I have found several cool things recently, but one in particular stands out, and that's what I'll write about for 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. Share a recent genealogy find about an ancestor or family, such as a new name, document, or even a clue toward cracking a brick wall.
2. Tell us about your recent genealogy find in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook Status post. Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.
[Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting this topic — I will probably use it again!]
This is another time when the coolest discovery I made recently wasn't for my own family.
My sister and her significant other were in Greece last year. I did not know this until then, but his grandfather immigrated to the United States from Greece. My sister told me there has always been a big mystery about what his name was originally and where he was born, partly because he told different stories at different times to different people. Could I find anything?
Well, I didn't find anything at the time, but I continued to look. And a new resource that I learned about provided a huge clue.
Lara Diamond, who has a blog called Lara's Jewnealogy, wrote not too long ago about a new index on the National Archives site. It's an index to Alien Registration forms (AR-2's) from World War II.
Nonnaturalized aliens in the United States were required to fill out AR-2's under the Alien Registration Act of 1940. Information requested included facts such as where the person was born, mother's name including maiden name, and all names the alien had used. A brilliant feature of the index is that once you find someone under one name and have an A number, you can then search for that number and find how many names are listed for it, which can help you verify whether it's for the person you want.
So I searched for James Thomas in Ohio (because he lived in Cincinnati) with his rough year of birth and had one relevant result. When I searched for that person's A number in a subsequent search, I had two results: James Thomas and Dems Tomas. (I'm pretty sure Dems will turn out to be Demetrios.) There's no real doubt this is the person I was looking for. And I was able to deliver the news on the significant other's birthday, no less! How is that for a great birthday present?
I actually did find some cool things in the index for my own family. My great-great-grandfather, whom I knew had never naturalized, is in there, as is his cousin. For both of them I have their father's names and their mother's given names but no maiden names. So now I'm saving my money to order the two forms ($17 each, which is almost a steal considering the great information).
Oh! And I just thought of someone else I need to look up!
