eBay Score: 1929 Atlas from USSR

I have to admit, I'm a geek about maps.  I learned how to read them when I was young.  I collect them.  I have lots of old maps from the early 20th century and several atlases.  And let's face it, old maps are very useful when you're trying to find places whose names have changed.

But I think this one is especially cool.  It's a 1929 world atlas published in Moscow.  So it has the Soviet/Russian names of places from that era, in Russian, which will help make them easier to recognize in documents.  And they're typeset, which makes it easier for me to read them!  (I can read handwritten Russian, but printed is so much better.)  But it also has that lovely "Soviet" perspective on the world that you can find only in period documents.

When it arrived in the mail, I opened it up to a random page and found ... California!  The scan above shows (starting in the upper left and going clockwise) orange groves in California, picking cotton in Georgia, and an agricultural area in Belgium.

Oh yeah, and when it was new, it cost 4 rubles and 50 kopecks.  The price is printed on the back cover.

Wordless Wednesday

Preserving American War Memorials Overseas

A small nonprofit organization, American War Memorials Overseas, was organized in 2008 to help document, promote, care for, and preserve overseas war memorials and gravesites that honor Americans and that do not receive support from the U.S. government.  The Web site includes a database of overseas war memorials, for which they welcome additional entries.  They publish a (roughly) quarterly one-page newsletter which includes information about war memorials and short vignettes about Americans who are buried or who died overseas.  One feature is their stories about "isolated burials", where only one or a few people are buried in a particular location.  There is also an informative FAQ about how war memorials are supported, and a list of resources, including how to maintain headstones and memorials.  I'm not sure how much of this might be duplicative of other groups' efforts, but it appears to be a well meaning organization, and the newsletter has interesting stories.

Stories of the Marketplace

Fictional stories can often be used to learn more about social conditions in the times and places in which they were written.  In the 19th and early 20th centuries Jews, Russians, Ukrainians, and Poles lived together in what was known as the Pale of Settlement, the area of Eastern Europe that belonged to the Russian Empire and that now encompasses parts of Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and the Baltic states.  Amelia Glaser has authored a book -- Jews and Ukrainians in Russia's Literary Borderlands:  From the Shtetl Fair to the Petersburg Bookshop -- about how stories that Jewish, Russian, and Ukrainian authors told about these different communities meeting and interacting in the marketplace can give insight into their history of coexistence.  This insight can give a small glimpse into the world that some of our ancestors lived in.  Prof. Glaser will give a presentation based on her book on Monday, October 15, at 7:00 p.m. at the San Francisco Jewish Community Library, 1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA 94115.  The presentation is free and open to the public.  For more information, contact Alison Greene at ajgreen@bjesf.org or (415) 567-3327 x703.

Wordless Wednesday

Black Family History Day, October 13, 2012

The African American Genealogical Society of Northern California and the Oakland FamilySearch Library are presenting the fourth Black Family History Day, this one timed for Family History Month.  It will run from 1:00-5:00 p.m.  The event is free, but you are encouraged to register for a free consultation, either through the Web site or by calling (877) 884-2843.  If we follow the same procedure we used in February, attendees will register, then go to a short introductory workshop for beginners, to assistance in filling out a basic four-generation family chart, to one-on-one assistance in research and looking for information on their families.

At the February 2012 event we had about 125 attendees and 35 volunteer researchers.  The October 2011 Family History Day drew fewer people, but we volunteers were able to give more assistance to each attendee.  We almost always manage to find records for each person who comes.  This year I've invited several friends to come.  I'm looking forward to another great day of introducing people to family history!

Town Hall Meeting about New York City Vital Records

There will be a "town hall" meeting with Elizabeth Begier, Assistant Commissioner, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Bureau of Vital Statistics, on Tuesday, September 25, 2012 from 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. at the Department of Records Visitor Center, 31 Chamber Street, Room 112 - Lobby.  Ms. Begier will answer questions and concerns about New York City vital records.

To attend you must register beforehand at visitorcenter@records.nyc.gov.  Walk-ins will not be permitted.

If anyone goes, please tell us what was discussed!

Photo Bonanza

After a false start occasioned by her computer crashing, I have connected in earnest with the cousin who found me because I posted the family names I am researching.  She has lots of family photos and has been generously scanning and sending them to me.  I am so excited to have faces to put to so many of the names in my family, and I was able to send her a photo of her great-great-grandmother, which she did not have.  She has also identified some of the photos I have without names.  I need to start scanning more and see who else she can recognize!  I already posted one of the photos she sent me for this past Wordless Wednesday, but wanted to share more.  These are some of my favorites. **doing the happy dance**

A Good and Bad Day for Genealogy

Saturday it was all genealogy, all day long.  First I drove to San Mateo to give a talk to the San Mateo County Genealogical Society:  "Following a Family's History for More than 100 Years through Newspaper Articles."  This was the first time I was giving the talk, and I always worry whether I've prepared enough, are they going to understand my points, are they going to enjoy it.  I was particularly concerned this time because I was taking a different tack with my approach on the talk.  I went a little long (what, me like to talk?), but other than that it went fine.  The attendees followed along quite enthusiastically and asked several interesting questions, giving me some new research ideas.

Then I prepared my lesson for the high school genealogy class I teach on Sunday.  That went smoothly, and I made copies of the lesson and handouts for everyone.  I'm all prepared for Sunday morning.

Then I had a little time for my own research, so I decided to try to find my father and his family in the 1940 census.  Boom!  Straight into a brick wall.  I really wanted to be able to show my dad himself as a four-year-old in the census, but it looks as though it just isn't going to happen.

In theory (theory being a wonderful thing), I should be able to find my dad, his two sisters, their father, and my grandmother together.  I did say in theory, right?  I have tried searching every way I can think of on both Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org, and they're just not there.  I've tried with names, without names, partial names, birth information, no birth information.  Can't find them.

Apparently the family moved a lot at that time.  My grandfather created a list of all the places he had lived during his life; there were three (!) for 1940, but no specific dates.  (He worked for the Civil Service, and they moved him around a lot.)  I've verified with my 87-year-old aunt that the locations my grandfather wrote are correct.  I used Steve Morse's "Unified 1940 Census ED Finder" (because my grandfather listed streets) and manually searched the enumeration districts.  And what did I find?  Zip.  Zilch.  Zero.  The big bagel.  My guess is that with all their moving around they simply were missed by the census takers in whichever city they were living in April.

So I decided to settle for finding my great-grandmother in 1940.  She was supposed to be living in the same house the family had owned for several decades.  I had the complete street address.  Piece of cake, right?

Nope.  I couldn't find her by searching, either.  I tried multiple approaches again, and nothing.  I went back to Steve's site, found the possible enumeration districts for her address, and went through them page by page.  And I found ... that her house address does not appear, not even on the "I missed them on the first go round, but got them again later" pages.

Maybe I should stick to doing genealogy for other people for a while.