Saturday Night (delayed) Genealogy Fun: Male Ancestors' Ages at Death

A week ago, Randy Seaver asked everyone to work out the lifespans of their male ancestors for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, which was a natural follow-up to the one from the week before that, when he asked people to figure out the lifespans of their female ancestors.  I was out of town when the quest for male ancestors took place and did not have access to my family tree database, but I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise, so I'm coming in really late with it.

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

1) Review your pedigree chart (either on paper or in your genealogy management software program) and determine the age at death of your male ancestors back at least five generations (and more if you want to).

2)  Tell us the lifespan in years for each of these ancestors.  Which of your male ancestors in this group lived the longest?  Which lived the shortest?  

3)  Share your results in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook or Google+.

These are my male ancestors for whom I have at least approximate birth and death years in my family tree program:

Father:
• Bertram Lynn Sellers, Jr., 1935– (still alive!), 80 years and counting

Grandfathers:
• Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr., 1903–1995, 91 years
• Abraham Meckler, 1912–1989, 77 years

Great-grandfathers:
• Joe Gordon, about 1892–1955, about 63 years
• Thomas Kirkland Gauntt, 1870–1951, 80 years
• Moishe Meckler, about 1882–1953, about 71 years

 Great-great-grandfathers
• Joel Armstrong, 1849–about 1921, about 72 years
• Mendel Hertz Brainin, about 1861–1930, about 69 years
• Frederick Cleworth Dunstan, 1840–1873, 33 years
• James Gauntt, about 1831–1889, about 57 years
• Victor Gordon, about 1866–1925, about 59 years
• Gershon Itzhak Nowicki, about 1858–1948, about 90 years

3x-great-grandfathers:
• Franklin Armstrong, about 1825–after 1869, about 45 years
• Richard Dunstan, about 1813–after 1860, about 47 years
• Hananiah Selah Gaunt, 1795–1852, 57 years
• Abel A. Lippincott, 1825–after 1884, about 60 years
• Ruven Yelsky, about 1838–about 1898, about 60 years

4x-great-grandfathers:
• Joel Armstrong, about 1798–1854, about 56 years
• Hananiah Gaunt, 1762–about 1799, about 37 years

5x-great-grandfathers:
• Joseph Gaunt, 1740–1806, 66 years
• Moses Mulliner, 1741–1821, 81 years

That's everyone I have entered in my database.  As with the female ancestors, I have more names and dates for the Gauntt lines (and maybe some for the Dunstans), but they are not in the database yet.  But I apparently have more of my forefathers entered than I do foremothers, or at least I know more dates for them.

The longest lived I know about in those seven generations was my paternal grandfather, Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr., partner of Anna (Gauntt) Stradling, who lived to be 91 years old (two and a half months shy of 92).  The shortest life was my great-great-grandfather Thomas Cleworth Dunstan, husband of Martha (Winn) Dunstan, who lived to be only 33 years old.

The average age for these 21 men (about two thirds of Randy's total) is a little more than 70 years.  (Again, I used to have more, until I proved that Elmer was my grandfather's adoptive father.)  The averages for each generation are:
• Father:  80 years
• Grandfathers:  84 years
• Great-grandfathers:  71 years
• Great-great-grandfathers: 63 years
• 3x-great-grandfathers:  54 years
• 4x-great-grandfathers:  47 years
• 5x-great-grandfathers:  74 years

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: How Many Autosomal DNA Matches Do You Have?

I was out of town last week and missed Saturday Night Genealogy Fun because I didn't have my family tree database with me, but I'm back now!  That's a good thing, because to look up the information for this week's project from Randy Seaver I needed the logins that are on my home computer.

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

1) Have you had you autosomal DNA tested by a genetics company?  Which companies?

2)  How many autosomal DNA matches do you have at each company, by approximate relationship?

3)  Tell us about them in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook or Google+.  Please add a comment to this post so folks can find your information.

I have had automsomal DNA tests done through AncestryDNA, Family Tree DNA, and Genes for Good.  I have uploaded my raw data to GEDMatch.com.

Here is my match information.

AncestryDNA

• One 1st cousin (actually a known aunt)
• One 2nd cousin (actually a known 1st cousin)
• Three 3rd cousins (one of whom is a known 2nd cousin once removed)
• 327 4th cousins

Family Tree DNA

• One parent (my father)
• One aunt/uncle (an aunt, different from the one on Ancestry)
• One 2nd to 3rd cousin (the same 2nd cousin once removed who is also on Ancestry)
• Forty-three 2nd to 4th cousins
• 506 3rd to 5th cousins
• 1,088 4th to remote cousins
• 2,589 5th to remote cousins

GEDMatch

• 25 with fewer than 4 generations (among these matches are the 2nd cousin once removed, the 1st cousin from AncestryDNA, and the aunt who tested through FTDNA, along with a couple of other cousins whose names I recognize)
• 748 with 4.0 to 4.4 generations
• 1,227 with 4.5 to 4.9 generations

Genes for Good allows you to download your raw data, but so far it can't be uploaded anywhere else.

I know that an important reason I have so many matches is the endogamy common among Ashkenazi Jews.  I will probably never determine the connection I have with anyone past 3rd cousin, and if I figure out any of the 3rd cousins I'll be doing well.

Going through this has been helpful in a few ways.  First, I realized I have not transferred the raw data of my aunt who tested through AncestryDNA to FTDNA.  I also have not transferred her data nor that of my father to GEDMatch.  These are both necessary steps to take, as I am trying to determine the biological father of my paternal grandfather.

Second, while looking through the lists on the different sites, I recognized several of the names who appeared as new matches.  I need to check those out further.

Third, I noticed some names were on all three sites, which means we should be able to compare our information more effectively.  And that means I need to get back to doing more work with my DNA results!

And last but not least, I finally found something where my numbers are higher than Randy's!

IAJGS 2016 — Conference Wrap-up and Looking Ahead

How time flies!  It's hard to believe, but the IAJGS 2016 International Conference on Jewish Genealogy is already over.  The second half of the conference had several useful sessions, plus we had not one, but two days of ProQuest databases (but more on that later).

Wednesday was a good day for some socializing.  One of the sessions I attended was the Professional Jewish Genealogists Birds of a Feather meeting.  The professional genealogists at the conference try to get together to talk about what’s going on in our field, how we can help each other, and things along those lines. About a dozen people came, and we had some productive discussions.  Then for lunch, three of us at the conference who have participated in the ProGen Study Group (Susan Kaplan, Janice Lovelace, and me) actually went out of the hotel (!) and had lunch together, in a real restaurant, no less.   It was an enjoyable break.

From the regular sessions I went to, I was surprised that the one I found most informative was on Newspapers.com.  I’ve been to one of the talks before (a thinly veiled sales pitch), but I always want to keep up-to-date on what’s happening with digitized newspapers.  I learned that for its new digitization efforts Ancestry has partnered with ProQuest, and this time it’s better for the newspaper publishers than in previous times.  Publishers actually get a copy of the digitized papers, which apparently didn’t always happen before.  I remember the sad experience I had trying to find the Poughkeepsie Journal online after it was dropped from Fold3.  It was digitized by ProQuest, and when the online agreement expired, the Journal didn’t even have a copy of the images of its own paper.  With the new agreements that apparently shouldn’t happen to other publishers.

Wednesday was also ProQuest database day in the resource room, which I always look forward to.  For several years the conference has been able to arrange access to many ProQuest databases for attendees.  Along with about 40 historical newspaper databases, some of which I had not seen at previous conferences — Austin American Statesman, Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, South China Morning Post — there was a database I hadn't heard of before, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.  I had a field day!  I found files and reports about Jewish, Japanese, Chinese, and Sikh immigration into Ellis Island, oral interviews from 185 people who had immigrated through Ellis Island or worked there, even a series on INS investigations into prostitution and white slavery.

Thursday morning started far too early for my taste.  Because my talk was at 7:30, which I wasn’t happy about to begin with, Emily Garber organized a bloggers breakfast for 6:30(!).  I actually managed to get there early, which meant I had time for a nice cup of Earl Grey before everyone else arrived, and I was almost awake.  It’s nice to see people in person with whom you normally interact only in cyberspace, so it was worthwhile to be there.

I had been joking all conference that I was expecting about five people to show up for my 7:30 talk about the research I have done on my Cuban cousins.  I admit, it's a pretty narrow topic.  I was so happy to see thirteen people there!  My talk went well, although I finished sooner than I had expected, for which I apologized.  There were several questions afterward, though, and everyone seemed to enjoy it, so I think it was successful.

After my talk I was finally awake enough to notice that there were signs around saying that we had an additional day of ProQuest database access.  Yippee!  I was able to download the remaining oral interviews I hadn't had time for on Wednesday, plus find some additional newspaper articles.  ProQuest has never given us an extra day before, so this was a great treat.

Judy Russell’s presentation about being an ethical genealogist was straightforward:  Her three rules are tell the truth, play nice with others, and don’t tell tales out of school.   If you keep those in mind when you’re doing your research, sharing information with others, and posting family info online, everything should pretty much be fine.  That seems like a good approach for genealogy to me!

One big negative on Thursday was the session that was really nothing more than a sales pitch for research services.  The substantive information was easily shared in less than two minutes; everything else after that was the pitch (in a 75-minute session).  Someone not at the conference suggested to me that maybe what we need are to have some presentations clearly labeled as “vendor sessions.”

Friday morning, the last day of the conference, is always a mixed bag.  Many attendees leave the conference early, and sessions tend to be small.  I’m sure it’s difficult to decide what to schedule for those conditions.  A talk about proving the Jewish ancestry of a Catholic family was short on documentation (as in, none was shown) and lasted only 25 minutes.  Judy Russell spoke about some situations in which DNA has been used successfully when documentation did not exist.  And in the last time slot of the day, Michael Strauss gave an interesting presentation on the life and family of Levi Strauss (who is no relation, as he pointed out).  And then everyone began saying their good-byes and drifting away as they headed home.

I caught the end of one additional session on Friday, where two of the organizers of the IAJGS 2017 conference were seeking input on what attendees liked and didn't like this year and what they would like to see next year.  I heard some people say they have already decided they don’t plan to attend next year’s conference, which will take place July 23–28 in Orlando, Florida, the first time the conference will be held in the South.  While I agree that Florida in July is not exactly my idea of perfect weather conditions, I do hope to be at the conference.  Some research areas the organizers plan to emphasize are Jewish life in the South and in Colonial America.  Now I have an incentive to push myself to prove that the Daniel Joseph I have been researching in 1760’s Virginia is indeed the brother of Israel Joseph, a big macher in the Jewish community of Charleston, South Carolina.  I better get back to work on that research!

Treasure Chest Thursday: Jean La Forêt Receives a Postcard

This is a postcard 5 1/2" x 3 1/2" in size.  The paper is a muted green on both sides.  It is a little worn but is in pretty good shape.  Both sides have some preprinted text and handwritten parts.  It has a 10 centime stamp from France (République Française) and is dated May 29, [19]18.  The postmark says Pl. Victor Hugo, but I can't read the city.  I suspect it is Paris, however, as the message side of the card has "(XVIe)" for the 16th Arondissement, the location of Place Victor Hugo in Paris.

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

Address side:

République Française

CARTE POSTALE

Ce côté est exclusivement réservé à l'addresse

Monsieur LaForêt .                      

              Via Consul d'Amérique .

              30 bd Carnot .                

                                    Alger .     

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

Message side:

107 Rue de la Pompe (XVIe)

My dear Mr. La Forêt .

I have found my father in a very critical condition and there is very little hope of his recovery, so I can make no plan at present for the future.

You should notify Oran of the day you took charge in order that consular agent can adjust his accounts.

With best wishes to yourself and Middour [?]

Cordially yours

Dionn [?] M Mason

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

Translation of address side of postcard:

French Republic

Postcard

This side reserved exclusively for address

Mr. LaForêt .                              

               Via American Consul .

            30 Boulevard Carnot .     

                                   Algiers .    

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

This seems to be from someone associated with Jean La Forêt's position as Vice Consul, as he gives Jean instructions to communicate with the consular agent about when Jean took charge.  A few embassies are in the area of 107, rue de la Pompe today, so maybe this was where the American embassy was in 1918.

This document on the Algerian U.S. embassy site says that from 1913–1925 the Consulate was located "in a seafront building behind the main Post Office at 30, boulevard Carnot."  Boulevard Carnot in Algiers is now Avenue Taleb Messaoud, according to Google Maps.  Oran most likely refers to the city in Algeria.  But why is the consular agent in Oran if the Consul is in Algiers?  Was the embassy in Oran?

The bulk of the note, however, is about this man's father, whom Jean appears to know.  The father's name is not given, and the name of the writer is difficult to read ("Dionn" was the best I could do, but I don't really think it's correct), so I can't do much to figure out who either man was.  I also don't know who "Middour" was (which I suspect is also misspelled).

Overall, this postcard leaves me with more questions than answers!

Wordless Wednesday

IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy 2016 — Already Halfway Done!

I'm attending the IAJGS Jewish genealogy conference in beautiful Seattle, and it has certainly been an interesting three days.  The highlight of Sunday's presentations was, by far, the keynote address by Dr. Devin Naar, "Sephardic Family History as Jewish Family History."  He talked about how he became interested in family history when he was young and began serious research when someone sent him information about another family named Naar, wondering if they were related.  He traced the other family backward from New Jersey to the Caribbean, Netherlands, and eventually Portugal and Spain.  He has learned much more concrete information about the other Naar family than his own, unfortunately.  Though it is almost definite that his Greek Naar family came from Spain and is probably connected, he can't trace his family out of Greece, primarily due to a lack of records.  He integrated the stories of both families into the broader scope of world history, explaining events that affected them.  He even clearly explained the difference between Ladino and Spanish, which I have been wondering about for a while.  The fact that he is still stuck on his own family made his journey that much more realistic, because everything wasn't all wrapped up in a neat, pretty package at the end.  And he was an energetic, enthusiastic speaker.  I suspect his students at the University of Washington enjoy his classes a lot.

The most memorable line of his talk, however, wasn't actually about his research.  It was a translation of a Ladino saying:  the "relative of the heel." This is someone who is probably related to you, but you don't quite know what the relationship is, or he might be a distant relation, or perhaps an in-law of an in-law, or might really just be an old, old friend of the family with no blood connection at all.  It reminded me of Jeremy Frankel (the president of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society) and the "tenuously, absurdly distant" cousins he writes to, hoping that they have a photo or some snippet of information about the family.

On Monday I tended to a fair bit of business.  I went to a media lunch talk with the IAJGS president and other bloggers, a "birds of a feather" meeting for volunteers working with the JewishGen Yizkor Book Project, and the JGS Webmaster roundtable (standing in for the SFBAJGS Webmaster, who was not able to attend the conference).  But I was able to make time to see the documentary Havana Nagila:  The Jews of Cuba, which I really thought I should squeeze in, seeing as how my talk at this conference is about the research I did on my Cuban Jewish cousins.  It was an interesting movie, especially because it's more than 20 years old at this point.  I even recognized some of the people and locations from my visit to Havana last July.

Tuesday brought more variety to my schedule.  Two sessions I attended were all about research, in Australia and New Zealand (by Robyn Dryen, she of the oh-so-dry sense of humor) and in the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC, or "the Joint") archives.  My cousin's mother was from Australia, and I still want to hunt down some information on that branch.  And the Joint assisted so many people, I'm convinced I have to be able to find something on someone in my family.

Tuesday was also when I had consultations with representatives from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem, who brought laptops with specialized databases not available online.  Now that I know the names of more of my relatives who perished in the Holocaust, I was hoping to find documents about them.  There might be something in the ITS holdings for Maishe Eli Szocherman, who died in Auschwitz, but none of the other names appeared in any of the databases.  This means I have several names for which I need to submit Pages of Testimony.

Most of the intrepid SFBAJGS attendees

Of course, the conference is always a wonderful opportunity to network and see other genealogists in person.  In addition to the 40+ members of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society who traveled north for the conference, I've talked to Maris Bredt, Schelly Dardashti, Banai Feldstein, Emily Garber, Roger Lustig, Jeff Malka, Jeff Miller, Israel Pickholtz, Garri Regev, Mary Roddy, Janette Silverman, Joel Spector, Susan Weinberg, and Joel Weintraub, along with several others.  And there are still three days to go!

Treasure Chest Thursday: Jean La Forêt's 1890 Naturalization

This sheet of paper is 8 1/2" x 13", which seems an odd size to me.  Maybe that was the standard for legal in 1890?  It is off-white and about 20# bond weight.  Everything on it is typewritten in clear black ink; this appears to be an original typed document, as I can feel the impression of some of the letters and punctuation on the reverse.  The page has no handwriting, seal, or anything beyond the typing.  There is no watermark.  It has three fold marks; when I received it, it was folded and in an envelope (see below).

I thought I had arranged all my "treasure chest" documents in chronological order, but I messed up with this.  It is a transcription of Jean La Forêt's 1890 naturalization in San Francisco Superior Court, which definitely predates his 1908 marriage to Emma.  It's nice that this copy is here, because otherwise there probably would be nothing to get, as most naturalization documents from San Francisco dating from before 1906 were destroyed in the fire after the Great Earthquake.

Jean was naturalized on March 22, 1890, which matches exactly the date that Emma put on her emergency passport application in 1917.  This page is not dated, however, so I don't know when it was typed.  I didn't find any misspelled words in the transcription, so someone seems to have done a good job.

Now that I have verified Jean's naturalization date, it's interesting to see where it fits into his timeline.  From the third section of his journal that I posted, he left the U.S. Army on August 11, 1889.  He naturalized the next year and was actually living in San Francisco — we finally have an address for him there, 123 Eddy Street.  (California Grocery is now at that address.  It's a few blocks from Powell Street BART station; guess where I'm going the next time I'm in San Francisco?)  Five months after his naturalization, he enlisted in the Marines (the first time).  The fact that he was already a citizen when he joined the Marines makes me think even more that he must have missed military life.

Jean apparently applied for citizenship through some sort of special provision for soldiers, because the document starts out with "( S O L D I E R )" at the top, and his two witnesses were one person and his honorable discharge.  As his naturalization was effected 16 years before the process came under federal laws and was regularized, it would have been under whatever laws San Francisco had at the time.  I'll have to figure out where to look for those.

The witness for Jean's naturalization was J. G. Wall of Alameda.  That name has not appeared in any other documents related to Jean.  I'm pretty sure it must have been a man, because I don't think a woman would have been allowed as a witness for a naturalization in 1890.  A quick search in city directories gave me Joseph G. Wall living in Oakland from 1889–1892, so the Alameda cited as his residence may have referred to the county.

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

And this is the envelope which held the naturalization document.  The first words on it make perfect sense:  "Naturalization paper."  But then it has "Décès d'Elizabeth Curdt", which means "Death of Elizabeth Curdt."  So maybe at some point Elizabeth Curdt's death certificate was kept in the same envelope?  If so, it wasn't there by the time I received it.

Wordless Wednesday

Copyright Confusion

It seems that misunderstanding of the difference between attribution and permission is still common among genealogists. While preparing the current issue of the CSGA Newsletter, I encountered two societies that didn’t appear to understand that permission is required to reprint anyone else’s copyrighted material.

The first society had included an article in its newsletter that I thought had useful information for the CSGA membership, so I wrote and asked for permission to reprint it. During the course of the discussion, the other editor realized the article was not original to the society and no attribution had been given to its author (much less had permission been requested to reprint it). An erratum is planned to correct the lack of attribution, but I doubt permission (albeit belated) will be requested, or an apology offered, for reprinting the article as it was.

The second society asked if I could reprint an article about the society that had been published by a newspaper. Permission had not been granted or even requested from the publisher. The person who made the request did not appear to realize that this permission needed to be sought. When I explained that I would not reprint the article without the permission, a request was sent to the publisher. That publisher requires nonprofits to pay $150 for permission to reprint an article. Needless to say, neither CSGA nor the society in question was prepared to pay that amount, and the article will not appear in the newsletter.

Unfortunately, neither of these situations is uncommon in genealogy today. Many people believe that “if it’s on the Internet it’s free”, and they can reuse those items at will. Others believe that as long as correct attribution is given, everything is fine. Neither of these beliefs is correct. Anyone who has written something has copyright to it, giving the author the exclusive right to determine if someone else may reprint that material. While most genealogists do not pursue anything against persons or organizations that have reused their materials (even though they can and sometimes should), commercial entities, such as the newspaper that published the article about the society in my second example above, often do. When genealogical editors and individuals republish copyrighted material without permission, they open themselves and their societies to possible legal action.

Coincidentally, at the fall CSGA Seminar, scheduled for October 29, 2016 in San Mateo and hosted by the San Mateo County Genealogical Society, one of the talks will be on copyright issues in genealogy. If you are unsure what you should be doing when you want to reuse someone else’s copyrighted material, or if you believe everything on the Internet is free to use, I recommend you come to the seminar. Details about the time and location of the seminar, which is free and open to the public, are available on the CSGA blog.

An excellent source of copyright information that is readily available night and day, and that is often geared specifically to genealogists, is the Legal Genealogist blog.  Judy Russell writes a lot about copyright and wants everyone to know what they should be doing to share information but protect authors' rights.