I Found Out Where We Had Our Vacation!

It's amazing what you can learn once you find the right people to ask.

Back on November 8, I posted a series of photographs from a vacation my family took, probably around April 1970, when most of the photos were dated.  Some photos were at picnic tables, some by a tent, some by a lake, and some of different family members standing in front of rock formations.

I still remember that we visited Lake Mead when I was young, so that was my guess for the lake in the photos.  But I had no idea where the rock formations could be.  I threw the question out to anyone looking at the blog post.

No one posted any comments on the blog, but I did get several comments on my Facebook page.  One in particular, from my cousin's wife, suggested that the rocks might be at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in Nevada.  So I looked it up online, found an e-mail address for questions, and sent a link to my blog post, asking if anyone there could tell me if the photos were taken at Red Rock.

The person who first received my message said he would forward it to people at Red Rock to look at.  It took a couple of weeks, but a very nice person from Red Rock responded and said the photos didn't look like Red Rock, but maybe they were at Valley of Fire State Park, also in Nevada.  He sent me the URL for Valley of Fire's site.

So I visited the Valley of Fire site, found an e-mail address there to send questions to, and went through the same routine.  This person thought the photos did look like Valley of Fire, and he said he would forward them to staff at the park to see if they could find the locations.

This time I waited much longer.  I realized after three months that I had never heard anything back, so I sent a follow-up message.  My contact said he would poke the staff at Valley of Fire.

Three days later, a message came from a new person, someone at Valley of Fire.  She said yes indeed, those photos sure did look like they were at her park, and she was going to ask some staff members to try to find the locations.

And two days after that, woo hoo!  Not only did they find all three locations, they took photos of them while holding up printouts of my photos from 1970!  Look what they sent me:

First we have the photo of the Toyota station wagon, and then just the rock formation.

Here's the photo of my father, and next the same rock formation without the photo.

Last but not least, the photo of the three of us kids being held up in front of the same rocks, and the rocks by themselves.

And now I know that all of these photos were taken in the Seven Sisters picnic area at Valley of Fire State Park.  Since there were photos of us sitting at a picnic table, I'm guessing that table was not far from the rock formations.  I hope that the picnic tables from 1970 have been replaced by now, although I'm amazed that the rocks look almost exactly the same as they did 55 years ago.  I know geologic time is slow, but I would have expected more erosion.

It's almost exactly 55 years ago, in fact.  I realized that we probably took this vacation during Easter break (yes, back then, before political correctness, it was Easter break, not spring break as it's now called), because my parents weren't really big on having us miss school unnecessarily.  Looking at the calendar for 1970, Easter fell on March 29 that year.  If I remember correctly (it has been a while, after all), Easter break was the week before Easter, so we would have been there during the week leading up to March 29.  And that was just last Saturday.  If Easter break came after Easter itself, then it's 55 years ago this week.

I'm so stoked that I was able to identify the locations for these photos, and also figured out when!  Next up, I think I'll see if the people at Lake Mead National Recreation Area can tell me where at the lake those photos were taken (the person who sent me the URL for Valley of Fire also sent me the one for Lake Mead).  I'm feeling lucky.

And I did receive permission to post these photos on my blog (because of course I asked; I didn't take the photos, so I don't own the copyright).  I'm still waiting on an answer from the park interpreter on whether she wants name credit for the photos.

Addendum, April 1, 2025:  The park interpreter has decided she wants to stay anonymous.  But I gave her a big thank you for helping me solve my mystery!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: The Occupations of My 2nd-great-grandfathers

I'm sure I have most of the information for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver, but I don't know if I have it memorized.  I'm going to test myself.

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

1.  Our ancestors had to work to support themselves and their families.  Do you know what occupations your 2nd great-grandfathers had?  Tell us about them.  If one intrigues or mystifies you, ask a free artificial intelligence tool to tell you more about the occupation in that place and time.

2.  Tell us about the occupations of your 2nd-great-grandfathers (and any AI created descriptions of those occupations) in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

Okay, let's see how I do.

My eight 2nd-great-grandfathers and their occupations are:

Joel Armstrong (about 1849–?), laborer

James Gauntt (1831–1899), wheelwright

Frederick Cleworth Dunstan (1840–1873), file grinder

Simcha Dovid Mekler (?–before 1904), possibly carpenter

Gershon Novitsky (originally Gershon Nowicki, about 1856–1948), wood turner, Hebrew teacher

Victor Gordon (originally Avigdor Gorodetsky, about 1863–1924), businessman, furrier

Morris Brainin (originally Mendel Hertz Brainin, about 1861–1930), shoemaker, peddler, rabbi

And that's only seven of them, because I still don't know who my biological great-grandfather was on the Sellers line, so I can't know who his father was.  If I include Sellers, my adoptive line:

Cornelius Godschalk Sellers (1845–1877), printer

I actually did very well from memory.  I did not remember the birth years of James Gauntt, Frederick Dunstan, and Cornelius Sellers or the earlier occupations of Gershon Novitsky and Morris Brainin.  Everything else I knew.

I still don't know when Joel Armstrong died.  I've seen it listed in a few family trees as 1921, but I have seen no documentation of his death (I don't think I've seen a complete date).  I keep looking.

Simcha Dovid Mekler never came to the United States.  I'm happy to know his name.  My guess for carpenter as his occupation is because his son, my great-grandfather Morris Mackler, was listed as a carpenter when he immigrated here, and many sons follow in their father's occupations.

And I just noticed that all eight men had different occupations!

I know that a carpenter and a wood turner are not the same thing, but I decided to search for the difference to clarify what they each do.  Google now automagically returns an AI synopsis at the top of the results page most of the time.  It said:

"a wood turner focuses on creating symmetrical, rotational objects using a lathe, while a carpenter focuses on structural and functional wood construction [such as] framing [and] trim, and installing fixtures."

So Randy can be happy that I did an AI search for my post.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Tuberculosis Is Still with Us

I was reading the Wikipedia page about World Tuberculosis Day, which falls today, March 24.  I had not realized that in the 1880's TB was the cause of death for one in seven people worldwide.  That's roughly 14%.  Current numbers that I found by searching online suggest that the world's current population is around 8.2 billion and that about 1.25 million people die annually from TB, for a percentage of about .0002.  Many more people, but a significantly smaller percentage of them overall.  So even though it is still with us, we seem to have improved a little in keeping people healthy.

March 24 was inaugurated as World Tuberculosis Day in 1982 because it was the 100th anniversary of when Dr. Robert Koch announced in 1882 that he had discovered the bacterium that causes tuberculosis:  Mycobacterium tuberculosis.  The purpose of World Tuberculosis Day is to draw attention to the fact that it still kills far too many people even now, in pretty much every country, including the United States.

Many well known people historically have suffered from tuberculosis.  There's even a page devoted to them on Wikipedia!  Just a few names I noted are Aubrey Beardsley, Sarah Bernhardt, Anne and Emily Bronte, Anton Chekhov, Frederic Chopin, Edward VI of England, W. C. Fields, Robert Heinlein, Vivien Leigh, Christy Mathewson, Amedeo Modigliani, Moliere, Edvard Munch, Florence Nightingale, George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), Junipero Serra, Igor Stravinsky, and Henry David Thoreau.

I wrote about World Tuberculosis Day in 2016 and had only one relative at that time whom I knew had died of TB.  In searching through my family tree program, I now have found three more cousins who died of tuberculosis.  I as yet have not found an ancestor who died of TB, although I have a note that one of my Hananiah Gaunt grandfathers supposedly did.  I'm still looking for documentation of that.

Henry H. Gauntt, son of Hananiah Selah Gaunt and Margaret S. Scott, died October 16, 1916 in Lumberton, Burlington County, New Jersey.  He was 42 years old and is my 1st cousin 3x removed.

Robert Francis Gauntt, son of John Benjamin Gaunt and Sarah Virginia Woolston, died July 17, 1917 in Norristown, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.  He was only 28 years old and is my 1st cousin 2x removed.

Ridgway Eacritt Zelley, son of Joseph Ridgway Zelley and Sarah R. Eacritt, died September 10, 1928 in Amarillo, Potter County, Texas.  He was 50 years old and is my 3rd cousin 2x removed.

Although the primary affliction we hear about spreading through World War I boot camps is influenza, tuberculosis also was a problem.  What's interesting about Robert Francis Gauntt is that his draft registration, dated June 5, 1917 — only six weeks before he died — indicates that he was having lung problems then.  If he was already sick, he probably wouldn't have made it through induction, so he appears to have acquired tuberculosis without being drafted and going to boot camp.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Plans Do You Have to Pass On Your Genealogy Work?

I've been thinking about this for a while also, Randy, but it's good to prompt people with a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post.

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

1.  What plans, or potential plans, do you have to pass your genealogy work to relatives and/or descendants, or posterity?

2.  Tell us about your plans to pass your work on in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

And just because I've been thinking about it doesn't mean I've figured out the answer yet.

Seriously, I have no idea.

So far no one in my family is interested in carrying on the work, that's for sure.  Whenever I stop, I'm pretty sure that'll be the end of adding information.

I've been sharing information with family members for literally decades now.  Every year for Christmas and Chanukah I used to mail updates to each family member I was in contact with for every family line that person descended from.  Some have become interested in specific people — for example, my cousin Yoni has developed a strong focus on our great-great-grandmother; my cousin Jeff was so struck by learning that his grandfather's family name had originally been Gorodetsky that he created that domain, but it doesn't appear that he has kept it — which is nice, but that's pretty much where it ends.  The information is out there, though, so it probably won't disappear entirely.

I suspect the best thing I can do for posterity is to create a "family report" style book that is well documented for each of my family lines and give copies of them to the FamilySearch Library.  That will help keep the information available to everyone, as I don't expect the LDS church to disappear.

The physical items that I have, particularly photographs, are likely doomed.  I don't think anyone else will want to maintain them, especially the ones that are still not identified.  "Why would we want to keep these?  We don't know who those people are."  My father's racing trophies?  They'll be gone.  Even my family ketubot will have trouble finding someone willing to keep them.

I better stop here.  I'm making myself depressed.

Celebrating the Flowers in My Father's Yard

There really is a "national" day for just about everything, isn't there?  Today, March 21, is National Flower Day, at least according to National Today (but it isn't listed with National Day Calendar, National Day Archives, or Days of the Year; I guess you have to pay each individually).  No background was provided on how the day was officially started (or who paid for it), although they do tie it to the vernal equinox and the beginning of spring.  Notwithstanding all of the suggestions they provide for ways to celebrate National Flower Day, I'm going to celebrate it by sharing a bunch of my father's photos of flowers.

I believe that all of these (or at least most of them) were flowers growing in Daddy's back yard in Mary Esther, Florida.  He loved photography and taking photos of just about anything, and he took lots and lots of photos of things in his back yard, including the flowers.  So to celebrate National Flower Day, here is a small selection of my father's flower photos.  My identifications are based on Google Image searches; if I have something wrong, please let me know.

Azalea

Southern Magnolia, Magnolia grandiflora

Closed African Lily, Agapanthus inapertus

Amaryllis, Amaryllis belladonna

Brazilian Orchid Tree, Bauhinia forficata

Crape Myrtle, Lagerstroemia indica

Jerusalem Thorn, Parkinsonia aculeata

The Second Tuesday of Next Week

The International
Date Line

While I was growing up, my mother was known for using interesting turns of phrase.  She would talk about the "oneth of the month" (the first day of the month).  She and my father both used Spoonerisms deliberately, so we saved Chublip Stamps instead of Blue Chip Stamps and ate chotato pips instead of everyday potato chips.  One of my favorites, though, was my mother threatening to knock us into the second Tuesday of next week when we were being, um, precocious.  But, of course, there is no second Tuesday of the week.

Until there was!

When my family moved to Australia in 1971, we flew on a Pan Am 747 and crossed over the International Date Line.  When we did that, the day we lost was a Tuesday.

When we returned to the United States in 1973, we took a Greek cruise ship, and of course we had to cross the International Date Line again.  On that trip across the date line, we happened to repeat a Tuesday.  So not only did we make up for the Tuesday we lost, we finally had the second Tuesday of next week!

And yes, we gave my mother a bunch of crap about all the times she had said that to us.  She had somehow finally succeeded in knocking us into the second Tuesday of next week.

Unfortunately, my parents have both passed away, and neither my brother nor I remember the specific Tuesday we repeated.  But we know we came back in March, and the Tuesdays in March 1973 were 6, 13, 20, and 27.  So I picked today to write about it.

And I am pretty sure my mother would love the fact that I still remember.

Wordless Wednesday

 

My First Musical Instrument Was the Recorder

I bet it was for a lot of people.  Wasn't it a standard thing around 3rd or 4th grade to introduce young students to music by teaching them to play the recorder?

I always figured that had become established because the recorder is a relatively easy instrument to learn to play (although it does take time and effort to learn to play well, without sounding like a screeching cat; recorders are kind of like clarinets in that way).  Once they were available in plastic, they were also pretty affordable.

Whatever the original impetus for schools was, I think I learned to play in the 4th grade, while I lived in Australia.  I don't remember the recorder from when I was in the 3rd grade in California.

And why am I writing about recorders today?  I guess you didn't know that today is Play the Recorder Day, did you?

Play the Recorder Day (PtRD), celebrated on the third Saturday of March, grew out of a one-day event held in 1989 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the American Recorder Society (ARS).  ARS started PtRD in 1992, to be an annual event.  Play the Recorder Month came after that, just to promote the recorder even more.

I have to admit, after originally learning to play recorder, I didn't do too much with it, even though I kept my instrument through several moves (kind of like keeping my Barbie dolls).  That was until I started participating in the Renaissance Pleasure Faire (the vestiges of which are currently called the Original Renaissance Pleasure Faire and owned by a for-profit corporation, but not the for-profit corporation that bought it when the original in which I participated ran into financial problems and was sold).

And hey, I suddenly had a place where I could play my recorder!  So I did!  And I had a lot of fun!

We didn't use plastic recorders at the Faire, of course, because they wouldn't have that "period" look.  I found a very nice wood recorder and played in the opening and closing parades.

I continued to play for several years.  I became interested in expanding my range from the standard alto recorder and picked up a soprano recorder.  I experimented a bit with tenor and bass recorders also.  I could produce decent notes on a tenor, but I had problems with the bass.  I never invested in purchasing either one, though, sticking to my alto and soprano recorders.

I haven't played either of my reorders in many years, but when I found out about Play the Recorder Day, it encouraged me to reminisce and document a little bit more of my personal history.

The Invisible Man Turns 75

That's not actually what people used to call my stepfather.  They didn't say he was invisible.  They used to question whether he existed at all.

Ric was (and is) a very hard-working man.  So if we were going on a trip, he opted out, because he stayed at home and kept working.

So the running joke from people outside the immediate family became that he wasn't really there at all, and that my mother had made him up as a cover story.

But he's real, and he's still here.  He took good care of us after my parents divorced and he married my mother.  He took good care of her, or as good as he could, even when she didn't make it easy to do so.

And he has made it to 75 years old!  Something he had seriously questioned whether he was going to do.

I figured he would make it.  He had a good role model with his mother, our Grandmama, who lived to see her 90's.

So happy birthday, Ric, and congratulations on making it to three quarters of a century!  Let's see you make it to 100!

We love you!

Wordless Wednesday

 

Hooray for Barbie!

No, I'm not talking about the movie (which I have seen, and once will be enough, thank you very much, dear daughter-in-law).  I'm talking about the actual doll.

March 9 is National Barbie Day because the Barbie doll was introduced at the American International Toy Fair on March 9, 1959, so today is Barbie's 66th birthday, making her older than I am, if not by much.

I don't remember if Barbie was my first doll — I might have had a baby doll before that? — but she was the first doll I remember, and I still have my first Barbie.  I think my second doll was a Stacey, which I recall as a redhead.  (I might have been given Stacey as a gift because my sister's name is Stacy.  Hey, they should have come out with a Laurie doll!)  Number three I believe was Midge.

I have taken my dolls with me from California to Australia, when my family moved there, then back to the United States when we returned in 1973, and across country when I moved back to California in 1979.  Then they moved with me from Los Angeles to Oakland in 1989, and up to Oregon in 2017.  I have never left a single doll behind.

I never got into the collectible Barbies, because I didn't want to leave them in the packaging ("never removed from box").  I wanted to take them out and play with them!  I have only one collectible Barbie, which a friend bought me for Christmas one year.  It's Barbie as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, in the green and white barbecue dress.  And yes, I took her out of the box.

Barbie is what really got me into sewing.  I had a sewing class in the 5th grade while my family lived in Australia, and when we came back to the States I started making clothes for my dolls.  I have dozens of patterns for Barbie clothes, most of them officially licensed by Mattel and produced by the big pattern companies.  The majority are from Simplicity, some are from McCall's, and a few others are from different companies.  I also have a few unofficial patterns, including some for Elizabethan clothing a friend gave to me when we were both performing at an Elizabethan faire.

Unfortunately, most of my dolls are still boxed up and in storage from when I moved to Oregon.  Not long after my arrival I tore my rotator cuff, and I've never regained the momentum I had for unpacking since then (it was probably the momentum that caused the tear in the first place).  But I've been adding to my collection since discovering groups such as Buy Nothing on Facebook.  It is amazing how many people give away Barbies and their accessories.  Now I have things I could never afford when I was younger, such as a Barbie airplane, car, condo, and house.  Soon I will be adding an RV!

One of my recent acquisitions, obtained specifically to pair with my dolls, is a dollhouse in the style of Victorian painted ladies.  I'll need to find (or make?) some patterns for Victorian clothing so that my dolls will look totally at home in their beautiful residence.

j

It's National Genealogy Day!

National Genealogy Day is not to be confused with Family History Month.  The latter is observed during the entire month of October.  It was established by Congress in 2001 and has stuck around since.

National Genealogy Day, on the other hand, was created in 2013 by Christ Church, a United Presbyterian and Methodist parish in Limerick, Ireland, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of that specific church (which was not always associated with United Presbyterian and Methodist).  Church records were brought together from Christ Church, Church of Ireland parishes, Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons).  People were invited to come and research their ancestors in the church records.

The celebration of National Genealogy Day has carried on and has spread to other areas after the 200th anniversary of Christ Church.  It's one day to focus on researching your genealogy and family history.

I am the family genealogist, and I don't do research on only one day, or during only one month, for that matter.  What I'm celebrating today is that most of my family members know that I'm the family genealogist, and they know they can ask me questions about the family.

Recently my brother asked me about specifics on relatives who died in or who survived the Holocaust.  I learned he was asking because my niece had to do a report on World War II and chose the Holocaust for her specific subject.  I was able to point my brother to my annual blog posts on Yom HaShoah, where I list all of the relatives I know/believe died in the Holocaust, including one cousin who was murdered in Auschwitz.  I also gave him details about several cousins who would be classified as survivors.  I may have drowned him in information, because I didn't hear back again after sending a long message.  I figure that meant my niece had enough for her report.

But I don't do research only on my own family, and even "extended family" members know who to turn to.

My uncle's wife is my aunt by marriage, but I've been researching her family for about 30 years.  A few years ago her sister's daughter, who had previously shown little to no interest in family history, sent me a message out of the blue, asking whether I still had all that research I had done on her family, particularly her father's side.  Of course I did!  And I sent her copies of everything.  She didn't use the information to do research per se, but to connect with people she was matching on DNA tests.  They also shared family information, a lot of which I received, so now I've added more to her tree.

Of course I did research on my ex's family.  Two different times after he was my ex, he called me because someone was asking him about his family history, and he knew I could do a much better job of explaining it.  Once he had me on the phone, he just handed his phone to the person who was asking (the same person both times), and we had a lively conversation about his family.

A more unusual conversation about his family came when I had just landed in the Portland, Oregon airport and was waiting for my luggage.  My younger stepson texted me with a question about his family, which I answered.  Then came another text with a new question, and I responded to that.  This went back and forth for close to ten minutes before I finally just called him and asked what it all was about.  As with my niece, it was for a school project, and he knew I had the information.  I told him that rather than giving him bits and pieces by text, I would wait until I was at my computer and send him all the information then, which worked much better for me than one dinky little text at a time.

So today I am celebrating National Genealogy Day and the fact that I have the opportunity to share family information with so many people!

William Brainin, Victim of the Spanish Flu

Although cases occurred before this date, a generally accepted start date for the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 (commonly called the Spanish flu epidemic) is March 4, when a U.S. Army cook by the name of Albert Gitchell at Camp Funston, Kansas was recorded as being ill.  In a very short time more than 500 men at the camp had been reported sick.  Only one week later, on March 11, the flu had reached Queens, New York.

One of the groups that was hit hard by the flu was men being inducted into the U.S. Army and attending boot camp, where close quarters and the effects of physical activity helped the virus spread quickly.  My great-granduncle William Brainin was one of those men.

I don't know much about Uncle Willie, as Bubbie (my grandmother) called him.  He was born about 1892 (he used the birthdate October 23, 1892 here), possibly in Kreuzberg, Russia (now Krustpils, Latvia).  He immigrated to the United States as Wolf Brainin with his mother, Ruchel Dvojre (Jaffe) Brainin, and three siblings — Chase Leah Brainin, Pesche Brainin, and Kosriel Brainin — aboard the Caronia, arriving at Ellis Island on October 3, 1906.

The Brainin family was enumerated in the census on April 20, 1910, living at 236 East 103rd Street, Manhattan, New York.  In the household were parents Morris [Mendel Hertz] and Rose Dorothy [Ruchel Dvojre] with children Lena [Chase Leah], Sarah [Sora Leibe], William [Wolf or Welwel], Bessie [Pesche], and Benjamin [Kosriel], everyone having chosen American names to use here.  William's occupation was ladies' tailor, a common job for young male Jewish immigrants at that time.

I have not found William in the 1915 New York census, but he might have already moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, to live with his older brother Max Joseph [Nachman] Brainin and his family.  Certainly he was there by June 1, 1917, where he registered for the Army draft.  I don't know when he entered the Army, but I have seen a photo which Bubbie identified as, "That's my Uncle Willie in his Army uniform."  (Unfortunately, the photo disappeared soon after that identification.  I'm still trying to figure out where it went.)

By the time of the 1920 census, William had returned to live with his parents in Manhattan.  They were enumerated there on January 12, 1920.

William had no occupation listed in the census, suggesting that he was probably already sick when the census taker came by.  Two weeks later, on January 26, William Brainin died in Manhattan.  His cause of death was given as pneumonia caused by influenza.  He was buried in the Workmen's Circle plot of Mt. Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, Queens on January 27.

I'm fortunate that some of Bubbie's memories, which were usually spot on, have proven to be inaccurate.  She told me that Uncle Willie had come home sick from the Army while my great-grandmother Sarah was pregnant with my grandmother, that my great-grandmother became ill, and that Uncle Willie died before Bubbie was born in 1919.  But that is Uncle Willie with his family in the 1920 census, and it's definitely his death certificate, so he absolutely did not die before Bubbie was born.  Finding him with the family in 1920 made it easier to identify him in the death index and get a copy of his death certificate.

So far Uncle Willie is the only member of my family I have found to have died due to the Influenza Pandemic.