Taking the First Kid to See Zadie (Grandpa)

I'm more than a little obsessive, so I like looking for all the documents I can find for my ancestors and collateral relatives also.  I'm always searching for everyone's names in databases.

Everyone on my mother's side of the family from the generation of my great-grandparents and some of their children immigrated to the United States during the early 20th century.  I have spent a lot of time searching for all of my immigrant relatives in passenger list databases.  This not only provides me with their original names prior to Americanization, but also tell me birth places and names of relatives who were still in Europe, listed as contacts in the old country.

One person I have continued to search for is my great-grandmother's sister, known as Jennie in this country.  After putting several puzzle pieces together, I have determined that her Jewish name was probably Zlate, although I have yet to find the passenger list for her first arrival in this country.

I know that Jennie married her cousin Louis Perlman (originally Leiser Perlmutter) June 30, 1908 in Brooklyn, so she had to have arrived before that date.  On May 22, 1906, my great-grandfather Moishe Meckler came into New York and provided the name of his sister-in-law — Zlate — as his relative here, so she was here before then.

Louis himself arrived at Ellis Island a few days earlier than Moishe, on May 19, 1906, and said the relative he was coming to was his cousin, so she was here before that date.  And Jennie's brother Sam arrived July 27, 1905 and listed her as his point of contact, so she was here by then.

But I still haven't found that passenger list for Jennie.  I have found her on a passenger list, but for several years later.

On the passenger list for the S.S. Zeeland, which departed Antwerp May 18, 1912 and arrived in New York May 29 (113 years ago today!), two of the passengers were Jennie Perlman and her son, Rubin Perlman.  They traveled in the second-class cabin, not in steerage, which was the normal method of travel for poor immigrant Jews coming from Eastern Europe.

Jennie and Rubin are the last two names in this image

Another unusual aspect of their travel is that they were apparently not held at Ellis Island.  Unlike the woman and her three children on lines 3 through 6, who are marked with X's, indicating they were detained; or the three minors on lines 14 through 16, just above Jennie, who have SI in front of each of their names, overstamped with ADMITTED, indicating they were held for Special Inquiry, Jennie and Rubin were apparently admitted with no delay.  Normally a woman of child-bearing age who was not accompanied by a man — particularly a woman with a child — was held until someone came to meet her, due to concerns that she would become a burden upon society, a "likely public charge" (abbreviated as LPC on pages listing detainees).  Maybe Louis met her at the ship.

Something not visually evident is that Jennie shouldn't have been listed on this page at all.  The title at the top of the page is very clear, in large capital letters:  LIST OR MANIFEST OF ALIEN PASSENGERS.  But Jennie was no longer an alien.  Her husband, Louis, became a naturalized citizen of the United States on January 23, 1912.  Under the laws of the time, she automatically became a citizen at the same time.  And Rubin was born here, so he was a citizen.  I don't know why Jennie and Rubin are on this page and not on a page for U.S. citizens.  On the other hand, I don't know when they departed the United States to travel to Europe, so it's possible that Louis had not completed his naturalization before they left.

When I first discovered this passenger list, I wondered why Jennie had taken the trip.  Then I noticed who she said was her nearest relative in the country whence she came:  her father, G. [Gershon] Nowitzky.  I think she went to visit her parents to introduce them to her first child.  Rubin wasn't Gershon's first grandchild — my great-grandmother Minnie, who was Jennie's older sister, had her first three children in Europe, and Gershon would have known them — but maybe Jennie was worried her parents wouldn't come to the United States (they didn't come until ten years after this) and wanted to make sure Rubin had an opportunity to meet them.

I'm glad I found this passenger list.  On th second page, in addition to saying that Jennie was born in Porozowo, Russia (now Porazava, Belarus), there is a notation that Jennie first came to the United States in 1904 and was in New York.  Maybe that will help me track down that first passenger list.

How Was the Trip, Mr. Brainin?

1906 passenger list for Mendel Brainin

Mendel Hertz Brainin, my great-great-grandfather, arrived at the port of New York on April 17, 1906 on the S.S. Gneisenau.  He departed from Bremen on April 5.  As I did with my great-great-grandfather Avigdor Gorodetsky, I will go through and analyze all of the information on his passenger list pages.

As I believe was the case for all of my immigrant Jewish relatives, he traveled in steerage.  He appears on line 25 on the page above.  Over the number 25 is a stamped word, "ADMITTED."  (We'll talk about that soon.)  His name was recorded only as Mendel Brainin; I know the middle name of Hertz from family information.  He was 46 years old, suggesting a birth year of about 1859–1860.  This is the earliest document I have for him; other documents extend the range for his year of birth to 1863.  I do not have any documents for him from the Russian Empire.

He was male and married, and his occupation was shoemaker.  If I can ever find any Russian documents for him, that's not a common trade, so it will be helpful information.  He was able to read and write; I'm sure he could write in Hebrew, as he later worked as a rabbi.  Maybe he could read and write in Russian also.

He was a citizen of Russia (well, maybe) and of the Hebrew race, meaning he was Jewish.  Somewhat surprising to me, he seems to be the only Jewish person on this list, or certainly the only one designated as such.  Half the people on the page are "Kovak" and from Hungary, but I don't know of an ethnicity by that name; Kovak to me is a blacksmith.  Others are German, Magyar (Hungarian), Bohemian, Croatian, and Polish.  Hmm, that Croatian is a little out of his native area.

Mendel's last residence was Kreuzburg, Russia, which is now Krustpils, Latvia.  Everyone in this branch of my family said they were from Kreuzburg when they came here, but I still haven't found any documentation from the old country to substantiate it.  Mendel's destination was New York.  His ticket was for that destination, and it was paid for by his son.

He had $3 in his possession.  He had never been to the United States before.

The person to whom he was going was his son Max Brainin at 236-34 (I think) 103 Street, New York.  Max, whose Jewish name was Nachman, was the oldest son and the first family member to make the trip to the Goldene Medine, arriving in August 1904.

The next six columns are ditto marks for Mendel and for everyone on the page except the person on the first line, indicating that they have not been prisoners, in an almshouse, in an institution for the insane, or supported by charity; they're not polygamists; they're not anarchists; they're not coming due to some agreement to work in the United States; their mental and physical health is good; and they are not deformed or crippled.  Hooray, everyone is in great shape!

And that's the end of the passenger list.  Only one page in early 1906.

Now back to that stamped ADMITTED.  That indicates that Mendel was held for some reason and potentially could have been deported, but that the authorities decided to admit him.   If there's an ADMITTED, an X, or an SI next to someone's name, you want to look for a page about that detention.  Usually I have found them after all the regular pages for the ship manifest, but sometimes they were microfilmed at the beginning.

I did find the page with Mendel on it.  It is titled Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry.  Sometimes you can find these online by searching in the index for the database, but sometimes the passenger's name is spelled differently on the two pages.  If the index doesn't find your person, look at the top of the passenger list for a large, handwritten number.  On this page, it's in the upper right and is called List, and it's number 1.  Then find the detention pages and look through them manually for your person's name and that number, which will be under Group.  (I do not know why it's called List on one page and Group on the other.)  Sometimes not all of the detention pages survived, so on occasion you might not find your person at all.

1906 Gneisenau Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry

Below the page title it shows that this is for the S.S. Gneisenau (N.G.L.), which stands for North German Lloyd.  (This Gneisenau is not any of the ones with pages on Wikipedia, but I did find information about it on GGArchives.com.)  The official arrival date of the ship into New York was April 15, but this page shows the detainees' arrival as April 17.  I have read that sometimes steerage passengers were deboarded later than other passengers.  I don't know if they were held on the ship those extra two days or maybe somewhere else.

The columns on this page are different from the regular passenger list.  The first column, which has no header, is the passenger's age and sex.  For Mendel this is 46 and m.  Next is the number of the passenger on this page, which for Mendel is 25.  Then is the passenger's name:  Brainin, Mendel.

The next three columns correspond to information from the main passenger list:  Group number, line number, and number of people in the party.  For Mendel these are 1, 25 again (a coincidence?), and 1.

The next column is the Cause of Detention, which is the same for every person on this page:  LPC, or "Likely Public Charge."  This means that when the passenger was being checked in, someone thought he wasn't going to be able to support himself and was going to end up being supported by the government.  Single women, women with children, and young people without trades were routinely held as LPC.

Mendel wasn't very old and did have a trade, so it was a little surprising that he was listed with this reason.  But some people have additional information in this field, and Mendel is one of those.  The additional comment is "Dr. Cert."  Maybe he looked frail or ill.

Next is the column for Inspector, and the name is Bechtel.  I noticed that Bechtel was the inspector for the person two lines above Mendel, who also had a comment of "Dr. Cert."  Maybe Bechtel was assigned to those specifically.

Next there are several columns under Actions of the Board of Special Inquiry.  This section has three subheads:  Dep. Excl. [Deportable Excludable], Rehearing, and Admitted.  Each of these also has subheads.  All three have Date, Page, and Sec'y [Secretary].  Admitted has a fourth, Time.  Most people on the page were admitted, including Mendel.  The only thing I can read for his line is the date, 4/24, which is written in the page column.  The other writing there is too light for me to interpret.

The two sections after Actions are Departmental and Executive Orders, with subheads of Date, Record No., and Orders; and Deported, with subheads of Date, Ship, and Officer.  Only one person on this page appears to have been deported.  I'm glad it wasn't Mendel.

The last section is Meals, with subheads of Breakfast, Dinner, and Supper.  The more meals, the longer the person was held.  The arrival date on the page is April 17, and the date given for Mendel's hearing is April 24.  His meal numbers are 7 breakfasts, 8 dinners, and 7 suppers.  That almost adds up right.  I wonder why or how he apparently had two dinners in one day.

Going through this form has made me realize that I have never requested a search for Mendel's Special Inquiry records.  I have read many times that most Special Inquiry hearing files did not survive, but that means that some did (such as that of actress Lea Michele's great-grandmother, as discussed on an episode of Who Do You Think You Are?).  And if I don't ask, I'll never know if Mendel's is one of the surviving files.  I think I need to add that to my (long) list of things to do.

As I wrote above, the Special Inquiry page indicates that Mendel arrived on April 17, 1906.  Coincidentally, April 17 is the day now celebrated as Ellis Island Family History Day!  That date was chosen because one year after Mendel came to this country, on April 17, 1907, the busiest day in the history of Ellis Island apparently took place, with 11,747 people passing through.  The day has been celebrated since 2001, when Ellis Island launched online access to passenger lists of people going through the immigration station.

Welcome to America, Mr. Gorodetsky and Sons!

1914 passenger list for Wigdor, Chaim, and Moische Gorodetky (first page)

February 19, 1914 (111 years ago!) is the date on which my great-great-grandfather Wigdor Gorodetsky and his two youngest sons, Chaim and Moishe, arrived in New York on the Nieuw Amsterdam, a ship of the Holland-America Line.  I'm going to look at every piece of information about them on the passenger list for their trip, which I have found.

They traveled in steerage.  They are on lines 6, 7, and 8 of the passenger list.  The first page shows that they departed from Rotterdam, the Netherlands on February 7, so the trip took almost two weeks.

Their names are written as Wigdor, Chaim, and Moische Gorodetky (someone apparently lost the "s").  Wigdor is 46, Chaim is 11, and Moische is 5, and Chaim and Moische are noted as being Wigdor's "Sons" in handwriting that is lighter than that on the rest of the page.  From his 1888 marriage record, I have estimated Wigdor's birth year as around 1863, whereas an age of 46 in 1914 would have him born around 1868.  He might have "youthened" himself for the trip, so as not to appear too old (maybe rumor said that being 50 or older might make you seem too old to be able to work?), or he might not have known how old he really was.

I have previously found the Russian birth records for Chaim and Moishe.  Chaim was born November 16, 1899, so he was actually 14 years old.  I'm not sure how beneficial it would be at his age to have fudged those three years, or again they might not have kept accurate track of his age.  Moishe was born November 13, 1908, so he really was 5 years old!  After looking at so many census records over the years, the younger someone is, the more accurate the reported age often is, so maybe that's why his age is correct.

They're all noted as male.  Wigdor is married, and the boys are single.  Wigdor was a furrier, while the two boys had no occupation.  Chaim could read and write (in Russian?  Hebrew?), while neither Wigdor nor Moishe could.  They are all listed as Russian subjects and of the Hebrew race, meaning they were Jewish, and their last residence was Kishinew (Kishinev), Russia (now Chisinau, Modolva).

For Moishe, in the columns for marital status, occupation, and ability to read and write, above the answers to those questions is some additional handwriting in heavy black ink:  2-479123 (505) 11/16/36.  Then two columns to the right appears "Rech 4/17/39."  I am pretty sure the 1936 date points to a Certificate of Arrival being generated when Moishe (by then known as Morris) applied to become a naturalized citizen by filing a Declaration of Intention, and the 1939 date was when he filed his petition.  I have copies of his naturalization paperwork (which I can't find right now); he became a citizen on June 4, 1940.

No similar notations for Wigdor and Chaim indicate they probably did not become U.S. citizens.  I do know I haven't found any naturalization paperwork so far for either one.

The name and address of the nearest relative where they had departed from were Wigdor's wife, Surki Gorodetsky (they found the "s"!) in Kishinew, Bess, which is short for Besserabia, the gubernia (province) in which Kishinev was.  There might actually be an address written, but I'm not sure what it says.  My best guess is Sessiona Pilenetz 7.  For all I know, it might not be an address.  Any takers?

Surki is Sura Galperin, my great-great-grandfather's second wife.  While the passenger list says that Surki is Chaim and Moishe's mother, she was actually their stepmother.  I have found an index entry for their marriage, which took place May 26, 1911 in Kishinev, but I don't have the complete marriage record.  My great-great-grandmother Esther Leah Schneiderman died December 8, 1908, less than a month after Moishe was born.  (The death record says the cause of death has something to do with blood.)

And that's everything on the first page!

The second page of the passenger list has "pecXam" to the left of the number 6, which is Wigdor.  The person two lines above Wigdor has "SpecXam."  I am interpreting both to mean Special Examination (Inquiry).  I looked through all five Special Inquiry pages for this sailing of the Nieuw Amsterdam that are online at FamilySearch.org, but I didn't see his name.  I also checked the five pages for Detained Aliens and didn't find him.  When I looked again at the first page, however, I noticed that the person on line 5, Menasche Biczowsky, is marked SI and deported, but there is no notation on that page for Wigdor.  In addition, Mr. Biczowsky does appear on the list of aliens held for Special Inquiry.  I think the notation by Wigdor on the second page is misplaced and was intended for the person on line 5.

The final destination for all three is New York, and they're marked as having a ticket to that destination, which is conveniently where the ship docked and where they offboarded.  Their passage was paid by Wigdor's son and Chaim and Moishe's brother (probably Joine, the person they are coming to meet here).  For the question of whether they are in possession of $50 and if less than that how much, $15 is noted by Wigdor's name and nothing by the two boys.

The number 13 and a mark around it are written under the $15.  Two lines above Wigdor is the number 35, and two lines below Moishe is 43.  Similarly, other numbers are written in the same column on the page.  I don't know what these are for.

The two columns asking whether the passengers have ever been in the United States before and when have a short dash for almost everyone on the page, including Wigdor and the boys, indicating none of them had.  On Wigdor's line is handwriting in a lighter ink that I don't understand.  It looks like a word and then the numeral 2.  The "word" almost looks like "dau &", but there's no girl, so that doesn't make sense (more on this below).

Next come the name and address of the relative or friend the passengers are going to join, where it says "son[s] Joine Gorodetsky c/o M [?] Brainin 1651 Madison Ave. N York."  Joine is my great-grandfather.  He is indeed Wigdor's son, and on the line below is written "brother", as he is Chaim and Moishe's brother.  M Brainin is my great-great-grandfather Mendel Hertz Brainin, father of Sarah Libby Brainin, who married Joine on April 4, 1914, less than two months after Wigdor arrived.  Joine was a boarder in the Brainin household, and that's how he met Sarah.

The [s] after the word son is confusing.  It's in the same lighter writing as "dau & 2."  Was it intended to make the word "son" plural, which is what it seems to have done?  Maybe the word I'm reading as "dau" is referring to Wigdor, and it's saying "& 2 sons" for Chaim and Moishe?  I noticed that the lighter handwriting for this looks similar to the word "Sons" on the first page.  In that case, "dau" must be something else and I just can't read it.

The next six columns are ditto marks for all three of my relatives (and for everyone on the page except the person on the first line), indicating that they are not prisoners, beggars, insane, anarchists, polygamists, coming on a work scheme, or crippled and that they are in good health.  Wigdor is 5'4"; no height is listed for the two boys.  All of them are marked as having fair complexion, brown hair and eyes, and no identifying marks.  All three were born in Russia.  Wigdor was born in Kamenetz, which would be Kamenets Podolsky, now in Ukraine; both boys were born in Kishinew.

A large block of handwriting in heavy ink goes at an angle across many lines, including the ones for Wigdor, Chaim,and Moishe.  It mentions certs, likely meaning certificates; two dates; and Scranton.  Three passengers were going to Scranton (the three lines after Moishe), so I think it's related to them and not to my relatives or anyone else on the page.

1914 passenger list for Wigdor, Chaim, and Moische Gorodetky (second page)

I Knew They Didn't Fly!

Ruchel Dwojre (Jaffe) Brainin, Mendel Hertz Brainin,
and Benjamin Brainin, c. 1906, New York

I have been looking for the arrival of my great-great-grandmother Ruchel Dwojre (Jaffe) Brainin and her three youngest children to the United States for about 20 years.  This was the closest I had to a brick wall.  I don't count research questions as brick walls unless I have exhausted every single possibility, and I hadn't quite done that.  And that was the key to solving the problem.  This is a story of a lot of forgetting and dropped clues, but also of how things went wrong in the first place.

Ruchel Dwojre Jaffe was born about 1866–1871 in the Russian Empire (possibly in modern-day Latvia; she and other family members claimed to be from Kreuzburg [modern Krustpils], but I have no European records confirming that). She married Mendel Hertz Brainin about 1880–1884 in Russia and died November 9, 1934 in Manhattan, New York.

When she left Europe, I was pretty sure she would have been traveling with her three youngest children: Welwel/Velvel (William), born about 1891; Pesche (Bessie), born about 1892–1895; and Binyamin (Benjamin), born about 1896.  I was told their Jewish names by family members.  I knew those were the names I should be looking for on passenger lists.

The chain migration of the family began with the oldest son, Nachman, who arrived in New York on August 21, 1904 on a ship from Southampton, England.  Next were Chase Leah, Sora Leibe (my great-grandmother), and Dovid, who came on August 4, 1905 from Liverpool to New York.   Patriarch Mendel Hertz came April 15, 1906, also to New York, having departed from Bremen.

I knew that Ruchel Dwojre and the children were in the United States by 1910, because they were enumerated in the census in Manhattan with Mendel Hertz.

My beginning hypothesis was that they had come into New York, as did the previous family members, so I focused my searches there.  When discussing this once with my grandmother, however, she said that she remembered her grandmother saying something about coming into Watertown, which led me to research Boston records.   I later discovered that there is a Watertown, New York which was a border crossing, so I searched Canadian border crossing records.

I looked for Ruchel Dwojre and the children in the Ancestry New York passenger record collection; the Ellis Island database, using the Steve Morse interface; microfilmed Ellis Island index cards at the Family History Library; the Ancestry Boston passenger record collection; the Ancestry Canadian border crossing collection; and the FindMyPast outbound UK passenger list collection.  I searched using their Jewish names and looked under Brainin and Jaffe.  I found no one who even closely approximated them.

I looked for naturalization paperwork for the four.  I determined that my great-great-grandmother had not become a citizen at all.  Bessie became a citizen by marrying a man who naturalized as a citizen a year later, in 1915, so she had no file of her own.  I searched for Benjamin in multiple naturalization indices but didn't find his name.

The one person I had overlooked was William.  I simply forgot to check on him, probably because I knew he had died young.  This was brought to my attention when I was teaching an intro to genealogy class at the Sacramento Public Library.  I had chosen Willie's World War I draft registration as an example of a military-related document that one should search for, and as I was going through the information on the card, I read that it said he was naturalized, which I simply had not noticed before.  I stopped dead and stared at the screen, then turned to the attendees and told them this was a great example of why it's good to look over older documents that you've had a while, to see what you can glean from them now that you have more information or what you missed the first time.  After the class I made a note to myself about his naturalization, but as he had been in the Army I thought it was probably a fast-tracked military one and didn't pursue it at the time.

In 2013, my cousin Janis, Benjamin's granddaughter, surprised me with the revelation that her mother had just discovered Benny's "immigration papers", which said that he had sailed from Riga and named the ship and date.  When I finally received a copy of the document, it was a Declaration of Intention to become a citizen that Benny had filed on April 20, 1926.  On that, he stated that he had left Europe form Libau (not Riga) on the Coronia and had arrived in New York on September 15, 1906.   Woo hoo, I had something to look for!  Unfortunately, I did not find the ship arriving in New York on that date.  I searched the ship’s passenger lists for other dates in 1906 on Ancestry and through Steve Morse’s site, but not exhaustively, because it was tedious, eye-tiring work.

Eventually I broke down and paid USCIS for an index search for Benny's naturalization file, referencing the Declaration of Intention number.  I learned that all he had ever done was file the Declaration.  He never followed up on it and so did not actually become a U.S. citizen.  Because he did not file a petition to become a citizen, no Certificate of Arrival had ever been generated, and I was still stuck with not finding him and the other family members on a passenger list.

I sent my question to Avotaynu (twice!), for its "Ask the Experts" section, listing what I had done already in my search.  I didn't receive a response either time.  I even tried speaking with one of the experts at the Trace.com Coaches Corner at RootsTech in 2019.  He couldn't come up with any avenues I had not explored, but in speaking with him I realized that I really needed to pursue Willie's naturalization, which I had not yet done, just so I could cross it off the list.

So I did.  I coughed up the requisite fee and sent another USCIS request, this one for Willie.  And then forgot about it.

This October I was looking through some old e-mail messages and realized I hadn't ever received a notice of results from the USCIS search.  So I sent an FOIA request and referenced my search request number.  About a week later I received a letter sayiing that USCIS had, in fact, actually found a naturalization file for William Brainin, who had become a citizen in New Bedford, Bristol County, Massachusetts on June 6, 1916.  The letter included a generous offer for me to pay an additional $65 for a copy of the file.  I made a mental note to follow up on that.  And then forgot about it.  (Hey, I have a lot on my mind!)

Two days after Christmas I was noodling around on my computer and found that letter again.  I was getting ready to head to the USCIS site to pony up the money when I realized I really should check to see whether FamilySearch might have digitized Bristol County naturalizations from that period.  Which it had.  After looking through some of the record sets and figuring out where the index pages showed up, I was able to find Willie's naturalization, which was in fact not a fast-tracked military one but a regular one, with a Declaration of Intention, a Petition . . . and a Certificate of Arrival, verifying that he had arrived in New York on the Caronia on October 3, 1906.

Oh, and by the way, his name on the passenger list was Wolf, not Welwel.

What?

Well, forget that, let's find the passenger list!  I jumped onto Ancestry and searched for Wolf (sounds like) Broinen (sounds like) (the spelling indicated on the Certificate of Arrival), arriving in October 1906, in the New York passenger lists database.

And got "Your search for Wolf Broinen returned zero good matches."

Mumble grumble stupid Ancestry fiddle faddle foo . . . .

Harumph.

I went to the Steve Morse "Ellis Island Passengers Gold Form" and entered the same information:  Wolf (sounds like) Broinen (sounds like), arrived October 1906.  Steve's search immediately found one entry, Wolf Broinen, residence "Hangburg", age 17, arriving in 1906.  When I clicked on the "Manifest" link, however, I learned that the Ellis Island database no longer allows you to even look at the passenger list for free.  For the privilege of paying $29.99 you can receive something, probably an electronic file (it doesn't state what you get) of that page, without being able to confirm ahead of time that it's the correct one.

I don't think so.

The Ellis Island site had confirmed that the ship was the Caronia, arriving October 3, 1906 in New York.  So back to Ancestry.com I went, this time searching for just the last name Broinen in October 1906 with no given name.  That brought me one result, Dwoire Broinen.  When I clicked on the link for that image, it brought me to a "Record of Detained Aliens" page, with Dwoire Broinen and four children as the first on the list.

This looked like it might be the right people!  They were met by husband "Mindel" on October 3, the same day the ship arrived.  Mindel is awfullly close to Mendel, and Dwoire is similar to Dwojre.  But I was expecting my great-great-grandmother to be traveling with three children, not four.

On the page it also indicated that the passengers were listed on group (page) 67 on lines 16–20.  So going back from page 227 in the database all the way to page 59, I finally found group 67.  And there, on lines 16–20 as promised, are:
Dwoire Broinen
Chase Broinen
Wolf Broinen
Pesse Broinen
Kosriel Broinen

whom Ancestry has indexed as:
Devorah Branen
Chose Branen
Coolf Branen
Pesse Branen
Koosel Branen

even though it's extremely clear that there is an "i" in Broinen and in Dwoire, and that there's no way that is two "o"s in Kosriel.  I'll give them Chose and Coolf; if you don't know what names they should be, I can see how those were misread.

And yes, that is my family! (doing the genealogy happy dance in the living room)

Okay, so where did I go wrong?  Why didn't I find them earlier?

I don't know why I didn't find them in the microfilmed Ellis Island index cards at the Family History Library.  I'm planning on looking at them again in February, when I'm in Salt Lake for RootsTech, to see if I can find the Broinen family now that I have the information.  But in the databases I searched, I can see some obvious problems.

I was looking for Dwojre, which is the spelling I was more famliar with and the one used by family members who gave me information.  Even though I routinely used "sounds like" and "similar" for matches, the "j" instead of the "i" would have thrown things off, because it's a consonant instead of a vowel.  I also looked for Ruchel, but that's not what she was called on the passenger list, so that clearly wouldn't find her.

I was looking for Pesche, again the spelling I am more familiar with and the one used by family.  Again, even using "sounds like" and "similar", having an additional consonant, the "h", will throw off the matching algorithms.

I was looking for Welwel/Velvel and Binyamin/Benjamin, not Wolf and Kosriel, which are totally different names.  I have never heard those names for my family members.  I asked Janis, Benny's granddaughter, if she had ever heard Kosriel for his Jewish name, and got a resounding "no."  We are at a total loss there.

And I never would have thought to look for Chase (pronounced "ha-suh", by the way, not like the English word "chase"), the oldest daughter in the family, Chase Leah, who went by Lena here in the United States.  I had not been told any stories that she went back to Europe at all, much less with her mother, presumably to help take care of the younger children when they came over.

On his Declaration of Intention, Benny had been close to the correct date, but the ship name was actually Caronia, not Coronia.  This probably would not have been a problem if there hadn't also been a ship named Coronia, although I still was looking for Binyamin/Benjamin, not Kosriel.

I had focused most of my searches on Benny, because he was the youngest person who would have been traveling with the group.  I have found that as people age you find more age variations in records, so I try to look for the younger individuals.  The given name being so different made those searches useless.

Another thing that would have thrown off my searches was the ages of Ruchel Dwojre and Willie.  I used the ages they later claimed here in the United States, but both are older on the passenger list.

I had tried searching with just a family name, but the number of results was overwhelming, because Brainin easily becomes Brennan, an extremely common name, with "sounds like" and "similar" searches.  That was another search like looking through all of the Coronia passenger lists:  too many pages, too tiring.  If I had persisted through all the Brennans, I might have found my family earlier.

And of course, the biggest problem was simply not following up on Willie earlier.  First I missed the clue from the draft registration, then I didn't immediately pursue it, and when I did I forgot to request the file.  So, lessons learned for the future.

And as I always used to joke, "I knew they didn't fly here!"