202535).  How many do you have?

(3) Tell us in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a status line on Facebook or Google Plus.  Leave a comment with a link to your blog post if you write one.

Ok, here's my list:

• Grandfather:  Bertram Lynn Sellers (1903–1995)
• Grandmother:  Anna Gauntt (1893–1986)
• Grandfather:  Abraham Meckler (1912–1989)
• Grandmother:  Lillyan E. (Gordon) Meckler (1919–2006)

• Great-grandmother:  Laura May (Armstrong) Sellers Ireland (1882–1970)
• Great-grandmother:  Sarah Libby (Brainin) Gordon (~1885–1963) (maybe)

So I have five, possibly six, ancestors who appear in the SSDI.  My father is still alive.  I'm not sure if it's my great-grandmother Sarah Gordon or not in the SSDI, and that person does not appear in the claims index.

On the other hand, I do have three ancestors who appear in the Social Security Claims Index.  Both of my grandfathers, Abraham Meckler and Bertram Lynn Sellers, are in there.  My great-grandfather Joe Gordon (~1892–1955) is also in the claims index, although he does not appear in the SSDI.  None of the rest of my great-grandparents is in either database, and my most recently deceased great-great-grandparent, Gershon Itzhak Novitsky, died in 1948 and also does not show up.

And I had my own strange search result with the SSDI on FamilySearch.  I looked for my grandmother Lillyan Meckler under those names with her year of death and did not find her.  When I searched for Esther Meckler, however, she was the only good matching result, with the full name of Lillyan Esther Meckler.  So I had the same kind of weirdness that Randy did while searching for his mother.

When Names and Languages Collide

1803 obituary of Justus Fox

When doing family history research, I often caution people not to worry about spelling.  Until well into the 20th century, most people were either poorly educated or functionally illiterate.  Spelling was done phonetically, and a person's name could be spelled multiple ways within one document.  In the United States, one of the things that helped codify spelling was passage of the Social Security Act.  Suddenly you had to prove you were a specific person, the same person every time.  Consistent spelling made that a lot easier.

But what if the problem isn't spelling, but pronunciation?  I traced one of my family lines back to a man named Justus Fox in Philadelphia.  He was born in one of the German states and immigrated to the British colonies in North America around 1750.  The family name was formerly Fuchs and was Anglicized to Fox.

When I began to find information about Justus Fox, my mind automatically pronounced his name as "justice."  My first language is American English, and it came naturally.  But then I started thinking about it.  "Justice" (which I have seen spelled as Justus) is seen as a given name in today's society, but it didn't make sense for a German-born man in the mid-18th century.  And then I started to think about German pronunciation.  The letter J does not sound the same as in English.  It has a Y sound; for example, the German word for yes, ja, is pronounced "ya" in English.  When I applied that logic to my ancestor's name, I got "yustus" and was easily able to figure out that Justus is the German equivalent of the name Eustace.  I also found there have been many well known men named Justus.

Another instance of pronunciation affecting research was when I was working on my half-sister's family.  Her mother's ancestry was all Irish all day long, both sides.  My sister's grandmother had done some work, which my sister gave me as a starting point.  Her grandmother didn't have many documents but had written down what information she knew about births, marriages, deaths, and family stories.  One story her grandmother wrote about was a portrait of her mother that had been painted by a Mr. O'Kane.  I thought it was interesting but, beyond wondering whether the portrait was still in the family somewhere, it didn't seem like anything that would help with my research.

I started looking for the family in censuses and found several I was sure were the correct people.  But I found one I wasn't sure about.  The husband was gone, which was plausible.  The mother, listed as a widow, looked right, and one person listed as her child seemed to be correct, but another person that should have been a child was listed last in the household as a boarder.  But all of the names were common Irish ones, and I didn't see enough for me to make a determination.  So I saved that census and looked for other documents.

One day I pulled out the census page again and tried to figure out if there were other clues I could use to decide if it was the right family.  This time I looked at all of the boarders listed in the household.  The name Okane caught my eye, and I remembered the story about the portrait.  When I read the rest of the line, I discovered the individual was a boarder, Japanese — and a painter.  My sister's grandmother probably interpreted the name Okane in the context of her Irish background and thought it was Irish, with an O'.  But now I'm pretty sure that I found the right family.

Do you have any interesting or entertaining pronunciation stories from your research?  Or am I the only geek who thinks this way?