Genealogy is like a jigsaw puzzle, but you don't have the box top, so you don't know what the picture is supposed to look like. As you start putting the puzzle together, you realize some pieces are missing, and eventually you figure out that some of the pieces you started with don't actually belong to this puzzle. I'll help you discover the right pieces for your puzzle and assemble them into a picture of your family.
I'm very excited! I was interviewed recently by DNA Weekly about my genealogy research, and the interview has gone through the editing process and is now available online.
I'm sure people who know me will recognize my rambling, but I think it turned out very well.
Today is the 9th anniversary for my brother and my sister-in-law, who were married in Elkridge, Maryland. They chose November 12 as their wedding date as they wanted to honor my deceased mother, whose birthday was November 11, but did not think it appropriate to have the wedding on her actual birthday. Ergo, it took place the day after.
The traditional gifts for the 9th anniversary, per the lists on Wikipedia, are pottery or leather goods in the United States (or copper in the United Kingdom). Those sounded kind of blah to me, so I figured a blog post commemorating their special day was a nicer gift.
Happy anniversary!
The older of my grandmother's two older brothers was Sidney Gordon. He was born December 22, 1915 in Manhattan, New York and died May 10, 2012 in Graniteville, Richmond County (Staten Island), New York, where he had lived since about 1952. During World War II, from about 1939 to 1943 he served in the U.S. Navy, with at least some of that time spent as a medic in Trinidad, or at least that's what I've been told.
Sidney had several photos taken of himself during his Navy service, and he apparently sent copies of the photos to his sister. I now have my grandmother's photo collection and therefore lots of photos of Sidney in the Navy.
I think this is the first time I've collected them all together. I don't have anything to date them by, so I don't know what order they should be in. While I'm pretty sure that some of them were taken in Trinidad, others (such as the one where Sidney is wearing a heavy coat) might have been in the States. I wish I had more details.
At this point I believe his service records should be available to me, and since he was in the Navy and not the Army, I shouldn't have to worry about lost records. I need to put requesting them on my to do list.
Visit this month's Genealogy Blog Party at The Family Heart for more family history stories about veterans.
Time to go on a treasure hunt with Randy Seaver for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun!
Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission: Impossible! music, please!):
(1) Lorine Mcginnis Schulze on her Olive Tree Genealogy blog asked this question several weeks ago in http://olivetreegenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/10/what-is-your-oldest-ancestral-item.html.
(2) So have at it — what is the oldest ancestral item in your collection of artifacts and stuff?
(3) Tell us all about it in a blog post of your own, in comments on this blog post, or in a post on Facebook. Be sure to link to them in a comment on this blog post.
Thank you to Lorine for the idea and to Linda S. for suggesting it.
I don't have many ancestral items to begin with and very few old ones, but I did take my time thinking about this to make sure I had determined the oldest item. I'm pretty sure it's a photo of my Gorodetsky great-great-grandparents taken in Kamenets Podolsky, Russian Empire, from about 1890. It's the only family item I have from before 1900.
The second-oldest ancestral item I have is a photo of a different set of great-great-grandparents, the Brainins, from about 1906, taken in Manhattan.
And that's almost everything I have that can count as an "ancestral item." I do have my great-grandmother's set of silverplate tableware, but I don't have a date for them. She married in 1914, so that's the oldest they are likely to be, but there's a good chance they're more recent.
