Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Most Recent No-Name Ancestor

I'm not going to write about the ancestor most people might expect for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

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

1.  Sometimes an ancestor or relative has no name at all — not even a given name (for males, we usually can surmise a surname, but . . .).  We all have millions of them.

2.  Tell us about one (or more) of your ancestors that have no given name and no birth surname who has perhaps married an ancestor with a given name and surname from whom you are descended.  (Don't worry, we'll do unknown parents some time soon.)

3.  When was the last time you looked for this no-name ancestor?

4.  Share information about your no-name ancestor(s) in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook comment.

Okay, here's mine.

I'm sure many people would expect me to write about my paternal grandfather's father, whom I usually discuss when it comes to recent ancestors I haven't identified.  But in June I posted that I have decided his last name must be Mundy (or a spelling variant thereof), and I was already pretty sure his given name included "bert" in it.  So he really isn't a no-name ancestor anymore.

I'm going further afield.

The first person who next came to my mind is the father of my great-great-grandmother Beila, who married Simcha Dovid Mekler, possibly in Kamenets Litovsk (now Kamyanyets, Belarus).  I wrote about her in August for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, "Five Questions for an Ancestor."  I know her given name, and I have estimated her year of death to be before 1924.  That's all I know about her.

So it stands to reason that I don't know anything about her father, who I am calling my "no-name ancestor" for the purpose of this post.

I admit I have never looked for him.  To be honest, I have barely looked for Beila.  I'm pretty sure both were born in the Russian Empire.  I think Beila was probably born in what was Grodno gubernia and is now part of Belarus.  Her father might have been born there, or possibly in what is now Lithuania.

If I could find a marriage record for Beila, it might include her father's name on it.  But because of the dearth of records for Jews in the former Grodno gubernia (most having been deliberately destroyed during World War II, to eradicate the history of the Jews in the area), it is unlikely I will ever find that marriage record.

If I could find a tombstone for Beila, it might have her father's name on it in Hebrew.  But the Jewish cemeteries in that area were also pretty thoroughly destroyed during World War II, and it is unlikely I will find that tombstone.

If I could find the family in a Russian revision list, perhaps the 1897 list, it would probably list her father's name and maybe even a maiden name.  Even a Russified version would be helpful.  I actually have tried searching for her, Simcha Dovid Mekler, and the two children I know of in the revision lists as transcribed on JewishGen.org, but I have not found them.  I know that many of the revision lists did not survive.  Perhaps one day a page with my family on it will be found in an attic or tucked inside the wall of a house.

Treasure Chest Thursday: The Marriage Certificate of Jean La Forêt and Emma Schafer

Now that I've finished up with Jean La Forêt's journal, I'm back to regular documents, and the first one is Jean and Emma's actual marriage certificate from 1908!  And I thought I was going to need to order it from Duval County.  (I may still try to get a copy of the marriage license application, if it still exists.)  Please forgive the imperfect image; I had to scan it in two parts, and my tiling was inexact.  But you can pretty much see everything.

This piece of paper is 12" x 9 3/8" and yellowish; it might have originally been white.  It's about a 20# bond weight.  There is a watermark, though I can't tell exactly what it is; it seems to be an image of a person, apparently a man, because he's wearing pants.  The head is cut off.  This was a blank form that was filled in after the marriage was performed.  The Justice of the Peace's seal is impressed in the lower left corner.  In the upper left corner, a newspaper clipping was pasted onto the certificate.

The paper was folded twice as though to fit in an envelope.  In addition, the far right side was folded over about a quarter of an inch, which I did not notice until now, so it was scanned with that fold.

Following the transcription of the certificate is a transcription of the newspaper clipping.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

652

CERTIFICATE OF MARRIAGE.

THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT

I have this day joined in

MARRIAGE

 Mr. Jean L. LaForest         of  Poblo Beach       State of    Florida           

~~ AND ~~

 Mrs. Emma Schafer Petit  of  Poblo Beach       State of    Florida           

according to the laws of the State of   Florida                      and that there were present as witnesses

W. R. Coulter                          of Jacksonville  Florida 
G. W. Wilkinson                      of Poblo Beach  Florida 
__________________________________

STATE OF FLORIDA • DUVAL COUNTY
11TH
JUSTICE'S
DISTRICT [SEAL]

Dated Jacksonville Florida May 7th 1908                    E E Willard 
                                                                               Justice of the Peace 

XXXXXXXXXXXX JACKSONVILLE, FLA.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

May 7 1908

Marriage Licenses Issued.—Yesterday Edward H. Satchell and Annie L. Lauterwitch (and to-day Jean L. LaForest and Mrs. Emma Schafer-Petit secured licenses to marry.)

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

What struck me immediately as I began to transcribe this was the spelling of Jean's last name.  Both on the certificate and in the newspaper announcement of the marriage license it is spelled LaForest.  Now the name as it appears on the photograph from Pablo Beach makes more sense.  But I wonder why Jean's name was spelled this way in Florida.

The next thing that jumped out at me was "Poblo" Beach.  Judging by the same photograph, that wasn't the way everyone spelled it.  Maybe it was an idiosyncracy of Justice Willard.

I wonder what was blacked out in the lower left, before the words "Jacksonville, Fla."  When I look at it under a bright light, it seems to be three words covered by felt marker (or whatever the equivalent writing implement was in 1908).  I think I can make out "Co." at the end, so maybe it was simply the company that printed the forms.  But why black it out?

Jean and Emma got their marriage license and married the same day.  I thought it was a sweet touch that someone marked Jean and Emma's listing with parentheses on the newspaper clipping.  I've never seen a license announcement glued to a marriage certificate before.

It was entertaining to compare the actual marriage certificate with the transcription that Emma submitted with her application for a pension based on Jean's military service.  Not counting discrepancies with punctuation (of which there were several), I found six differences between the original and the transcription:  LaForet instead of LaForest; Pablo instead of Poblo (three times); the second witness was listed as Wilkerson, but it's actually Wilkinson; and 7 instead of 7th in the date.  That's significantly worse than the differences in transcription of Emma's divorce decree.  So much for the "true and correct copy" certified by notary W. T. Kelley!

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

The marriage certificate was in this envelope when I received it.  I'm not sure whose writing this is, but it's likely either Jean's or Emma's.  I like the little doodle at the bottom of the back side of the envelope.

They're Not Mine; Are They Yours?

Herschel Kosewen and
Maria Wiernicka
marriage license (top)

I'm sure that everyone who does family history research has at some time ordered a record (probably more than once!) for a person that turned out not to be a family member.  What to do with these?  They aren't doing me any good.  I've accumulated a few of these at this point, so I thought I'd post about them in the hope that other researchers who can use them might read about them here before ordering them.  It's easy to spend a lot of money doing research; helping someone else save some money is a good thing.  These are all high-resolution scans, all but one from microfilm.  All are from New York City except one marriage license from Cuba.

Edwin Carroll Atwood and Margaret Victoria Andren marriage license, Manhattan, New York, May 9, 1931

Alex Blumenkranz and Leah Citron marriage license, Bronx, New York, December 1, 1934 (first page only)

Julius Fitzgerald and Margaret Andrew marriage license, Manhattan, New York, January 21, 1937

Herman Greenberg and Dorothy C. Itzkowitz marriage license, Bronx, New York, May 21, 1935 (first page only)

Jerome V. Heim and Margaret C. Andrews marriage license, Queens, New York, September 5, 1931

Jerome Klosenberg and Edith Posnick marriage license, Bronx, New York, June 9, 1935 (second page only)

Herschel Kosewen and Maria Wiernicka marriage license, Havana, Cuba, March 19, 1937

Irving Strauss and Rebecca Kshonz marriage license, Bronx, New York, November 24, 1934 (second page only)


Dora Sandals birth certificate, Manhattan, New York, February 23, 1899

Beckie Sandler birth certificate, Manhattan, New York, March 11, 1895

Joseph Sandlowitch birth certificate, Manhattan, New York, May 23, 1893


Margaret (Webster) Morrison death certificate, Bronx, New York, November 27, 1923 (first page only)

John O'Brien death certificate, Bronx, New York, November 27, 1923 (second page only); wife Mary O'Brien

Treasure Chest Thursday: 1883 Marriage Certificate of Emma Schafer and Emile Petit

Now that we have a good overview of the timeline of Emma Schafer's life at least up to about 1920, from her early years through two marriages, I'm going to work through other documents in chronological order from the beginning.  Among the documents relating to Emma was what appears to be an original copy of her 1883 marriage certificate.  (I wish I had something like this for my own family!)  It might be only a "souvenir" copy, because no witnesses are listed, but it certainly looks old.  The paper has been folded many times.  The handwriting is light but clear; Jeremiah Ryan's signature is bold and dark.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

Marriage Certificate

State of Missouri, City of St. Louis.

— This is to Certify, —

That Mr. Emile Petit

of St. Louis County in the State of Missouri

and Miss Emma Schaefer

of St. Louis County in the State of Missouri

were by me united in the HOLY BONDS OF MATRIMONY;

in City of St. Louis on the 10th

day of November in the year of our Lord, one

thousand eight hundred and three
     In the Presence of
_____________________
_____________________           Jeremiah Ryan
_____________________           Justice of the Peace

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

Two things surprised me about this:  They were married in the city of St. Louis, and the marriage was performed by a justice of the peace.  Not having the marriage in St. Louis County, where everyone lived, made me think that it might have been a deliberate choice to have them married away from prying eyes.  Considering the short amount of time this was apparently accomplished in, Mr. and Mrs. Curdt probably didn't want those prying eyes.  Once I thought about it, however, the short amount of time probably had something to do with the choice of a justice of the peace.  A pastor, priest, or other officiant from a church probably would have wanted the couple to have known each other a little bit longer than nine days.

If this is only a souvenir or "wall hanger" copy, original records might list who the witnesses were.  The typed narrative asserted that the marriage took place in front of witnesses and Emma's mother, Mrs. Curdt, so their names should appear somewhere.  Or maybe the witnesses didn't want their names associated with the event?

I Found Two Possible Siblings of My Great-Great-Grandfather!

Possibly Gersh Wolf Gorodetsky

One of the great advantages of searchable electronic databases is their ability to show you information you wouldn't have thought to look for.  Even if you had considered looking, the time required might not have been practical.

Many years ago, I rented several rolls of microfilm of Jewish metrical records from Kishinev, Russian Empire (now Chisinau, Moldova) from the Family History Library.  I was trying to find information about my great-grandfather's family, which I had been told moved to Kishinev from the Kamenets Podolsky area some time soon after his birth.

My search was very successful.  I found the birth registrations of five of the six younger children in the family, the death record for my great-great-grandmother, and the index entry for my great-great-grandfather's second marriage (the church did not have the full marriage record on film).  I learned that this branch of my family was probably reasonably well educated, because when those five siblings immigrated to the United States the birthdates they used were surprisingly close to the actual dates.  I also learned my great-great-grandmother died one month after the birth of her youngest child, and that my great-great-grandfather did not remarry until two and a half years later, even though he had a one-month-old child.

I still have those microfilms on extended loan at my local Family History Center in Oakland, because I know it can be helpful to go through these types of records and look for other people with the same name and from the same place, as they might be related.  As these records were in Russian handwriting from the 1890's to the early 1900's, however, I kept putting it off, because I didn't want to slog through the 100+-year-old Cyrillic.

But now we have the Internet and searchable databases.  Several volunteers have transcribed many of the FHL microfilms of Kishinev records, and the transcriptions are now online in one of those databases.  I was recently doing research for someone else and ended up searching in the database that includes the Kishinev metrical records.

I didn't find any relevant information for the family I was researching, but I really thought there should be something.  To test the database, I searched for my family name, Gorodetsky, to see what kinds of results I would get.

The first thing I did was look for the information I had already found on microfilm.  All of it was there — that was a good start.  In these records my great-great-grandfather was consistently listed as being from Orinin, and his father's name as Gersh Wolf.  Then I glanced over the other results from the search.

I noticed a minimal death listing with my great-great-grandfather's name as the father.  I found another listing with more information about the same death and discovered that my great-great-grandmother had had at least one more pregnancy beyond the eight children I knew of, but this one apparently had sadly ended in a miscarriage.  I didn't know that miscarriages could be included in the death registers, but at least this one was.

Then I saw a second Gorodetsky whose father was also Gersh Wolf and who was from Orinin.  This man was potentially a brother of my great-great-grandfather!  He had three children listed in the database results.  Based on the birthdates of his children, he was probably a little younger than my great-great-grandfather.

I also found the death of a woman with the same father and from the same town, but she's quite a bit older than my great-great-grandfather.  She might be a sister!  It appears that she was not married.

Looking at the range of ages for these possible siblings made me wonder about my third-great-grandfather.  If these three were siblings, I wonder how many wives/mothers there were.  It's plausible, though on the extreme end, that all three could be children of the same mother.  Unfortunately, these records give only the father's name; the mother's name is not included.

I also began to think about Gersh Wolf's possible age.  I realized that none of Gersh Wolf's eight grandchildren I know about and the three potential grandchildren from the database had that name.  It was a common practice among many Eastern European Jews at this time, including my family, to name children after deceased ancestors.  In fact, my great-grandfather and three of his siblings named their first daughters after their mother; three of the siblings named their first sons after their father.  Admittedly, I know the names of only eleven possible grandchildren, but those births extend to 1910.  I'm starting to consider whether my third-great-grandfather was still alive as of that year, and that's why no one had yet named a child after him.  If Gersh Wolf was the father of the woman whose death I found, however, he had to have been born by around 1818 at the latest, so that would make him at least 92!  Of course, it's also possible that his children didn't like him, and that's why they didn't name any sons after him . . . .

Obviously, I need to follow up on all of these potential new clues.  And all this because I decided to poke around in a database!