Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

One Catholic School Alum in the Family

Today is the beginning of National Catholic Schools Week for 2025.  And Catholic schools actually played a role in my family, notwithstanding that none of my ancestors (at least as far as I know) was Catholic per se.

When my father was born, my grandmother was almost 43 years old (although she thought she was almost 42), which in 1935 was a relatively advanced age to be having a child, especially since her last children (twins) had been born 20 years previously.  She probably was not planning or expecting to become pregnant.

But pregnant she was, and she thought the sun rose and set on my father (which, I have been told, rather annoyed her first child, my father's half-sister who was 21 years older than he).  She wanted the best of everything for him, including an education.  In rural New Jersey in the 1940's, the best education you could find was at Catholic school.  And if you went to Catholic school in the 1940's, that meant you were going through catechism and essentially growing up Catholic.

So my father grew up Catholic.  He told me about the religion lessons and the nuns rapping his knuckles with rulers.  He went through confirmation (his confirmation name was Joseph).

Did he actually get the good education my grandmother wanted?  I haven't seen his school records from New Jersey, so I don't really know.  But if what my mother said about how he did in public high school in Florida was similar to his performance in Catholic school in New Jersey, maybe not.

My mother told me that my father had to take American history three times to graduate.  It wasn't that he didn't understand it, she said (and I know my father was very intelligent), but that he just didn't want to be bothered with it, and so he didn't pass the first two times.  After it was made clear to him that he had to pass the class to get the diploma, he finally did.

And here's the proof:

Wordless Wednesday

 

Three Grandmothers with the Same Birthday

It's easy to say that something is against the odds, but how do you determine the odds?

I've read about statistics that once you get something like 50 people together in one place, it's almost guaranteed that two of them will have the same birthday.  (I've read it, but I still don't understand it.)  But what about when you're dealing with only two or three people?  The odds have to be much lower, right?

Yet low odds are not impossible odds.

For our example here, we have my half-sister, Laurie.

We have the same father, so we share a paternal grandmother.  Anna Gauntt was born January 14, 1893.

Laurie's maternal grandmother, Louise Elsie Gaynor, was born January 14, 1903.

Okay, all you statisticians out there, can we figure out the odds of that happening?

But I'll go one step further.

Our paternal grandfather married twice after living with our grandmother.  His third wife, to whom he was married before I was born, and who can reasonably be called our stepgrandmother (my mother certainly always told me to call her Grandma), was Adelle Cordelia Taylor.  And she was born January 14, 1914.

What are the odds on that particular situation?  I certainly don't know.  Maybe our brother or sister-in-law can figure it out.  They're the mathematicians in the family.  Which I realize is not the same as a statistician, but it's the closest we have.

So today, on January 14, I'll wish a happy birthday in heaven to three of my sister's grandmothers.

This is the type of thing I noticed while going through a year's worth of births, marriages, and deaths in my family.

Family historians are a strange breed.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Make an Ahnentafel Report

I get all excited about having enough time and energy to participate in this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy Seaver, and my computer tries to thwart me by not cooperating.  But I won, and here's my post!

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.  Have you made an Ahnentafel report ("name table" in German) recently?  Show us yours!  How did you do it?  Which program did you use?

2.  Write your own blog post, leave a comment on this post, or write something on Facebook.

I will admit, it has been a while since I did an Ahnentafel report, and I don't think I have done one since I installed Family Tree Maker2019.  Things have apparently changed since the last time I did a report.

As just mentioned, I am using Family Tree Maker2019.  I went to my paternal grandmother, the person I had decided I wanted to do the report for, then clicked Publish, Genealogy Reports, and Ahnentafel Report.

After I clicked Ahnentafel Report, I got a pop-up screen that told me that whereas previous versions of Family Tree Maker offered an Anhentafel report and a simplified Ahnentafel report, this new version had combined the two reports and included all the options of both.  I don't remember there being two choices before, but I'll believe them.

After clicking ok to that little squib, I then clicked Create Report.

The output I got didn't quite resemble what I remember an Ahnentafel looking like.  It had a lot more information than I thought it should, I think partly because the options for the previous report I had created in the program (not an Ahnentafel) were carried over.  So I unclicked several items, and it looks slightly more like what I remember of an Ahnentafel, but still not quite.  Oh, and it doesn't even say Ahnentafel in the default header.

But that's why Randy has us do this type of project, right?  So we can learn about the capabilities of our computer programs.

This is page 1 of the Ahnentafel for my grandmother Anna Gauntt.

It only ran two and a quarter pages and has 32 people total over nine generations (I was optimistic and had requested 20).  I just don't have the same kind of information Randy does.

Then came the real fun.  This is only the second report I have run in my new FTM, and I had totally forgotten what to do next.  I couldn't find the report on my computer.  I searched on the computer, searched for help online, and finally realized the report is internal to FTM.  To obtain something I could use in this post, I had to print it.  Aha!

That worked.  It created a PDF, which I then converted to a PNG file so I could upload the image to Blogger.

Just remember, computers make our lives easier, right?

Mother's Day 2022

For Mother's Day this year, here is my maternal line in photographs.  I have five generations.

My mother Myra with her three children:
me, my sister Stacy, and my brother Mark

My mother Myra, her mother Lily (my grandmother),
and *her* mother Sarah (my great-grandmother)

My great-great-grandmother Rose Dorothy on the left

And somewhere I have a photo of my great-great-grandmother with my great-grandmother.  I really need to find that.

The Mother-in-Law

Lynn and Mary Lou,
Thanksgiving 1957

It's October 16, the birth date of my half-sister's mother, Mary Lou Jocelyn (Bowen) Sellers James.  During the past few years I have been trying to document my memories of Mary Lou both for my sister and myself.

My family was unusual for its time.  My sister and her mother lived with us for a while when I was younger.  We were a relatively early "blended family."  So I actually knew Mary Lou.

I still haven't figured out if there's an existing term in English that accurately describes our relationship.  She wasn't my stepmother, because she was married to my father before his marriage to my mother.  A pre-stepmother?  Pre-mother?  Ante-mother?  I bet Yiddish has a word for it.  But still family, whatever the term.

One of the more interesting stories that Mary Lou told me was about when she and my father were first married.  They had been friends prior to that and skating partners, but apparently not really romantically involved.

I don't know what Nana, my maternal grandmother, thought of Mary Lou prior to the marriage, but — at least according to Mary Lou, who sometimes "embellished" her stories — she had specific misgivings about her new daughter-in-law that manifested right after they were married.

The wedding night must have been spent at Nana's home.  Mary Lou told me that the next morning, Nana went upstairs to inspect the bed sheets to ensure that her daughter-in-law hadn't been fooling around with anyone, I guess including my father, prior to marrying my father.

That sure can set a tone for a marriage.  I guess it's amazing that it lasted as long as it did (just under five years on paper, although it may have been less than that in person).  Coincidentally, the divorce was finalized on Mary Lou's birthday.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Fearless Females 2021

I haven't posted much recently, but I couldn't miss doing something for my grandmother's birthday today.  And what do you know — tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post from Randy Seaver fits the situation perfectly!

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.  Check out Lisa Alzo's "Fearless Females 2021" blog post prompts and write about one of them.

2.  Put it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link in a comment to this post.

What a great coincidence!  Today, March 6, is my maternal grandmother's birthday!  So I noticed the prompt for March 6 which Randy had used and thought it would be perfect.

"Describe an heirloom you may have inherited from a female ancestor (wedding ring or other jewelry, china, clothing, etc.).  If you don’t have any, then write about a specific object you remember from your mother, grandmother, or aunt (scarf, hat, cooking utensil, furniture, etc.)."

Something my grandmother gave me before she passed away was a set of china.  She told me she had used it as her Passover dairy dishes when she kept a kosher household.  The amazing thing is that she acquired it one piece at a time from a grocery store during its weekly dishware sale, or at least that's what she told me.

For those not familiar with this practice, many grocery stores would sell a specific piece of china from a set for a very low price, or sometimes free, every week.  If I remember correctly, you had to spend a minimum amount in purchases at the store to get the china on the special deal.  If you worked at it, you could biuld up a nice set.

Bubbie (Yiddish for grandmother) had full settings for fourteen people:  dinner plate, salad plate, soup bowl, coffee cup and saucer, dessert bowl.  She also had two large serving platters, two large serving bowls, a gravy boat, a creamer, and a sugar bowl.

That's a lot of trips to the grocery store.  I think Bubbie was an overachiever.

The set is "Golden Wheat" (by Homer Laughlin, according to Replacements, Ltd.).  The back of some of the dishes (not all of them) says, "Golden Wheat / Made in USA / — 22K Gold — / Oven Proof."  The 22K gold was used on the wheat design on the obverse, on the rim, and for the lettering and design on the reverse.

I have to admit that I am amused by the fact that the dishes are safe to put in the oven but not the microwave (because the 22K gold will set off the micro).

I still remember picking up the set from Bubbie.  I lived in California; she lived in Florida.  One day, out of the blue, she decided it was very urgent that I should come visit because she wanted to give this set to me and have me take it home.

The first problem was that she insisted on this right when I was planning my foot surgery.  No, she didn't care that I wasn't going to be fully mobile.  It had to be that month, December 1997.  Sure, I just had foot surgery and I had to be pushed around the airport in a wheelchair, but I could figure out a way to handle this, right?  But it was my Bubbie, so I went.

The second problem, which I didn't find out until I got there, was that she didn't give me an accurate idea of just how much she wanted me to take home.  This was a lot of china, even if I hadn't been working with only one good foot.

Somehow we managed to pack everything into one duffel bag, with a reasonable amount of padding to protect the pieces.  But it wasn't secure enough that I could check it as luggage; it would have arrived as a huge bag of china shards.

So I had to lug the bag around with me at Fort Lauderdale Airport, and at my transfer airport, and at Oakland Airport.  All while being pushed around by very nice airport personnel who were very, very annoyed (but tried to keep a good face) that I had this big bag of china on my lap during the entire time.  I explained to each of them that I was very sorry, that my grandmother had insisted I had to pick up the china now, that I didn't want to do it right after my surgery.  I don't think it helped a lot.

But the good news is that the china and I arrived safely and in one piece back at Oakland Airport.  I managed to get home also.  I don't remember if I drove or had a shuttle pick me up; it was likely a shuttle, because the surgery was on my right foot, and I don't think I was ready to drive yet.  But we made it.

And I still have the set.  I brought it to Oregon with me.  Only a couple of pieces have been broken over the years I've owned it, one being the gravy boat.  I think I lost one of the small plates also.

And I use it for my Passover seders, although I don't keep kosher.  Bubbie stopped keeping kosher after her father-in-law passed away, which was in 1953, so the dishes were already trafe by the time I got them.

And now that I've written all of this up, I'll print out ths post and include it with the dishes, so I have documented them and why they're important, just as I did with the silverplate flatware that used to belong to my great-grandmother.

===

Addendum, March 15, 2021:  This is the gravy boat I received today from a very generous reader, to replace the one I broke several years ago.  Thank you so much!

Second addendum, August 7, 2021:  I found out that the person who bought the replacement gravy boat for me was not the person who shipped it but my own sister in Pennsylvania.  It took her a while to let me know.  And now I know that she actually reads my blog!

Which Story Is True?

My mother (in back) and
me, Stacy, and Mark, 1964

Today is January 14, 2021, which on the Hebrew calendar is 1 Shevat 5781.  My mother died January 2, 1995, also 1 Shevat and therefore the date of her yahrzeit, the commemoration of her death.  The Hebrew calendar is a solar-lunar one, and the dates don't line up year to year with the Christian calendar.  So the fact that I write regularly about my mother on her yahrzeit means that the date I write about her changes from year to year.

When I was young, but not too young, my mother told me how she had decided on the names for my brother, my sister, and myself.  I'm the oldest, and she said I was named for her grandfathers, Joyne and Moishe.  So my name is Janice Marie, using the initials, a common practice among American Jews.  Probably because she wasn't an observant Jew, she did not also give me Hebrew names (hers being Mushe Ruchel, for her grandmothers, Mushe Zelda and Ruchel Dwojre).

My sister, the youngest of us three children, is Stacy Ann.  I was told that Stacy was for my mother's grandmother, Sarah, again using the initial.  Sarah died the year before Stacy was born, so that fits well.  Her middle name was for my paternal grandmother, Anna.  Ann is pretty much the same name as Anna and would seem to be in conflict with the Ashkenazi tradition of not naming after a living ancestor, but, again, my mother wasn't observant, so maybe this didn't bother her very much.

The name of my brother, the middle child, is much more entertaining, however.  Mommy told me that my father wanted him to be Bertram Lynn Sellers III (my father being Junior and my grandfather Senior).  My mother didn't want to do that, this time invoking the prohibition against naming for a living ancestor, plus the very practical consideration of what my brother would be called.  My father had gone through the early part of his life being called Sonny (although he insisted it was Sunny, for his "sunny disposition") and ended up going by his middle name as an adult.  What to call the third male with the same name?

My mother came up with what she considered a better choice, Marc Anthony Sellers.  Either because of the historical nature of the name (I was told it took my father three times through to pass history in high school) or another reason, my father objected to that idea.  After some back and forth, my mother suggested Mark Russell Sellers, which my father decided was okay.  What my mother didn't tell him was that Russell was the name of an old boyfriend!  But that's what my brother was named, and it has worked out well enough.

BUT!

Some time after my mother had passed away, I was driving her mother — my grandmother — to a family event, and my grandmother related an entirely different story about the origins of our names.

According to Bubbie (grandmother in Yiddish), the story my mother told her was that our first names were for deceased ancestors, in the Jewish tradition, and our middle names were after saints, because my father was raised Catholic.

If that were true, I am Janice for Joyne (the same), my brother is Mark for Moishe (no problem), and my sister is Stacy for Sarah (again the same).  So far, so good, right?

Under this interpretation, my Marie would be for Mary, mother of Jesus.  Okay, that works.

There are at lease a few Saint Ann(e)s to account for my sister's middle name.  Check.

But who would Saint Russell be?  Not that it's an infallible source, but Wikipedia doesn't have any listings for a Saint Russell.  Lots and lots of other saints are included, which make for an extensive listing, if not an exhaustive one.  Why no Russell?

And why different stories for different people in the first place?  Let's consider the situations.

I no longer remember the circumstances when my mother told me my version of the story, but I was young when I first became interested in family history, so I might have asked my mother about our names when I was in my early teens or even before that.  I wasn't particularly interested in Judaism, so I see no advantage to the explanation my mother gave me.

But I can think of two reasons that the version my grandmother repeated to me might have been preferred in a conversation between my mother and her mother.

The first reason that came to mind is that my grandmother might not have liked the idea that her grandson was named after an old boyfriend of my mother.   It's also possible that my mother was concerned that at some point Bubbie might repeat the information and my father would learn about it.

Second, and more important, is the Ashkenazi tradition (minhag) of not naming after living ancestors.  Saying that Stacy's middle name was for a saint, not an ancestor (who was most decidedly alive), could have allayed any discomfort Bubbie might have had with the name.

And that makes a lot of sense.  When Stacy named her son after my mother's brother, Bubbie was indeed quite upset, even though my sister pointed out that she had spelled the name differently.  Many years later, when Bubbie was getting older, she declared to the family that she would like the next female child to be born to be named after her, even if she was still alive at the time.  Stacy did that, and her youngest child has Lillyan as a middle name.  But Bubbie then was upset that Stacy did that while Bubbie was alive.  Yes, even though Bubbie had made the declaration.

Based on other things I have been told, neither one of the names should have mattered anyway, because supposedly the Ashkenazi tradition is important for the Hebrew names, not the secular names.  But I know from my own experience that Bubbie was very unhappy with both names.

It seems to me that the story my mother told me is likely the accurate one, and the one she told her mother was trying to obscure some information my grandmother probably would not have liked.  So now that's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

My Grandfather Bertram Lynn Sellers and His "Wives"

My paternal grandfather, Bertram Lynn Sellers, was born April 6, 1903.  This took quite some time to confirm and turned into almost a scavenger hunt.  But eventually the documentation showed that yes, this was indeed his birth date.

Grandpa was married three times, lived in sin with my grandmother (while still married to his first wife), and fathered five children that I know of:  three with his first wife, one with my grandmother, and one with his second wife.  Here are photos of him with my grandmother and the later two wives.

Anna Gauntt and Bert Sellers (probably 1930–1940)

Anita (Loveman) and Bert Sellers (probably 1954–1957)

Adelle (Taylor) and Bert Sellers (probably 1961–1970)

Something I realized while writing this post was that the first names of all three of these women begins with the letter A.  I never noticed that before.

Another thing I realized is that not a single one of these photos is dated.  I can narrow them down somewhat, but that's very frustrating.

Not as frustrating as still having no photo of Grandpa's first wife, however.  I've been trying for a while to find a photograph of Grandpa with Elizabeth Leatherberry Sundermeier, but no one in my family seems to have one, or even one of her by herself.  It's almost as if she never really existed, except that I knew my aunts, who were her daughters.

Lillyan E. Meckler, March 6, 1919–October 17, 2006

Today is the 100th anniversary of my maternal grandmother's birth.  Esther Lillian Gordon was born at 1575 Madison Avenue, Manhattan, New York.  She knew the address becaue that was the home of her maternal grandparents, Morris (Mendel Herz) and Rose Dorothy (Ruchel Dwojre) Brainin.  The reason she said that she and her two older brothers were born at her grandparents' home was because for her parents' first child, a boy, her mother had gone to the hospital, and the child was stillborn.  Blaming it on the hospital, my great-grandmother then had all of her children after that in her mother's home.

Brainin family (as "Brennan"), 1575 Madison Avenue, 1920 census

Bubbie (Yiddish for grandmother) told me she spoke Yiddish as her first language and that she didn't learn English until she began school.  I have her Hebrew primer.  I don't think she had a bat mitzvah, and she didn't really remember or use Hebrew later in life.

She did continue to speak Yiddish.  The only time I heard her speak Yiddish, however, other than some random words, was when she turned 80.  She had flown out to California for her birthday and was staying at my uncle's home.  Her best friend (my godmother) had come up from Southern California to help celebrate.  I was listening to them talking, and then their voices got louder, and it sounded like an argument — and suddenly I couldn't understand anything they were saying.  I was mesmerized — they were arguing in Yiddish!  It's still the only time in my life I've heard the language used in a conversation, albeit a loud one.  I wish I had been able to record it.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Photographs through the Generations

This week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun exercise from Randy Seaver is a fun one!

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

(1) How many generations do you have photographs or portraits of your ancestors and descendants?  It can be any line—it just can't be broken!

(2) Tell us the line, or better yet, show us the unbroken line.  Provide birth and death years, and the approximate date that the photograph or portrait was made.

(3) Share your generation photograph line in a blog post of your own, in a Facebook post, or in a comment to this post.

I thought I wouldn't be able to compete with Randy on this, but I found one of my Jewish(!) family lines with eight generations of photographs.  It doesn't include me, because I don't have any descendants, but has my sister instead.

1.  3rd-great-grandfather Gersh Wolf Gorodetsky, unknown birth and death dates, probably from Podolia gubernia, Russian Empire (now in Ukraine), maybe from Kamenets Podolsky or Orinin, no idea when photograph was taken.  (At least I'm pretty sure this is Gersh Wolf Gorodetsky.)

2.  Great-great-grandfather Victor Gordon (originally Avigdor Gorodetsky, Hebrew name Isaac), ~1866–1925, from Kamenets Podolsky, Podolia gubernia, Russian Empire, photograph from about 1890 (on the left in the photo).

3.  Great-grandfather Joe Gordon (originally Joine Gorodetsky), ~1892–1955, from Kamenets Podolsky, Podolia gubernia, Russian Empire, photograph from about 1914 (on the right in the photo).

4.  Grandmother Lillyan E. (Gordon) Meckler, 1919–2006, originally from Manhattan, New York, photograph from 1937.

5.  Mother Myra Roslyn (Meckler) Sellers Preuss, 1940–1985, originally from Brooklyn, New York, photograph from about 1972.

6.  Sister Stacy Ann (Sellers) Doerner Fowler, living, originally from La Puente, Califorina, photograph from 2019.

7 and 8.  Nephew Garry Travis Doerner, 1982–2012, from San Antonio, Texas; and grandniece Natalie Desiree Doerner, living; unknown date for photograph.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: The Date Your Grandmother Was Born

Randy Seaver has a fun challenge for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun!

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

(1) What day of the week was your grandmother born (either one)?  Tell us how you found out.

(2)  What event was a headline in the newspapers on that date?  Tell us how you found out.
 
(3) What has happened in recorded history on your grandmother's birth date (day and month)? Tell us how you found out and list five events.

(4) What famous people have been born on your grandmother's birth date?  Tell us how you found out and list five of them.

(5) Put your responses in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a status or comment on Facebook.

Here's mine:

1.  I chose my paternal grandmother, Anna Gauntt, who was born January 14, 1893, a Saturday, in Westhampton Township, Burlington County, New Jersey.  Her parents were Thomas Kirkland Gauntt and Jane Dunstan.

Method:  I confirmed Nana's birth date and place by finding her birth registration in Burlington County, New Jersey records.  I found the day by checking http://www.timeanddate.com/.

2.  In the Los Angeles Herald of January 14, 1893, the first story on the front page was "Charges against Carnot / Enemies of the President [of France] Tell Ugly Stories", with a dateline of Paris.

Method:  I looked on Chronicling America for front pages of newspapers published on January 14, 1893.  I wanted to find one from New Jersey, but there weren't any, so I settled for a Los Angeles newspaper, because that's where I was born.

3.  Historical events that occurred on January 14:

• A.D. 1301:  Andrew III of Hungary died.

• A.D. 1539:  Spain annexed Cuba.

• A.D. 1784:  The Congress of the United States of America ratified the Treaty of Paris with Great Britain.

• A.D. 1907:  An earthquake in Kingston, Jamaica killed more than 1,000 people.

• A.D. 2004:  The national flag of the Republic of Georgia was restored to official use.

Method:  I looked up the date on Wikipedia.

4.  Famous people born on January 14:

• 83 B.C.:  Mark Antony, Roman general and politician.

• A.D. 1273:  Joan I of Navarre, queen regnant of Navarre and queen consort of France.

• A.D. 1741:  Benedict Arnold, American-British general and traitor.

• A.D. 1836:  Henri Fantin-Latour, French painter and lithographer.

• A.D. 1919:  Andy Rooney, American soldier, journalist, critic, and television personality.

Method:  I looked up the date on Wikipedia.

I didn't think Nana's birth date was as boring as Randy thinks his grandmother's was.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Which Ancestors Were Born on This Date?

Tonight for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, Randy Seaver asked a question specifically about ancestor birth dates, which I'm having to adapt a little.

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

(1) Which of your ancestors were born on this day, 31 March 2018?  How can you find out?  Tell us how you did it.

(2) If you don't have an ancestor born on this date, then select another date in March and list those.

(3) Share your findings in your own blog post or in comments on this blog post, on Facebook, or on Google+.

First of all, Randy obviously didn't really mean an ancestor born on March 31, 2018.  A descendant might be possible, but not an ancestor.  In addition, I have no ancestor whose birth date fell on March 31.  I found two ancestors with March birthdays, but two different dates, so I'm listing them both.

As to how I found the information, I have previously exported a GEDCOM file from my primary database in Family Tree Maker and imported it into Reunion because the date search function in FTM is, frankly, awful.  It isn't perfect in Reunion for single digits, but it's a vast improvement over FTM.  I had already done this because since the beginning of the year I've been posting the births, marriages, and deaths from my family tree on a (somewhat) daily basis.  The search is easy:  Command-F (for find), then select "Birth Date" and the date you want.  Twelve people in my database were born on March 31, but, as I said, none of them is an ancestor.

These are my March ancestors:

1.  Sophia Bodder (1762–1836), daughter of Peter Bodder and Regina Ditor, was born March 9, probably in Pennsylvania.  She is my 4x-great-grandmother.  She married Abraham Sellers (abt. 1758–1831) in 1780 in Franconia, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.  My family line is through their son Peter Franklin Sellers (1800–1863), who married Rachel Godshalk (1809–1894).

2.  Esther Lillian Gordon (1919–2006), daughter of Joe Gordon and Sarah Libby Brainin, was born March 6 in Manhattan, New York County, New York.  She is my maternal grandmother.  She married Abraham Meckler (1912–1989), son of Morris Meckler and Minnie Zelda Nowicki, in 1939 in Bronx, Bronx County, New York.  I am descended from their daughter, Myra Roslyn Meckler (1940–1995), who married Bertram Lynn Sellers, Jr. (1935– ).

My Left-handed Grandmother

Today, March 6, was the birthday of my maternal grandmother, born Esther Lillian Gordon in 1919.  She was never called Esther; she and her three 1st cousins who had the same given names (all were named after their deceased grandmother, Esther Leah Schneiderman Gorodetsky) were called Lily.  Even so, she didn't like the Esther and later changed her name, possibly legally (she told me she had), to Lillyan E.  I don't know if she changed it before or after she married my grandfather in 1939, or where the change took place.

One of the things I found most interesting about Bubbie (Yiddish for "grandmother") was that she was left-handed.  During the period in which she grew up, it was common for teachers to try to force left-handers to write with their right hands, due to historic societal and cultural perceptions against left-handedness.  It took many years, but it finally dawned on me to wonder how my grandmother had escaped that pervasive social pressure.

I'm lucky in that my light-bulb moment came while Bubbie was still alive, so I asked her about it.  She told me that the teachers in her elementary school had indeed tried to force her to use her right hand for writing and other tasks.  Apparently she mentioned this to her mother, who she said then angrily walked down to the school and informed those teachers that her daughter was left-handed and that was the way she was going to stay!

Sometimes my mind works slowly to assimilate all the pieces of information with which it is presented.  While I appreciated my great-grandmother's desire to stand up for her daughter, it took a while longer for me to realize that another story I had been told about my great-grandmother was that she never learned to speak English, even though she arrived in the United States in 1905, became a naturalized American citizen in 1945, and lived until 1963.  My mother used to tell me that she communicated with her grandmother by speaking English and her grandmother responded in German, and the two managed to make themselves understood somehow.  So if she never learned English, how did she convey to little Lily's teachers that they should no longer try to force Lily to use her right hand?  Unfortunately, that question did not coalesce in my brain until after my grandmother had passed away, so I will probably never know the answer.

Photographs: A Cautionary Tale

Harriet Gordon,
bar mitzvah, 1960

I have posted before about the benefits of showing unidentified photographs to older family members to see if they recognize any of the faces.  It's important to do that as soon as possible — multiple times, if necessary — because once those older family members have passed away, no one else in the family may recognize the faces in those old photographs.  And sometimes it doesn't even have to be as dramatic as someone passing away for the opportunity to be lost.

Several years ago, in 2002, I visited my grandmother, Bubbie, in Florida.  We had lunch with several of her cousins, and she remembered that she had photos that were important to them:  "I have a photograph of your parents on their wedding day."  "I have a photo of you when you were a baby."  When we returned to her apartment after the luncheon, she had me drag out four big boxes of photos and we went through them looking for those she wanted to give to the cousins.  Bubbie wouldn't let me label any of the photos, but we put aside the ones she wanted to give to the cousins.

Fast forward two years to 2004.  Bubbie's memory had started to fade a little.  She hadn't actually begun to forget things, but she was repeating herself several times in one conversation.  I remembered those boxes of unlabeled photographs and thought I better do something.  I was already planning to visit a paternal cousin near Orlando, Florida for Thanksgiving, and my grandmother lived near Fort Lauderdale.  That was pretty close, so I  told Bubbie I wanted to visit her and quickly added a flight to Fort Lauderdale to my schedule.

This time Bubbie was much more amenable to labeling the photos.  I brought piles of sticky notes.  We went through all four boxes again, and she let me put a note on every photo.  This not only meant that every photo was identified, it led to the discovery that one photo was of my great-great-grandparents.

And why is this a cautionary tale?  The visit to my grandmother was in November.  The next summer, in 2005, she had a severe stroke.  While her brain and memory functions were left relatively intact, she was functionally blind.  She could no longer see the photographs and would not have been able to tell me who was in them.

I am very fortunate that I took advantage of the opportunity to visit my grandmother and convince her to let me label the photographs she had.  If you have a lot of unidentified photos in your family, don't wait.  Talk to those older relatives and ask for their help in letting you know who is in the photos.

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Unbroken Chain of Gravestones

I'm going to be pretty much a total failure tonight for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge.  Lack of digitization is part of the problem, but not all of it.

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

(1) Determine what is your longest unbroken line of ancestral gravestones:  How many generations can you go back in time?  Do you have photographs of them?

(2) Tell us and/or show us in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog, or in a Facebook status or Google+ stream post.

Let's see how lacking my contribution is and the reasons for that.

I am happy to report that my father is still alive.  That means that he has no tombostone, and therefore nothing for me to have a photo of.

My mother was cremated and her ashes scattered in Choctawhatchee Bay in Okaloosa County, Florida.  She has no cenotaph or other marker.

So much for my parents.

On my mother's side, even though I have seen it, I don't think I have a photograph of my grandfather's tombstone.  I believe I have a photo of my grandmother's tombostone, but it was taken with a film camera and I haven't digitized the image.

On my father's side, I'm not sure if my grandfather has a tombstone.  If he does, I'm pretty sure I don't have a photo of it.

I do, however, have a photo of my grandmother's tombstone.  (Finally!)  Anna (Gauntt) Stradling [Sellers] was born January 14, 1893 in Westhampton Township, Burlington County, New Jersey and died January 20, 1986 in Lindstrom, Chisago County, Minnesota.

According to FindAGrave, neither Nana's mother nor her father has a marker in the Brotherhood Cemetery in Burlington County, New Jersey, where they are buried.  So I have one generation in this unbroken chain!

But let's get hypothetical.  IF I could find the photo of my maternal grandmother's tombstone, that would give me one for that family.  I do have a photo of the tombstone of her father, Joe Gordon, who was born about 1892, probably in or near Kamenets Podolsky, Podolia, Russian Empire, and died May 2, 1955 in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York:

That's my grandmother, Lillyan (Gordon) Meckler, standing on the left and her brother Sidney Gordon on the right.  I think this photo was taken at the unveiling of my great-grandfather's stone, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

I also know I have a nondigitized photograph of the tombstone of Joe's father, my great-great-grandfather Victor Gordon.  He was born about 1866ish in or near Kamenets Podolsky and died January 26, 1925 in Brooklyn.  So even though I'm not able to post them all tonight, I have a chain of three generations of tombstones on my Gorodetsky/Gordon line.  I have no idea when my 3x-great-grandfather Gersh Wolf Gorodetsky died or where he is buried, so I don't think I'll be adding that to my records anytime soon.  And my maternal uncles are happily still alive.  I think three is about as far as I'm likely to get for a while.

Obviously, I have not made a huge effort to photograph tombstones of my family members, nor to digitize the ones that I do have.  I guess I can't do everything!

Wordless Wednesday