Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Three More Ancestry Questions

Randy Seaver told us last week that he was splitting up this little genealogy quiz into two parts, so we were expecting this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun to be the final three questions, and indeed it is:

1) My friend and colleague Linda Stufflebean posted JUST FOR FUN – 4 X 6 = 24 FAMILY TREE QUESTIONS on her blog last week, and I thought we could answer half of the questions last week and half this week.

2)  Here are the last three questions:

*  Name four places on my ancestral home bucket list I’d like to visit:

*  What are the four most unusual surnames in your family tree?

*  Which four brick walls would you most like to smash through?

3)  Answer each of the questions based on your own ancestors, not the collateral lines.  If you didn't answer the first three questions, you can include them this week.

4)  Share your answers with us in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this post, in a Facebook post or a Google+ post.  Please provide a link to your response if you can.

So here are mine.  The hard part again was restricting answers to my own ancestors.

D.  Name four places on my ancestral home bucket list I'd like to visit.
This one was tough, because how do I narrow it down to just four?  But I decided to choose:
• Kamyanets Podil's'kyy, Ukraine (formerly Kamenets Podolsky, Podolia, Russian Empire)
• Kamyanyets, Belarus (formerly Kamenets Litovsk, Grodno, Russian Empire or Poland)
• Krustpils, Latvia (formerly Kreuzburg, Courland, Russian Empire)
• Porazava, Belarus (formerly Porozovo, Grodno, Russian Empire or Poland)

E.  What are the four most unusual surnames in my family tree?
• Brainin from Kreuzburg, Russian Empire
• Coleclough from Lancashire, England
• Winn from Lancashire, England
• Yelsky from Pororozovo, Grodno, Russian Empire

F.  Which four brick walls would I most like to smash through?
First I have to state that I don't have any brick walls.  "What??!" I hear you ask?  "How can she possibly not have any brick walls?"  I only count a research question as a brick wall if I have tried every possible avenue, and I haven't done that yet with any of my thorny problems.  My choices below are those where I have exhausted most possibilities and have only a couple left.
• Find out what happened to Raymond Lawrence Sellers (1945–??), the son that my 90-year-old aunt gave up for adoption.  He was born in Bridgeton, Cumberland County, New Jersey and was placed for adoption in that county.  I hope he is still alive and is amenable to meeting her.  My aunt has tried twice to do the Ancestry DNA spit test, and neither was usable.  Now she's going to do the Family Tree DNA swab test.  I hope, hope, hope we find a close match once she's in the database.
• Determine the biological father of my paternal grandfather, Bertram Lynn Sellers (1983–1995).  I only recently proved via Y-DNA that this was not Cornelius Elmer Sellers.  I'm hoping autosomal and Y-DNA will help me solve this problem.  (This one was a no-brainer for my short list.)
• Learn something (anything!) about my great-great-grandmother Beile [unknown maiden name] Meckler (??–??), mother of Moishe Meckler.  She was born, lived, and died in the Russian Empire, probably all in or around Kamenets Litovsk, Grodno gubernia.  I have nothing but a given name.
• Make contact with some cousin from my Jaffe/Michels line.  My great-great-grandmother was a Jaffe, a very common Jewish surname.  Her sister married a Michelson.  Their son, Bere-Leib, was the only person I know from the Jaffe side of the family who immigrated to the U.S.  He changed his name to Barnet Michels and married Rose Yudelson; they had three children.  One died young but had surviving children, whose names I don't know.  The other two siblings refused to talk with me.

Treasure Chest Thursday: The Missing Documentation

This week's document is typed and stamped clearly and legibly with almost no handwriting, as were last week's, so I'm opting not to transcribe it either.  It is a letter typed on 8 1/2" x 11" white watermarked ("–OYALTY BOND") bond paper.  It has two holes punched in the top, probably to put in a file folder with those metal holders that I don't know the name for.  It has two folds, as though it had been placed in a mailing envelope.  On the back is a line of rust about an inch long that looks very similar to the one on the letter dated May 17, 1927 from the Bureau of Pensions (the line shows through the paper from the front and can be seen in the scanned image above).  This letter may have been clipped with that letter at some point, though it was not when I received it.

In last week's post about "The Perils of Emma" I described the carbon copies of documents, dated July 27, 1927, that Emma La Forêt sent to the Pension Bureau in response to the letter from the Bureau, dated May 17, 1927 (the one with the rust mark), asking her to supply various forms of proof of her eligibility for the pension she was applying for.  Those documents covered almost all of the points in the May 17th letter.  The one item Emma had left unanswered was #4, a statement from her as to whether any former husband of hers had served in the U.S. Army or Navy.

I guess the Bureau of Pensions did send her a letter or postcard asking where that information was (though I don't have it), because that's what this letter is about.  She said that good old Emil (sic) Petit never served in the U.S. military or naval service (what, the Navy isn't military??!).

Unlike two of last week's documents, this letter does include the case number.  Emma again complied with the requirement that the information be a sworn statement, and again the witness was notary public W. T. Kelley, whose signature and impressed seal are on the letter.  So Emma had now supplied all the information requested by the Bureau of Pensions.

Something interesting about this letter is that it appears to be an original, not a carbon copy like last week's.  The words look like typing ink, not carbon, and some punctuation marks can be physically felt on the back.  It has Kelley's impressed seal.  Kelley's and Emma's signatures and the date ("19th") appear to be pen ink, not carbon.  Below Kelley's signature is his notary commission expiration date stamped in purple ink.  The fact that it looks like an original, coupled with the holes punched in the top suggesting it was in a file, make me think that this was sent back to Emma from the Bureau of Pensions.  I don't know why they would do that, though.

More Newspapers Online!

I have found many new links over the past few months to add to the Wikipedia online newspaper archives page.  The links include three new country listings (two of which are just correctly classifying existing links) and one new state for the U.S.  The big winner this time is Hungary, with five additions.  Several of the new collections are subscription, but most are free.

• Ontario, Canada:  The Newmarket Public Library (in the York region of Ontario) apparently provided ten newspapers to create the Newmarket's Digital Newspaper Project (free).

• China:  In 2014 the complete North China Daily News, 1850–1951, was digitized, but only three years were available, and those through a ProQuest subscription.  Now it appears that access to the entire collection is available.  This is a paid site and might be institutional only.

• England:  The Daily Mail for 1994 to the present can be freely read.

• England:  The Teesdale Mercury, an independent newspaper from County Durham, has been digitized for 1855–2005 (free).

• Germany: Der oberschlesische Wanderer is online at two sites, one German (33 years between 1833 and 1936) and one Polish (42 years between 1828 and 1938), with different coverage between the two.  Both are free and have images only with no search.

• Hungary:  The Arcanum Digitheca has ten newspapers and is a pay site.

• Hungary:  Zalai Közlöny ("Zala Gazette") for 1862–1945 is free.

• Hungary:  Eger, a magazine with political and other content, has been digitized for 1863–1944 (free).

• Hungary:  The Hungaricana Library has several newspapers and can be used with an English or Hungarian interface (free).

• Hungary:  The Middle and Eastern European Digital Forum has about a dozen German-language newspapers covering the 18th–20th centuries (free).

• Iran (new country!):  A collection at the University of Manchester has been digitized for three historical periods (free).  A recent article discusses the collection and its importance.

• Ireland:  The Ballymun Concrete News was a local paper published from 1998–2006 that emphasized positive stories about its area, a Dublin neighborhood (free)

• Isle of Man (new category) - The Manx Newspapers and Publications site, which includes World War I German-language internment facility newspapers, was formerly listed under England (pay).

• Northern Ireland (new category):  Two Belfast links were moved from Ireland and into a new Northern Ireland subheading under the United Kingdom (free).

• Poland:  The Lodz/Litzmannstadt Ghetto Chronicle was not actually a newspaper, but it has detailed information about the day-to-day events in the ghetto (free).

• California:  The Clovis Roundup has two online archives, one a monthly listing on the paper's site and the other via Issuu (free).

• California:  Newspapers from the Glen Park neighborhood have been added to the collection of San Francisco neighborhood papers available on the Internet Archive (free).

• California:  An obituary index for Tulare County for 1859–2012 is available through the Tulare County Genealogical Society (free).

• Iowa:  The Daily Nonpareil for 1857–1964, which was digitized by NewsBank, can be read online by Council Bluffs Library cardholders.

• Michigan:  The Caro Area Public Library has placed the digitized Tuscola County Advertiser for 1868–1942 on a site with Caro High School yearbooks for 1922–2006 (free).

• Missouri:  Newspapers.com, the online newspaper site owned by Ancestry.com, has digitized the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for 1874 to the present as a pay service.

• Missouri:  On the other hand, the St. Louis Public Library has free obituary indices for the Post-Dispatch for 1880–2014 and for the St. Louis Argus, a historical black newspaper, for 1915–1919, 1921–1927, and 1942–1945 for free.

• New Jersey:  The Asbury Park Press for 1905 to the present has also been digitized by Newspapers.com as a pay service.

• New Jersey:  The Plainfield Public Library has an obituary index for the mid-1920's through the mid-1980's for the Courier News available as PDF downloads (free).

• New York:   Obituary indices for the Suffolk Times (1920–present) and for obituaries found in the Gildersleeve scrapbooks (1915–1982) are online courtesy of the Mattituck-Laurel Library (free).

• New York:  The Queens Library has The Wave of Long Island for 1896–1900 online with somewhat limited flexibility of access (free).  Click the link, click the plus sign by "Newspapers and Periodicals", then click the plus sign by "The Wave of Long Island" to see the individual years.

• North Carolina:  The Salemite, the student newspaper for Salem College, a women's college in North Carolina, is online for 1920–1990 (free).

• Ohio:  The Ottawa County Exponent for 1897–1957 is online at the Oak Harber Public Library (free).

• Pennsylvania:  The University of Pennsylvania newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, is online for ranges of years between 1885 and 1995.  I believe the plan is eventually to digitize all years.

• Texas:  Another student newspaper, The Lariat of Baylor University, has been digitized for 1900–2015 (free).

• Washington:  Green River Community College's newspaper, the Green River Current, is available from 1965, the year the college was founded, through 2015 (free).

• West Virginia (new state!):  The first item for West Virginia is an obituary index for Parkersburg and Wood County newspapers for 1841–1890, 1896–1902, and 1930–2007 (free).

Other Newspaper News

It isn't digitized, but it's worth noting that the only known surviving copy of The Colored Enterprise, dated December 15, 1897 (issue #15), was discovered when a time capsule in Asheville, North Carolina was opened in June 2015.  An article about the discovery said the newspaper and other items in the time capsule will be held in a collection at the state archives.

Wordless Wednesday

The Solano County Archives Are in Indefinite Storage

archival documents on
shrink-wrapped wooden carts

During my series of "Treasure Chest Thursday" posts about the cache of documents I was given relating to Emma (Schafer) Petit La Forêt, I've noted that she was often living in Vallejo, in Solano County, California, when several of those documents were created.  In addition, I wrote that my plan to try to learn "someday" whether the file for Emma's divorce from Emile Petit still existed moved up on my to-do list after I gave a presentation to the Solano County Genealogical Society and spoke to a volunteer from the Solano County Archives.

Well, I have learned that the divorce shows up in the index for civil cases from the Superior Court.  I learned that Emma first filed for divorce in 1906, prior to when she paid Emile Petit to stay out of her life forever.  And that seems to be as far as it can go right now, because I also learned that the Solano County Archives is in a state of limbo.  Above is a photograph of the current status of the archives, according to information on the Solano County Historical Society site.

I sent an official request for records retrieval.  The Solano County employee who responded to my request said that the documents just can't be found.  They might be lost, they might be misfiled, they might be in a box where someone can't read the numbers because they're on a shrink-wrapped cart — oh, wait, that last one was not one of the reasons the employee cited.  That's my own suggestion after looking at the photograph.

At this point Solano County apparently has no idea of when the question of what will happen to its archival materials will be resolved.  I was told it could take "several months" but no specific timeline.

These archival documents go back to 1850.  That's definitely worth preserving!  Some people in Solano County believe an official county archive should be established and now have an online petition to try to accomplish that.

To be fair, there is at least one more side to the story.  One person has put forth that Solano County has higher priorities than funding an archive.  That individual wrote to me that archival requests number no more than one per month, although no basis for the statistic was given.  That sounds rather low to me, considering the explosion of interest in family history that has taken over this country (remember, it's now the second highest Internet topic, right behind porn!).  The person in question did not state where knowledge of the situation came from and did not list any affiliation with the archives.

I have to admit I probably lean more toward hoping the county can have its own archives.  In theory it might be possible for the Solano County documents to be incorporated into the holdings of the California State Archives, but there's no guarantee that the state is willing or able to take on the additional material, and no indication that the idea has been broached to the state at all.  In addition, it would mean that local residents would have to go out of the county to research their own area.  My opinion holds little weight here, however, because I don't live in Solano County.  Residents of Solano County need to let their opinions be known to the county Board of Supervisors as soon as possible, whichever side of the debate they are on, because the board might make a decision as early as June.  Until the issue is resolved, research into the history of Solano County appears to be derailed.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Three Ancestry Questions

This week for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Randy Seaver has again been inspired by another person's post.  He linked to Linda Stufflebean's "Just for Fun – 4 x 6 = 24 Family Tree Questions" and asked everyone to follow that theme.

1) My friend and colleague Linda Stufflebean posted JUST FOR FUN – 4 X 6 = 24 FAMILY TREE QUESTIONS on her blog this week, and I thought we could answer half of the questions this week and half next week.

2)  Here are the first three questions:
*  What four places did my ancestors live that are geographically the farthest from where I live today?
*  What are the four most unusual given names in my family tree?
*  What are the four most common given names in my family tree?

3)  Answer each of the questions based on your own ancestors, not the collateral lines.

4)  Share your answers with us in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this post, in a Facebook post or a Google+ post.  Please provide a link to your response if you can.

I guess we know what next week's SNGF will be!  The tricky part about this, though, is restricting it only to ancestors and not including any collateral lines.

A.  What four [known] places did my ancestors live that are geographically the farthest from where I live today?
The Russian Empire is farther from me than the British Isles or continental Europe, so those will be the relevant ancestor residences for me:
• Chişinău, Moldova (formerly Kishinev, Bessarabia, Russian Empire or Romania)
• Kamyanets Podil's'kyy, Ukraine (formerly Kamenets Podolsky, Podolia, Russian Empire)
• Porazava, Belarus (formerly Porozovo, Grodno, Russian Empire or Poland)
• Kamyanyets, Belarus (formerly Kamenets Litovsk, Grodno, Russian Empire or Poland)

B.  What are the four most unusual given names in my family tree? [I have so many single instances of names, I just picked four.]
• Abel Amos Lippincott (abt. 1825 – aft. 1884)
• Mendel Herz Brainin (abt. 1860 – 1930)
• Simcha Dovid Mekler (? – bef. 1904)
• Sirke [unknown maiden name] (? – bef. 1893), married Abraham Yaakov Nowicki

C.  What are the four most common given names in my family tree?  [Mine are so much easier to count than Randy's.]
• Ann (5)
• Esther, Etta, Hananiah, James, John, Mary (six-way tie with 3)

Treasure Chest Thursday: Emma Responds with Documents

My little "treasure chest" included carbon copies (who out there besides me remembers typing those?) of three pages that appear to have been sent in response to the letter of May 17, 1927 that was addressed to Emma La Forêt.  All of these are typed clearly and have almost no handwriting, so I think I'll forego the transcriptions today.

The first is a letter on 8 1/2" x 11" green bond paper with a watermark of "Interlake Bond."  This looks to be the cover letter Emma sent with the subsequent pages.  It references W.O.1560656, the claim number for the pension application being processed by the Bureau of Pensions.  It is addressed to the Commissioner of Pensions, Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C.  (It has no street address!  No ZIP Code!  How ever did it get to the right office?)

From the items requested in the May 17 letter, Emma here covers:
• sworn statement of the Marine's service (requested in the letter)
• Jean's height, complexion, hair and eye color, occupation, and birthplace (#15 from the "circular")
• Jean's signature (#17 from the circular)
• Emma's response to the request for sworn statements of two people who knew Jean between 1874–1896, during which time she said he was a resident of France (requested in the letter)

The May 17 letter also requested that the information be a sworn statement from Emma.  This letter is signed by her and notarized by W. T. Kelley, a notary public in Solano County, and impressed with his notary seal (which doesn't show in the scan above).

Emma included her birthdate and age, which was requested on the second page of the circular, although not as a numbered item.

There's a small time conflict for the years Emma said Jean was a resident of France.  If he was living there from 1874–1896, then how could he have served in the U.S. Marines from August 11, 1884 to August 10, 1889?  I doubt that his five years of service were all in France.  Maybe the pension office asked her to clarify that later.

Unfortunately, the example of Jean La Forêt's signature isn't included.  She didn't state in her letter what the signature was on.  The fact that it's from March 15, 1906 means that it not only predates Jean and Emma's marriage, but also Emma's divorce from Emile Petit.  Ah, well, when I get around to ordering a copy of the pension file, maybe it will be included there.

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

This is an 8 1/2" x 11" piece of canary onionskin (another thing many people today won't recognize, I'm sure).  It is all a typed carbon copy except for the same notary's signature and impressed seal, and a handwritten date.

This is a transcription of the final divorce decree for Emma Schafer and Emile Petit.  It was in answer to item #5 on the circular, which was a request for proof that the claimant was widowed or divorced from any former husbands.

I have an original copy of that divorce decree, so I was able to compare the two documents word for word.  I found three changes in wording:  "haveing" was transcribed as "having", and two words were omitted—"the said Plaintiff" became "said Plaintiff", and "each of them is freed" became "each of them freed."  Other than that, some words were typed in capital letters that weren't in the original, and it wasn't noted that "L. G. Harrier" was a signature.  Overall, that's a pretty good job, though not perfect.

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

This is a second piece of 8 1/2" x 11" canary onionskin and another typed carbon copy.  The only items not typed are the notary's signature and his impressed seal.  The date at the bottom (which is next to the seal, which still doesn't show in the scan) was typed directly on this piece of paper, as opposed to having been from the carbon paper.   The word "were", interpolated between the fourth and fifth lines of text, was also typed directly on this sheet.

This page fulfills #2 from the circular's list of requested items and is a transcription of Jean L. La Forêt's and Emma Schafer Petit marriage certificate from Florida.  That I don't have a copy of, so I have to rely on the transcription to be accurate.  It says they were married in Jacksonville, so I guess I'll be writing to Duval County when I try to get a copy of the original.

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

Emma was pretty good at following directions.  Referring back to the letter from last week, it looks as though she sent everything requested except #4, a statement about whether any former husband had served in the U.S. Army or Navy (this office really didn't deal with Marines on a regular basis, did it?).  I'm sure they came back to her with another letter asking where that was.

Her sworn statement was made before a notary, so she followed that instruction.  The copies of the records were attested to by the notary.

It appears that Emma didn't quite comply with some other directions, though.  The circular said that every document needed the name and service number of the Marine, but the two transcriptions don't have that information.  Maybe they were added to the original copies before they were mailed to Washington.

A Push to the Finish for the Freedmen's Bureau

Last year I wrote about the Freedmen's Bureau transcription project, the effort coordinated by FamilySearch to create an (almost) every-name index to all the surviving records created by the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.  FamilySearch had already digitized the records and placed them online.  What was needed next was to create the index.

Unfortunately, the genealogical community has not jumped onto this project with the same enthusiasm it had for the 1940 census.  I don't remember how long that took, but I think it was something like four or five months?  We're nine months into the Freedmen's Bureau project now, and it's only about 64% complete.

The project was started last year on Juneteenth.  FamilySearch is hoping that enough volunteers can be energized to finish the transcription in time for this year's Juneteenth celebrations.

Remember, these records are so important in black family history research because they are one of the most easily accessible primary sources that can indicate the last owner of a formerly enslaved individual.  Many of the records created by the Freedmen's Bureau directly asked for the name of the last slave owner.  That owner's name is critical to finding more information about the individual prior to Emancipation.

And these records are helpful even if your ancestors were not Freedmen!  Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist, posted about how the records are useful to anyone doing Southern research.

New "indexing parties" are being organized to help get us to the finish line.  At the Oakland FamilySearch Library, we have three scheduled for April:
Thursday, April 14,  3:00-9:00 p.m.
Thursday, April 21,  3:00-9:00 p.m.
Monday, April 25, 3:00-9:00 p.m.

If you haven't used the FamilySearch indexing software yet, we'll have volunteers on hand who will be happy to teach you.  We'll also have people there who have worked on these records already, who can give advice on working with them.

If you think working with a group on this sounds good, come over and join in!  The library is at 4766 Lincoln Avenue in Oakland, California.

If it's difficult for you to get to the library, you're not in our area, or you just would prefer to work on your computer, we've got you covered:  You can help from the comfort of your own home!  Go to http://www.discoverfreedmen.org/, where you'll find the information you need to transcribe at home, maybe while wearing bunny slippers.

C'mon, guys, we can do it!

Wordless Wednesday