William Brainin, Victim of the Spanish Flu

Although cases occurred before this date, a generally accepted start date for the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 (commonly called the Spanish flu epidemic) is March 4, when a U.S. Army cook by the name of Albert Gitchell at Camp Funston, Kansas was recorded as being ill.  In a very short time more than 500 men at the camp had been reported sick.  Only one week later, on March 11, the flu had reached Queens, New York.

One of the groups that was hit hard by the flu was men being inducted into the U.S. Army and attending boot camp, where close quarters and the effects of physical activity helped the virus spread quickly.  My great-granduncle William Brainin was one of those men.

I don't know much about Uncle Willie, as Bubbie (my grandmother) called him.  He was born about 1892 (he used the birthdate October 23, 1892 here), possibly in Kreuzberg, Russia (now Krustpils, Latvia).  He immigrated to the United States as Wolf Brainin with his mother, Ruchel Dvojre (Jaffe) Brainin, and three siblings — Chase Leah Brainin, Pesche Brainin, and Kosriel Brainin — aboard the Caronia, arriving at Ellis Island on October 3, 1906.

The Brainin family was enumerated in the census on April 20, 1910, living at 236 East 103rd Street, Manhattan, New York.  In the household were parents Morris [Mendel Hertz] and Rose Dorothy [Ruchel Dvojre] with children Lena [Chase Leah], Sarah [Sora Leibe], William [Wolf or Welwel], Bessie [Pesche], and Benjamin [Kosriel], everyone having chosen American names to use here.  William's occupation was ladies' tailor, a common job for young male Jewish immigrants at that time.

I have not found William in the 1915 New York census, but he might have already moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, to live with his older brother Max Joseph [Nachman] Brainin and his family.  Certainly he was there by June 1, 1917, where he registered for the Army draft.  I don't know when he entered the Army, but I have seen a photo which Bubbie identified as, "That's my Uncle Willie in his Army uniform."  (Unfortunately, the photo disappeared soon after that identification.  I'm still trying to figure out where it went.)

By the time of the 1920 census, William had returned to live with his parents in Manhattan.  They were enumerated there on January 12, 1920.

William had no occupation listed in the census, suggesting that he was probably already sick when the census taker came by.  Two weeks later, on January 26, William Brainin died in Manhattan.  His cause of death was given as pneumonia caused by influenza.  He was buried in the Workmen's Circle plot of Mt. Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, Queens on January 27.

I'm fortunate that some of Bubbie's memories, which were usually spot on, have proven to be inaccurate.  She told me that Uncle Willie had come home sick from the Army while my great-grandmother Sarah was pregnant with my grandmother, that my great-grandmother became ill, and that Uncle Willie died before Bubbie was born in 1919.  But that is Uncle Willie with his family in the 1920 census, and it's definitely his death certificate, so he absolutely did not die before Bubbie was born.  Finding him with the family in 1920 made it easier to identify him in the death index and get a copy of his death certificate.

So far Uncle Willie is the only member of my family I have found to have died due to the Influenza Pandemic.

The Miracle Baby

Lily Gordon, circa 1935

Family stories are always interesting, but are they accurate?  My grandmother Esther Lillian Gordon, whom I always called Bubbie (Yiddish for grandmother), was born March 6, 1919.  One of the stories I heard many times while I was growing up was how it was a miracle she had been born and survived.

The story goes that Bubbie's mother, Sarah Libby (Brainin) Gordon, was pregnant with her when Sarah's brother, William Brainin, came home from the Army with influenza during the 1918 pandemic.  He infected his sister, who became gravely ill.  She had to go to the hospital and have a lung removed, while still pregnant.  Everything was touch and go, and there were serious questions as to whether either or both of Sarah and the baby would survive.

Somehow, Sarah recovered and gave birth to my grandmother.  Both of them were healthy, and Sarah's father, Rabbi Mendel Herz Brainin, was so overjoyed he went dancing in the streets. As an epilog to the story, Bubbie also said that her Uncle Willie had died before she was born.

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So far, the only part of this story that I've attempted to research is Uncle Willie's death.  My first clue that he didn't actually die before my grandmother was born was that I found him, or someone who certainly appeared to be him, in the 1920 U.S. census with his parents in Manhattan.  After that discovery, I searched for him in the New York City death index and found a likely listing with a death date of January 26, 1920.  I ordered the death certificate and confirmed it was indeed for the brother of my great-grandmother.  Obviously, I was very lucky in that he lived long enough to be enumerated in the census!

Learning that Uncle Willie had died in 1920, not before Bubbie's birth in March 1919, does seem to poke a fairly large hole in my grandmother's story.  Unfortunately, the other avenues of research aren't particularly viable.  The odds on any hospital records from 1918–1919 surviving are very small, and even if they existed, I probably wouldn't be permitted to view them, because medical records of any type are considered sacrosanct in this country, and New York is especially well known for being unfriendly about allowing researchers access to records (yes, even 100-year-old records that are supposed to be available).

A slightly — only slightly — better angle would be to research Uncle Willie's time in the Army.  He apparently did serve, because there was a photograph of him in his uniform that my grandmother identified.  It disappeared several years ago, but he was an enlisted man.  About 80% of Army enlisted personnel records for soldiers discharged between 1912 and 1960 were destroyed in a fire in 1973 at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri.  So the chances of his records having survived are low.  I do need to try requesting them, though, because that's still a 20% of being successful.  If his records did survive, I might be able to find out if and when he was sent home with the flu.  (It's on my [long] list of things to do for my own family research.)  If he did have the flu, and if he went home between about June 1918 and February 1919, maybe the story is true after all!

"Finding Your Roots" Begins Its New Season

The new season of Finding Your Roots has started, but I'm running a week behind on viewing, because PBS is airing the program against NCIS.  I'm sorry, but I've found it easier to watch Finding Your Roots at alternative times than to wait for NCIS to appear in my On Demand menu.  So maybe I'm not totally obsessed by genealogy after all.

As anyone knows who has watched both programs, the premises behind Finding Your Roots and Who Do You Think You Are? are very different.  A WDYTYA celebrity starts out by talking about a specific question he wants to know the answer to or wondering if something in her family background has any relationship to what she is like.  The program sends its celebrities around the country and sometimes the world in search of documents, even though they are not doing the research themselves.  We watch the process of discovery and follow one clue to another (though as I often comment, the path shown may have huge leaps and departures from logic).  The question voiced at the beginning is handled by the end of the episode.

In Finding Your Roots, on the other hand, we do not see any of the research.  Each episode has a theme of some sort and three to four celebrities whose stories tie into that theme.  It would appear that the theme and a predetermined narrative are chosen, and the producers then look for celebrities whose stories fit, though it's possible they have a pool of celebrities they research and then put together themes and narratives based on what they find.  Our host, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., presents each celebrity with a completed book, and during the episode a few items are highlighted and sometimes discussed.  We are completely removed from the research process and rarely have knowledge of how information was discovered or how one piece connects to another.  We're very much on the outside looking in.  From my perspective as a genealogist, there's little to comment on, because it is impossible to follow the flow of research.  All that's left is an entertainment piece and possibly finding out about a new research resource, such as the episode featuring Sanjay Gupta, in which I learned about the existence of some written family records for Indians prior to Partition.

So far I have seen only the first episode of the new season, "In Search of Our Fathers", featuring Stephen King, Gloria Reuben, and Courtney Vance.  For differing reasons, each of the celebrity guests grew up not knowing their fathers.  As expected, various discoveries were made about their fathers, and they came away knowing more than they had.  But some things puzzled me.  For example, Gloria Reuben said that she had not been able to learn the names of her father's parents from her mother.  The way the story was presented, it appeared that Reuben's parents had married in Canada.  Canada's marriage licenses require both parties to list their parents' names.  So why was the information not available from that resource?  Did they not marry in Canada?  Did they marry at all?

Then I thought that several parts were phrased poorly.  When discussing King's father's decision to change his name from Pollock, Gates acted surprised that the researchers were not able to find out why he changed it.  What's the big surprise?  It's rare to find documentation of a name change in the early 20th century for anyone.  When Gates talked about the influenza pandemic, he said it "wreaked havoc across the country."  That's quite an understatement, considering that part of the pandemic's infamy comes from the fact that it was worldwide.  And when speaking of Vance's father, in the beginning Gates said he was a foster child, then later used the word adopted without any explanation for the change in terminology.  The foster care system and adoption are very different legally and emotionally for the people involved; the terms are not interchangeable.

On a personal level, I don't like hopping back and forth between each celebrity's story.  I find that technique merely emphasizes the lack of continuity that is inherent in not following the research process.  I find Gates' habit of reading directly from his notes to be somewhat stilted.  I also don't like Gates' heavy reliance on DNA and how much credibility he gives autosomal results.  Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist, has explained very clearly that these numbers are essentially "cocktail party conversation" and nothing more.  On the other hand, something I really enjoy about Finding Your Roots is that since it's on PBS, I don't have to suffer through an Ancestry ad during every commercial break; they're limited to one appearance in each of the beginning and ending underwriter sequences.

Did the 1918 Flu Pandemic Affect Your Family?

The influenza pandemic of 1918 killed millions of people throughout the world.  In the United States, one of the groups hardest hit was servicemen drafted into the Army for World War I.  One member of my family probably caught the flu this way, and he passed it on to his sister and almost prevented my grandmother from being born.  At least, that's how the family story goes.

Velvel Brainin was the second-youngest brother of my great-grandmother Sarah.  He was born about 1892 in the Russian Empire, possibly in or near Kreuzburg (now Krustpils, Lativa).  He immigrated to the U.S. sometime between 1904 and 1910, most likely with his mother, Ruchel Dwore Jaffe Brainin (my great-great-grandmother), and the two youngest children, Pesche (later Bessie) and Benjamin (I still haven't found that ship manifest).  By 1910 the entire family was in the U.S., and everyone except brother David was living in New York City.  (David was in San Francisco, but that's another story.)

Velvel went by the name of William after his arrival here.  He registered for the draft on June 1, 1917 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he was working as a tailor with his brother Max.  According to his draft registration card, he was of medium height and build and had dark brown hair and eyes.  Once when my grandmother and I were going through boxes of photographs, she identified one photo as "my Uncle Willie in his Army uniform", but that photo sadly seems to have disappeared.

"Willie" died in New York City on January 26, 1920.  The death certificate lists the cause of death as influenza.  Since he apparently did serve in the Army, either by being drafted or by enlisting, there is a good chance he caught the flu while at boot camp, as many soldiers did.

Most of the above information is pretty straightforward.  Now comes the family story.

My grandmother told me that while her mother (the aforementioned great-grandmother Sarah) was pregnant with my grandmother, she caught the flu from her brother Willie.  Sarah became seriously ill and had to go to the hospital.  Both her life and that of my grandmother were in danger.  She supposedly had a lung removed.  When my grandmother was born and they both proved to be healthy, my great-great-grandfather the rabbi went dancing in the streets in celebration.

One interesting element to the story is that my grandmother always said that her uncle died before she was born, which was in 1919, so I had not put much effort into looking for him in the 1920 census.  When I finally found the Brainin family in the census, however, William was there, still alive and kicking.

To make sure I actually had the right guy, I searched in the New York City death index and found a likely candidate, who had died shortly after the family was enumerated in the census.  When I obtained the death certificate, it showed he was the right person.

So with one part of my grandmother's story disproven, what about the rest?  Medical records are pretty taboo in this country, so it is unlikely I would be able to gain access to them, if they have even survived (I have been told that medical records need only be kept for 20 years; most are destroyed after that, and my great-grandmother died 50 years ago).  So much for verifying the lung removal.  There might be an obituary for William in a local paper, which might mention the family story, but it would probably be in Yiddish—which I don't read.

Willie was certainly enlisted, not an officer, so his service file was probably burned in the 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center, but I should try asking for it just in case.  I'm not a descendant (not that he had any), however, which will limit what I can receive.  But if I can find out what unit he was assigned to or where he went to boot camp, I can try to track down morning reports that might mention Willie becoming ill with the flu and when it happened.  Then I could at least verify that part of the story.

Willie said on his draft registration that he was a naturalized citizen.  I also should try to get a copy of his naturalization file.  He doesn't seem to have become a citizen in New York City (or at least his name doesn't show up in the Italian Genealogical Group index), so it's possible he was naturalized while stationed somewhere else with the Army.  That would be another possible way to learn his unit and then look for morning reports.

The great thing about family stories is that they give so much texture to what otherwise can easily be a dry list of names and dates.  But not everything in family stories is necessarily true; sometimes things are "misremembered" over time.  It's good to try to verify the accuracy of as many facts as possible, because knowing the accurate information can affect your future research.  Don't just dump the story, though.  Record it as the impetus that started you researching in that direction.  After all, if you hadn't heard the story, you might not have looked for that information, right?