Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Are Your Major Genealogy Research Challenges?

Randy Seaver is back with this week's challenge (a key word this week) for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun!

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

1.  What are your major genealogy challenges — the family mysteries that you haven't been able to crack to date?

2.  Tell us about five of your real genealogy challenges with a short paragraph, and links to blog posts if you have written about them.

3.  Share your challenges in your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, BlueSky, or other social media post.  Leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.

Okay, here's my list.

• Who was the biological father of my paternal grandfather, Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr. (1903–1995)?  He was informally adopted by his mother's husband when he was seven months old and used the name Sellers his entire life.  See "I'm Apparently a Sellers via Informal Adoption" and "Looking for Mr. Mundy (or a variant thereof)."

• What happened to my cousin Raymond Lawrence Sellers (1945–?) after his mother put him up for adoption?  I was unable to find anything about Raymond before my aunt passed away, but her other children would still like to know.  See "Saturday Night Genealogy Fun:  Your 2024 'Dear Genea-Santa' Letter."

• All of my Jewish research is a challenge, but the especially difficult lines are those who were living in what was Grodno gubernia in Russia, now mostly in Belarus.  The Nazis were particularly thorough in destroying archival records about the Jews in the area.  So my Meckler (Mekler), Novitsky (Nowicki), and Yelsky lines I'm really, really stuck on.  See "Saturday Night Genealogy Fun:  Your Best Genealogy Research Find in May 2018."

• And speaking of the Jewish part of my family, I had a few cousins who ended up in Cuba when they fled Eastern Europe.  I have managed to acquire only four records from their time there (which ranged from the late 1920's to the early 1960's).  I don't know if going back to Cuba will help with my research on the Szochermans.  See "A Declaration of Intention — from Cuba."

• My ex's father (and therefore the grandfather of my stepsons), Karm Singh, was from Punjab, India, born when it was still controlled by the British.  The British barely bothered with records for their own people in India; they didn't really care about the Indians.  So I've gotten absolutely nowhere so far on finding any records for the family.  I have been told I would have better luck if I could travel there and talk to people in person.  See "'Finding Your Roots' – Margaret Cho, Sanjay Gupta, and Martha Stewart."

Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Tell Us about the Fathers in Your Tree

Tomorrow is Father's Day, so we knew that fathers would be the topic in some way for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver.

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

1.  It's Father's Day on Sunday.  This week, tell us about the fathers in your tree — their names, their birth and death years and locations, their occupations, the number of spouses, the number of children, etc.  Go back at least four generations if possible through your known second-great-grandfathers.

2.  Share your father list information in your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, BlueSky, or other social media post.  Leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.

I can handle this!  Well, except for the chart.  Family Tree Maker and I could not agree on producing that, so I'm omitting it.  I'll try to figure out how to beat FTM into submission at a later date.

• Father:  #2 Bertram Lynn Sellers, Jr. (1935 New Jersey to 2019 Florida), automobile mechanic, 3 spouses, 4 children (3 girls, 1 boy)

• Grandfather:  #4 Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr. (1903 New Jersey to 1995 Florida), civil engineer, 3 spouses, 5 children (3 girls, 2 boys)

• Grandfather:  #6 Abraham Meckler (1912 New York to 1989 Florida), taxi driver, 1 spouse, 3 children (1 girl, 2 boys)

• Great-grandfather:  #8 Mr. Mundy, unknown everything else except at least 1 child (1 boy)

• Great-grandfather:  #10 Thomas Kirkland Gauntt (1870 New Jersey to 1951 New Jersey), farmer, 1 spouse, 10 children (5 girls, 5 boys)

• Great-grandfather:  #12 Morris Mackler (about 1882 Russian Empire to 1953 New York), carpenter, 1 spouse, 7 children (3 girls, 4 boys)

• Great-grandfather:  #14 Joe Gordon (about 1892 Russian Empire to 1955 New York), furrier, 1 spouse, 4 children (1 girl, 3 boys)

• 2nd-great-grandfather:  #16 Mr. Mundy, unknown everything else except at least 1 child (1 boy)

• 2nd-great-grandfather:  #18 Joel Armstrong (1849 New Jersey to maybe 1921 New Jersey), laborer, 1 confirmed spouse, 3 confirmed children (2 girls, 1 boy)

• 2nd-great-grandfather:  #20 James Gauntt (1831 New Jersey to 1899 New Jersey), wheelwright, 1 spouse, 10 children (4 girls, 6 boys)

• 2nd-great-grandfather:  #22 Frederick Cleworth Dunstan (1840 Lancashire to 1873 Lancashire), file grinder, 1 spouse, 6 children (3 girls, 3 boys)

• 2nd-great-grandfather:  #24 Simcha Dovid Mekler (unknown Russian Empire to before 1903 Russian Empire), unknown occupation but carpenter would be a good guess, 1 known spouse, 2 known children (1 girl, 1 boy)

• 2nd-great-grandfather:  #26 Gershon Itzhak Novitsky (about 1856 Russian Empire to 1948 New York), wood turner, 1 official spouse, 7 known children (3 girls, 4 boys)

• 2nd-great-grandfather:  #28 Victor Gordon (about 1863 Russian Empire to 1925 New York), furrier, 2 spouses, 8 children (4 girls, 4 boys)

• 2nd-great-grandfather:  #30 Morris Brainin (about 1861 Russian Empire to 1930 New York), shoemaker, 1 spouse, 8 children (4 girls, 4 boys)

Where's Grandpa?

My grandfather wearing his Shriner's fez,
whose whereabouts are also unknown.

Today, April 6, was my paternal grandfather's birthday.

Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr. was born April 6, 1903 in Mount Holly, Burlington County, New Jersey.  He died January 23, 1995 in Niceville, Okaloosa County, Florida.

When I thought, "Where's Grandpa?", the first thing that came to my mind was the humorous link on Steve Morse's One-Step Website.  But that's actually looking for your great-grandfather.

What I'm really thinking about when I ask that question, though, is where is what's left of my grandfather.

I know from my grandfather's death certificate that he was cremated.  So what's left of him are the cremains.

But I don't know where they are.

When Grandpa died, he was married to his third wife, Adelle Cordelia Taylor.  She was the only person he was married to during my life; they married the year before I was born.  Adelle was a very quiet woman, and Grandpa pretty much controlled her life.

About a year or two before he died, Grandpa had a stroke.  Adelle couldn't care for him, because she was about 80 years old at the time.  So Grandpa was moved to a rehabilitation facility in town.  Adelle didn't drive, so she could only visit when someone took her there, which wasn't often.  She was left sitting at home most of the time.  I'm sure she went to church quite a bit, because it was just across the street, but I don't think she did much else.  Her niece visited Grandpa every day and helped with his physical therapy.  She may have been living in the house with Adelle during this time.

But then Grandpa died.

My Aunt Carol, Grandpa's youngest child, asked me one day if I could find out what happened to her father's cremains.  So I started trying to figure it out.

The death certificate doesn't state who received the cremains, only which company handled the cremation.  I started there.

And learned that the facility that handled Grandpa's cremation no longer exists.  I found the name of the company that bought its business, but the new company didn't get (maybe didn't bother to get?) all of the records from the old company (or at least that's what they told me).  So they couldn't tell me what happened to Grandpa's cremains.

And the trail stopped there.

I'm thinking, "Aren't there laws about this?  Doesn't someone have to keep track of where these things go?"

But it was several years after the fact that I started looking for this information, and by that time Grandpa was already lost.

My best guess is that Adelle probably received the cremains.  After settling Grandpa's estate, she moved about 20 miles north of Niceville to Crestview, to live with her nephew.  I know that she brought a bunch of Grandpa's papers and photos with her, because another aunt was given those several years later (see the next paragraph).  So it's a reasonable guess that she brought the cremains with her also.

A little more than five years after Grandpa died, Adelle passed away in Crestview, on May 25, 2000.  And a few years after that, Adelle's nephew contacted my Aunt Dottie to give her all of my grandfather's papers that Adelle had kept.  If he had the cremains, one would think he would have offered to give those also.  But if they weren't in an urn and were just in a plain box, maybe no one realized what they were and they were tossed out (which is why I need to label the little urn that has some of my father's cremains in it, so it doesn't suffer that fate).

I am still very disappointed that I couldn't answer the question "Where's Grandpa?" and return his cremains to my aunt.

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

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: The Best Newspaper Article You've Found for Your Family History

I love newspaper research, so this week's challenge from Randy Seaver for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun should be right up my alley.

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

1.  What newspaper article is the best one you've found to help you with your family history?  Tell us about it:  where you found it, and what you learned from it.

2.  Tell us about your best newspaper article find in a comment on this post or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

Because I love newspaper research so much, I am constantly searching databases for family names, and as a result I have all sorts of articles about family members.  But I can't say that any of them has particularly helped with my family history.  I learn cool little tidbits of information, but I can't recall solving any significant mysteries or resolving any major questions with them.

I did answer a question the other way around, though.

Many years ago, when SmallTownPapers.com was still a pay site and had a lot more content (including older issues, and newspapers from not-so-small towns), I had access to it at some point, so I poked around and searched for various family names.  One article I discovered was in a DeFuniak Springs, Florida newspaper (which might have been the Herald or the Breeze, but I don't remember).  The article mentioned a display of antique carpenter's tools in the local library that had been provided by my paternal grandfather, B. L. Sellers, who lived in Niceville.

I printed out a copy (well before the days when I routinely saved electronic files, sadly) and remember thinking that I had never known my grandfather to collect carpenter's tools.  I wondered what had generated his interest in them.

Only a few months ago I was looking through a stack of papers that my grandfather saved from when he worked as a civilian at Fort Dix, New Jersey (he saved everything!) and learned that one of his early jobs there was as a carpenter.  So the newspaper article created the question for me, and other documents answered that question.

Another cool newspaper find was from the 1978 Playground Daily News (now the Northwest Florida Daily News), the newspaper that covers a lot of the Florida Panhandle communities.  I lived in that area for six years.  I didn't find this myself; my father's sister was volunteering at the Historical Society Museum in Valparaiso and made the discovery.  She was sorting through a newspaper clippings file and found a photo of me at the museum, so she made a photocopy and mailed it to me.  During the summers, the museum used to offer craft classes, which I think were free.  So I have a photo of me learning traditional Indian pine needle basket weaving.  And I still have the little basket that I made in that class.

me, in a very 1970's polyester shirt
(which I actually remember!)

So no great revelations, but fun stuff nonetheless!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: When Has Someone Helped You Find a Record or Solve a Mystery?

How could we get by in genealogy without people who help us find things?  That's the focus 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.  We all need, and usually enjoy, a little help from our genealogy friends.  This week's challenge is to share a time when a genea-friend helped you find a record, or even solve a mystery.  It could be a recent help, or something from long ago.

2.  Tell us about them in a comment on this post or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

For one of the most important records that someone helped me find, it wasn't a genea-friend who stepped up, it was my sister.

I had requested a search for my paternal grandfather's birth record from the state of New Jersey a few times, and I had failed every time.  I tried with his name as I knew it, with no given name, and under his mother's maiden name.  Fail, fail, fail.

But my sister had offered to help with the family research, and I took her up on the offer.  I did the previsit legwork:  checked with the archives on their procedures, verified their hours, etc., etc., etc.

So when my sister went in to search manually, she was successful!  And the lovely archivists even had found when my great-grandmother had amended the birth certificate 37 years after my grandfather was born.

The original birth certificate of my grandfather, whom I knew as Bertram Lynn Sellers, was made out in the name of Gertrude L. Armstrong, female, born April 6, 1903.

We're never going to be able to explain the mystery of how a mistake was made on the sex and name of the child, but 37 years later, his mother had it corrected.

And with the help of my sister (who I guess is also my genea-friend!), we now have the documentation to show it happened.

Coincidentally, today is April 6, my grandfather's birthday.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Five "Fun" or "Different" Facts

And somehow I have fallen behind in my blog posts again!  Ah, well, I'm picking myself up and starting over (again).  That's all we can do, right?  So here I am for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

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

1.  We all find "fun" or "different" information about ourselves, our relatives, and our ancestors in our genealogy and family history pursuits.  What are five "fun" or "different" facts in your life or your ancestors' lives?

2.  Tell us about your five fun or different facts in a comment on this post or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

Thank you to Jacquie Schattner for suggesting this topic.

I had to think about this a little bit to come up with five stories.

• Starting with myself, something fun and different about me is that for a short while I was a professional drummer — as in was paid for a drumming gig.  This is prettty cool, since I'm not actually a drummer (as any real drummer can tell you), but a percussionist who can drum a little.  So I consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity.

• After he passed away, I found out that my father had served in two different state National Guard units.  This was one of those accidental discoveries, as opposed to something I had been looking for.  My sister had consulted me about my father's obituary (as she should have, since I'm definitely the family genealogist).  She had included that Daddy had served seven years in the New Jersey National Guard.  I knew that couldn't be right, based on his age and when he had moved to Florida, so suggested she take it out.  She ended up revising it to served seven years in the National Guard.  The question prompted me to figure out how to request his National Guard personnel file.  The revision turned out to be accurate, because he served four years in New Jersey and three in Florida.  None of us had known previously that he served in Florida!  And I was happy the obit didn't have inaccurate information.

• Many years ago, I found a newspaper squib in an issue of the De Funiak Springs, Florida newspaper thanking my paternal grandfather for lending his collection of antique carpenter's tools to a display in the local library.  I saved it (of course!) and remember thinking at the time that I had had no idea my grandfather collected antique carpenter's tools and wondered what had sparked his interest.  Recently I was looking over documents my grandfather saved from when he was working at Fort Dix, New Jersey in the civil service and discovered that one of his early jobs there was as . . . a carpenter!  So one little genealogical tidbit fed into another.

• After being contacted by a cousin's husband (he's the genealogist in their family), I learned that my great-great-grandmother's older sister had an early marriage that was apparently annulled (so far the only annulment in my family that I know of).  I say apparently because I haven't found documentation yet (not sure what kind of documentation you can find for annulments), but it's definitely her in the marriage record, and there doesn't seem to be a divorce (and my cousin's husband thinks it was annulled).  Okay, so it's possible that she simply moved on without dissolving the first marriage and married two more times, which would make those bigamous.  Well, that would be a different kind of "fun" fact about a relative, wouldn't it?

• And for something different on my mother's side of the family, I was told that her father had played sandlot baseball with Jackie Robinson (yes, *that* Jackie Robinson) in Brooklyn.  I suspect I'll never be able to find any kind of documentation for that, but it's a cool story.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Who Is a Mysterious Person in Your Family Tree?

Time for this week's Saturday Night Geneaogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver!

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

1.  Who is a mysterious person in the family tree you'd like to learn more about? [Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting topics!]

2.  Write your own blog post, or add your response as a comment to this blog post, in a Facebook Status post or note.

The most mysterious person in my family tree is still my paternal grandfather's biological father, about whom I know nothing, although I suspect his given name was Bertram.

My grandfather's birth was registered under his mother's maiden name of Armstrong because she was not married at the time he was born.  When he was 7 months old his mother married Cornelius Elmer Sellers, and from that point on he apparently used the last name of Sellers.  When he was 37 years old his mother filed an amended birth record for him, changing his name legally from Armstrong to Sellers and stating that his father was Elmer Sellers.

I proved through Y-DNA that he was not biologically a Sellers.  My cousin, the grandson of my grandfather's brother through a straight male line, and my father had totally different Y-DNA results, indicating they did not descend from the same man (certainly not within a genealogically relevant period of time).  (And there is no question that my father was my grandfather's son; they looked too much alike.)  My cousin matched several other Sellers men whose ancestor was the same German man, Hans Georg Soller.  My father has no matches to anyone with the last name of Sellers.

I was fortunate to meet my grandaunt, my grandfather's youngest sister, before she passed away.  She provided quite a bit of information about the family, including that my grandfather, whose given names were Bertram Lynn, was supposed to have been named after a close family friend.

Three years after Elmer Sellers died, my great-grandmother had another child (with no husband), whom she named Bertolet.  This is a little too much of a coincidence for me, particularly because the name Bertolet is pretty unusual (I'm not sure if it's unique).  Whether the same man was the father of my grandfather and of Bertolet is a separate question (my great-grandmother did not list Bertolet's father's name on the child's birth or death certificate), but I'm pretty sure that Grandpa's father was named Bertram or something similar, because the name "Bert" certainly seemed to be meaningful to my great-grandmother.

My father has two Y-DNA matches at 111 markers (the most available for commercial consumer testing), both of whom have the last name of Mundy.  So my theory (still) is that my biological great-grandfather was probably a Mundy with the given name of Bertram or something similar.

With the help of one of my readers, I have a really good candidate, a Bertram Mundy who lived in northern New Jersey but who was some sort of traveling salesman.  It is quite plausible (to me, at least) that he might have traveled to the Philadelphia area, somehow met my great-grandmother (who lived in nearby Burlington County, New Jersey), and had a tryst of some type with her.  I'm still working on researching that theory and trying to prove or disprove it.

FInding My Aunt Carol

I had known about my Aunt Carol for years.  My mother, who cared so much about knowing and staying in touch with family members, made sure of that, even if Carol was my father's sister, not hers.

But the problem my father had was that she wasn't his sister — she was his half-sister.  She was born from the relationship my grandfather had after he left my grandmother, and my father resented that for decades, as I eventually learned.

When my mother compiled a list of all known relatives out to stepgrandparents (yes, really!) for my brother, who was applying for a job with a security clearance, Carol was included.  I knew her full name — Carol Beth Sellers — and her birthday — August 20, 1954.  Mommy thought she was born in Niceville, Florida.  We knew her mother's name was Anita.  And that was about it.

My grandfather died in 1995, as did my mother.  Adelle, my grandfather's widow when he died, went to live with her nephew; she had no children of her own to take her in.  She herself died in 2000.

I still don't know how much of my grandfather's "stuff" Adelle kept with her when she moved to her nephew's home.  (For instance, the whereabouts of Grandpa's Shriner's fez are still unknown.)  Apparently, however, some of what Adelle did take with her were a lot of Grandpa's papers from when he worked in the Civil Service with the U.S. Air Force and several photos from his marriage to Anita.

The reason the papers and photos became known is that some years after Adelle had died, the nephew contacted my aunt Dottie — my father's oldest sister from Grandpa's side of the family — and asked if anyone in the family was interested in those items.  I am so happy Dottie said yes.

Dottie got everything from Adelle's nephew and then sat on the papers and photos for a couple of years before asking my father if he wanted them.  And thus they were passed on to a new caretaker for a while.

My father had them for some time.  He had made plans — he wanted to scan all the Civil Service documents and then share them with other family members, particularly me, the primary one interested in our family history.  He even told me that he had them and was going to share the scans after he had made them.

The problem was, however, that there were a LOT of papers.  Grandpa was known for being a little obsessive about keeping things, and his work documents were no exception.

After a while Daddy decided he wasn't going to get around to doing all that scanning and asked if I just wanted the documents, and I could be the one stuck scanning them and sharing with family members.  And of course I said yes.

When he sent everything to me, the first thing I did was separate the work documents from the several photos that were included.  When I looked through the photos, I recognized my father in a couple and my grandfather in several, but I didn't know who the woman and young girl were who appeared many times.  After asking my father and aunt, I learned they were Anita, my grandfather's wife after his relationship with my grandmother, and my aunt Carol, Anita's daughter and Daddy's youngest sister.

My father made it clear he was not interested in the photos in any way — "That is not my sister.  I've never had anything to do with her."  Of course, using his logic, his sisters Dottie and Mildred shouldn't have wanted anything to do with him, as Grandpa had left their mother to live with my grandmother (not divorcing their mother until Anita insisted on being able to marry, as I'll explain in a little while), and my older half-sister Laurie shouldn't have wanted to keep in touch with my siblings and me.  And I eventually determined that he was in photos with Carol, debunking what he said.  But that's okay, life has a way of working out sometimes.

There were so many photos, I couldn't let them just be.  I decided I had to find Anita and/or Carol and reunite them with the photos.

I asked my aunt Dottie if she was in touch with Anita or Carol.  She said no.  My only clue starting out was my grandfather's obituary, which included Carol as a surviving family member and had her last name as Ebanks.

This was the early days of genealogy information being available online.  I didn't find anything relevant with searches.  I wasn't finding much of anything with the name Ebanks at all.  I started to think that it might be Eubanks, just misspelled, so searched for that also.  I found more results, just not for the person I was looking for.

I was making a lot of phone calls by searching phone directories for Ebanks and Eubanks.  I don't remember now how I made the connection (this was several years ago), but in calling someone else named Ebanks, she told me she knew about Anita and that she used to work for this one company; maybe they could help me get in touch with her.

I was certainly grasping at straws by that point, so I said, sure, it couldn't hurt to try.  And I called the company.  I'm certain it was against policy, but the woman I spoke to said that not only did she know Anita, who had retired by that time, but she could give me a phone number for her!  I did the genealogy happy dance around the living room.

When I called Anita, she confirmed that she was indeed the ex-wife of my grandfather and the mother of my aunt Carol.  I told her how happy I was to find her and that I had been searching for her so that I could return the photos.  She appreciated the effort I had gone to and was looking forward to seeing them again after all those decades.

She also got chatty and told me a little about herself and her relationship with Grandpa.  They met each other working at Fort Dix in New Jersey.  He apparently had been chasing after her for a while.  At some point she told him he would have to prove to her that he was divorced because she was a good Christian girl and wouldn't take up with any married man.  And he did it!  He divorced his wife!  She even went looking in her house for the divorce paperwork, which she had a copy of, so she could tell me what it said.  She found it and read some from it but neglected to tell me the name of the wife!  (I didn't find out until some years later that the divorce was from his first wife, Elizabeth, and not my grandmother, Anna, who had apparently "lived in sin" with Grandpa for all the years they were together.  When I did discover that, I immediately called my father to tell him that he was officially a bastard because his parents had never been married.  He thought that was hilarious and broke out laughing.)

I don't remember now if I sent the photos to Anita or to Carol.  I think I sent them to Anita.  I'm sure that I got Carol's address from Anita at that time, and I wrote to her.

A year or so after that, I had plans to be in Atlanta for a convention.  I realized how close that was to where Carol lived and decided I finally had to meet my aunt.  At the end of the convention, the friend who was there in Atlanta with me (coincidentally also named Carol) and I drove to lovely Toccoa (birthplace of DeForest Kelley!) to meet her.  We had a wonderful time, and I am still so happy I made the effort to do that.

When my father was turning 70, I tried to arrange for all four of his children to come to Florida to celebrate.  (Well, three of us made it.)  I also invited Carol, who wasn't able to come, but she asked for Daddy's mailing address so she could send a card.  When I arrived in Florida, the first thing my father did was show me the card that Carol had sent for his birthday, telling him how much she cared about him even though they hadn't spent that much time together during their lives.  He cried when he told me how happy he was that I had helped put him in touch with his sister.

Carol wasn't able to travel much around that time, but at some point she made it down to Florida, and the four siblings were together for one of my most treasured photographs.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: How Many Children/Grandchildren in Your Birth Surname Line?

I had to think about how I wanted to approach this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge.  It wasn't as straightforward as it could have been.

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) Consider your birth surname families:  the ones from your father back through his father all the way back to the first of that surname in your family group sheets or genealogy database.  List the father's name and lifespan years.

(2) Use your paper charts or genealogy software program to create a descendants chart (dropline or graphical) that provides the children and their children (i.e., up to the grandchildren of each father in the surname list).

(3) Count how many children they had (with all spouses) and the children of those children in your records and/or database.  Add those numbers to the list.  See my example below!  (Note: Do not count the spouses of the children.)

(4) What does this list of children and grandchildren tell you about these persons in your birth surname line?  Does this task indicate areas that you need to do more research to fill out families and find potential cousins?

(5) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a comment on Facebook.  Be sure to provide a link to your post in a comment to this post.

Because my grandfather was informally adopted by Elmer Sellers and was not a biological Sellers, I chose not to go back to the earliest Sellers (or Söller, the immigrant German's original family name), who was born in 1615, for this exercise.  Instead, I started with my grandfather, because I no longer emphasize the Sellers family prior to him in my research.

Given that, here is mine:

A.  My Sellers surname list is:

• Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr. (1903–1995) had five children (four who lived to adulthood) and 12 grandchildren.
• Bertram Lynn Sellers, Jr. (1935–2019) had four children and 9 grandchildren.

B.  I determined the numbers manually, because I only had two generations to work with.

C.  What does my list tell me?

• The two generations had a total of nine children (average of 4.5) and 21 grandchildren (average of 10.5).
• The numbers for the two generations are not substantially different.  Both are 20th-century men.
• Only one child died young, which did not have an effect on the number of grandchildren, as my grandfather still had more grandchildren than my father did.
• Neither my grandfather nor my father lived and worked on a farm for their professions, so I did not have the contrast between farm versus city families.
• I am very sure that I have accounted for all children of both my grandfather and father (notwithstanding comments that my father's first wife used to make about "little Lynns" running around).  I'm also pretty up-to-date on the subsequent generations and am in contact with many of my cousins.  What I still need to work on is determining my grandfather's biological father.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Abraham Meckler, July 23, 1912–December 10, 1989

Today is the 102nd anniversary of the birth of my maternal grandfather.  Abraham Meckler (or possibly just Abe) was born in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York to Morris (sometimes Max) Meckler (later Mackler) and Minnie (originally Mushe) Zelda Nowicki.  I don't know the specific location because the lovely City of New York won't release birth records after 1909, even though it has been more than 100 years.  I read a statement once where someone from the city declared that as far as they were concerned, these are not public records in any way.

Meckler family in 1915 New York State census; next to last is "Abie"

From what I was told, Zadie (Yiddish for "grandfather") grew up in a very conservative, traditional Orthodox family.  The two photos I have of his grandparents bear that out, but the one photo I have of his father shows a man with short hair and no head covering.  I don't know if that photo was taken in Europe or in the United States, so maybe the photo was taken here and he became less observant once he immigrated.

I do not have nearly the number of photos of my grandfather that I do of my grandmother.  The earliest one is from his bar mitzvah, which presumably took place in 1925, when he turned 13.

Later in life Zadie had heart problems.  He contracted leukemia from a blood tranfusion he received after a heart attack.  His health slowly worsened, but he held on until he and my grandmother had celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, with a big family reunion in Las Vegas, where Bubbie and Zadie had lived for many years.  He passed away about a month later.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Maternal Grandfather's Matrilneal Line

When I saw the subject for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, I knew I was not going to get as far as Randy Seaver did.

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

(1) What was your mother's father's full name?

(2) What is your mother's father's matrilineal line?  That is, his mother's mother's mother's . . . back to the most distant female ancestor in that line.  Provide her Ahnentafel number (relative to you) and her birth and death years and places.

(3) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please put a link to your post in the comments here.

See, my mother's side of the family is the Jewish one, and once you get past the most recent generations I don't always have a lot of information.  But I discovered that for this line it wasn't as bad as I expected.  I actually have a few generations AND surnames.

1.  My mother's father's full name was either #6 Abraham Meckler or Abe Meckler (1912–1989); I've been told both.  There is an Abraham Machler listed in Ancestry's New York, New York Birth Index, who appears to have a birth date of July 23, 1912.  If I could get a copy of that birth certificate from New York City (ha!), I might be able to verify that's him, but I'm pretty sure it is.  I called him Zadie ("grandfather" in Yiddish).

2.  Zadie's mother was #13 Mushe Zelda Nowicki, called Minnie in the United States (about 1880–1936), who married Moshe Meckler, Morris or Max here (about 1882–1953).  Mushe was born in the Russian Empire, probably in Porozowo, Grodno gubernia; married in the Russian Empire, probably in Porozowo or in Kamenets Litovsk, Grodno gubernia; and died in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York at approximately age 56.

• Mushe's mother was #27 Dube Yelsky, Dora in the United States (about 1858–1936), who married Gershon Itzhak Nowicki (about 1858–1948).  Dube was born in the Russian Empire, probably in Porozowo; married in the Russian Empire, also probably in Porozowo; and died in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York at approximately age 78.

• Dube's mother was #55 Frieda Bloom, which was probably not really Bloom, but it's the only name I have (about 1838–about 1898), who married Ruven Yelsky (about 1838–about 1898).  Frieda was born, married, and died in the Russian Empire, likely in Porozowo and almost definitely in Grodno gubernia.  Based on the scant information I have, she lived to be about 60.

And that's it.  I have no idea who Frieda'a parents were, and I'll probably never know, since Grodno gubernia is the black hole for Jewish records.

Unlike Randy's line, all these women probably started in the same place, Porozowo.  The two who immigrated to the United States both died in Brooklyn, which is likely the only place they ever went after their arrival at Ellis Island.