Wordless Wednesday

 

Yom HaShoah: Remembering the Lost

Yom HaShoah falls on 27 Nisan of the Jewish calendar, which measures days from sunset to sunset.  This year on the Christian calendar it began at sunset today, May 5, and will end at sunset on May 6.  It is the annual day of remembrance to commemorate the fates of the approximately 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust during World War II.

The following are my family members I have been told died in the Holocaust.  All of them are from the Mekler/Nowicki branch of my family and lived in what was Grodna gubernia in the Russian Empire (now in Belarus).  May their memory be for a blessing.

Beile Dubiner
Eliezer Dubiner
Herschel Dubiner
Moishe Dubiner
Sore (Mekler) Dubiner
Aidel Goldsztern
Golda Goldsztern
Josef Goldsztern
Pearl (Gorfinkel) Goldsztern
Tzvi Goldsztern
Esther Golubchik
Fagel Golubchik
Lazar Golubchik
Peshe (Mekler) Golubchik
Pinchus Golubchik
Yechail Golubchik
Mirka (Nowicki) Krimelewicz
— Krimelewicz
Beile Szocherman
Chanania Szocherman
Mobsza Eli Szocherman
Perel Szocherman
Raizl (Perlmutter) Szocherman
Zlate Szocherman

Mirka Krimelewicz's name on the passenger list for my
great-great-grandparents Gershon and Dobra Nowicki, as
their nearest relative in the country they immigrated from in 1922.
She was their daughter and the sister of my great-grandmother.
This is the only documentation I have of her name and of her existence.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Make a Descendants List for Second-great-grandparents

This week's challenge from Randy Seaver for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun is almost something I can do from memory, at least for some of my family lines (okay, only on my mother's side).

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  How complete is your family tree?  Do you have information about your cousins, both close and more distant?  Today's challenge is to take one set of your 2nd-great-grandparents and make a descendants list (using your genealogy management program, e.g., Family Tree Maker, RootsMagic, etc.).

2.  Tell us about your choice of 2nd-great-grandparents and tell us approximately how many descendants of them that you have in your family tree database.  Share your answers, and perhaps a chart, on your own blog or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

And here's mine:

My family line with the most people on it for this exercise was the Dunstans, which surprised me.  I expected it to be the Gauntts.  Both of these are on my father's side.

The format that Randy used is called an Outline Descendant Report in Family Tree Maker, which is the program that I primarily use.  For this report FTM automatically set the number of generations at 99, which I didn't change.  It turned out to be six generations anyway, the same number of generations that Randy used.

Starting with my 2nd-great-grandparents Frederick Cleworth Dunstan (1840–1873) and Martha Winn (1837–1884), the result was 12 pages with about 20 descendant names on each page, so roughly 240 descendants total.  This is the first page of that report:

On my mother's side, the family with the most descendants was the Gordons (originally Gorodetsky).  The report for those 2nd-great-grandparents, Victor Gordon (circa 1866–1924) and Esther Leah Schneiderman (circa 1871–1908), ran nine pages.  It had about 25 descendant names on each page, so roughly 225 descendants overall.

The shortest report was for my paternal grandfather's paternal line.  As I still have not determined who his biological father was, that line stops with my grandfather.  The report was only four pages.  I was surprised to see that when I did take it back two additional generations of Sellerses, the report only increased to six pages total.  I admit I am not doing research on the Sellers line anymore, so that may be why.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: The Best Newspaper Article You've Found for Your Family History

I love newspaper research, so this week's challenge from Randy Seaver for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun should be right up my alley.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  What newspaper article is the best one you've found to help you with your family history?  Tell us about it:  where you found it, and what you learned from it.

2.  Tell us about your best newspaper article find in a comment on this post or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

Because I love newspaper research so much, I am constantly searching databases for family names, and as a result I have all sorts of articles about family members.  But I can't say that any of them has particularly helped with my family history.  I learn cool little tidbits of information, but I can't recall solving any significant mysteries or resolving any major questions with them.

I did answer a question the other way around, though.

Many years ago, when SmallTownPapers.com was still a pay site and had a lot more content (including older issues, and newspapers from not-so-small towns), I had access to it at some point, so I poked around and searched for various family names.  One article I discovered was in a DeFuniak Springs, Florida newspaper (which might have been the Herald or the Breeze, but I don't remember).  The article mentioned a display of antique carpenter's tools in the local library that had been provided by my paternal grandfather, B. L. Sellers, who lived in Niceville.

I printed out a copy (well before the days when I routinely saved electronic files, sadly) and remember thinking that I had never known my grandfather to collect carpenter's tools.  I wondered what had generated his interest in them.

Only a few months ago I was looking through a stack of papers that my grandfather saved from when he worked as a civilian at Fort Dix, New Jersey (he saved everything!) and learned that one of his early jobs there was as a carpenter.  So the newspaper article created the question for me, and other documents answered that question.

Another cool newspaper find was from the 1978 Playground Daily News (now the Northwest Floriday Daily News), the newspaper that covers a lot of the Florida Panhandle communities.  I lived in that area for six years.  I didn't find this myself; my father's sister was volunteering at the Historical Society Museum in Valparaiso and made the discovery.  She was sorting through a newspaper clippings file and found a photo of me at the museum, so she made a photocopy and mailed it to me.  During the summers, the museum used to offer craft classes, which I think were free.  So I have a photo of me learning traditional Indian pine needle basket weaving.  And I still have the little basket that I made in that class.

me, in a very 1970's polyester shirt
(which I actually remember!)

So no great revelations, but fun stuff nonetheless!

One Ringy Dingy

I'm going to date myself here.  Are you old enough to remember when you did not actually own your telephone, but you only leased it from Ma Bell (American Telephone and Telegraph Company or AT&T, which many years earlier had started as Bell Telephone Company)?

Today is National Telephone Day, and I am old enough to remember that.

In fact, those were the days when in order to be able to get phone service, essentially you had to already have phone service, or you had to have someone personally vouch for you.

My family ran into a problem with that when we returned to the United States in 1973 from Australia, where we had lived for two years as potential immigrants.  My parents had decided not to naturalize as Australian citizens, and my father told me we left two years to the day after we arrived.

But when we returned, we wouldn't have had phone service in the United States for two years, which was going to make it difficult for us to then get new service.

So we had to choose somewhere to live where we would have someone willing to personally vouch for us — for my parents, really.  I will never know exactly how that decision was made, but we ended up going to Niceville, Florida, where my father's father lived, and he must have convinced Ma Bell that my parents were trustworthy, because we got a phone.

But it wasn't our phone.  It belonged to AT&T.  We officially leased it.

Even after I graduated high school and went to college, I didn't own my phone then.  I also leased it from Ma Bell.

This really sounds ridiculous nowadays.  What do you mean, you didn't own your phone?  What was so valuable about that equipment?

I wish I knew.  That tight control over even the telephones themselves may have been part of the reason AT&T was judged to be a monopoly and was broken up into the seven "Baby Bells" after the 1982 United States vs. AT&T antitrust lawsuit.  (Of course, the Baby Bells have been slithering back together over the years, so that wasn't really effective.)

And somewhere I think I still have my old AT&T phone.  It was a teal trimline phone.  I remember I wanted to keep it, because it was actually mine.  I finally owned it.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Was Your Best Genealogy Research Achievement This Past Month?

I had to really think about the answer to this week's question from Randy Seaver for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  It wasn't what what came to mind first.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  What was your best genealogy research achievement this past month?  Tell us about it — what you achieved, and how does it affect your 2024 goals?

2.  Tell us about your recent achievement in a comment on this post or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

When Randy posed his question, he almost certainly meant research on one's own family.  And I actually did research on my own family this past month and accomplished quite a bit!

But I think my best research achievement wasn't on my own family.  It was on the family of someone I'm working with on acquiring dual citizenship.

That person has an Italian ancestor through whom he is eligible for dual citizenship, and that has been the focus of the research and the planning for the application.  That's what he asked me to work on.

There's no problem with his eligibility.  It's very clear he can apply through that ancestor.  It's a great-grandfather, which is three generations back, and that requires three generations of documentation and all the associated bureaucratic processes associated with that.  Plus needing to make an appointment to go to the consulate in person, which apparently at this time is at least two to three years out.  If you can actually manage to make an appointment, which he hasn't been able to do after weeks of trying.

And then last week he told me that his mother, whom I had already known was born in Germany but had not verified what her citizenship was, immigrated to the United States under a German passport, after he was born.

Well, guess what?  That makes him eligible for German dual citizenship.  Only one generation back, and only one generation of documentation.  Fewer documents, less bureaucracy.  Can be accomplished in weeks or months, not years.  Much more straightforward.

That's a far more important achievement than verifying the birth and marriage dates of a few dozen of my British cousins.

It doesn't have anything to do with my planned research goals for 2024, though.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Seeking Assistance with a Hyena, a Shipwreck, Woodbine, and Route 66

This year National Volunteer Week runs from April 21 through 27.  The week, observed in Canada and the United States, is designed to honor volunteers and the contributions they make.  I use it to highlight the work that volunteers do within the family history world and projects that can currently use their assistance.  And I know about a few projects right now that would like your help, if you have the information they're looking for.

Judith A. Yates is a criminologist who is writing an all-encompassing book on Irma Grese, the "Hyena of Auschwitz."  She is seeking people to interview who came into contact with Grese, who was employed at:

• Ravensbruck, July 1942 to March 1943
• Auschwitz, March 1943 to January 1945 (mostly at Bergen-Belsen)
• Belsen, March 1945

Yates would also like to interview:

• people who attended the Belsen trials
• people who know about Grese's home town, Wrechen (Neubrandenburg County), North Germany
• people who can discuss the general life of female guards at either camp (behavior, where they lived, how they lived, etc.)
• people who did not have personal dealings with Grese but knew "of" her personally
• family members of survivors
• anyone who can provide information, including photos and documents

You may contact Yates at truecrimebook@yahoo.com.  Her site is http://www.judithayates.com/.

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

Descendants of victims from an Australian shipwreck are being sought to share their stories.

The SS Nemesis disappeared in 1904 on its way from Newcastle, New South Wales to Melbourne, Victoria.  Thirty-two crew members were on board the ship, and they left behind more than 40 children.

The ship's wreckage was found in 2022 and confirmed to be the Nemesis this year.  After the first call for descendants, twenty grandchildren and great-grandchildren, from almost every Australian state, came forward, including relatives of the ship's captain.  Heritage NSW is asking more relatives to share their stories so they can be saved and archived.

An article about this story has more details and includes contact information for Heritage NSW.

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

Do you remember Route 66?  (I don't, I'm too young!)  Have any great stories?  The National Trust for Historic Preservation wants you to share those stories so they won't be forgotten!

Leading up to Route 66's centennial in 2026, the National Trust is hoping to receive (at least) 2,026 stories to celebrate the famous highway, and it's asking community members, travelers, historians, and everyone else to contribute.  More details and a link to the submission form can be found here, along with many stories and photos that have already been shared.

[I just discovered by reading the Wikipedia page about Route 66 that it was established on November 11, 1926.  Although this was commemorated as Armistice Day, it was not yet a holiday (that didn't happen until 1938).  And November 11 is a special day in my family because it was my mother's birthday.]

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

Stephen A. Diamond, Ph.D. of New York City is in the planning stages to film a documentary about the Jewish Agricultural Colony of Woodbine, New Jersey.  The filming is likely to happen this summer, but the exact scope and content are still under discussion.  He is looking for descendants and others from the extended Woodbine family who have anecdotal information or memorabilia related to the colony to share that information and/or to participate in the documentary.  You may contact him at diamondesllc@gmail.com.

It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's . . . .

Today is April 15, now probably most famous in the United States for being Income Tax Day, the deadline to file one's federal (and often state) income taxes, or at least make your payment while you extend your filing date for six months.  The date was codified in 1955 and varies sometimes depending on holidays, weekends, and events such as the COVID pandemic.

In 1912, the RMS Titanic sank on April 15, after having glancingly hit an iceberg the night before.

And in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died, succumbing to the gunshot wound inflicted on him by John Wilkes Booth on April 14.

But even more important than any of these events, April 15 is my little brother's birthday.

Happy birthday, Mark!

Me and Mark, about 1964–1965