Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Disappeared Ancestors

When I hear about "disappeared" people nowadays, it usually has a more sinister connotation than what Randy Seaver means for today's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun exercise.

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

1.  Sometimes an ancestor or relative just disappears out of the records and we cannot find another record after a certain date.

2.  Tell us about one or more of your relatives or ancestors that have disappeared and not been found since a certain date.  Do you have any idea of what might have happened to them?

3.  Share information about your disappearing relative or ancestor in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook comment.

Based on the way Randy has set this up, I guess I can't use any of my early ancestors on my mother's side, because I haven't found them in any records yet, period, much less after a certain date.  Or at least not in any records about them.  I have found their names in later generations' records, which is why I have the names at all, but all I have is their names.

A relative on my mother's side for whom I have not found records after a given date is my great-grandmother's brother Sam Novak (originally Shmuel Nowicki).  I have found him immigrating to the United States in 1905.  I have found him with his family in censuses in 1920, 1925, and 1930 and on a 1942 World War II draft registration card.  I am pretty sure it's him on a 1940 census page, but not completely sure.  A daughter in the household appears to be the correct person, but his wife's name has been transcribed as "Verge", and I don't know if it's Sarah or not.  The census is a different address than 1930 and 1942, so that doesn't help.  And I can't seem to find him in the 1950 census.  As for Randy's question "Do you have any idea of what might have happened to them?", I'm sure he died, but I don't know when or where.  My guess for where is Brooklyn, but that's all I have.

Two ancestors on my father's side I don't know about after certain dates are my great-grandmother's parents.  I have been able to find documents for Joel Armstrong and Sarah Ann Lippincott from their births and early lives through 1885.  I believe I have found them each in 1900 and later, although I'm not always positive it's them.  I think I have found Sarah living with her aunt and uncle and my great-grandmother in 1900; I know I have found her in 1905 living with her older daughter.  I might have found Joel with a second wife in 1910 and 1920.  At this point I have guessed that they divorced sometime between 1880 and 1900, but I don't have a record for that.  And I've seen various death dates attributed to each of them but nothing with any documentation.  So again I'm sure they died, but I don't know for sure when or where.  My guess for where for each of them is Burlington County, New Jersey.  I've seen Joel listed with a death date of 1922 multiple times, but I can't find any records to verify that.  I don't remember what I have seen about Sarah, but I do remember nothing has had documentation.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Pick an Ancestor: What Story Lines Do You Want to Explore?

It's Saturday, which means it's time for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy Seaver.  I had a very busy week and didn't have time to write at all, so I'm making up by doing last week's challenge.

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

1.  Pick one of your ancestors whom you want to know more about.  Based on your knowledge of that person's life, what story lines do you want to explore?

2.  Tell us about your ancestor and the story lines of interest to you in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook comment.

Partly prompted by my sister's comment on a recent post, this time I will focus on my great-grandmother Laura May (Armstrong) Sellers Ireland.

• Tell me about your parents, Joel Armstrong and Sarah Ann Deacon Lippincott.  How do you remember them?  What did they look like?

• How much formal schooling did you have?  Did you enjoy school?  What were your favorite and your least favorite subjects?  Did you generally get good grades?

• Did your parents divorce?  If so, when?  Did either one remarry?  If yes to the latter question, how well did you get to know the new spouse (and family, if there was one)?

• Did you know any of your grandparents or older generations?  Aunts and uncles?  I would love to hear about them.

• Did you know about your sister's first marriage, which apparently was annulled?  Why was it annulled?  Were your parents upset about the marriage?

• Was that your mother living with you in 1900 when you were enumerated in the census at your granduncle and grandaunt's house?  Tell me about your granduncle and grandaunt and what they were like.  Did your grandaunt really have three children who died between 1900 and 1910?

• Who got you pregnant with your first child?  How long had you known him?  Did you want to have his name on the birth certificate?  How did your son Bertram Lynn's birth certificate end up being listed as a girl named Gertrude L.?

• How did you meet Elmer Sellers?  How long had you known him before you married in November 1903?  Were you happy with him?

• It must have been difficult and sad to have so many of your children die so young.  Did you have funerals for any of them?  Did Elmer's mother help with their burial expenses?

• It also must have been very difficult for you when Elmer died so young.  Did Elmer's mother pay for his funeral?  Did she help you financially after that?  Did you have to go to work?  Did the older children work to help support the family?

• When did Elmer's mother die?  How well did the two of you get along?  Was she a good grandmother to your children?

• How did your children react when you had a daughter three years after Elmer had died?  Who was that child's father?  Why didn't you provide his name for Bertolet's birth certificate?

• How big of a wedding did Bertram and Elizabeth have?  Did you like Elizabeth?  How did you feel when your first grandchild was born?

• Your grandson died at the age of 2, and then your daughter Bertolet died at the age of 6.  How did the family handle these sad events?  Why didn't you include Bertolet's father's name on her death certificate?

• Your oldest son, Bertram, wrote in a list of everywhere he had lived that from 1927–1928 he was out west with no fixed location.  Do you remember that period?  Was that the truth?  Do you have any idea what he was doing during those years?

• Is it true that you married John Ireland only because someone said you needed a man's help?  And is it true that you dumped him when you figured out you really didn't need his help?  Did you stay married until he died?

• How did you manage to be not at home when the census taker came around in 1940?  Were you trying to avoid him?  Were you living by yourself at that time?

• What prompted you to get an amended birth certificate for Bertram, your oldest child, in 1940?  Did he need it for a security clearance at his job?

• Did you know that Catherine was flipping a bird in one of the photos that Anita took of you and your four adult children at Betty's house?

• When did you move to Florida to live with Bertram and his wife?

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: How Many Autosomal DNA Matches Descend from Your Eight Pairs of 2nd-great-grandparents?

My participation in tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver is not going to be pretty.  Or fun.

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

1.  How many autosomal DNA matches do you have descended from your eight 2nd-great-grandparents (they would be your third cousins)?  Do you know how they are related to you?  Have you corresponded with them?  Why are your numbers high or low?

2.  Share the number of your autosomal DNA matches for each of your 2GGP and answer my questions above on your own blog, on Facebook or other social media, or in a comment on this blog.  Share the link to your post on this blog, so readers can respond.

Oh, this is going to be painful.

First, I need to mention a couple of clarifications.

I do not have eight 2nd-great-grandparents.  I have sixteen 2nd-great-grandparents, as does everyone else.  I have eight pairs of 2nd-great-grandparents, which I'm pretty sure is what Randy meant (and what I changed the title of mine to).

And not all of my autosomal matches who descend from any given pair of 2nd-great-grandparents are going to be my 3rd cousins.  I can have other relatives in addition to 3rd cousins who descend from one pair of ancestors.  If the question was intended to be "How many autosomal matches do I have who are identified as 3rd cousins?", that's significantly different from what Randy wrote, and he wouldn't have to ask, "Do you know how they are related to you?"  Maybe he started with one idea and it morphed into another.

Now that I've cleared the air on that (once an editor, always an editor), on to the disaster of my response for this challenge.

I have mentioned before (particularly when the question of DNA comes up) that my mother was Ashkenazi Jewish and that Ashkenazi Jews suffer from high degrees of endogamy due to lots of intermarriage.

Well, on Family Tree DNA, my current results show that I have 24,697 autosomal matches.

I'm sure that the vast majority of those are on my maternal side, and I have no idea (and probably never will) how they are specifically related to me, due to endogamy and the lovely obstacles that can exist for doing Jewish research in the former Russian Empire in general, particularly in the former Grodno guberniya, where three of my lines go back to.

For reasons unknown to me — I have not actually done much with my FTDNA matches in quite a while and have not kept up with all of the announcements — 1,525 of those matches are identified as paternal, 38 as maternal, and 710 as both.

I have very few matches on FTDNA where I have identified the specific relationship I have with them.  So I have no idea how FTDNA has come up with the numbers of matches that are paternal, maternal, or both.  I'm pretty sure I have not identified 38 relationship matches total, much less 38 on my maternal line alone.

And there is absolutely no crossover in a genealogically relevant period of time between the paternal and maternal sides of my family.  Absolutely none.  Period, end of report.

So I have no idea how FTDNA has identified 710 of my matches as being both paternal and maternal.  That is just flat-out wrong.  Unless there is another way to interpret "paternal and maternal" that I'm not coming up with on my own.

On top of all that, I don't even know one set of my 2nd-great-grandparents, because I as yet have not identified the biological father of my paternal grandfather.  If I don't know who that great-grandfather was, I don't know who his parents were.

As for the number of matches I have who are descended from my eight sets of 2nd-great-grandparents?

To quote Randy:

The number of autosomal DNA matches I have on FTDNA with a known common 2nd-great-grandparent is:

NONE.

The number of autosomal DNA matches I have on AncestryDNA with a known common 2nd-great-grandparent is:

Three total.

• James Gauntt (1831–1899) and Amelia Gibson (1831–1908):  2

• Mendel Hertz Brainin (c. 1860–1930) and Ruchel Dwojre Jaffe (c. 1866–1934):  1

Some days it's just not worth chewing through the straps.

I do have additional cousins who descend from various of my 2nd-great-grandparents and for whom I know the exact relationship who appear as autosomal matches in both databases.  I have corresponded with almost all of them.  Several of them I was able to determine the exact relationship only because I corresponded with them.  Some I recognized by name and knew the relationship immediately.

The huge numbers of matches on my maternal side I already discussed above.  I don't really know that I would characterize the numbers of matches on my paternal side as being particularly low.  It's more that I don't know the exact relationship for most of them.  That is due mostly to a lack of response when I have reached out, particularly with matches on AncestryDNA.  I attribute that to the fact that many, many people who test at Ancestry do it strictly for the cutesie-poo (and mostly useless) pie chart and don't care about anything else.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Did Your Grandparents Know Their Grandparents?

We have a really fun challenge today for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun!

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

1.  Marie Cooke Beckman on her blog, MarieB's Genealogy Blog--Southeastern USA, asked and answered this question, and it is right up the SNGF alley:  Did your grandparents know their grandparents?  Thank you for the idea, Marie!

2.  Tell us about your grandparents and their grandparents in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

This is a really cool topic!  I love it!

My maternal grandparents were Abraham Meckler (1912–1989) and Lillyan "Lily" E. Gordon (1919–2006).

• Abraham Meckler's maternal grandparents were Gershon Itzhak Nowicki (c. 1856–1948) and Dube Yelsky (c. 1848–1936).  Gershon and Dube immigrated to the United States in 1922 and lived in Brooklyn.  They changed the spelling of their family name to Novitzky, and Dube used the name Dora.  My grandfather knew both of them.  My maternal uncle Gary Meckler, who was born in 1951, was named after Gershon.

• Abraham's paternal grandparents were Simcha Dovid Mekler and Beila (birth and death years unknown for both).  They both died in Europe, almost definitely before my grandfather was born, and he never met them.

• Lillyan Gordon's maternal grandparents were Mendel Hertz Brainin (c. 1862–1930) and Ruchel Dvojre Jaffe (c. 1868–1934).  The immigrated separately to the United States in 1906 and lived in Manhattan.  They used the secular names Morris/Max and Rachel Dorothy, and my grandmother knew both of them.  She was born in their house.

• Lily's paternal grandparents were Avigdor Gorodetsky (c. 1863–1925) and Esther Leah Schneiderman (c. 1867–1908).  Esther Leah was my grandmother's birth name, following the Ashkenazi tradition of naming after a deceased ancestor (my grandmother changed her name as an adult).  Esther Leah's death was what precipitated the chain migration of this branch of my family to the United States.  Avigdor came in 1914 and changed his name to Victor Gordon.  My grandmother knew him, and I have a big family photo with the two of them in it.

My paternal grandparents were Bertram "Bert" Lynn Sellers, Sr. (1903–1995) and Anna Gauntt (1893–1986).

• Anna Gauntt's maternal grandparents were Frederick Cleworth Dunstan (1840–1873) and Martha Winn (1837–1884).  They both died in England before my grandmother was born, and she never knew them.

• Anna's paternal grandparents were James Gauntt (1831–1899) and Amelia Gibson (c. 1831–1908).  Everyone lived in Mount Holly, New Jersey and the nearby vicinity.  Since Anna was born in 1893 and James died in 1899, there's a reasonable chance she knew him.  Amelia died when my grandmother was 15 years old, so I'm pretty sure she knew her.

• Bertram Sellers' maternal grandparents were Sarah Ann Deacon Lippincott (1860–aft. 1904) and Joel Armstrong (c. 1849–c. 1921).  I don't know if he knew them.  I don't have documented dates of death for either person or confirmation that they were divorced, which I believe to be the case.  I suspect he might have known his grandmother; I'm pretty sure she's in the household with Grandpa's mother in 1900, so his mother was apparently on speaking terms with her mother.  If I have researched the correct person, his grandfather remarried and had a second family, so maybe he didn't know them, but I really don't know.

• Bert's biological paternal grandparents are still unknown to me, as I have not yet determined his biological father.  His adoptive father's parents were Cornelius Godschalk Sellers (1845–1877) and Catherine "Kate" Fox Owen (1849–c. 1923).  As Cornelius died so young, none of his grandchildren knew him.  Kate had a second husband, George W. Moore (1840–1920).  Bert did know Kate, and we have a photo of her.  In fact, she's the person who paid for his father's funeral, as he also died very young.  It's reasonable to believe that Grandpa probably knew George Moore, even though we don't have a photo of him, as Grandpa's brother was named after George.  I was told that Grandpa's father loved his stepfather so much that he named his second son George Moore Sellers after him.  That certainly suggests he was around the family.

And I am proud to say that I didn't need to look up any of the above information except some of the birth and death years.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Where Were Your 16 2nd-great-grandparents Born, Married, and Died?

This week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun exercise from Randy Seaver had me looking up a lot of information!

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.  Where did your 16 2nd-great-grandparents live and die?  What are their birth, marriage, and death dates and locations?

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

I can write about only twelve of my great-great-grandparents.  I may have their names committed to memory, but not all that other data.

• James Gauntt:  born June 18, 1831 in New Jersey; married February 1, 1851 in Westhampton Township, Burlington County, New Jersey; died February 16, 1889 in Rancocas, Burlington County, New Jersey

• Amelia Gibson:  born June 1831 in Burlington County, New Jersey; died June 19, 1908 in Lumberton, Burlington County, New Jersey

• Frederick Cleworth Dunstan:  born January 18, 1840 in Deansgate, Manchester, Lancashire, England; married October 18, 1858 in Manchester, Lancashire, England; died September 21, 1873 in Hulme, Lancashire, England

• Martha Winn:  born August 12, 1837 in Manchester, Lancashire, England; died November 26, 1884 in Manchester, Lancashire, England

• Simcha Dovid Mekler:  unknown when born, possibly in Kamenets Litovsk, Grodno gubernia, Russia; married before 1885 in Russia; died before 1904, possibly in Kamenets Litovsk, Grodno gubernia, Russia

• Bela <unknown maiden name>:  unknown when born, in Russia; died before 1924, possibly in Kamenets Litovsk, Grodno gubernia, Russia

• Gershon Itzhak Novitsky:  born about 1858, probably in Porozowo, Grodno gubernia, Russia; married about 1875 in Russia; died December 12, 1948 in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York

• Dora Yelsky:  born about 1858, probably in Porozowo, Grodno gubernia, Russia; died February 9, 1936 in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York

• Victor Gordon:  born between 1864–1868, probably in Kamenets Podolsky, Podolia, Russia; married before 1891 in Russia; died January 25, 1925 in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York

• Esther Leah Schneiderman:  born between 1868–1874 in Russia; died December 10, 1908 in Kishinev, Bessarabia, Russia

• Morris Brainin:  born between 1860–1863, probably in Kreuzburg, Russia; married before 1883, possibly in Kreuzburg, Russia; died February 13, 1930 in Harlem, Manhattan, New York County, New York

• Rose Dorothy Jaffe:  born between 1866–1871 in Russia; died November 9, 1934 in Harlem, Manhattan, New York County, New York

As fuzzy as some of the information is for my great-great-grandparents on my mother's side, at least I have something, which is more than I can say for my paternal grandfather's paternal side.  I'm still hunting for that biological father.

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Photograph(s) of Your Favorite Heirloom(s)

What heirlooms do you have in your family?  This week for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, Randy Seaver wants to see the heirlooms readers have been discussing:

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

(1) Last week we shared the heirlooms that we inherited or obtained from our families.

(2) This week, please show a photograph of one or two of them.

(3) Share your cherished heirloom(s) in your own blog post, on Facebook, and leave a link to it in the comments.

In previous posts about heirlooms I have written about the silverplate dinner flatware and the earring I have left (as the other one was stolen, along with a necklace) that used to be my great-grandmother's.  But I also have lots of photographs, primarily from my maternal grandmother's family.  I think my favorite photograph is this one:

This scan is only of the actual photo and does not include the card backing.  The front of that backing indicates that the photo was taken in Kamenets Podolskiy, Russia, now Kamyanets Podilskyy, Ukraine.  Because of clear resemblances of the adults in the photo (the man to a known, identified photo of my great-great-grandfather and the woman to one of my great-grandfather's younger sisters), I am fairly certain that these are my great-great-grandparents Vigdor Gorodetsky and Esther Leah (Schneiderman) Gorodetsky, and that the little girl is their first child, Etta (my great-grandfather's older sister).  That makes the photo about 130 years old at this point.  Esther Leah died in 1908 in Kishinev, Russia (now Chisinau, Moldova), and soon after that the chain migration of that branch of my family to this country began.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Known Immigrant Ancestor Time Span

It's time for another family history challenge from Randy Seaver for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun!

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

(1) Reader Doug Greenhill suggested this challenge:  "What is the time span between your first known immigrant ancestor to your last known immigrant ancestor?"

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

Of course, since I am out of town and don't have access to my family tree database, this week's challenge involves details from said database.  I knew it would happen.  But I can make estimates.

My most recent known immigrant ancestors were my great-great-grandparents Gershon Itzhak Nowicki and Dobra (Yelsky) Nowicki, who arrived in the United States on August 22, 1922.  They came on the S.S. Laconia, which docked in New York City.

My earliest confirmed immigrant ancestor is from the Gaunt(t) family.  It's someone who came in the 1600's, but I don't remember his name or what year he came.  Because I can't look up the information right now, I can push his arrival to the very end of the century, to 1699.

That makes the interval 1699 to 1922, for a total of 223 years.

I'm supposed to descend from someone who came on the Mayflower in 1620.  If accurate, that would make my time span 302 years.

===

Observant readers may have noticed that I slightly modifed the phrasing for this challenge.  At least Randy, if not Doug Greenhill also, used "direct ancestor."  Being an editor, this phrase drives me crazy.  An ancestor is someone from whom you descend.  "Direct ancestor" is redundant, because there is no such thing as an indirect ancestor.  If it isn't a direct line, the person isn't an ancestor but is a collateral relative.  Similarly, there is no such thing as an "indirect descendant."  Either someone is a descendant or is not.

I tried searching for links online to back me up on this and found an interesting situation.  It appears that at one point Dick Eastman denigrated this incorrect grammatical use of direct and indirect descendant, because there's a link on an old Facebook post to a 2012 post on his blog (I include the image for those who don't use Facebook):

But when I clicked on the link in the post to Eastman's blog, https://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2011/04/what-is-an-indirect-descendant.html, the result was "Something's Missing / The content you're looking for doesn't exist at this address.  Continue browsing, or try searching for your content using the form below."

So I did try searching for the content on the form.  And the phrase "indirect descendant" no longer appears on the site.  "Direct ancestor" and "direct descendant" show up several times each, but in other posts, the text in some of them apparently copied from press releases and some in posts written by Eastman himself.  So what it looks like is that now that he has decided the phrases are ok to use, he deleted the one post that attacked them.  Or did I miss something?

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.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Who Is Your Most Recent Immigrant Ancestor?

This week for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Randy Seaver posed a question about immigrant ancestors:

1) Who is your most recent immigrant ancestor?  I'm assuming that your ancestors moved from one country to another at some point in time.

2)  Tell us about that person:  name, birth and death, emigration and immigration country and port, date or year of immigration, etc.  Share it in a blog post of your own, in a comment on this blog post, or on Facebook or Google+.

Well, my family are relative latecomers compared to Randy's, by almost 70 years.  My most recent immigrant ancestors were my great-great-grandparents, Gershon Nowicki and Dvojre (Yelsky) Nowicki, shown as Gerszon and Dobra Nowitzky, who departed Liverpool on August 24, 1922 on the S.S. Laconia and arrived in New York City on September 3.  When they immigrated they were listed as being about 66 and 64 years old, respectively.  Gershon was a woodturner, and Dvojre was simply his wife.  They were of the Hebrew race (Jewish), and their last permanent residence was Porosowa, Poland (now Porozovo, Belarus).  Their nearest relative whence they came was their daughter, Mirke Krimelewicz, also in Porosowa.

The second page of the passenger list shows that Gershon and Dvojre paid for their own tickets, were each in possession of $25, and had never before been in the United States.  The relative they were joining was their son, Sam Nowitzky, who lived at 1160 52nd Street, Brooklyn.  They replied no to all of the big "boot you out right away" questions:  ever been in prison, are you a polygaist or an archist, do you advocate overthrow of the government, etc.  They both stated they were in good physical and mental health and were not deformed or crippled.  Gershon is listed as 4'5" and Dvojre as only 4', which seems incredibly tiny to me; no one has ever told me they were that short.  They both had fair complexions and dark hair and eyes, and were born in Porosowa.

So that covers all the typed information on the form, which was created when they embarked.  Now we get to the added comments, most of them handwritten, which came at Ellis Island.  The first clue that there's more to look for is the word "ADMITTED" stamped over the letters "S I" to the left of their names on the first page (I admit, the letters are hard to read under the ADMITTED).  When you see this, or a handwritten "X" to the left, you should look for your immigrant relative on a page near the end of the complete ship manifest for detained aliens or those held for special inquiry.  The names are often spelled differently on the two pages, so they might not come up in the same search.  That happened to me with Gershon.  On the special inquiry page, his name is Gerzon Nowitzcy.  Dvojre's first name is still Dobra, however.  On the second page of the passenger list, both Gershon and Dvojre have "Senility which may aff." handwritten over the typed responses and "Med. cert" and a number.

And now for the special inquiry page.  An explanation of the special inquiry process can be found on the JewishGen.org site, including a partial list of abbreviations found.  (Part of the explanation is the bad news that most of the special inquiry records no longer exist.)  Going by this information, both of my great-great-grandparents were considered likely public charges (LPC) due to being physically (PH) defective (DEF).  The processors at Ellis Island believed that they weren't capable of working to support themselves.  Their inspector was named Tufarolo.  They were finally admitted on September 9, and while they were held they ate eight breakfasts, ten dinners, and eight suppers.  The additional days of meals after they were admitted was probably due to it taking a day or two to contact Sam or another relative and let them know that Gershon and Dvojre were allowed to stay.

In earlier years, the page listing aliens held for special inquiry also included the name and address of the person who picked up the immigrants, which can often be very helpful.  By 1922, however, this was no longer the case, so I don't know if it was my cousin Sam or someone else who collected his parents from the detention center at Ellis Island.

I don't have documented birth information on either of these great-great-grandparents.  They were both born roughly about 1858.  Dvojre died February 9, 1936 in Brooklyn.  Gershon died December 12, 1948 in Brooklyn.  And as for him being physically defective or senile, after his arrival he worked as a Hebrew teacher for several years, and family members have told me he was a rambunctious dirty old man right up until the end.

Wordless Wednesday